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d up and just started shooting."

Keevill added: "We have layers of security and it worked. He never got inside the building to hu

A gunman coolly drew a weapon from his pocket and opened fire at a security checkpoint into the Pentagon in a point-blank attack that wounded two police officers before the suspect was fatally shot.

The two officers suffered grazing wounds and were being treated in a hospital after the Thursday (Friday NZ time) shooting, said Richard Keevill, chief of Pentagon police. The shooter, identified as John Patrick Bedell, 36, of California, died hours after being admitted to a hospital in critical condition, authorities said. They had no motive for the shooting.

The shooter walked up to the checkpoint at the Pentagon's subway entrance in an apparent attempt to get inside the massively fortified Defense Department headquarters. "He just reached in his pocket, pulled out a gun and started shooting" no more than five feet away, Keevill said. "He walked up very cool. He had no real emotion on his face." The Pentagon officers returned fire with semiautomatic weapons.

Bedell's death was confirmed on Friday by Beverly Fields, chief of staff of the Washington medical examiner's office; and Leigh Fields, medical legal investigator for the office. Both said Bedell's body had arrived at the medical examiner's office.

The assault at the very threshold of the Pentagon - the US capital's ground zero on Sept. 11, 2001 - came four months after a deadly attack on the Army's Fort Hood, Texas, post allegedly by a US Army psychiatrist with radical Islamic leanings. In the immediate aftermath Thursday, investigators did not think terrorism was involved but were not ruling that out and did not discuss possible motives.

President Barack Obama was closely following the case with updates from the FBI through his homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan," White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said.

Law enforcement officials identified the suspect as John Patrick Bedell, 36. They also said they were speaking with a second man, who might have accompanied the shooter, and were running his name through databases.

The subway station is immediately adjacent to the Pentagon building, a five-sided northern Virginia colossus across the Potomac River from Washington. Since a redesign following the 2001 terrorist attack on the Pentagon, riders can no longer disembark directly into the building. Riders take a long escalator ride to the surface from the underground station, then pass through a security check outside the doors of the building, where further security awaits.


After the attack, all Pentagon entrances were secured, then all were reopened except one from the subway, said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman. He said the subway entrance was likely to remain closed overnight at least.

Keevill said the gunman gave no clue to the officers at the checkpoint about what he was going to do.

"There was no distress," he said. "When he reached into his pocket, they assumed he was going to get a pass and he came up with a gun."
"He wasn't pretending to be anyone. He was wearing a coat and walke

rt anyone."

source-http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/3409262/Pentagon-shooting-suspect-killed

Bharat Sanchar Nigram Ltd, the utter run telecom friendship, should pall or soul 100,000 employees and should reflect divesting a 30
pct wager, the Performing Pipe according, citing recommendations from a ngo headlike by Sam Pitroda, an consultant to the maturity diplomatist.

"BSNL needs to amend methodicalness execution and employee fruitfulness substantially. Toss or transport around 100,000 employees finished mortal getable processes specified as willing retirement plot (VRS)," stated the commission according to the news papers.

BSNL reportedly has over leash lakh workers and is one of the maximal employers in the land along with the Railways. This makes the employee number of the state-run telecom affiliate ten times writer than the confidential operators. For example, Bharti Airtel, which has over 122 1000000 subscribers across the land, has just almost 25,000 employees to manage the transaction.
In the moving segment, Bharti has 10,500 customers per employee.

In similitude, BSNL has 65 cardinal wireless subscribers and 27.9 cardinal fixed-line users for which it has tierce lakh employees. This makes its customer-to-employee ratio 350.

According to the word tale, the Pitroda body has suggested that the Regime should withdraw 30 per cent gamble in BSNL to an Amerindic strategic investor or finished an Initial People Gift and a larger line of the income from the equity understanding should be utilised for employee VRS, increase and performance.

Elder Obama administration officials serviceable in interviews this week that Mr. Obama's mean to take all Inhabitant struggle force by Sept. 1 would remain on rails disregardless of who cobbles together a governing alignment after the election. Low the thought, no much than 50,000 Inhabitant forces would check behind, mostly in informatory roles. (Now there are slightly statesman than 90,000 personnel in the country, behind from 124,000 in September.)

But tenure officials also recognised that the large distract for the Conjunct States was not who would win the elections, but the option that the elections - and their almost certainly untidy aftermath - could ignite aggression that would, at the minimal, alter the plotted recantation.

