Officer indicted

Officer indicted

NEW YORK

A rookie police officer who fired into a darkened stairwell at a Brooklyn public housing complex, accidentally killing a man who had been waiting for an elevator, has been indicted in his death, a lawyer said Tuesday.

Officer Peter Liang will appear in court today in the November shooting death of 28-year-old Akai Gurley, according to Scott Rynecki, an attorney representing Gurley’s family. Grand jury proceedings are secret. It wasn’t clear what charges were considered; they could range from misdemeanor official misconduct to manslaughter, a felony.

Patrick J. Lynch, head of Liang’s police union, said he deserves due process.

Counties refuse gay marriages

MOBILE, Ala.

Same-sex marriage spread farther across Alabama on Tuesday as more courthouses issued licenses to gays and lesbians, yet some counties still defied a federal judge’s order, so couples took their fight back to court.

The dispute and confusion headed toward a showdown in federal court set for Thursday in Mobile, where gay couples have waited for two days in a courthouse after officials quit issuing marriage licenses altogether — even for heterosexual couples — rather than sell them to same-sex couples.

Lawmakers back $1B in aid to Ukraine

WASHINGTON

The top Republican and Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday called for $1 billion in lethal defensive aid to Ukraine as Congress increased pressure on President Barack Obama to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian-backed rebels.

Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, the panel’s chairman, and Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state introduced legislation that would provide training, equipment and lethal defensive weapons to the national security forces of Ukraine through Sept. 30, 2017, to help secure “its sovereign territory against foreign aggressors.”

US to withdraw nearly all troops from West Africa

The U.S. will withdraw nearly all of its military personnel fighting the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the White House and the Pentagon announced Tuesday.

Nearly all the troops will exit the region by April 30, the Pentagon said in a statement. About 1,500 military personnel already have returned to their posts, it said.

“All have or will undergo established controlled monitoring procedures” upon their return, the agency announced.

Men charged with planning terrorist attack in Australia

SYDNEY

Two Sydney men were charged today with planning to launch an imminent terrorist attack after police seized a homemade flag associated with the Islamic State group, a machete and a hunting knife in a counterterrorism raid.

The men, age 24 and 25, would have carried out the attack Tuesday if they had not been arrested that day in the raid in the Sydney suburb of Fairfield, New South Wales state Deputy Police Commissioner Catherine Burn told reporters.

A video that was seized in the raid showed one of the two men making threats, though Burn declined to detail exactly what was said. Asked whether they were planning a beheading, Burn replied, “We don’t really know what act they were going to commit.”

Combined dispatches