GUNMAN DEAD, FOUR HURT IN SHOOTING AT COURT
PA.» A gunMASONTOWN, man opened fire outside a crowded courtroom Wednesday afternoon, shooting at police and others before an officer fired multiple shots at him, killing him.
Fayette County District Attorney Richard Bower said Wednesday night that a German Township police officer shot and killed the gunman after he entered the lobby with a handgun drawn and opened fire, wounding four people. Bower declined to name the gunman, saying only that he was due in court on charges related to a recent domestic violence incident.
Bower said Masontown police Sgt. R. Scott Miller first encountered the gunman and was wounded when he exchanged gunfire with him. When Miller took cover, Bower said the gunman proceeded to fire shots, wounding two men and one woman.
Man opens fire at his Wisconsin office; three seriously hurt.
» A heavily armed man WIS. opened fire on his coworkers at a Wisconsin software company Wednesday, seriously wounding three people before being fatally shot by police as employees ran from the building or hid inside, according to investigators.
Middleton Police Chief Chuck Foulke said officers shot the man within eight minutes of receiving calls about an active shooter at WTS Paradigm. Foulke said the man was armed with a semiautomatic pistol and extra ammuni tion, and fired at officers before he was shot. Foulke said three people were seriously wounded, while a fourth person was grazed by a bullet.
Pakistan’s former prime minister freed after court suspends sentence.
ISLAMABAD
Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, his daughter and soninlaw were released from prison Wednesday after a court suspended their sentences and granted them bail pending their appeals hearings.
The Islamabad High Court made the decision after the Sharifs petitioned to appeal their sentences, which were handed down by an antigraft tribunal this year in a corruption case against them.
The three were released from a prison in the garrison city of Rawalpindi.
The development is the latest twist in a series of scandals involving the former prime minister, beginning with his ouster from office last year, to several corruption cases and trials he still faces.
When the antigraft tribunal first convicted and sentenced Sharif on July 6, he was in London with his daughter, visiting his critically ill wife.
The father and daughter returned home a week later and were taken to prison to serve their sentences.
Russia to study Israeli data related to downed plane.
MOSCOW» Russian President Vladimir Putin has accepted Israel’s offer to share detailed information on the Israeli airstrike in Syria that triggered fire by Syrian forces which downed a Russian reconnaissance plane, the Kremlin said Wednesday.
Syrian forces mistook the Russian Il20 for Israeli aircraft, killing all 15 people aboard Monday night. Russia’s Defense Ministry blamed the plane’s loss on Israel, but Putin sought to defuse tensions, pointing at “a chain of tragic accidental circumstances.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Putin on Tuesday to express sorrow over the death of the plane’s crew and blamed Syria. Syrian President Bashar Assad sent Putin a telegram Wednesday offering his condolences and putting the blame on Israeli “aggression,” the official SANA news agency said.
Colombia cocaine output soars to Clintonera peaks.
Colombia’s cocaine production has never been higher, surpassing levels seen before U.S. President Bill Clinton launched the Plan Colombia counternarcotics program.
The amount of land planted with coca shrubs rose 17 percent to 171,000 hectares last year, enough raw material to produce 1,379 tons of cocaine, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said Wednesday. That’s more than triple the output five years ago.
Coca output now surpasses the previous record of 163,000 hectares in 2000, the year Plan Colombia started. The U.S. has given Colombia more than $10 billion in aid over that period, more than to any other country outside the Middle East and Asia.
Plan Colombia didn’t change conditions in the country’s cocaine producing regions, which suffer from an absence of the state, land titles, roads or legal economic opportunities, said Adam Isacson, a Colombia expert at the Washington Office on Latin America.