German teen shooter's threat in chatroom

The 17-year-old German boy who killed 15 people and then himself this week warned about his plans "in an Internet chat room six hours before" he went on a shooting spree in his former high school, the Associated Press reported. The message he posted was seen by "a teen in the neighboring state of Bavaria. The Bavarian teen told his father and then police about the chat when he realized the threat had been real." But police didn't have enough time to locate the boy, apparently. The school, however, had fortunately done some training in case an incident like this should happen. "Authorities said they found some 60 shell casings in the school and that the number of victims could have been much higher had educators and police not carried out a plan learned in an earlier training program preparing them to respond to such a shooting." Pls see the article for details about the boy and the school's warning system. Here's coverage at the New York Times.

Tragic school shooting in Finland

A high school student in Finland shot and killed himself, six other students, and the school principal yesterday "after announcing plans for the rampage on YouTube," the Financial Times reports. The FT cites a Reuters reports saying the boy's video was "called 'Jokela High School Massacre' and posted by a user called Sturmgeist89, meaning Storm Spirit in German. The video's musical backing was a song called Stray Bullet." The Washington Post reports reports that "the song was a favorite of Eric Harris, one of the Columbine High School shooters, who had featured the band's lyrics on his Web site." According to the FT, "there have been occurrences around the world, including the death of 16 children in 1996 in Dunblane, UK, the 1999 killing of 12 students at the Columbine High School in Colorado, the 2002 deaths of 18 in Erfurt, Germany and this year's killing of 32 at Virginia Tech University in the US." The Times of London looked at what's unique to Finland about this tragedy.

Net communications at Va. Tech

Administrators used email and students used Facebook as, in many cases, their only means of sending and receiving information fast in the aftermath of the worst mass shooting in modern US history, ABC News reports. The death toll was 33 by late Monday night, the Associated Press reported. With phone and other communication systems jammed, "many people turned to social networking sites to try to connect with friends, family and loved ones." ABC cites a MySpace user sending out a bulletin asking if they knew about six people she listed (presumably at Virginia Tech) and a Facebook user who "suggested that all others [on Facebook at Virginia Tech] update their profiles to say 'I'm OK'.... For the most part, the comments posted online were from people sharing their prayers and sympathies." Along those lines, see also Canada.com and the Los Angeles Times. Reuters and CBS analyst (and BlogSafety.com co-director) Larry Magid zoomed in on Facebook's role in helping Virginia Tech students (here's Larry's audio interview with Chris Kelly, Facebook's chief security officer).