Hostage gunman buried

More than 1,000 people attended the funeral yesterday of Eric Schmitt, who was shot dead by police after taking a classroom of children hostage last week in the Paris suburb of Neuilly, AP reports from Paris. The funeral was held in the village of Cers, in southern France, where Schmitt, 42, had lived with his parents for the past year, after losing his job as a computer technician.