NASA Contractor Takes Hostage Two Dead

A NASA contractor took two co-workers hostage at Johnson Space Centre, killing one of them before turning the revolver on himself, just days after the bloodiest school shooting in US history.

Bill Phillips, an engineer with Jacobs Engineering who has worked for NASA for about 12 years, barricaded himself inside the building late yesterday, after managing to sneak a revolver past security at the sprawling space centre campus.

Phillips shot David Beverly in the chest, killing the NASA employee, and later shot himself in the head inside Building 44, a communications and engineering facility, officials said.

The second hostage, Fran Crenshaw, another NASA contract worker, was found duct-taped to a chair a few hours after the standoff began. She was treated at a hospital and released.

Police had tried to negotiate with the man but all they heard from the room was another gunshot. When they rushed in the room they found the two men dead and the woman bound at her hands and ankles.

On a chalkboard in the room where his body was found, Phillips left a list of names and phone numbers and a scribbled note, which was not immediately understandable, The Houston Chronicle reported Saturday.

Friday's shooting happened while the nation was mourning the 32 people shot dead by a South Korean student who killed himself after his rampage at Virginia Tech University on Monday.

All three were electrical engineers in their early 50s who knew each other, and they may even had had lunch together earlier in the day, Johnson Space Centre director Michael Coates told a news conference.

Officials did not know the motive behind the killing.

"Apparently there was some type of dispute between" Phillips and Beverly, Houston Police Chief Howard Hurtt told reporters.

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NASA Shooting; Two Engineers Dead in Houston

Gunman Goes Postal Before His Final Rampage

After killing two in the residence hall, but before his murderous rampage at Virginia Tech Norris Hall, the gunman went to the post office and mailed NBC a package containing photos and videos of him brandishing guns and delivering a snarling, profanity-laced rant about rich “brats” and their “hedonistic needs.”

“You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today,” 23-year-old Cho Seung-Hui says in a harsh monotone, in an excerpt shown on “NBC Nightly News.” “But you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off.”

NBC said the package contained a rambling and often-incoherent, 1,800-word video manifesto, plus 43 photos, 11 of them showing Cho aiming handguns at the camera.

He repeatedly suggests he was picked on or otherwise hurt.

“You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul and torched my conscience,” he said. “You thought it was one pathetic boy’s life you were extinguishing. Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and the defenseless people.”

In another portion of the tape, Cho said, "You love crucifying me, I didn’t have to do it. I could have left. I could have fled. But now I am no longer running. If not for me, for my children and my brothers and sisters that you (expletive). I did it for them.”

He also refers to “martyrs like Eric and Dylan” a reference to the teenage killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who killed 13 people at Columbine High School in Colorado on April 20, 1999.

Word of hate towards wealthy kids. “Your Mercedes wasn’t enough, you brats,” he says, apparently reading from a manifesto. “Your golden necklaces weren’t enough, you snobs. Your trust funds wasn’t enough. Your vodka and cognac wasn’t enough. All your debaucheries weren’t enough. Those weren’t enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything.”

NBC News said Cho sent the "long and rambling communication" to the network, and it was delivered Wednesday morning to NBC News chief Steve Capus. A time stamp on the mailed package indicates it was sent at 9:01 a.m. Monday, about an hour and 45 minutes after Cho killed two people in a campus dormitory.

A short while later, he opened fire in a university engineering building, killing 30 people. Then he killed himself as police closed in.

Network officials said the material was hand-delivered to Capus on Wednesday by a New York City postal employee who saw the return address and realized it was important. NBC turned the package over to the FBI and said they would not immediately disclose all its contents pending the agency’s review.

If the package was indeed mailed between the first attack and the second, as the time stamp indicates, that would help explain where Cho was and what he did during that two-hour window.


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Raw Video: NBC Releases Gunman Video Manifesto

Va Tech Cho Seung-Hui A Troubled Young Man

Cho Seung-Hui the student who had killed 32 people in two university buildings on Monday had also killed himself, but he left behind a bomb threat, and the school was investigating whether he had any links to previous bomb threats on campus.

