SEATTLE - The state of Washington says 63 suicide prescriptions were dispensed during the first nine months of the state's "death with dignity" act to people between the ages of 48 and 95.

The Health Department said Thursday that of the 63 who received lethal doses, 47 are known to have died.

Thirty-six of them died after taking the medications and seven most likely died from their ailment. The agency says it doesn't know the details of the other four because the death certificate or report hasn't been filed.

Under the Washington law, any patient requesting fatal medication must be at least 18 years old, be declared mentally competent, a resident of the state and have a terminal condition with six months or less to live.

Oregon and Montana also allow assisted suicides.

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A gunman coolly drew a weapon from his pocket and opened fire at the subway entrance to the Pentagon complex Thursday evening, wounding two police officers before being shot and critically wounded, officials said.

The two officers suffered grazing wounds and were being treated in a hospital, said Richard Keevill, chief of Pentagon police. Authorities had no motive for the shooting.

The suspect, believed to be a U.S. citizen, walked up to a security checkpoint at the Pentagon in an apparent attempt to get inside the massively fortified Defense Department headquarters, at about 6:40 p.m. local time. "He just reached in his pocket, pulled out a gun and started shooting" at point-blank range, Keevill said. "He walked up very cool. He had no real emotion on his face." The Pentagon officers returned fire with semiautomatic weapons.

Early Friday morning, the medical examiner's office said suspect had died.

The assault at the very threshold of the Pentagon — the U.S. capital's ground zero on Sept. 11, 2001 — came four months after a deadly attack on the Army's Fort Hood, Texas, post allegedly by a U.S. Army psychiatrist with radical Islamic leanings. In the immediate aftermath Thursday, investigators did not think terrorism was involved but were not ruling that out and did not discuss possible motives.

President Barack Obama was "closely following the case" and getting updates from the FBI through his homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan," White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said.

Second man questioned
Law enforcement officials identified the suspect as John Patrick Bedell, 36. They also said they were speaking with a second man, who might have accompanied the shooter, and were running his name through databases.

A man who identified himself as Bedell's father called KNX Newsradio in Los Angeles and said that his son had been slipping. He said Bedell was a grad student at San Jose State University.

The subway station is immediately adjacent to the Pentagon building, a five-sided northern Virginia colossus across the Potomac River from Washington. Since a redesign following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the Pentagon, riders can no longer disembark directly into the building. Riders take a long escalator ride to the surface from the underground station, then pass through a security check outside the doors of the building, where further security awaits.

After the attack, all Pentagon entrances were secured, then all were reopened except one from the subway, said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman. He said the subway entrance was likely to remain closed overnight at least.

Keevill said the gunman gave no clue to the officers at the checkpoint about what he was going to do.

"There was no distress," he said. "When he reached into his pocket, they assumed he was going to get a pass and he came up with a gun."

"He wasn't pretending to be anyone. He was wearing a coat and walked up and just started shooting."

Keevill added: "We have layers of security and it worked. He never got inside the building to hurt anyone."

A Pentagon official working late in the building said people inside first heard of the shooting on television. They were later told the building was locked down and to stay in place.

Then at around 7:30 p.m. local time, they heard an announcement on the public address system that they could leave through Corridor 3 — one widely used to get access to one of the parking lots.

"We really don't know anything, just that we can leave now through that corridor," one official said on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak about the incident.

CHICAGO - It's a situation too agonizing to contemplate — a child dying and in pain. Now a small but provocative study suggests that doctors may be giving fatal morphine doses to a few children dying of cancer, to end their suffering at their parents' request.

A handful of parents told researchers that they had asked doctors to hasten their children's deaths — and that doctors complied, using high doses of the powerful painkiller.

The lead author of the study and several other physicians said they doubt doctors are engaged in active mercy killing. Instead, they speculate the parents interviewed for the study mistakenly believed that doctors had followed their wishes.

A more likely scenario is that doctors increased morphine doses to ease pain, and that the children's subsequent deaths were only coincidental, said lead author Dr. Joanne Wolfe, a palliative pain specialist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Children's Hospital in Boston.

The American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics and most other mainstream doctor groups oppose mercy-killing but say withholding life-prolonging treatment for dying patients can be ethical....

