State trooper fatally shot in search-warrant raid

A man fatally shot a Virginia state trooper before being shot and killed by law enforcement west of Richmond in Cumberland County, officials said.

A state police tactical team, accompanied by a local drug and gang task force, had entered a home just north of Farmville with a search warrant when a man inside began shooting at them around 10 p.m. Monday.

Officials said the trooper — Lucas B. Dowell of Chilhowie, Va. — died at a hospital. Officials did not immediately identify the suspect who was killed.

The U.S. has formally notified Russia over the weekend of its decision to suspend its obligations under the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty, citing alleged Russian violations.

Russia has rejected the U.S. claim that it has built and deployed a cruise missile that violated the treaty’s ban on land-based cruise and ballistic missiles with a range of 310 to 3,410 miles. But Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday such weapons need to be designed now, contending that the U.S. has started developing such weapons. reports said.

The Interfax news agency said the city’s emergency services received nearly 300 bomb threats, resulting in the evacuation of about 50,000 people. The state RIA Novosti news agency said 130 venues were targeted with bomb hoaxes.

No explosives had been found, and it was not known who made the calls.

A spate of fake bomb threats has engulfed Russia in recent days.

The shooting death of Emantic F. Bradford Jr., 21, at the Riverchase Galleria mall in the Birmingham suburb of Hoover incited protests and raised questions about whether police officers are too quick to assume that a nonwhite person who is armed is a wrongdoer.

Attorney General Steve Marshall concluded that the Hoover police officer — identified only as Officer 1 — who shot Bradford while on duty at the mall had “reasonably exercised” his duties.

The police officer shot Bradford a few seconds after gunshots had rung out at the mall on Nov. 22, sending shoppers racing for safety and leaving an 18-year-old man, Brian Wilson, wounded by two bullets.

The police later arrested another man — Erron Martez Dequan Brown, 20 — and