Man dies after shooting Pentagon security officers
A man shot and wounded two security officers at an entrance to the Pentagon near a busy commuter rail station on Thursday before being fatally wounded in a shootout, officials and media reports said.
The gunman, identified in media reports as 36-year-old John Patrick Bedell of California, was apparently trying to gain entry to the giant U.S. Defense Department headquarters, Pentagon police chief Richard Keevill told reporters.
The security officers' wounds did not appear to be life-threatening, Pentagon officials said in a statement.
"He walked up very cool," Keevill said. "He had no real emotion on his face."
Several media reports early on Friday stated that the gunman died of wounds sustained in the shootout at the Pentagon entrance.
Instead of presenting a Pentagon pass, which is required to enter the building, the gunman pulled out a gun, Keevill said. Three Pentagon security officers exchanged fire with the suspect, and two were wounded.
The underground Metro station is adjacent to the main entrance of the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Washington. People can approach the Pentagon unimpeded from the Metro station.
All entrances to the five-sided building were closed after the shooting at 6:40 p.m. (2340 GMT) during the evening rush hour. The entrances were later reopened, except the one adjacent to the Metro station.
Clinton promises solidarity, supplies for quake-damaged Chile
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived Tuesday morning in Chile, bringing with her more than two dozen satellite phones and a pledge of U.S. commitment to the earthquake-damaged nation.
"The United States is ready to respond to the requests that the government of Chile has made so we can provide not only solidarity but specific supplies that are needed to help you recover from the earthquake," Clinton said at a brief news conference with Chilean President Michelle Bachelet.
"The people of Chile are responding with resilience and strength," Clinton said.
The secretary of state said she brought with her 25 satellite phones, one of which she presented to Bachelet at the news conference. Eight water purification units are on their way to Chile, Clinton said, and the United States will provide a mobile field hospital unit with surgical capabilities.
The United States will also work to provide autonomous dialysis machines, electricity generators, medical supplies and portable bridges, Clinton said.
The secretary of state also said that Americans would be told how they can contribute to the recovery effort.
In addition to meeting with Bachelet at the airport in Santiago, Clinton also met with President-elect Sebastian Piñera, who will be sworn in next week.
"I have been visiting sites of disaster for more than 30 years ... [and] it is very clear to me that Chile is much better prepared, much quicker to respond, more able to do so," Clinton said at a news conference with the president-elect.
She congratulated Piñera, a conservative billionaire businessman, on his inauguration. Piñera extended an invitation to President Obama to visit Chile.
Bachelet leaves office with high approval ratings for having steered the country through the global economic downturn and promoted progressive social reforms.
Clinton is in the midst of a six-nation tour of Latin America, planned before the earthquake.
She attended Monday's inauguration in Uruguay of President Jose Mujica, and then traveled to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to meet with President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
Clinton next travels to Brazil, where she is expected to talk with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva about his planned trip to Iran. The United States and other nations believe Iran has undertaken a program to build nuclear weapons, an assertion Iran denies.
She will stop in Costa Rica for meetings with President Oscar Arias and President-elect Laura Chinchilla, who takes office in May. She also will attend Pathways for Prosperity, a meeting of hemispheric officials. The initiative includes such things as "microcredit" loans and ways in which women can be empowered, a State Department spokesman has said.
Clinton's final stop will be Guatemala. She will meet with Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom and leaders of other Central American countries and the Dominican Republic before returning to Washington.
The State Department has "strongly" urged U.S. citizens to avoid tourism and non-essential travel to Chile after the massive earthquake.
Reporting from Orlando, Fla. - A killer whale fatally attacked an animal trainer at SeaWorld in Florida on Wednesday, jerking her into the pool and thrashing her around underwater as dozens of horrified tourists watched.
The orca had been involved in two previous deaths, including one at the water park in 1999.
Dawn Brancheau, 40, was finishing a session with Tilikum, a 12,000-pound male killer whale, after a midday show at the Orlando theme park.
Witnesses said the killer whale grabbed her by the upper arm, disappeared underwater with her and swam to the other side of the tank, flailing her around. At least two dozen tourists looked on from above the killer whale tank and from an underwater viewing area.