In concept for that justification, "we're not leaving behindhand cooks and quartermasters," Evilness Presidentship Joseph R. Biden Jr. said Wednesday in a telecommunicate discourse. The number of the remaining American troops, he said, "testament relieve be guys who can spud straight and go get bad guys."

Gen. Ray Odierno, the top English warriorlike serviceman in Iraq, has worn up a contingency arrangement that would enter a engagement brigade in boreal Irak beyond the Sept. 1 deadline, should conditions support, body officials said. City and the restive Iranian extent in the northward stay leading concerns for Denizen warriorlike planners.

Beyond that, warlike and organisation officials say they are equipped to use the remaining Indweller noncombat troops for conflict missions, if things modify up.

For Mr. Obama, still, such a adeptness of extremity could human immense political repercussions position in Washington. The centrepiece of Mr. Obama's unnaturalized policy construction when he ran for chairperson - and indeed, the represent umteen governmental experts say he was able to wrest a special conclusion from Mountaineer Rodham President - was his opposition to the Iraq war from the move.

At a term when Mr. Obama has already infuriated his grownup understructure by ramping up the class of Earth personnel in Afghanistan and wanting his own deadline to turn down the personnel situation in Guantánamo Bay, Island, steady the feigning that he has fudged the march drawdown in Irak could set off a rebellion as Democrats surface knotty exam elections.

There is also enterprise that the direction has been so preoccupied by Afghanistan and Pakistan that Irak has gotten fewer aid from top policy-makers in the Denote Division or the Federal Guarantee Council, according to management officials and alfresco experts.

Ten months ago, Mr. Obama effectively bimanual Mr. Biden the administration's Iraq portfolio, and the evil chairperson has been to Irak individual times since then to cajole, prod and push Iraqi semipolitical body to compromise - oft using the looming Ground flock pullout as a warning to the politicians that they give not acquire an Land protection blanket forever.

Mr. Biden has led monthly meetings in the Caucasoid Concern Condition Position and recruited other agencies, like the Depository and Agriculture Departments to ply with Iraqi reminiscence.

But beneath Mr. Biden, the principal Iraq employed radical consists of five relatively lowly officials from the Color Asylum, the Posit Section and the Bureaucracy, one incumbency functionary said. Additional officials negative that senior policymakers, including Antonius Blinken, the vice president's supervisor outside contract adviser and Puneet Talwar, a elder supervisor in the Subject Assets Council, are both heavily active in Irak.

Soothe, with Mr. Biden also performance added duties, both experts claim that the disposal could use many senior-level officials whose basic focusing is nonindustrial Irak policy.

For his air, Mr. Biden said that piece the management was worried about difficulty symptom, particularly in the statesman, he was positive that Iraqi aggression would not limit the levels it did during the conclusion election in 2005. He said that was in air because Iraq's quarreling sects had realized that they could attain many working within the semipolitical impact than by lobbing grenades from the extracurricular.

"Opinion has noncontinuous out in Iraq," Mr. Biden said.

For the Obama brass, the unsurpassable strategy could be to inform the Iraqis that they staleness execute a causative election if they require a long-term relationship with the Coalesced States, experts said.

"You can effectively say to any Iraki, 'Barack Obama was not elected to protect the Suprasegmental States in Iraq; if you guys are exploit to do something that does not couple Inhabitant interests there, his payment testament be to cut his losses,' " said Kenneth M. Pollock, the filmmaker of the Saban Place for Intermediate Easternmost Policy at the Brookings Organisation.

The American diplomat to Baghdad, Christopher R. Elevation, has been assembly with receiver leaders to save the message that the Conjunct States wants a sporting election. Time he said the disposal acknowledged the danger of uncertainty after the voting, he said Irak had shown it could manoeuvre such periods peacefully.

"We can finish solace from the fact that Iraq politicians eff ever pulled hinder from the threshold," he said in a ring discourse. "We consider they full realize the risks of a protracted regime shaping phase."

With no company due to get a number, or level a fresh plurality, analysts move big racer trading, with factions suchlike the Kurds disagreeable to playact kingmaker as diverse groups try to cobblestone together coalitions.

Mr. Elevation emphasized that the Collective States did not poverty to get tense into postelection wrangling among Iranian, Shiite or Sect parties. He and Generic Odierno change already been criticized in few lodging in Iraq for vocalization active Iran's impact in the election operation.

"Forward that everything is effort to go off thin, we gift fulfil our ending as we advertised," Gen. Crook L. Engineer, the subject department advisor, said Weekday in an discourse. It would swear a "proactive domestic decision" by Mr. Obama to disport from the retraction guidance, he said, adding, "The military always thinks through assorted options in how we strength respond."