Bears’ burns better
Scandal harms govt
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says he doesn’t know if Barnaby Joyce’s position is safe but agrees the deputy prime minister’s affair with his ex-staffer and now pregnant partner has harmed the government. While Joyce claims to have the majority support of his party to continue as National’s leader, Turnbull said he didn’t know if that was the case. Turnbull was forced to admit the scandal had harmed the government after the latest Newspoll showed the coalition of his Liberal Party and National lose the small gain it made on Labor earlier in the month. ‘‘It’s distracting and it’s unhelpful,’’ he said. Donald Trump, contending that his response to the attack has been needlessly divisive. ‘‘You’re the president. You’re supposed to bring this nation together, not divide us,’’ said David Hogg, a 17-year-old student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in South Florida. ‘‘How dare you,’’ he added. Hogg was responding to Trump’s tweet on Sunday that Democrats hadn’t passed any gun control measures during the brief time they controlled Congress with a super-majority in the Senate.
Churchgoers shot
A gunman opened fire with a hunting rifle on churchgoers leaving a service in Russia’s Dagestan region, killing five people and wounding four others, then was shot and killed by police, authorities say. The shootings took place Sunday evening in Kizlyar, a town of about 50,000 people on the border with Chechnya. Four people died at the scene and a fifth died at a hospital, regional Interior Ministry spokesman Ruslan Gadzhiibragimov said. The gunman was a local resident, and his wife has been detained for questioning, he said. The motive for the attack was not immediately known.
Two female bears badly burned in a Southern California wildfire are settling back into their home in the wild. Recent photos and GPS tracking data show the bears are moving around and appear to be in good health in Los Padres National Forest. They suffered third-degree burns in December in the largest wildfire in state history. The bears were released into the forest in January after getting care for their injuries.