Ex-cop killed after firing gun in W.Va.

Ex-cop killed after firing gun in W.Va.

WHEELING, W.Va.

A retired police officer armed with an assault weapon and a handgun fired up to two dozen shots at a U.S. courthouse in West Virginia on Wednesday before police returned fire and killed him, authorities said.

Wheeling Police Chief Shawn Schwertfeger identified the gunman as Thomas J. Piccard, 55, of Bridgeport, Ohio. He was a retired Wheeling police officer.

Schwertfeger did not say whether Piccard used both weapons during the assault on the Wheeling Federal Building or speculate on a motive. Officials said they had no knowledge of any sort of note left behind by Piccard.

Study: Temps to be off charts by 2047

WASHINGTON

Starting in about a decade, Kingston, Jamaica, will probably be off-the-charts hot — permanently. Other places soon will follow. Singapore in 2028. Mexico City in 2031. Cairo in 2036. Phoenix and Honolulu in 2043.

And eventually the whole world in 2047.

A new study on global warming pinpoints the probable dates for when cities and ecosystems around the world will regularly experience hotter environments the likes of which they have never seen before.

And for dozens of cities, mostly in the tropics, those dates are a generation or less away.

3 in US win Nobel for chemistry

NEW YORK

Three U.S.-based scientists won a Nobel Prize on Wednesday for developing a powerful new way to do chemistry on a computer.

They pioneered highly sophisticated computer simulations of complex chemical processes, giving researchers tools they are now using for a wide variety of tasks, such as designing new drugs and solar cells.

The prize honored research done in the 1970s by Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel.

1 killed in bus crash on I-80 in central Pa.

PHILADELPHIA

A Greyhound bus struck a tractor-trailer early Wednesday on Interstate 80 in central Pennsylvania, killing a woman, critically injuring four other people including the bus driver and sending dozens to the hospital, authorities said.

Trooper Matthew Burrows of the state police barracks in Milton said the bus was extensively damaged when it hit the rear end of a flatbed trailer that was hauling garbage about 1:30 a.m. in the westbound lanes of I-80 in Union County’s White Deer Township.

Greyhound spokeswoman Alexandra Pedrini said 38 of the 49 passengers transported to five hospitals were released by late Wednesday afternoon, and then placed on replacement buses to their final destination.

Charity to pay death benefits

WASHINGTON

The Obama administration, scrambling to tamp down a controversy over suspended death benefits for the families of fallen troops, announced Wednesday that a charity would pick up the costs of the payments during the government shutdown.

“The Fisher House Foundation will provide the families of the fallen with the benefits they so richly deserve,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in a statement, adding that the Pentagon would reimburse the foundation after the shutdown ended.

Hagel said Fisher House, which works with veterans and their families, had approached the Pentagon about making the payments. The Defense Department typically pays families about $100,000 within three days of a service member’s death, but officials say the shutdown was preventing those benefits from being paid.

Associated Press