|
HOUSTON: A NASA contractor took two co-workers
hostage at Johnson Space Center, killing one of them before turning
the revolver on himself. Bill Phillips, an engineer with Jacobs
Engineering who has barricaded himself inside the building Friday,
after managing to sneak a revolver past security at the sprawling
space center campus, police and NASA officials said. Phillips shot
David Beverly in the chest, killing the NASA employee, and later
shot himself in the head inside Building 44, a communications and
engineering facility. The second hostage, Fran Crenshaw, another
NASA contract worker, was found duct-taped to a chair a few hours
after the standoff began. She was treated at a hospital and
released.
London: BRITAIN’s Queen
Elizabeth II was marking her 81st birthday in private on
Saturday—a far cry from last year’s public celebrations in front
of cheering, flag-waving crowds. The queen, on the throne since
1952, was to spend the day in private at Windsor Castle, west of
London—the royal residence she considers home—and enjoy a
private dinner with her husband Prince Philip, 85.
Paris: FRANCE was poised to start choosing its new president
Saturday, after campaigning ended for the first round of the
election and the last polls showed right-wing favorite Nicolas
Sarkozy maintaining his lead over Socialist Segolene Royal. The
first votes were to be cast during the day, as citizens of French
overseas territories and expatriates in the Americas go to the polls
24 hours ahead of mainland France. Official campaigning in France
ended at midnight Friday (2200 GMT), and a ban came into force
preventing all media from publishing opinion polls and statements
from the 12 candidates.
Virginia: The family of a
gunman who shot dead 32 people has apologized for the
“excruciating grief” inflicted on a US campus, saying as the
nation mourned that he had made “the world weep.” “Each of
these people had so much love, talent and gifts to offer, and their
lives were cut short by a horrible and senseless act,” said a
statement issued by the family of South Korean-born Cho Seung-Hui
Friday. The statement came just after bells tolled around the
country for the 27 students and five teachers mown down in a hail of
gunfire when Cho rampaged through a dormitory block and a classroom
complex. Burning questions remain over whether Cho, who had been
briefly hospitalized for mental health problems, should have been
able to buy two guns and ammunition.
Taipei: An undersea
earthquake of magnitude 5.6 jolted Taiwan on Saturday, the central
weather bureau said, but there were no immediate reports of damage
or casualties. The tremor struck at 8:32 a.m. (0032 GMT) with its
epicenter 97 kilometers (60 miles) east of Orchid Island, off
southern Taiwan. It hit at a depth of 9.8 kilometers. Taiwan, which
lies near the junction of two tectonic plates, is regularly shaken
by earthquakes.
CAIRO: An Egyptian with
Canadian citizenship was sentenced to 15 years behind bars on
Saturday on charges of spying for Israel, judicial sources said.
Judge Sayyed al-Gohary of Cairo’s high state security court
sentenced Mohammed Essam Ghoneim al-Attar, 31 and three Israelis
tried in absentia, to 15 years in prison and a fine of 10,000
Egyptian pounds ($1,760) each.
Beijing: Bishop Fu Tieshan,
the head of the official Catholic church in China, has died of
illness at the age of 76, official media reported Saturday. Fu, who
was chairman of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, died
Friday night in Beijing. A local newspaper paid a front-page tribute
to the memory of this “close friend of the Chinese Communist
Party,” who was bishop of Beijing and also a vice-chairman of the
National People’s Congress, or parliament.
LAGOS: Polls began opening
Saturday amid chaos and tension in Nigeria’s landmark presidential
elections, due to see the first postcolonial transfer of power
between two civilian presidents in Africa’s most populous nation.
The first of Nigeria’s 61.5 million voters cast their ballots as
booths opened at 0900 GMT in the commercial capital Lagos, in
northern Kaduna and in Abeokuta (south-west), where outgoing
President Olusegun Obasanjo is to cast his vote.
KUWAIT CITY: A man who
poisoned his eight children, killing five of them, was ruled “not
responsible for his actions” on Saturday by a Kuwaiti court and
ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment. Four daughters and a son
died instantly after the 38-year-old Muayad al-Saeedi forced them to
drink a poison-laced liquid, while his three other children were
later treated in the hospital. The incident took place two years ago
in Jahra, a tribal area 50 kilometers (30 miles) northwest of Kuwait
City, after Saeedi’s wife reportedly left the family home. The
ruling by Kuwait’s lower court, which can be appealed, was based
on a medical report.
TOKYO: Three bodies were found in a car filled with carbon
monoxide in what appeared to be Japan’s latest group suicide,
police said Saturday, the second such incident this week. Bodies of
two men and one woman were found Friday evening in a vehicle in a
carpark in Mishima, a city in Shizuoka prefecture some 200
kilometers (120 miles) west of Tokyo, police said. “There were
three charcoal burners inside the car, and a note was also found
that said, ‘I want to die,’” local police spokesman Iwao Irie
said.
SYDNEY: Police
investigating the disappearance of three sailors from a yacht found
drifting off the Australian coast with engines running and a table
laid for a meal ruled out foul play Saturday. Police admitted they
were still baffled about the fate of the crew of the 12-meter
(40-foot) catamaran “KAZ II,” which was spotted Thursday adrift
80 nautical miles off Townsville, on Australia’s northeast coast.
Rescue crews who initially reached the vessel said it had engines
running, computers switched on and food and utensils out ready for a
meal but there was no sign of the sailors, a 56-year-old man and two
brothers aged 63 and 69.
JAKARTA: Three people were
killed in Indonesia when a landslide buried a house, police said
Saturday. A mother and her two daughters died in the accident,
caused by heavy rain in West Java province, but the father survived,
state news agency Antara reported. “The landslide buried a house
in Samarang village last night at about 10 p.m., killing three
people,” a local police spokesman said.
--AFP
|