...Dr. Walter Robinson, an ethicist and associate pediatrics professor at Vanderbilt University, said many doctors lack expertise in treating dying children's pain, and many also worry about using opiates including morphine to treat children's pain because there's an unreasonable fear of addiction.

"The lesson we should learn from the paper is the need for expert pain control. That ought to be available in every children's hospital and to every child with a life-limiting illness," Robinson said.

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BAGHDAD – Iraq on Friday reinstated 20,000 former army officers dismissed after the U.S.-led invasion, a landmark gesture at reconciliation ahead of the March 7 elections.

It's a move designed to allay some of the bitterness that still rankles Iraq — years after the Bush administration first made the controversial decision to dismantle Saddam Hussein's army.

The 20,000 returnees are the largest known group to rejoin the officer corps.

The timing of the announcement also raised suspicions that Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his allies were just currying favor ahead of the election for a new, 325-seat parliament.

News of the reinstatement was followed by a U.N. announcement that Iraq was gaining momentum with its bid to end U.N. sanctions imposed after Saddam's army invaded Kuwait in 1990. The U.N. Security Council pledged "to review, with a view toward lifting" the sanctions once Iraq's safeguards against acquiring weapons of mass destruction are shown to be sufficient.

The 2003 order by Iraq's then-American governor L. Paul Bremer to dissolve Saddam's 400,000-strong army, the largest in the Middle East on the eve of the 2003 invasion, is widely seen as a key factor that fed the alienation many Sunnis felt toward the new Iraq.

That rancor fueled a Sunni insurgency that broke out later that year and still claims lives in Iraq.

Sunnis dominated Saddam's regime, and many top military officers came from the community.

Jobless and angry, some from the old army took their expertise in explosives, urban warfare and military tactics to the insurgency, seeking an income for their families or revenge against the Americans and their Iraqi allies.

The disbanding of the army, along with the looting of the army's bases and depots across much of Iraq, is widely blamed for the torturously slow pace of forming, equipping and training the country's new army.

Defense Ministry Spokesman Mohammed al-Askari denied Friday's announcement was linked to the election, insisting funding for the 20,000 positions is only now available.

"This measure has nothing to do with elections, rather it is related to budget allocations," said al-Askari, who did not provide a breakdown of the ranks of the officers being reinstated.

Critics, however, said the sudden return of their jobs might influence the votes of the reinstated officers.

"No doubt, this move is related to the elections and it aims at gaining votes," said Maysoun al-Damlouji, a candidate from a secular bloc led by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a fierce critic of al-Maliki.

The skepticism underscored just how bitter feelings have become between Iraq's factions ahead of the election. Many had hoped the vote would be a chance to move past the Shiite-Sunni divisions that have tormented Iraq since Saddam's ouster nearly seven years ago, but instead, the sectarian mistrust has become more stark.

Al-Maliki angered Sunnis after a Shiite-led commission barred 440 candidates — most Sunnis — from running because of suspected ties to Saddam's former ruling Baath Party.

A Defense Ministry statement said the rehired personnel would be reinstated by Sunday, but a senior Iraqi military official said absorbing so many could take weeks or months to complete.

In recent years, thousands of officers from the disbanded army have trickled back to service in an ongoing process of reintegration. The official said a ministry committee has been screening officers for ties to Saddam's regime or involvement in atrocities or war crimes.

He said reinstatements were strictly based on the army's present requirements and mainly benefited officers from the rank of colonel down. U.S. commanders have in the past pointed out that Iraq's new army, which is at least 300,000-strong, desperately needed mid-ranking and experienced noncommissioned officers.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

The United States hopes a transparent and credible election will bolster national reconciliation efforts and pave the way for its combat forces to go home by the end of August and the rest by next year's end.

Regardless of the motive, reinstating the large group of officers would help reconciliation. Al-Maliki has raised Sunni resentment with his relentless denouncements of Baathists in Iraqi politics. But many were allowed to return to government service in 2008, and al-Maliki has also shown flexibility when it comes to the military.

Al-Maliki's Shiite-dominated government has already reinstated many Sunni officers as top commanders in the new army. It also waived "de-Baathification" rules and reinstated generals — Sunnis and Shiites — who once held senior positions in Saddam's ruling party.