PARIS: A middle-aged man with a history of family problems shot himself dead yesterday in a Paris primary school near the Eiffel Tower, in front of about a dozen stunned children. The man, who was not affiliated with the school, forced his way into the institution in central Paris at 0930 GMT, pushing aside two adults who tried to stop him, Francois Weil, the city’s top educational official said. A police source said the man, who is in his 50s, had a history of family violence and entered the reception area of the school from an adjoining building and not the main entrance. The man, who was in an agitated state, had some papers with him and a sawn-off shotgun, which he then fired from under his jaw. A part of his face was blown off. “I heard a shot. I saw all the blood. I saw the man. I saw the man fall back when he shot himself. It was horrible,” a schoolgirl told France’s Europe 1 radio.
Boston suspect wrote message in boat
WASHINGTON: Accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was found hiding in a boat days after the blasts, left a handwritten message describing the attack as retribution for US wars in Muslim countries, CBS News reported yesterday. The CBS News report, citing anonymous sources, said that Tsarnaev used a pen to write the message on an interior wall of the boat, where police found him bleeding from gunshot wounds four days after the April 15 bombing. The note summed up with the idea that “when you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims,” CBS News reported. CBS News did not make clear how its sources knew the information and Reuters was not immediately able to confirm the report. A spokeswoman for the FBI in Boston, Katherine Gulotta, declined to confirm or deny the report.
Czech ‘Velvet Revolution’ official dead
PRAGUE: Czech economist and politician Valtr Komarek, a leading figure in the 1989 “Velvet Revolution” that brought down the communist regime, has died at age 82 after a long illness, his family said. As head of an institute on economic forecasts, Komarek was instrumental in explaining to his fellow countrymen the challenges facing the country in the transition from a communist state to a multi-party political system and a market economy. He served as deputy prime minister in the transition government which led then Czechoslovakia to its first free elections after four decades of totalitarian rule in June 1990. Komarek, honorary president of the CSSD social-democrat party, was in 1989 considered a possible contender for the post of Czech president, which went to the country’s famous dissident and playwright Vaclav Havel.
Mother held after babies found dead
MOSCOW: Russian police detained the mother of two baby boys whose bodies were found after five years in a freezer in the basement of the supermarket where she worked, investigators said yesterday. The Investigative Committee said the boys were born alive, but died shortly afterwards from exposure. Their mother had kept the bodies in her refrigerator before moving them to the supermarket where she worked in western Russia. Local police said that the owners of the supermarket were being questioned. “It should be clarified why over the course of five years no one in the management of the shop did anything regarding the contents of the freezer,” Itar Tass quoted a police source as saying. Agencies
