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Panel to probe massacre
Maharajah’s bomber restored to glory
Indian jailed for sex liaison with student
Algerian woman gives birth to seven babies |
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Another massacre threatened
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Blacksburg, April 20 Governor Tim Kaine’s announcement came as Virginia Tech university officials were peppered with questions over whether a student with a history of mental problems and stalking women should have been allowed to remain in school. Cho Seung-Hui, 23, a Virginia Tech senior whose family moved to the United States from South Korea when he was eight years old, went on the rampage here Monday mowing down 32 teachers and students with two recently bought handguns. Kaine said the review panel would be headed by Gerald Massengill, a former Virginia police chief, and would include Tom Ridge, a former head of the US Department of Homeland Security. A 20-year veteran of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a senior state education official and a psychiatrist were also named to the body. The panel will also look into Cho’s dealings with the mental health system, the type of treatment he received. Loganathan family arrives
Washington: The family members of Professor G V Loganathan, who was killed in the shooting spree at the Virginia Tech University, have arrived at the institute to perform his last rites. Nine members of the Loganathan family flew into the Dulles International Airport, Virginia, where staffers of the Indian Embassy met them. Loganathan and 26-year-old Minal Panchal were in the same classroom when Cho gunned them down on Monday morning. Panchal’s family is in the United States, her mother already here visiting her other daughter. However, there is no final news on when the last rites for Loganathan and Panchal are going to be performed as the authorities, as of yesterday afternoon, are yet to return their bodies. While Loganathan’s funeral is expected to take place in Blacksburg, Panchal’s last rites are expected to be performed in Baltimore, Maryland. NBC under fire for airing video
New York: US television network NBC has received flak for airing parts of video, photographs and documents sent by Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui, with critics questioning its editorial judgement. The parts of video were picked up by other networks but several disturbing videos, photographs and materials were taken off the websites after networks received hundreds of emails criticising the video. The police, psychiatrists, students and parents of the victims criticised the airing of disturbing videos and in television interviews several said the overall effect would be to make Cho hero posthumously and might give ideas to others that this is the way to get fame. More than two-dozen of the country’s top mental health specialists, including adolescent psychiatrists, forensic specialists, suicide prevention specialists said the video should not have been broadcast. Their reasons ranged from the threat of copycat violence to the possible stigmatisation of those with mental health problems. Lecturer buried in Israel
Raanana (Israel): Liviu Librescu, who survived the Holocaust only to be gunned down trying to save his students from the Virginia Tech assailant, was buried today in Israel to the sobs of his grieving family and with his native Romania’s highest honour. Librescu, a 76-year-old aeronautics engineer and lecturer at the school for 20 years, died trying to barricade the door of his Virginia Tech classroom to keep the gunman, Cho Seung-Hui, away from his students. US schools shut down
San Diego: A Web designer was charged with posting on his own site a bogus threat to kill 50 San Diego State University students, then alerting a TV station to try to draw publicity, the FBI said. It was among several cases emerging days after the Virginia Tech massacre and as the Columbine shooting anniversary approaches. Cristobal Fernando Gonzalez, 32, faces one felony count of making a threatening communication through the Internet. He was being held on $ 30,000 bail yesterday. Scores of schools across the country shut down or evacuated students yesterday and at least a dozen people were arrested or under investigation. The wave of campus threats started soon after Monday’s Virginia Tech shootings. Cho’s family under police protection
Seoul: The parents and sister of the gunman, who shot and killed 32 persons at Virginia Tech University and then himself, are under police protection, a South Korean Foreign Ministry official said today. The parents of Cho Seung-Hui, 23, who have lived in a Virginia suburb of Washington, DC, as well as his sister are being protected by police, the official cited a South Korean consul in the US as saying. —
Agencies
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Maharajah’s bomber restored to glory
London, April 20 The De Havilland DH9 biplane is the only one in Britain and one of the six in the world, an official of the Museum said today. Its saviour, Guy Black, an aircraft restorer who sold the prized possession to Imperial War Museum for nearly one million pounds, told the Daily Telegraph “it was a phenomenal find, like discovering gold”. The chance discovery was made by a British backpacker who photographed a cannibalized DH9 in a new museum at the Palace of Bikaner in Rajasthan 12 years ago. On his return to Britain, he circulated the photo and Black, who runs a specialist restoration company in Sussex, heard about the discovery. Three years later Black visited the palace in India. The aircraft, built in 1918 and the first British bomber to house bombs in its fuselage, had vanished. Inquiries led him to the palace’s former elephant stables. There, among piles of elephant saddles, was the airframe of the DH9, engineless, its timbers partly eaten by termites and much of its fabric covering missing. Along one wall, Black saw half a dozen DH9 wings and several tailfins. “I could not believe my eyes. The DH9 was the most manufactured bomber of the First World War — they made more than 2,000 of them — but there wasn’t a single one in a collection in Britain,” he said. Black had found the remains of three DH9s that were given by Britain to the Maharajah of Bikaner in the early 1920s to help him establish an air force. — PTI
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Another massacre threatened
Los Angeles, April 20 Schools in the northern city of Yuba were shuttered in a lockdown as search was underway for Jeffrey Carney, J Paul Parker from the Sutter County Sheriff Department told a private TV channel. Parker said Carney, 28, called his family members and a local pastor late on Wednesday “and made statements to them that he was going to make Virginia Tech look mild in comparison, that he was armed with an AK-47 and improvised explosive devices and that he wanted to commit suicide” by being killed by a police officer. Parker said a search for the suspect was immediately launched in cooperation with four neighbouring law enforcement agencies, and the local school districts were contacted late last night to make them aware of the situation. Carney has been arrested several times recently on domestic violence issues and was suspected of taking methamphetamine, a powerful stimulant. —
AFP
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Indian jailed for sex liaison with student
New York, April 20 Pronouncing the sentence, Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Carol Berkman said Lina Sinha’s offences become more ‘culpable’ as she comes from an advantageous background. Sinha has two master's degrees from the Columbia University. — PTI
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Algerian woman gives birth to seven babies Algiers, April 20 The mother gave birth to a boy and six girls at the Kouba public hospital on Wednesday, Slim Belkassem told Reuters over the phone. “The mother is in good condition. This shows the competence of Algerian doctors, and we are very happy about this event,” he added. According to the latest Guinness World Records, there have been three known cases of seven children surviving birth; two in the United States and one in Saudi Arabia. The latest case was in December 1998 when six girls and two boys were born, but the lightest, weighing 11.3 ounces (320 grams), died a week later. —
PTI
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Another massacre threatened Los Angeles, April 20 Schools in the northern city of Yuba were shuttered in a lockdown as search was underway for Jeffrey Carney, J Paul Parker from the Sutter County Sheriff Department told a private TV channel. Parker said Carney, 28, called his family members and a local pastor late on Wednesday “and made statements to them that he was going to make Virginia Tech look mild in comparison, that he was armed with an AK-47 and improvised explosive devices and that he wanted to commit suicide” by being killed by a police officer. Parker said a search for the suspect was immediately launched in cooperation with four neighbouring law enforcement agencies, and the local school districts were contacted late last night to make them aware of the situation. Carney has been arrested several times recently on domestic violence issues and was suspected of taking methamphetamine, a powerful stimulant. — AFP
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