Arizona college shootings

Arizona college shootings

PHOENIX — Officials say three people were shot Thursday afternoon at South Mountain Community College in Phoenix, and two of them were critically injured.

A witness said the shooter had been fighting with another man in a computer building. The gunman seemed to be directing his shots and not firing randomly, said student Yessenia Lara, 18.

A 25-year-old man and a 22-year-old woman were in critical condition, while a 17-year-old boy was in stable condition, said Mark Faulkner, a division chief for the Phoenix Fire Department. No other information on their injuries was available.

Air Force investigation

WASHINGTON — Three ballistic missile crew members in North Dakota fell asleep while holding classified launch code devices this month, triggering an investigation by military and National Security Agency experts, the Air Force said Thursday.

The probe found that the missile launch codes were outdated and remained secure at all times. But the July 12 incident comes on the heels of a series of missteps by the Air Force that had already put the service under intense scrutiny.

The lapse, which involved a crew based at Minot Air Force Base, was serious enough to prompt an investigation by the 91st Missile Wing, in conjunction with codes experts at the 20th Air Force, U.S. Strategic Command and the National Security Agency.

Iran won’t cooperate

VIENNA, Austria — Iran signaled Thursday that it will no longer cooperate with U.N. experts probing for signs of clandestine nuclear weapons work, confirming the investigation is at a dead end a year after it began.

The announcement from Iranian Vice President Gholam Reza Aghazadeh compounded skepticism about denting Tehran’s nuclear defiance, just five days after Tehran stonewalled demands from six world powers that it halt activities capable of producing the fissile core of warheads.

Marines charged in killing

SAN DIEGO — Two Marines apparently killed one of their Camp Pendleton comrades in a dispute over stolen drug money, prosecutors said Thursday.

Lance Cpl. Christian William Carney and Pfc. Alvin Reed Lovely are scheduled to be arraigned today in Orange County Superior Court on charges related to the killing of Pfc. Stephen Serrano.

In a statement issued by the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, prosecutors allege that Serrano and an unidentified Marine broke into Carney’s room at the base on May 9 and stole drug money.

Karadzic’s identity theft

BELGRADE, Serbia — The real Dragan Dabic has emerged — and the 66-year-old construction worker was shocked Thursday to discover his identity had apparently been stolen by one of the world’s most notorious war crimes suspects.

Radovan Karadzic assumed Dabic’s identity as a cover during the autocratic rule of his mentor Slobodan Milosevic, officials said Thursday, promising to track down anyone who helped the Bosnian Serb warlord stay on the run from genocide charges for nearly 13 years.

The true Dabic lives in Ruma, a Serbian town just north of Belgrade, according to Rasim Ljajic, a government official in charge of war crimes.

That discovery certainly altered Dabic’s plans for the day.

“Instead of working in the garden, I’m being besieged by reporters and answering telephone calls,” Dabic said in Ruma, adding that he had no idea how the copy of his ID ended up in Karadzic’s hands.

Officials were trying to figure out whether Karadzic’s ID was a fake or an official copy of Dabic’s original.

Authorities said Karadzic was captured in Belgrade on Monday and is awaiting extradition to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. However, Karadzic’s lawyer insisted his client was captured last Friday.

Feared leader sentenced

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — A court sentenced one of Argentina’s most feared former military leaders to life in prison Thursday for the 1977 kidnapping, torture and killing of four leftist activists.

Luciano Benjamin Menendez, 81, was commander of the Third Army Corps in Cordoba for five years during Argentina’s 1976-83 military dictatorship and controlled one of the regime’s most notorious torture centers.

Hours before the sentencing, an unrepentant Menendez read a statement in front of live television cameras saying the regime’s repression had been justified in the face of a leftist militant threat.

Associated Press