Police Seeking Crash Notification Find 3 Dead

Officers tasked with the grim job of notifying a woman about the death of her husband stumbled onto a grisly crime scene Thursday when no one responded at the suburban Detroit home, which had been left unlocked.

Inside, the woman and the couple's two young children were found dead in separate bedrooms. Investigators were probing whether the man killed his family then committed suicide by driving the wrong way on an interstate highway in neighboring Indiana, instantly killing a stranger too as he slammed into the man's car.

The Joys and Hazards of Self-Publishing on the Web

Minh Uong/The New York Times

Not long ago, an aspiring book writer rejected by traditional publishing houses had only one alternative: vanity publishing. For $5,000 or $10,000, or sometimes much more, he could have his manuscript edited and published, provided that he agreed to buy many copies himself, often a few thousand or more. They typically ended up in the garage.
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There are two basic kinds of self-publishing companies, both Web-based:

U.N. monitors quit, saying Syrians choose "path of war"

Credit: Reuters

(Reuters) - Syria's government and rebels have "chosen the path of war", a U.N. peacekeeping chief said as the world body ended its doomed monitoring mission to Damascus and deadlock persists among world powers over how to contain the spreading conflict.

Two officers killed, two wounded in Louisiana shooting

(Reuters) - Two Louisiana sheriff's deputies were killed and two others wounded in a pair of related shootings west of New Orleans on Thursday, and police said they have five people in custody in connection with the incident.

A gunman shot and wounded a St. John Parish deputy while he was directing traffic at about 5 a.m. CDT in an off-site parking lot for the Valero Energy Corp.'s St. Charles refinery, St. John Parish Sheriff Mike Tregre said.

The gunman fled, and officers investigating the incident ended up at a trailer park in LaPlace, about 25 miles west of New Orleans. As they were interviewing two suspects, someone came out of a trailer with an assault weapon and shot dead the two officers, Tregre said.

"Two of my officers were ambushed, I want to say assassinated," he said during a press conference on Thursday afternoon.

Police have not said how the fourth officer involved was wounded.

The slain deputies were identified as Brandon Nielsen, 34, and Jeremy Triche, 27. The wounded deputies were identified as Scott Boyington and Jason Triche. The Triches are related, but Tregre could not say how.

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