OAKLAND, Calif.

Rampage shooter’s target was nursing program head

Police confirmed Wednesday that the nursing program director of the California college where a former student is suspected of going on a shooting rampage was the suspect’s intended target.

Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan told The Associated Press that investigators believe Ellen Cervellon was the person sought by suspect One Goh.

Police said that when Goh was told Cervellon wasn’t there at the time, he began shooting in classrooms.

Goh had been upset after dropping out of the nursing program because school officials would not fully refund his tuition, Cervellon said.

Meanwhile, prosecutors filed seven murder charges against Goh. He also was charged Wednesday with three counts of attempted murder and faces a special circumstance allegation of multiple murders that could make him eligible for the death penalty.

MOGADISHU, Somalia

Suicide bomber kills 10 at national theater event

Two weeks ago, Somalia’s National Theater reopened for the first time in 20 years for a concert that drew an audience in festive colors in a city trying to rise above war. A welcoming banner proclaimed: “The country is being rebuilt.”

On Wednesday, the theater was turned into a scene of screams, chaos and blood when a suicide bomber attacked another high-profile event, killing 10 people, wounding dozens and shattering a tentative peace in the capital of Mogadishu.

The blast occurred as Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali stood at the podium to deliver a speech. He was unharmed, said government spokesman Abdirahman Omar Osman, but the president of Somalia’s Olympic committee and the head of its soccer federation were among the dead.

The government said a female suicide bomber carried out the attack. The Islamist militant group al-Shabab used its official Twitter feed to claim responsibility for the bombing.

SANTIAGO, Chile

Anti-discrimination law passed after gay man killed

Chile’s Congress has passed an anti-discrimination law after the killing of a gay man whose attackers beat him and carved swastikas into his body.

The House of Deputies approved the measure in a close vote Wednesday, seven years after it was first proposed. The Senate passed the law in November.

President Sebastian Pinera had urged lawmakers to accelerate approval of the law after 24-year-old Daniel Zamudio died March 27. His death came 25 days after he was attacked, and his case set off a national debate about hate crimes in Chile.

BAMAKO, Mali

Sharia law imposed as rebel faction takes over Timbuktu

Mali’s crisis deepened Wednesday, as officials in the fabled northern city of Timbuktu confirmed that the Islamic rebel faction that seized control of the town over the weekend has announced it will impose sharia law.

Rebels in the country’s distant north have taken advantage of the power vacuum created last month when renegade soldiers in the capital of Bamako overthrew the nation’s democratically elected leader. In the chaos that followed the March 21 coup, they advanced on strategic towns in the north, including the ancient city of Timbuktu, located over 620 miles from the capital.