NEWS OF THE DAY
From Around the World
1 Mall fire: A shopping mall fire in a Siberian city killed 48 people, and 16 are considered missing, the Russian government said Monday. The fire at the four-story Winter Cherry mall in Kemerovo was extinguished early Monday after burning for hours. State news agency Tass reported that many of the dead and missing were children. An additional 43 people were injured in the blaze, the report said. The mall is about 1,900 miles east of Moscow. Tass said the fire started on the top floor but the cause wasn’t immediately known, although Vladimir Chernov, a deputy governor of the Kemerovo region, said a child apparently started the fire with a lighter. A criminal investigation into the cause was begun.
2 Bus crash: A police official in Tanzania says a truck and a minibus collided, killing at least 26 people and injuring nine others. The country’s traffic police commander, Fortunatus Musilimu, says the dead in Saturday night’s accident in the southern town of Mkuranga included 12 women and seven children. There was no immediate word on the cause of the crash. Road accidents are common in the East African nation, often the result of badly maintained roads and poor enforcement of traffic laws. Government statistics show that such accidents kill around 9,000 people annually.
_3 Funeral Mass: A French bishop paid tribute Sunday to a police officer who lost his life after swapping himself with a supermarket employee held hostage by an Islamist extremist, saying his heroic sacrifice helped save the nation. Survivors and families of the four victims of Friday’s rampage of attacks packed the Saint-Etienne-deTrèbes church for the special Mass honoring Lt. Col. Arnaud Beltrame. Members of the region’s Muslim community were among those mourning at the special Palm Sunday service in the southern town of Trèbes, near the medieval city of Carcassonne. The manager of the supermarket sat in the front row, alongside her husband, the town mayor. The bishop of Carcassonne and Narbonne, Alain Planet, hailed Beltrame’s “extraordinary act, extraordinary devotion.”
4 Ferry rescue: South Korea’s coast guard said it rescued all 163 people from a ferry that hit a large rock in waters off the country’s southwestern coast Sunday. At least six people suffered minor injuries. A coast guard official said the ferry’s 158 passengers and five crew members were being taken to shore on four coast guard vessels and a number of civilian fishing boats. The rescue operation went smoothly because the ferry wasn’t flooded and didn’t lose its balance despite the crash off islands in Sinan County, he said. The official said it appeared the ferry hit the rock while trying to avoid a fishing boat while traveling in foggy waters. Rescue workers treated six people for minor injuries caused from the shock of the crash, which left the ferry’s front pushed atop the rock, he said. 5 Guilty verdict: A British newspaper editor in Dubai was found guilty Sunday of bludgeoning his wife to death with a hammer and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Francis Matthew, the former editor of the English-language Gulf News, had faced the possibility of the death penalty in the July 2017 killing of Jane Matthew, his wife of over 30 years. Neither Matthew nor his lawyer were present in the Dubai Court of First Instance for the verdict read by Judge Fahad al-Shamsi, which is common in courts in the United Arab Emirates. Matthew’s lawyer, Ali al-Shamsi, said he would appeal the sentence.