Flinchum said Wednesday that the gunman, Cho Seung-Hui, had been accused of stalking two female student in 2005 and had been taken to a mental health facility that year.

Cho's roommates and professors on Wednesday described a troubled, very quiet young man who rarely spoke to his roommates or made eye contact with them. His bizarre behavior became even less predictable in recent weeks, roommates Joseph Aust and Karan Grewal said.

Several students and professors described Cho as a sullen loner, he was quiet, shy and withdrawn. Authorities said he left a rambling note raging against women and rich kids. News reports said that Cho, a 23-year-old senior majoring in English, may have been taking medication for depression and that he was becoming increasingly erratic.

In screenplays Cho wrote for a class last fall, characters throw hammers and attack with chainsaws, said a student who attended Virginia Tech last fall. In another, Cho concocted a tale of students who fantasize about stalking and killing a teacher who sexually molested them.

Despite the many warning signs that came to light in the bloody aftermath, police and university officials offered no clues as to exactly what set Cho off.

Cho who arrived in the United States as boy from South Korea in 1992, graduated from Westfield High School in Chantilly, Va., in 2003. Cho was raised in suburban Washington, D.C., where his parents worked at a dry cleaners left a note that was found after the bloodbath.

A law enforcement official described it Tuesday as a typed, eight-page rant against rich kids and religion. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

"You caused me to do this," the official quoted the note as saying.

Cho indicated in his letter that the end was near and that there was a deed to be done, the official said. He also expressed disappointment in his own religion, and made several references to Christianity, the official said.

Officials at a press conference yesterday said they could not comment on allegations that Cho had a previous run-in with law enforcement officers in Blacksburg in 2005.

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Va Tech Shooter's Family Struggled in S. Korea

Virginia Tech Massacre Investigation

Virginia Tech President Charles Steger told "Good Morning America's" Diane Sawyer this morning that there was still the possibility that there were two shooters in the separate campus attacks on Monday morning.

Steger said that the shooter who took his own life in the Norris Hall classroom building, where 30 other people were also killed, was a student of Asian descent who lived in a dormitory at Virginia Tech.

The name of gunman has been released by the police as, "Seung Hui Cho." 23 year old from South Korea, permanent resident of U.S. since 1992 and a student at Virginia Tech.

Steger referred to this person as the "second shooter."

"It appears that the second shooter was a resident in a dormitory," Steger said. "We don't have all of that confirmed but it appears he was an on-campus resident."

Sawyer asked whether there was more than one shooter involved.

"We don't know for sure. That's what we're trying to confirm," Steger said.

Steger said police had questioned a person of interest in the case.

"They have questioned them once and they'll probably continue to question the individual," he said.

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Va. Tech Massacre Adds to Infamous Week

Virginia Tech Gun Rampage Kills 32 Plus Gunman

A gunman opened fire in a dorm and a classroom today at Virginia Tech, killing 32 people in the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history, government officials said. The gunman then killed himself, bringing the death toll to 33.

At least 26 people were being treated at area hospitals for injuries, police said. The injuries included gun wounds, but also broken bones and sprains sustained by students who jumped from windows to escape the attacker.

The university reported shootings at opposite sides of the 2,600-acre campus, beginning about 7:15 a.m. at West Ambler Johnston, a coed residence hall that houses 895 people, and continuing about two hours later at Norris Hall, an engineering building.

Two people were killed in the dorm room, and 30 others and the gunman died in Norris Hall, police said.

Students told MSNBC that they were in a Norris Hall classroom when the gunman, dressed in a black leather jacket, walked in and began shooting without saying a word.

The Associated Press quoted an anonymouos law-enforcement officer as saying the gunman had two pistols and multiple clips of ammunition. The Washington Post, also quoting anonymous police officials, said the man was carrying two 9mm pistols and said his self-inflicted gunshot wound caused such extensive damage that police had not yet been able to identify him.

