Man sets house on fire, kills deputy

Man sets house on fire, kills deputy

TALLAHASSEE, Fla.

A man who had made previous threats against police set his house on fire Saturday and ambushed the first deputy sheriff who responded, fatally shooting the deputy and wounding another before he was killed by a police officer who lives nearby, a law-enforcement official said.

The man’s name and address had been entered into a law-enforcement computer system because of previous threats, but the 911 dispatcher who entered the fire call put in the address of a neighbor who reported the blaze, so the alert wasn’t activated and the Leon County deputy who responded first had no warning, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he or she wasn’t authorized to release the information.

Earthquakes hit China and Japan

Beijing

A strong earthquake struck a lightly populated, mountainous area of western China, killing at least two people, injuring 54 others and collapsing homes, officials said today.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the magnitude-5.9 quake hit Saturday about 20 miles from the town of Kangding in Sichuan province. China’s seismological agency put the magnitude at 6.3.

In Nagano, Japan, helicopter surveys today showed more extensive damage than earlier thought from an earthquake Saturday in the mountainous area that hosted the 1998 Winter Olympics.

More than half a dozen homes were destroyed in a ski resort town, and at least 39 people were injured across the region, including seven seriously, mostly with broken bones, officials said.

The magnitude-6.7 earthquake struck shortly after 10 p.m. Saturday.

28 non-Muslims killed in Kenya

NAIROBI, Kenya

One gunman shot from the right, one from the left, each killing the non-Muslims lying in a line on the ground, growing closer and closer to Douglas Ochwodho, who was in the middle.

And then the shooting stopped. Apparently each gunman thought the other shot Ochwodho. He lay perfectly still until the 20 Islamic extremists left, and he appears to be the only survivor of those who had been selected for death.

Somalia’s Islamic extremist rebels, al-Shabab, attacked a bus in northern Kenya at dawn Saturday, singling out and killing 28 passengers who could not recite an Islamic creed and were assumed to be non-Muslims, Kenyan police said.

University suspends fraternities after rape allegations

The University of Virginia suspended all fraternity activities and asked police to investigate a 2012 sexual assault in the wake of a damning Rolling Stone article that suggested the Charlottesville campus failed to protect students from potential sexual predators lurking among the school’s Greek organizations.

In a statement issued Saturday, University President Teresa Sullivan said all fraternity activities would be suspended through Jan. 9, 2015, as campus officials discuss steps to prevent assaults on campus.

“The wrongs described in Rolling Stone are appalling and have caused all of us to reexamine our responsibility to this community. Rape is an abhorrent crime that has no place in the world, let alone on the campuses and grounds of our nation’s colleges and universities,” Sullivan said. “We know, and have felt very powerfully this week, that we are better than we have been described, and that we have a responsibility to live our tradition of honor every day, and as importantly every night.”

Combined dispatches