The incident was eerily similar to one at San Diego SeaWorld four years ago, but that trainer survived.
In Orlando, Brazilian tourist Joao Lucio DeCosta Sobrinho, 28, and girlfriend Talita Oliveira, 20, were at an underwater viewing area when they saw the orca with Brancheau in its mouth.
The couple said they had watched the show two days earlier and returned to take pictures. But this time, they said, the killer whales appeared agitated.
"It was terrible. It's very difficult to see," Sobrinho said.
Brancheau was bleeding from the face or mouth, they said, and the orca turned her over and over as it swam.
A spectator from Michigan told the Associated Press that Brancheau was on a platform massaging the killer whale. The interaction appeared leisurely and informal, Eldon Skaggs said.
Then the orca "pulled her under and started swimming around with her."
Skaggs said an alarm sounded and staff members rushed the audience out of the stadium as workers scrambled around with nets.
SeaWorld President Dan Brown said none of its parks had ever experienced a similar incident. He pledged a thorough review of the park's procedures.
"This is an extraordinarily difficult time for the SeaWorld parks and our team members. Nothing is more important than the safety of our employees, guests and the animals entrusted to our care," Brown said, his voice breaking. "We extend our deepest sympathies to the family and friends of the trainer and will do everything possible to assist them in this difficult time."
Brancheau, who had been employed at the park since 1994, had known she wanted to work there since visiting SeaWorld at age 9, she told the Orlando Sentinel in 2006.
"I remember walking down the aisle and telling my mom, 'This is what I want to do,' " she said.
Brancheau had started working with sea lions and otters, then advanced to killer whales. But she recognized the dangers.
"You can't put yourself in the water unless you trust them and they trust you," she said in 2006.
A SeaWorld official said Wednesday that because of Tilikum's size and his involvement in the two previous deaths, trainers were not supposed to get into the water with him.
SeaWorld said it hadn't decided what to do with him.
But Brancheau's sister, Diane Gross, told the Associated Press that the trainer "would not want anything done to that whale."
Nicknamed Tilly, the orca was one of three blamed for the 1991 drowning of a trainer who lost her balance and fell into the water at Sealand of the Pacific in British Columbia, Canada.
And in 1999, SeaWorld officials discovered the body of a naked man on the killer whale's back. Authorities concluded that the man, who had either sneaked into the park after hours or hidden inside until it closed, most likely drowned after suffering hypothermia in the 55-degree water.
They also said it appeared that Tilikum had bitten the man and torn off his swimming trunks, probably believing he was a toy.
In the San Diego incident, the park's most experienced trainer was dragged to the bottom of a pool during a show by a 7,000-pound killer whale named Kasatka.
The trainer, Kenneth Peters, escaped with puncture wounds and a broken foot after he calmed the orca by stroking it.
The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health investigated the 2006 incident and produced a report predicting that it was "only a matter of time" before an orca killed a trainer at the park. It recommended that SeaWorld be prepared to kill an orca if necessary to rescue a trainer.
SeaWorld officials objected, saying the agency did not have expertise in animal behavior. In March 2007, the agency agreed to withdraw and rewrite the report, focusing only on the incident. The report concluded that SeaWorld had done a good job in training its employees who work with the large mammals and that no major safety violations occurred.
On Wednesday, SeaWorld San Diego canceled its afternoon killer whale show, park spokesman David Koontz said.
"We're terribly saddened by the loss of the member of our SeaWorld family," Koontz said.
Officials at PETA, long critical of SeaWorld's practices, issued a statement calling on the park "to stop confining oceangoing mammals to an area that to them is like the size of a bathtub. It's not surprising when these huge, smart animals lash out."
One of the daughters of the pilot who crashed his plane into an IRS facility in Austin, Texas, killing an IRS employee and injuring 12 others, said she hoped his actions would send a message to the government.
Samantha Bell, the daughter of Andrew Joseph Stack III from his first marriage, told Good Morning America hat her father’s actions last Thursday were inappropriate. “His last actions, the suicide, the catastrophe that caused injuries and death, that was wrong,” she acknowledged. “But if nobody comes out and speaks up on behalf of injustice, then nothing will ever be accomplished. But I do not agree with his last action with what he did. But I do agree about the government.”Asked if her father was a hero, she answered, “Yes, because now maybe people will listen.” After the on-air interview, she later called to retract that statement, however, saying he is not a hero.
