The names of the victim, an undergraduate, and his killer were not immediately released.
According to reports, the gunman walked into Wiley Hall, a four-story, red brick men's dormitory housing mostly first-year students, and entered the supervisor's third-floor room.
He then shot the supervisor twice around 2:50 p.m.
"I just heard a big, loud blast. And then I heard what sounded like something dropping," said first-year student Kevin France, who lives on the floor above. "It was so loud, I could feel the floor shaking."
The gunman then ran down the hall and locked himself in his room, Purdue spokesperson Joe Bennett said. The gunman then shot himself.
Police evacuated the building and, after a room-by-room sweep, fired tear gas into the room, burst in and discovered the gunman's body.
University spokesperson Ellen Rantz said the dorm supervisor had found cocaine in the other student's possession on Tuesday and alerted campus police, who searched his room and confirmed the drug possession.
Freshman Joe Blauvelt said the counselor was well-liked and responsible.
"He didn't give people a hard time. I guess he was just doing his job when this happened," Blauvelt said.
Purdue, a state-supported, coeducational university founded in 1869, has a student enrollment of 35,647. Its 1,565-acre campus is about 60 miles northwest of Indianapolis.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (AP) - A Purdue University student shot and killed another student who was a dormitory counselor yesterday, and was then found dead in his room.
The counselor, an upperclassperson who was a resident supervisor in the dormitory, had discovered cocaine in the younger student's possession on Tuesday, said university spokesperson Ellen Rantz.
The counselor told campus police, who searched the student's room and car and confirmed the drug possession, Rantz said.
Police surrounded the dormitory for more than two hours after the gunman locked himself in his room. Officers fired tear gas inside, entered the room and found the student dead, said university spokesperson Joe Bennett.
The names of two students were not immediately released.
West Lafayette is about 60 miles northwest of Indianapolis.
UNITED NATIONS - The United Nations is moving slowly toward agreement on the need to create a permanent international criminal court to deal with genocide and crimes against humanity.
But human-rights activists complain that progress toward this goal is likely to come at the cost of what they see as severe limits on the proposed court's independence and effectiveness. And, these critics charge, the United States, a leading advocate of such a court, also is among the nations that want to limit its powers.
At issue is whether the international community needs a tribunal able to prosecute criminal acts arising from the alarming number of regional conflicts involving antagonistic ethnic groups that have broken out in the post-Cold War period.
The Security Council, prodded by the United States, created a special court at The Hague to deal with the atrocities spawned by "ethnic-cleansing" campaigns in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. But that court operates on a limited basis. Many governments and non-governmental rights advocates believe there should be a permanent judicial body to investigate and prosecute such crimes worldwide.
Enrollment of 40-plus students in adult education more than tripled between 1970 and 1993, according to the study, which was conducted by the Washington-based Institute for Higher Education Policy and the Boston-based Education Resource Institute.
Overall, the presence of the older generation in higher education jumped from 5.5 percent of total enrollment in 1970 to 11.2 percent in 1993, the study said.
"By sheer numbers, the baby boomers are revolutionizing our educational worlds, as they have been doing all along, starting in elementary school and continuing throughout society as they have aged," said Ted Freeman, president of The Education Resource Institute, a not-for-profit organization that provides information and financing services.
The report predicted that these students "will be critical to the economic productivity of the nation."
If the Federal Aviation Administration concurs with the recommendations of the National Transportation Safety Board, Boeing and the airlines would be required to make safety modifications on the 2,800 Boeing 737s in fleets around the world.
Such a development could cost the airline industry and Boeing tens of millions of dollars, but Boeing said it's too early to tell exactly how much or the part of the total that Boeing or the airlines would have to pay.
"I think we're going to review (the NTSB recommendations) with great interest, and we're always willing to consider product improvement," said Boeing spokeswoman Susan Bradley. "But at this point we'd like to see the FAA review them and then work with all parties to come to some kind of solution or resolution."
Thomas McSweeny, the FAA's director of aircraft certification, said the NTSB recommendations would be given "a lot of serious consideration."
"Broadly speaking...they're in the area that we're looking at," McSweeny said.
The NTSB action came as American Airlines announced in Fort Worth, Texas, that it is installing a new navigation system designed to prevent crashes like one in Colombia last December: a jetliner slammed into a mountainside and killed all but four of the 163 people aboard.
The NTSB's 14 recommendations follow exhaustive investigations into unsolved crashes in Pennsylvania and Colorado. Many safety experts have theorized about rudder problems in both cases, but definite proof has not emerged.
Under the recommendations, Boeing would be required to develop and install cockpit indicators in new 737s to provide details on rudder positions and movements. For existing 737s, the same system would be required.
The FAA has 90 days to respond to thommendations.
NTSB Chairperson Jim Hall said the agency's proposals were developed during studies of the two crashes and other incidents and should make a safe plane even safer. But they may not actually address the causes of the two accidents, which remain unknown, he said.
Boeing spokesperson Tim Neale said the rudder system already has been redesigned for newer-model 737s in production. The design change was needed because the aircraft is bigger than older models, not because of safety shortcomings, he said.