Students and one employee criticized the university's response to the shooting, there were no public-address announcements or other warnings on campus after the first burst of gunfire. They said the first word they received from the university was an e-mail more than two hours into the rampage around the time the gunman struck again.

Until today, the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history took place in 1966 at the University of Texas, where Charles Whitman climbed to the 28th-floor observation deck of a clock tower and opened fire. He killed 16 people before he was gunned down by police. In the bloodbath at Columbine High School near Littleton, Colorado, in 1999, two teenagers killed 12 fellow students and a teacher before taking their own lives

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First Person: Student Describes Campus Shooting

N Korea Forgets Nuclear Deadline For Cash

North Korea has refused to begin dismantling its Yongbyon atomic reactor as the deadline for its closure is reached.

Saturday's missed deadline marks the latest setback for an agreement reached in February that to disarm the world's newest declared nuclear power.

North Korea has said it would only begin the process of denuclearisation once about $25m in North Korean accounts, frozen for 18 months in Macau's Banco Delta Asia after the US accused the bank of being involved in money laundering, had been released.

The US initially missed the deadline to unblock the funds.

Missed deadline

But Washington says authorities in Macau have now released them and has urged North Korea to abide by the denuclearisation agreement reached by the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States in Beijing.

North Korea, which conducted its first nuclear test last October, said it would check whether it could access the funds and promised to start scrapping its nuclear programme once it confirmed that it could access the money.

In Washington, US officials said Friday that North Korea was virtually certain to miss the weekend deadline, although they added this would not necessarily lead to a collapse of the deal.

Song Min-Soon, the South Korean foreign minister, said that as long as all sides remain committed, "it's important not to be bound to the date but to carry out the agreed steps in a stable way".

US officials and experts say the process of shutting down a reactor and having UN nuclear inspectors verify it would probably take several days.

Christopher Hill, the US negotiator in the nuclear talks, said the US "not indifferent to missing a deadline".

He told reporters: "I don't want to put a date or an hour, but another month is not in my constitution."


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North Korea Disarmament Deadline Slips

India Fires Nuke-Capable Missile

India Thursday tested its home made nuclear capable Agni-III ballistic missile, from a defense base in Orissa,according to Indo-Asian News Service.

The news quoted defense sources as saying that a four-hour "range countdown" for test-firing began at 6 a.m. on Thursday morning.

The Defense sources said the missile, with a range of over 1864 miles, was test-fired from Inner Wheeler Island of the Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Chandipur defense base, about 143 miles from the state capital Bhubaneswar.

This missile was first launched last year but failed.

We Want Some Of Our Cash & Oil Too

Seoul, North Korea has told a visiting US delegation it will take initial steps to shut down its main nuclear reactor within a day of receiving funds frozen in a Macau bank.

New Mexico state governor Bill Richardson said he was given the assurance during his trip to Pyongyang this week at the head of a US delegation.

"The North Korean Government told us that with the (bank) issue resolved, it would move promptly, within a day after receiving the funds," Mr Richardson said yesterday.

"And therefore, within that day it would invite the IAEA inspectorate to Pyongyang to draft the terms for shutting down the Yongbyon reactor."

North Korea expelled International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors in late 2002 after the latest crisis over its nuclear program began.

Mr Richardson said he believed the communist state was committed to the six-nation February 13 agreement to disable its nuclear programs in exchange for one million tonnes of fuel oil or its equivalent and diplomatic benefits, as well as its bank funds.

Pyongyang's chief nuclear negotiator, Kim Kye-Gwan, reportedly made the promise to the US team after accepting assurances the North would soon receive the funds that had been frozen in a Macau bank on US instructions.

The US team's official mission was to secure the remains of US troops killed in the Korean War, but it also discussed the nuclear dispute.

Mr Richardson and his party crossed the Korean border yesterday with remains believed to be of six US soldiers, the US military said.




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Hill: Breakthrough in N. Korea Nuke Stalemate