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BOSTON (AP) -- Moshe Kai Cavalin has two college degrees, but he's too young to vote. He flies airplanes, but he's too young to drive a car alone.
Life is filled with contrasts for Cavalin, a 17-year-old from San Gabriel, California, who has dashed by major milestones as his age seems to lag behind. He graduated from community college at age 11. Four years later, he had a bachelor's in math from the University of California, Los Angeles.
This year, he started online classes to get a master's in cybersecurity through the Boston area's Brandeis University. He decided to postpone that pursuit for a couple of terms, though, while he helps NASA develop surveillance technology for airplanes and drones.
Between all that, he has racked up an exhausting list of extracurricular feats. He just published his second book, drawing on his experience being bullied and stories he's heard from others. He plans to have his airplane pilot's license by the year's end. At his family's home near Los Angeles, he has a trove of trophies from martial arts tournaments.
Still, Cavalin insists that he's more ordinary than people think. He credits his parents for years of focused instruction balanced by the freedom to pick his after-school activities. His eclectic interests stem from his cultural heritage, he said, with a mother from Taiwan and a father from Brazil.
"My case isn't that special. It's just a combination of parenting and motivation and inspiration," he says after a recent shift at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. "I tend to not compare myself that often to other people. I just try to do the best I can."
His parents say he was always a quick study. At 4 months, he pointed to a jet in the sky and said the Chinese word for airplane, his first word. Cavalin hit the limits of his home schooling after studying trigonometry at age 7. Then his mom started driving him to community college.
"I think most people just think he's a genius, they believe it just comes naturally," said Daniel Judge, a professor of mathematics who taught Cavalin for two years at East Los Angeles College. "He actually worked harder than, I think, any other student I've ever had."
But his rapid rise hasn't been without twists. Early in college, he dreamed of being an astrophysicist. When he started taking advanced physics classes, though, his interest waned. His fascination in cryptography led him toward computer science.
That has been a better fit, Cavalin said. He was surprised when NASA called to offer work after rejecting him in the past because of his age. Ricardo Arteaga, his boss and mentor at NASA, says Cavalin was perfect for a project that combines math, computers and aircraft technology.
"I needed an intern who knew software and knew mathematical algorithms," Arteaga says. "And I also needed a pilot who could fly it on a Cessna."
In the office, Cavalin is a quiet worker with a subtle sense of humor, Arteaga says. They laugh about the stuff scientists laugh about. His daily work at NASA has included running simulations of airplanes and drones that are headed for collision, and then finding ways to route them to safety.
"He's really sharp in mathematics," Arteaga says. "What we're trying to bring out more is his intuitive skills."
In conversation, Cavalin speaks with the even cadence and diction of someone who chooses his words with care. He's unflappable, at least until he discusses his distaste for being called a certain word: "One word I don't take too kindly is genius," he said. "Genius is just kind of taking it too far."
After he finishes his master's from Brandeis, Cavalin hopes to get a master's in business at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Later, he wants to start his own cybersecurity company.
For now, though, he's counting down the days until his 18th birthday, when he'll be able to get a full driver's license under California law. Living away from home to work at NASA, he relies on his landlord for rides to the grocery store, or he takes a taxi. His older colleagues drive him to work every day.
As for the other teenage stuff, Cavalin says he'll wait until he gets his doctorate degree to find a girlfriend. He's only half-joking.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Election Day 2015 is Tuesday, which means we're a year away from the big Election Day to come - the one with the next president on the ballot. Here's a look at some of the milestones ahead before the end of the 2016 presidential campaign.
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A DEBATE OVER DEBATES
Nov. 10: The next Republican debate, in Milwaukee, is expected to proceed as planned, with Fox News and The Wall Street Journal as sponsors.
Nov. 14: The next Democratic debate, a Saturday night in Iowa.
Dec. 15: Republicans are scheduled to debate in Nevada, though questions hang over the proceedings now that the campaigns are pressing for changes in how the primary series is conducted.
Dec. 19: Another Saturday debate for the Democrats, in New Hampshire.
Jan. 17: The Democratic debaters are up again, this time with the Congressional Black Caucus as one of the sponsors, in South Carolina. Two more Democratic matchups are expected in February and March.
Jan. 31: A big day for money in politics. For the first time since July, super PACs report on how much money they've raised and the names of donors. These candidate-aligned groups can raise and spend unlimited money, outside the control of candidates and have become key to success in a presidential race. This date is also when the campaigns next report on their fundraising, showing who's got the cash to put up a sustained fight on the eve of voting.
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OMG ACTUAL VOTING!
Feb. 1: The storied Iowa caucuses. Iowans meet to choose their favorite for the Republican and Democratic nominations, the first votes that count in the presidential contest after several years of positioning by the hopefuls and a months-long blizzard of opinion polls.
Feb. 9: The storied New Hampshire primary. After this, the intimate flavor of politicking in small states will give way to big rallies and advertising blitzes.
Feb. 20: The Republican South Carolina primary - first primary in the South as well as the first in a state with a large non-white population - and the Nevada Democratic caucuses.
Feb. 23: Nevada Republican caucuses.
