In the World

ICELAND

Nation's first-ever fatal police shooting is reported

Police in Iceland said Monday they shot dead a gunman - the first time armed police have killed someone in the nation.

Iceland, which has a tiny population of around 320,000, has a low crime rate and gun violence is extremely rare. Its regular police force does not carry firearms.

Haraldur Johannessen, national commissioner of the Icelandic Police, said Monday's incident was unprecedented.

Police said officers were called to an apartment in the Reykjavik suburb of Arbaer early Monday when a man fired a shotgun from inside the flat. Two policemen, who were not armed, were shot at when trying to enter the gunman's apartment.

Witnesses told local media that a smoke bomb was thrown into the apartment through a broken window in efforts to subdue the man. A special armed unit then entered and fired at the man, who was rushed to the hospital, where he died. No one else was injured.

- AP
THAILAND

Protest leader is defiant

A firebrand opposition leader vowed Monday to escalate his campaign to topple Thailand's government, and ordered his followers to storm Bangkok's police headquarters after they fought all day with riot police protecting heavily barricaded key buildings. Protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban gave a defiant speech late Monday to thousands of cheering supporters at a government complex they seized last week when the antigovernment demonstrations started.

- AP
LIBERIA

President protests rape

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and thousands of citizens marched through the main streets of Monrovia Monday to denounce rape, which has remained a problem in the West African country since the civil war ended 10 years ago. Sirleaf, dressed in a purple suit, said as she marched that she and others were "marching for a purpose, to stop violence against women. We are marching for a cause." Gender and Development Minister Julia Duncan-Cassell said that rapes are going on all over Liberia. - AP