Bell, 38, spoke to the show by telephone from Norway, where she moved after her Medicaid benefits had been reduced. She believed that was another factor contributing to her father’s anger against the government.
Before committing suicide by crashing his plane into the IRS building, Stack had set fire to his own home in Austin. His second wife and 12-year-old daughter were not inside the house at the time. Bell said she believed her father may have burned down the house because of the property taxes that were paid to the government.
The son of the IRS employee slain in the attack spoke out after hearing Stack’s comments. Ken Hunter, the son of Vernon Hunter, said Stack should not be called a hero. “How can you call someone a hero after he burns down his house, gets into his plane … and drives it into the building to kill people,” he told GMA. My dad did two tours of duty in Vietnam. My dad’s a hero.”
After her on-air interview, Bell later said that she considered Hunter the true hero. "I don't want to hurt anybody," she said. "Vernon Hunter is the true hero."
Hunter had worked at the Austin offices of the IRS with his wife Valerie. Their son, Ken, told the Austin American Statesman. "My dad, in that building, he didn't write the tax laws. If he [Stack] would have talked to my dad, my dad would have helped him."
The space shuttle Endeavour, carrying six astronauts, touched down in Florida on Sunday evening despite some earlier weather concerns.
NASA said the shuttle landed safely at the Kennedy Space Center at 10:20 p.m. ET.
Earlier in the day, the agency had said rain and cloudy conditions there and at its backup landing site at Edwards Air Force Base in California might force it to postpone the landing. But the weather improved at the Kennedy Space Center as the day proceeded, making it acceptable for the landing, NASA said.
Astronauts George Zamka and Terry Virts were at Endeavour's controls as the shuttle made its glide to the Kennedy runway, the agency said.
The astronauts wrapped up a two-week mission that began Feb. 8 to deliver equipment and install a seven-window observation deck at the International Space Station, bringing the 11-year-old orbiting outpost to 98 per cent of completion.
There are four remaining shuttle flights to the space station scheduled, to stock the space station with more supplies, spare parts and experiments.
This was Endeavour's 10th trip to the space station.
An Austin man apparently angry with the Internal Revenue Services and the rest of the federal government flew his small, private plane into a glass-faced office building next to an Austin highway on Thursday killing himself and one other person in an explosive suicidal form of protest.
The office building housed an IRS office with about 200 employes.
Andrew Joseph Stack, III, lived on Dapplegrey Lane in Northwest Austin, in a medium-sized red brick house with standard lawn. At approximately 9:15 a.m. Elbert Hutchins, Stack’s neighbor who lives two doors south, heard an unusual noise he thought were windows blowing out of Stack’s house. He went outside and saw dense smoke rising with flames coming from the second story windows, after Stack allegedly set his home on fire.
Stack’s wife and daughter, aged 13, who stood watching as her house burned, according to several neighbors. Dane Vick, one of Stack’s neighbors, said he heard through another neighbor that as the house was burning, Stack’s daughter said her parents had argued Wednesday night and had stayed in another location that evening. They returned back to the home in the morning and continued to fight.
By 9:40 a.m. Stack had departed from Georgetown Municipal airport in his private Piper Dakota airplane, and headed south toward Austin.
Through the windows of Austin Echelon Building 1, at 9:55 a.m. office workers saw into the distance a small aircraft looming overhead. Within a minute the plane dove into the building’s first floor where the Internal Revenue Services office are located, sending flames throughout the seven-story structure.
Sounds of an explosion resounded in the halls of the building with people pooling into the streets, avoiding near destruction.
“It felt like an earthquake shaking the building,” said Dennis Files, an IRS employee for three years. “People started yelling for people to leave. Everyone started running outside — it was unbelievable.”
Only yards across in another building was a Federal Bureau of Investigations office with several agents. Near U.S. Route 183 and Mopac, the three-building plaza soon became the site of several cameras and people voicing concern that the next national terrorist attack had occurred.
