The World in Brief

Catalan police officers stand guard at the entrance of a building near Barcelona, Spain, during a raid Monday. Police said they shot a man who attacked officers with a knife at a police station.
Catalan police officers stand guard at the entrance of a building near Barcelona, Spain, during a raid Monday. Police said they shot a man who attacked officers with a knife at a police station.

Spanish police kill man wielding knife

BARCELONA, Spain -- A man pleaded to be let into a locked police station in Barcelona before dawn Monday, then lunged with a knife at officers inside. Police shot him dead and the attack is being investigated for any links to terrorism, authorities said.

Commissioner Rafel Comes, the second-in-command of the Catalan regional police, told reporters that police are treating it as a terrorist attack "for the moment" because the incident was "extremely serious," involving a "premeditated" attack that intended to kill police.

The man shouted "Allah" and other words that police officers did not understand, Comes said, adding that Spanish intelligence services are helping with the investigation.

But he added that police have found no evidence linking the incident to terror attacks last August in Barcelona and nearby Cambrils, which killed 16 people.

Officers opened a locked police station security door to the man, who lived in a nearby apartment, Comes said. The police station is in the Cornella district on the outskirts of the city.

He said the suspect repeatedly pressed the buzzer to be let in about 5:45 a.m. and spoke with officers inside over an intercom. After they decided to let him in, he pulled out "a large knife" and lunged at officers, according to Comes.

The man had ID documents on him and police are checking whether they are authentic.

Crash kills U.S. service member in Iraq

WASHINGTON -- One U.S. service member was killed and three others were injured Monday in a helicopter crash in Iraq, where a U.S.-led coalition is battling the remnants of the Islamic State group, the Pentagon said.

The cause of the crash was being investigated, but Army Col. Rob Manning, a Pentagon spokesman, said there were no indications that it was caused by hostile fire. He said three service members were evacuated from the crash site for further medical treatment.

Manning said the forces were "conducting a partnered counterterrorism mission" against the Islamic State group.

The coalition said the crash happened shortly after midnight. It was the 14th U.S. service member fatality in the war against the Islamic State this year, according to the tracking site iCasualties.

Latest Indonesia quakes claim 12 lives

SEMBALUN, Indonesia -- Multiple strong earthquakes killed at least a dozen people on the Indonesian islands of Lombok and Sumbawa as the region was trying to recover from a temblor earlier this month that killed hundreds of people.

A shallow magnitude-6.9 quake that hit about 10 p.m. was one of several powerful earthquakes Sunday in the northeast of Lombok that also caused landslides. The nighttime quake was followed by strong aftershocks.

At least 10 people on Lombok and neighboring Sumbawa island were killed by collapsing buildings or heart attacks, National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said Monday. Two people died earlier Sunday on Lombok during a magnitude-6.3 quake.

More than 1,800 houses were damaged, at least half of them severely, he said.

The swarm of quakes caused panic in Sembalun subdistrict on Lombok in the shadow of Mount Rinjani, but many people were already staying in tents after the deadly jolt in early August and its hundreds of aftershocks. On Sumbawa, a neighborhood was engulfed by a fire that started in a collapsed house.

Sunday night's tremor occurred on a different fault and was not an aftershock of the magnitude-7.0 quake on Aug. 5 that killed 460 people, damaged tens of thousands of homes and displaced several hundred thousand people.

Australia leader dumps emissions plan

CANBERRA, Australia -- Australia's prime minister on Monday abandoned plans for legislation to limit greenhouse gas emissions to head off a revolt by conservative lawmakers.

Malcolm Turnbull on Monday conceded that he could not get legislation through the House of Representatives, where his conservative coalition holds only a single-seat majority. He said that although most government lawmakers supported the target of reducing Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by 26 percent below 2005 levels, that support was not enough.

Some lawmakers including former Prime Minister Tony Abbott argue that the government should be focusing on cutting electricity prices instead of cutting emissions.

Some government lawmakers want Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, a close ally of Abbott, to challenge Turnbull's leadership.

Turnbull said Dutton had told him he would not challenge for the party leadership.

-- Compiled by Democrat-Gazette staff from wire reports

A Section on 08/21/2018

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