MOST NOTEWORTHY: The machinery industry, Sohu.com (SOHU), Intuit (INTU), Priceline.com (PCLN) and Expedia (EXPE) were today's noteworthy initiations:

• JP Morgan assumed coverage of 5 machinery stocks: The firm assumed Eaton (NYSE: ETN) and Illinois Tool Works (NYSE: ITW) with Overweight ratings and Ingersoll-Rand (NYSE: IR), Parker Hannifin (NYSE: PH) and Kennametal (NYSE: KMT) with Neutral ratings. JP Morgan's top picks in the group are Illinois Tool Works and Eaton.

• Pali initiated Sohu.com (NASDAQ: SOHU) with a Buy rating and $41 target and believes the Olympic Games represent the biggest growth catalyst for the company.

• Jefferies started shares of Intuit (NASDAQ: INTU) with a Buy rating and $34 target, likes the momentum in TurboTax and QuickBooks and sees potential upside fo FY08 expectations.

• Banc of America initiated Priceline.com (NASDAQ: PCLN) with a Buy rating and $96 target and is positive on the company's European positioning given expectations for top line growth and margin expansion. The firm also started shares of Expedia (NASDAQ: EXPE) with a Buy rating and $35 target, positive on the company's strong management, solid competitive positioning and improving fundamentals.

OTHER INITIATIONS:

• First Albany assumed coverage of Cougar Biotechnology (OTC: CGRB) with a Buy rating and $29 target.

• Oppenheimer started shares of Virginia Commerce (NASDAQ: VCBI) with a Neutral rating.

• Omega Financial (NASDAQ: OMEF) was initiated at Keefe Bruyette with a Market Perform rating and $25 target.

• Merrill Lynch initiated shares of Insulet (NASDAQ: PODD) with a Buy rating.

Analyst summaries provided by TheFlyOnTheWall.com (subscription required).

I knew one of my colleagues at AOL had attended Virginia Tech; he was still in school when he started working for my group as an intern. I work remotely, though, and hadn't heard how affected by yesterday's tragedy he was. Today at our early morning meeting I heard a little more; he'd known one of the first people killed. He knew the killer. And then, an hour ago, he published this astonishing piece on how he'd immediately thought of Cho, whose 'macabre' offerings in a play writing class prompted his fellow students to recoil.

Naturally, after a tragedy like this (or even, yesterday, while it was still unfolding), everyone asks: "what should we have done differently?" Late at night, when BBC is on the local public radio station, all the talk was of gun control. When I woke up and NPR had taken over, the conversation had changed. I wondered yesterday about whether this would lead to heightened security on college campuses everywhere, and this morning a U.S. security expert was talking about how better training (read: heightened security) can lead to prevention of tragedies like this. He said that he personally has averted more than a dozen mass shootings simply by knowing how to look for individuals who are carrying weapons; they walk and act differently when they're packing a loaded gun.

But there's something else, and while I'd like to get all nature/nurture and blame his parents (if you look at the plays he wrote, you'll see exactly why I write that), it's a little more practical. It's about being more watchful, both at companies where rogue employees have been known to come in and gun down their former co-workers, and at public schools, and at all the other places where people become close enough to know one another and (subsequently) develop the passion required to murder those close acquaintances. It's about being attentive -- not just to whether someone's packing heat but whether or not they're capable of doing so. I don't have an answer to "what should we do when we discover the guy in the next cube is a psychopath?" -- but I think it's an easier question than "how do we regulate guns so only the good guys have access?"

It's the deadliest campus shooting in the U.S. ever: 22 33 people, including students, were killed at Virginia Tech University by senior Seung-hui Cho a gunman whose name has not yet been released, this morning; one in a dormitory and the rest in a classroom. [Update 9:26 p.m.: 33 are dead, and 15 more are wounded, and rumors among the students are that the shooting was started as an argument between a boyfriend and girlfriend. There was one incident in the dorms, in which two students were killed, and a separate incident in classrooms later.] The gunman too was shot, either by police or at his own hands. A dorm lockdown has now been lifted, but campus buildings will be closed and classes cancelled through tomorrow.

President Bush has weighed in, saying he was shocked and saddened, while the university's president, Charles Steger, has released a statement, calling it a "tragedy of monumental proportions." It's certainly monumental; the next two most deadly campus shootings in the U.S. were the 1966 shooting at the University of Texas, in which 17 were killed, and the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado, where 14 were killed; both numbers include the gunmen themselves.

While most of the dead were shot in classrooms, which at most public institutions have always been open to the public during class time, it brings a question for me: will this change the way campuses deal with security in dormitories? Certainly, key cards and other security measures have been in use for the past decade or so at most large college and university dorms, but in my experience you can always get a friendly student to hold the door for you -- and, as so many colleges are housed in grand old buildings, they're often difficult to secure fully. Will a tragedy like this put many of our university security offices at a much-heightened level of awareness? Will classrooms soon be put in lockdown? Columbine prompted many high schools to install metal detectors and do random sweeps -- are college classrooms and dormitories the nation wide to follow suit?