AURORA, Colo.

Four dead after gunman holds off police for hours

A gunman barricaded inside his Colorado home fired shots at police from a second-story window before he was killed as SWAT officers stormed the home Saturday. Once inside, they found the bodies of three other adults, authorities said.

The suspect, whose name was withheld by police, held officers at bay for nearly six hours after neighbors reported gunfire at 3 a.m. inside the modest townhome in the Denver suburb of Aurora, said police Sgt. Cassidee Carlson. It wasn’t known if officers shot the suspect or if he shot himself.

Investigators said two men and a woman appeared to have been killed before officers arrived.

The suspect shot at police who approached the front of the home with an armored vehicle and who fired tear gas around 8:15 a.m. He was killed when he fired at officers from the second-story window about 45 minutes later, Carlson said.

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JUNEAU, Alaska

Powerful quake prompts tsunami warning for coast

A powerful earthquake sparked a tsunami warning for hundreds of miles of Alaskan and Canadian coastline, but the alert was canceled when no damaging waves were generated.

The magnitude 7.5 quake and tsunami warning that followed caused concern in some coastal communities, with alarms sounding and people rushing to higher ground for safety.

But the Alaska Tsunami Warning Center later said the waves were too small to pose a threat, reaching just six inches above normal sea level in places such as Sitka and Port Alexander.

The temblor struck at midnight Friday and was centered about 60 miles west of Craig, Alaska, the U.S. Geological Survey said. It was followed by several aftershocks, including a 5.2 quake felt in southeastern Alaska and British Columbia.

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“Houses shook; mine had things tossed from (the) wall,” Craig Police Chief Robert Ely said. But he added that there were “no reports of any injuries.”

CARACAS, Venezuela

Rescue crews find no trace of small plane that vanished

Rescue crews used boats and aircraft Saturday to search for a small plane that disappeared off Venezuela carrying the CEO of Italy’s iconic Missoni fashion house and five other people.

But more than a day after the BN-2 Islander aircraft disappeared from radar screens on its short flight from Venezuela’s coastal islands of Los Roques to Caracas, no sign of the plane had been found, officials said.

“We have no other news” about the plane carrying Vittorio Missoni, the head of the company; his wife, Maurizia Castiglioni; two of their Italian friends; and two Venezuelan crew members, said Paolo Marchetti, a Missoni SpA official, as he left company headquarters in the northern Italian town of Sumirago on Saturday.

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AUGUSTA, Ga.

Oldest U.S. citizen dies weeks after breaking hip

A 114-year-old South Carolina woman who was the oldest living U.S. citizen has died, two of her daughters said Saturday.

Mamie Rearden of Edgefield, who held the title as the country’s oldest person for about two weeks, died Wednesday at a hospital in Augusta, Ga., said Sara Rearden of Burtonsville, Md., and Janie Ruth Osborne of Edgefield. They said their mother broke her hip in a fall about three weeks ago.

Gerontology Research Group, which verifies age information for Guinness World Records, listed Mamie Rearden as the oldest living American after last month’s passing of 115-year-old Dina Manfredini of Iowa.

Rearden was more than a year younger than the world’s oldest person, 115-year-old Jiroemon Kimura of Japan.

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Rearden, who was married to her husband, Oacy, for 59 years until his death in 1979, raised 11 children, 10 of whom survive, Sara Rearden said. She lived in the family homestead with a son and a daughter on land that had been in the family since her father’s accumulation of acreage made him one of the area’s largest black landowners.

SAO PAULO

Prison guards catch cat loaded with contraband

Guards thought there was something suspicious about a little white cat slipping through a prison gate in northeastern Brazil. A prison official says that when they caught the animal, they found a cellphone, drills, small saws and other contraband taped to its body.

An Alagoas state prisons spokeswoman said the cat was caught on New Year’s Eve at the medium-security prison in the city of Arapiraca.

The O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper reported Saturday that all of the prison’s 263 inmates are suspects in the smuggling attempt, although it says a prison spokesman said, “It will be hard to discover who is responsible since the cat does not speak.”

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NEW YORK

Musician poses as a potential date to reclaim missing iPhone

A New York City musician used a combination of technology, seduction, a hammer and a bribe to reclaim his missing iPhone from a confused crook.

Jazz trombonist Nadav Nirenberg, 27, said he left the phone in a cab on New Year’s Eve. The next morning, he learned via email that someone was sending messages to women using a dating app on the phone.

Nirenberg logged on to the service and offered the man a date — posing as a woman. When the culprit arrived at Nirenberg’s Brooklyn apartment with wine, the musician greeted him with a $20 bill while holding a hammer, just in case. The thief handed him the iPhone and left without a word.

 


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