Thesun 2009-06-12 Page08 Holocoust Museum Guard Shot Dead

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theSun

| FRIDAY JUNE 12 2009

news without borders

Holocaust Museum guard shot dead

Von Brunn... in critical condition after being shot by guards.

WASHINGTON: An elderly gunman linked to an anti-Jewish website killed a security guard at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington on Wednesday and was wounded when guards returned fire, officials said. The guard, Stephen Tyrone Jones, died at a local hospital after being shot with a rifle, officials said. The museum said it would be closed for a day in his honour. “There are no words to express our grief and shock over these events,” the museum said in a statement. The gunman was in critical condition after the incident, authorities said. A federal law enforcement official said investigators had identified James W. von Brunn (pix), 88, as the potential suspect and linked him to a website that expresses anti-government and anti-Jewish sentiments. According to officials the man is a Holocaustdenying white supremacist once imprisoned for an attempted attack on the Federal Reserve. He railed in a recent blog posting that “America is a Third-World racial garbage-dump – stupid, ignorant, dead-broke, and terminal.” He has written books on his views on the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler and on white superiority, including Tob Shebbe Goyim Harog, or Kill the Best Gentiles, which his website calls “the culmination of his life’s work.” – Agencies

briefs 8 dead in clashes on Philippine island ZAMBOANGA: Two soldiers and six members of an Islamic militant group holding an Italian Red Cross hostage were killed in heavy fighting in the southern Philippines yesterday, the military said. There was no immediate confirmation on the physical state of Eugenio Vagni, the 62-year-old Italian who was abducted by the Abu Sayyaf along with two other aid workers – who have since been released unharmed – nearly five months ago. A marine combat patrol came upon about 150 heavily armed Abu Sayyaf members near the town of Indanan on southern Jolo island at dawn, the military said. “A fierce firefight ensued and is still ongoing,” Navy spokesman Lt-Col Edgard Arevalo said. – AFP

Pakistan opens new front against Taliban ISLAMABAD: Pakistan unleashed helicopter gunships and artillery to kill scores of Taliban fighters, officials said yesterday, after opening a second front against the militants near their stronghold in the Waziristan tribal region. Already in the final stages of an operation to clear the militants from Swat valley, far to the northwest and closer to Islamabad, the military went on the offensive on Tuesday in Bannu district after up to 800 militants infiltrated from Waziristan. Bannu is 150km southwest of Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province, where a suicide truck bomb attack on a luxury hotel killed nine people on Tuesday. – Reuters

Pregnant ‘man’ suffers miscarriage MADRID: A Spanish transsexual who was pregnant with twins has suffered a miscarriage, a Spanish

newspaper said on Wednesday. But 25-year-old Ruben Noe Coronado, who was born a woman named Estefania and still has female sex organs, said he plans to try again, El Mundo said on its website. After doctors told his female partner she could not have any more children, Coronado interrupted his sex-change procedure in order to get pregnant through artificial insemination. And in March he announced he was expecting twin boys in September. – AFP

Cash, trash and a mattress JERUSALEM: A treasure hunt in the trash was the talk of Israel on Wednesday after a woman said she had accidentally dumped a mattress stuffed with US$1 million (RM3.5 million) in notes. Identified only as Anat, the woman at first told Israeli media she had replaced her mother’s mattress as a surprise, learning too late about the stash of cash. She then went off to search local landfills, so far fruitlessly, for the old mattress, she said. Questioned later on television news, the woman said she had known about the money – which she called “a substantial sum,” not US$1 million – and blamed a “very serious trauma involving banks” for her mother’s unusual choice of hiding place. – Reuters

Activist killed after anti- Arroyo speech DUMAGUETE (Philippines): A leftist activist has been shot dead in the central Philippines hours after he criticised President Gloria Arroyo in a speech, police and his colleagues said yesterday. Fermin Lorico, leader of a local farm workers’ union closely allied with the political left was attacked on the street several hours after leading a protest in the city of Dumaguete against Arroyo on Wednesday, police said. The motive for the killing was not immediately known, but Juliet Ragay, a fellow officer of the union, alleged the attack was part of a government plot. – AFP