Feb. 26: A planned Republican primary debate in Texas. This date is in jeopardy because the Republican Party suspended cooperation with NBC, a sponsor, after the flap over the October debate on CNBC. Questions hang, too, over sponsors, rules and schedule for five other GOP debates planned from January through March.
Feb. 27: South Carolina Democratic primary.
March 1: There's no clump in U.S. politics like Super Tuesday, when contests are held in 13 states. Among the big ones for both parties: Colorado, Texas and Virginia. Until this point, the race is largely one of expectations and bounce. Super Tuesday, though, offers a huge cache of delegates needed for the nomination. It's typically when the numbers really start to count.
March 15: Another big night for winning delegates and scoring in battleground states, with primaries in Illinois, Ohio, North Carolina, Missouri and Florida. The Florida primary, a big deal in its own right, takes on added significance because Floridians Marco Rubio, the senator, and Jeb Bush, the ex-governor, are running.
May 29: How many Republican rivals will be still be standing by the end of May? This is the date in 2012 when Mitt Romney clinched the Republican nomination - the Texas primary pushed him over the edge.
June 3: Will the Democratic race drag out this long? Barack Obama secured the nomination over Hillary Rodham Clinton on this date in 2008, thanks to the final primaries, in Montana (which he won) and South Dakota (which he lost), as well as a heaping helping of support from party establishment figures known as superdelegates.
July 18-21: Republican National Convention, Cleveland, crowns the winner, dazzles partisans.
July 25-28: Ditto for the Democrats, in Philadelphia.
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THE FALL CAMPAIGN
Sept. 5: Labor Day is the traditional (informal) kickoff of a presidential campaign that actually has been going on for months. Really it's the start of the final stretch.
Sept. 26: The first of three head to head debates of the Democratic and Republican nominees, in Ohio.
Oct. 4: The running mates debate, in Virginia.
Oct. 9: The second presidential debate, St. Louis.
Oct. 19: The last presidential debate, Las Vegas.
Nov. 8: Election Day.
Soon after: Who pops up in Iowa to stake a claim for the 2020 race? Last time, it was Marco Rubio, sowing seeds for 2016 less than two weeks after the 2012 campaign was done.
ST. LOUIS (AP) —
Authorities charged A 35-year-old black St. Louis man with arson for two of the seven church fires in a predominantly African-American part of the St. Louis region, and federal investigators said there is no evidence of a hate crime.
David Lopez Jackson was charged Friday in St. Louis Circuit Court with two counts of second-degree arson in the fires at Ebenezer Lutheran Church and New Life Missionary Baptist Church, both in the city. St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson said investigations continue into the other fires — three in St. Louis, two in nearby Jennings — and Jackson is a suspect in all of them.
The fires were set between Oct. 8 and Oct. 22. Five of the congregations are predominantly black, one is racially mixed and one is mostly white.
The fires spurred a hate-crime investigation to determine if the attacks were motivated by race or religion. But the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives downplayed that possibility in a statement on Friday.
"There appears to be no indication of a hate crime or sign ... any one particular Christian denomination or ethnic group was being targeted," the federal agency said.
Dotson gave no alternative explanation for the attacks, saying investigators "are still trying to understand" the motive.
The region is still recovering from the events surrounding last year's police shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, a St. Louis suburb, and a grand jury's subsequent decision not to charge the officer who shot him. Brown was black and unarmed when he was shot by white Darren Wilson in a case that helped spur the national "Black Lives Matter" movement, and it renewed concern about the treatment of minorities in and around St. Louis.
Most of the fires were during the night when churches were unoccupied, although one at a Catholic church was during the day when a priest was there.
No one was hurt in any of the incidents. Damage was mostly minimal, but New Life Missionary Baptist Church was so badly damaged that pastor David Triggs wasn't certain if the congregation would rebuild or move.
In all seven fires the front doors were ignited. Dotson said gas was used as an accelerant in both fires that resulted in charges against Jackson. He said forensics evidence linked Jackson to the crime, though he did not elaborate. Surveillance footage also tied Jackson's car to one of the fires, and Dotson said police found evidence in the car that included a gasoline canister and a Thermos bottle that smelled of gas.
St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay said the fires hit at the heart of the community — places of worship.
"It's just absolutely despicable that somebody would go after churches," he said.
Msgr. Robert J. Gettinger of St. Augustine Catholic Church, damaged in a fire on Oct. 14, said he and his congregation of about 300 families, most of them black, are pleased that the suspect is off the street and no longer a threat, although Jackson was not charged Friday with the fire at the Catholic church.
"There was a fear in a lot of people, so you're certainly relieved," Gettinger said. "Hopefully he'll get some kind of help."
Gettinger was also relieved that the attack was apparently not racially motivated.
"It's helpful" for the region, Gettinger said. "We don't need anything else like that with Ferguson going on."
The Rev. Rodrick Burton of New Northside Missionary Baptist Church in Jennings, which suffered damage Oct. 10, agreed.
"I believe the St. Louis community will have a sigh of relief," Burton said. "Given our history of racial division, it will be a great relief that it is not motivated by prejudice."
The churches represented several denominations — two Catholic, two Baptist, one Lutheran, one Church of Christ and one non-denominational.