Austin Travis County Emergency Medical Services sent 24 personnel with several ambulances and special response vehicles to the scene. First responders treated 13 victims of burns and heat inhalation, two whose injuries were considered critical and were subsequently sent to University Medical Center at Brackenridge and Brook Army Medical Center in San Antonio. One employee of the building was unaccounted for.
Emergency response was a coordinated effort among several agencies with the investigation led by the FBI.
“Today in the City of Austin we saw a deliberate and intentional act against a federal building,” said U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, a member of the Committee on Homeland Security. “It’s something that has exposed a weakness we have seen since 9/11 — that airplanes can fly into buildings.”
One of Stack’s neighbors, who wished to remain anonymous because of his personal relationship to the Stack family, said he had known the family for years. He would join them on “Sunday night jams” listening to music crafted by Stack and his wife, Sheryl, who is a professional musician and a UT music performance graduate student.
The neighbor said Andrew Joseph Stack, III, was a software engineer who owned his own business and worked out of his house. The neighbor never noticed anything unusual about Stack, who he described as slight in build, 50 years old, with big glasses and balding with grey hair.
“I knew him just in passing, and I liked him,” the neighbor said. “He was a very likable person. Evidently Joe has some problems.”
Andrew Joseph Stack, III, was being audited by the IRS, and an apparent suicide note he had written disseminated throughout the Internet early Thursday morning.
In the note, he recalled a painful history of personal economic plunders and a particular tax law that he said left him penniless. He cited the federal bailouts of large companies, such as General Motors and bankrupt airlines.
“Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities...and when it’s time for the gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficult coming to their aid within days if not hours?” he wrote in his note.
He wrote about the .COM bust, 9/11 and an elderly woman and her husband he knew in his youth who never received pension or medical care after the man had retired.
The White House announced on Thursday afternoon that the incident was not an act of terrorism.
“There really is no cause for alarm,” said APD Chief Art Acevedo. “We are very lucky. We have been blessed — things could have been a lot worse. I call it a cowardly, intentional criminal act, and there is no excuse for it.”
President Obama's announcement Tuesday of loan guarantees for nuclear power plants may encourage new construction, but a problem still remains that has plagued atomic energy for decades: what to do with nuclear waste?
On the left, opponents of nuclear power say the president should not be using taxpayer money to help build more power plants that will produce even more radioactive material, so long as the government has not figured out where to put it all.
"We haven't found a solution for the 100 nuclear power plants operating," said Stephen Smith of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. "And waste is building up on-site, with no solution."
On the right, critics fault the president for leaving the country without a plan for disposing of the waste, when he decided to pull the plug on the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in Nevada. The government spent billions of dollars studying the location.
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, a Republican, said the president's decision was "spectacularly misguided, and breaks a promise" made "decades ago" by the federal government to handle the waste.
Sanford accused Obama of making a "Chicago-style" political play to help Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada, who faces a tough re-election bid in a state where the Yucca Mountain plan was unpopular. But the White House points out that the president opposed the site since he was campaigning as a candidate, on the grounds of scientific and security questions.
Reid echoed those security concerns, saying any transportation of nuclear materials across the country could open a vulnerability.
"Leave it on-site where it is," he said last year. "You don't have to worry about transporting it. Saves the country billions and billions of dollars."
Currently, 70,000 tons of radioactive waste are stored at more than 100 nuclear sites around the country, and 2,000 tons are added every year.
After uranium has been used in a reactor, the spent fuel remains radioactive for thousands of years. It is taken out and put into a pool of water, or above ground in canisters made of concrete, steel, and lead. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says the canisters are currently certified for up to 90 years of use, but that term may be extended.
During a visit to the Dresden nuclear plant in Illinois a few years ago, Christopher Crane of Exelon Nuclear stood next to a storage cask and showed CNN how little radiation escapes.
"If you stood here for an hour," he said, "you would pick up the same amount of radiation as you did by flying from Washington to Chicago to visit us today."
But both supporters and opponents of nuclear power largely agree that storing the material in casks at nuclear plants is no long-term solution.
"This generation was responsible for creating the waste," says Jack Edlow, whose Washington-based company transports nuclear material, "and this generation should make the decision to focus on it."
In January, the Obama administration announced a blue-ribbon panel would take a new look at the problem, headed by former Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton and former Republican National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft.
