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2 killed in New York shooting Police officials stand near the covered body of the suspected shooter near
the Empire State Building in New York on Friday. — AFP Norway jails ‘sane’ Breivik for maximum 21 years |
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Drones kill 18 militants in Pak tribal belt Fierce fighting in Syria swells refugee exodus Syrian refugee children receive toys and other goodies distributed at the Zaatari refugee camp close to the Jordanian city of Mafraq. — AFP Book on Osama Raid
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2 killed in New York shooting New York, August 24 The gunman has been identified as Jeffrey Johnson, 53, who had worked as a designer of women's accessories at apparel firm Hazan Imports for six years. He was laid off from his job a year ago when the company underwent downsizing. New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told reporters outside the crime scene here that the victim, a 41-year-old male, was a "former co-worker" of Johnson's. Nine other persons have been injured in the shooting, some of them by the police officers who were confronting the gunman, and they are expected to recover soon. "This is a terrible tragedy and there is no doubt the situation could have been more tragic but for the acts of heroism by the police officers," New York city Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was at the scene of the shooting, told reporters. "New York city is the safest big city in the US but we are not immune to the national problem of gun violence," Bloomberg said. The shooting happened a little after 9 am (local time) as the streets outside the iconic Empire State Building were getting packed with tourists and New Yorkers going to their jobs. Kelly said Johnson walked up to the 33rd street office of the company near the Empire State building and "in a dispute with one of the former employees in front of the building, Johnson produced the pistol and fired at close range." He shot at the victim three times and a bullet struck the victim in the head. Johnson then fled the scene but was followed by a construction worker, who alerted two uniformed police officers stationed outside one of the entrances of the Empire State Building. Kelly said as the two officers approached Johnson, he pulled out his 45 calibre semi-automatic pistol from a black bag and fired at the officers, "trying to kill them." "The officers returned the fire and killed him," Kelly said. Bloomberg said nine other people were shot, of which "some may have been shot accidentally by the police officers who responded immediatley and while confronting the suspect." Kelly said the gunman had lived in Manhattan. — PTI
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Norway jails ‘sane’ Breivik for maximum 21 years Oslo, August 24 Breivik smiled with apparent satisfaction when Judge Wenche Elisabeth Arntzen read the ruling, declaring him sane enough to be held criminally responsible and sentencing him to "preventive detention," which means it is unlikely he will ever be released. The sentence brings a form of closure to Norway, which was shaken to its core by the bomb and gun attacks on July 22, 2011, because Breivik's lawyers said before the ruling that he would not appeal any ruling that did not declare him insane. But it also means Breivik got what he wanted: a ruling that paints him as a political terrorist instead of a psychotic mass murderer. Since his arrest, Breivik has said the attacks were meant to draw attention to his extreme right-wing ideology and to inspire a multi-decade uprising by "militant nationalists" across Europe. The five-judge panel in the Oslo district court unanimously convicted Breivik of terrorism and premeditated murder and ordered him imprisoned for a period between 10 and 21 years, the maximum allowed under Norwegian law. Such sentences can be extended as long as an inmate is considered too dangerous to be released, and legal experts say Breivik will almost certainly spend the rest of his life in prison. — AP
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Drones kill 18 militants in Pak tribal belt US drones targeted three militant compounds in the lawless North Waziristan tribal region on Friday killing at least 18 insurgents, just a day after Pakistan summoned a top American diplomat to lodge protest over such attacks calling them a violation of its sovereignty. The CIA-operated spy planes targeted the militant compounds in Shawal region of North Waziristan tribal agency, which has witnessed a series of drone attacks in the past few weeks. Eighteen persons were killed in the strikes, state-run Radio Pakistan reported. The drones fired two missiles at each of the compounds. The spy planes continued hovering over the area after the attacks. Officials told the media that the death toll could rise. Today's attacks came a day after Pakistan's Foreign Office summoned a senior US diplomat to protest a string of drone strikes since last week, saying the attacks by the spy planes were unlawful and a violation of the country's sovereignty. (With inputs from
PTI)
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Fierce fighting in Syria swells refugee exodus Amman, August 24 In an accelerating exodus, more than 3,500 Syrians crossed into Turkey in the past 24 hours, Turkish officials said, one of the highest daily totals since initially peaceful protests against President Bashar al-Assad erupted in March 2011. "In Jordan, a record 2,200 people crossed the border overnight and were received at Zaatari camp in the north," Adrian Edwards, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said in Geneva. Assad's forceful response to unrest inspired by Arab uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere has spawned an armed insurrection and plunged Syria into a civil war in which over 18,000 people have been killed, according to a UN estimate. There was no let-up in the violence on Friday, the Muslim holy day that has often been a focus for anti-Assad protests. The Syrian army pounded the Damascus suburb of Daraya, where the 21 deaths reported by opposition activists brought the toll from a three-day-old military assault to at least 70. Assad's forces are trying to regain control of the capital's outlying districts such as Daraya, a Sunni Muslim working class township that sprawls among farmlands where insurgents often take refuge after attacking government troops. Troops fired multiple rocket launchers and artillery at Daraya, where rebels were still holed up, activists said. "There are lots of bodies trapped in destroyed buildings and civilians are trying to flee towards Damascus," an activist in Daraya, who gave his name as Abu Kinan, told Reuters by phone. Syrian authorities restrict media access, making it hard to verify accounts by both sides in the conflict. Fighting was also taking place in several lower middle class Sunni suburbs around Damascus, including Qatana, Sbeineh, Qadam, Assali and Hajar al-Aswad, opposition activists said. Assad's elite forces, mostly drawn from his minority Alawite sect and increasingly used to keep control of Damascus, are based in hilltop compounds in the capital and surrounding areas. About 220 persons were killed in Syria on Thursday, according to the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Death tolls on that scale have become commonplace since the killing of four of Assad's senior aides in a July 18 bombing prompted a rebel offensive that led to fierce military counter-attacks in Damascus and the northern city of Aleppo. Fighting raged on in Aleppo, Syria's biggest city and commercial powerhouse, where combat jets and helicopter gunships struck rebel-held districts overnight, residents said. — Reuters
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Book on Osama Raid Washington, August 24 The book, "No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden," is set to hit shelves on September 11. It is penned under the pseudonym "Mark Owen," but multiple sources were quoted by Fox News as saying that his name is in fact Matt Bissonnette. — PTI
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A ‘disgruntled’ designer, who was sacked from an apparel company, shot dead a former co-worker and then randomly opened fire on the crowded sidewalks outside the iconic Empire State Building here today, the third such incident in the US in nearly one month.
A Norwegian court today sentenced Anders Behring Breivik to prison, denying prosecutors the insanity ruling they hoped would show that his massacre of 77 persons was the work of a madman, not part of an anti-Muslim crusade.
Amman, August 24