"The 737 rudder has been scrutinized more than any other part on any other aircraft," Neale said. "No one has conclusively come up with a design flaw that is attributable to this part."
The safety board's recommendations drew praise from the Airline Pilots Association. "These are pretty broad-reaching recommendations," said John Cox, a union spokesperson and USAir pilot. "They're pretty much where they need to be."
Gail Dunham whose ex-husband was a pilot in the Colorado Springs, Colo., crash, said she hopes the board's recommendations will prod the FAA to quickly order the improvements.
"I would hope the FAA would be embarrassed and come forward now and say, 'This is what you're going to do, and this is the time line on which you're going to do it,"' Dunham said.
The FAA already has ordered relatively modest improvements in 737 control systems, calling the changes prudent after the two crashes.
The USAir 737 crash Sept. 8, 1994, near Pittsburgh, killed all 132 people aboard. The March 3, 1991, United Airlines crash in Colorado Springs killed 25.
In Fort Worth, American Airlines said its new Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System will be installed on the carrier's 635 planes beginning in November. Company spokesman John Hotard said the job won't be completed before 1999.
Alaska Airlines also has announced plans to install the new system, and other major airlines are expected to follow.
The new device not only warns that a plane is approaching too close to the ground but also senses terrain in front of the plane. Hotard said the devices give pilots more time to react than do current systems.
The Fort Worth-based airline's board approved the $25 million investment in July.
The system "probably would have prevented the accident in Cali by giving the pilots more advance warning," Hotard said.
The American Airlines Boeing 757 was heading for Cali, Colombia, on Dec. 20 when it veered from its planned flight path and struck a mountain. Last month, the FAA said the new systems will be required on all aircraft.
LIVINGSTON, Ala. (AP) - A black judge, holding court in the old plantation country of western Alabama, found himself both victim and witness when shotgun blasts shattered the quiet of night, and his bedroom windows.
The Feb. 28 attack came only weeks after Circuit Judge Eddie Hardaway had sent two white men to jail for vandalizing black churches with a sledgehammer.
Hardaway blamed race and politics, citing powerful, unidentified whites behind the attack, and civil rights activists rallied around.
On a visit here to consult with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's Prime Minister Abdul-Karim Kabariti, Arafat grew angry as he demanded that Israel abide by accords signed last year in which it pledged to withdraw its troops from Hebron.
He waved proposals he said he received from the Israelis on Tuesday night, saying they contained unacceptable changes in the Israeli-Palestinian accords.
"It is my right to tell you and expose to everyone - the Arab and Islamic nations and Palestinian people - what bitter truths we face,'' Arafat said. "It shows ... complete and abhorrent racism.''
Despite the harsh tone of Arafat's remarks, Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy said agreement on the contentious Hebron question was close and might be achieved within hours.
The sweeping government initiative immediately was subject to protest from opponents, parents of the children slain at Dunblane elementary school in Scotland last spring and even some of its own supporters for not going far enough. All demand a total ban on handguns.
Yesterday's proposal coincided with publication of an inquiry by Lord W. Douglas Cullen, a Scottish jurist, into the March 13 Dunblane incident.
Cullen found that, in an action that could not have been predicted, loner Thomas Hamilton walked into the school with four licensed pistols and 743 licensed rounds of ammunition that morning and a crazed determination to kill children. Firing methodically in the school gymnasium, Hamilton shot 105 rounds from a Browning 9 mm pistol in three to four minutes, the Cullen report said.
In Great Britain, population 58 million, most police are unarmed and guns are an aberration. There are fewer gun homicides in Britain every year - 75 in 1994 - than in many mid-sized American cities; 4.7 percent of British households now own guns, compared with 48 percent in America, where the chances of getting shot are 50 times greater.
Uncounted thousands of illegal handguns are in the hands of British criminals, experts estimate. But nationwide, there are only about 40 firearms offenses of all sorts each day.
Cullen proposed 23 recommendations to drastically tighten rules governing the licensing and use of privately owned handguns. Unlike the United States, the British consider gun ownership a privilege, not a right; self-defense is not considered justification for a license. Deer hunting rifles and more than 1 million legally held shotguns are unaffected by the proposals.
In his 163-page report, Cullen also recommended improved security for schools, children and their teachers and closer monitoring of those working with the young. Hamilton ran a number of sports clubs for young boys.
Addressing a packed House of Commons, Michael Howard - who as home secretary is Britain's police minister - said the government accepts all of Cullen's proposals and would extend them by banning all but the smallest caliber target pistols, including all those of the rapid-fire type used by Hamilton. "At least 160,000 hand guns, 80 percent of all legally held, will be destroyed. Compensation will be paid,'' Howard said.
Target shooting with .22 single-fire pistols has been an Olympic sport since 1896, he noted.
The new controls, for which the government expects parliamentary approval by Christmas, will strengthen licensing and monitoring requirements, forbid gun sales by mail, ban expanding "dumdum'' bullets and require that legal .22 pistols be stored only at certified gun clubs. Howard said all clubs would be required to meet stringent standards against theft of stored weapons. Those among Britain's 2,118 clubs that fail to meet standards must close, he said.
Possession of an illegal handgun, or of a legal .22 outside an approved club, would be punishable by up to 10 years in jail, he said.