20 hurt as suicide bomber hits Palm Sunday Mass in Indonesia
MAKASSAR, Indonesia — Two attackers believed to be members of a militant network that pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group blew themselves up outside a packed Roman Catholic cathedral during a Palm Sunday Mass on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island, wounding at least 20 people, police said.
The Rev. Wilhelmus Tulak, a priest at the Sacred Heart of Jesus Cathedral in Makassar, said he had just finished celebrating Palm Sunday Mass when a loud bang shocked his congregation. He said the blast went off at about 10:30 a.m. as a first batch of churchgoers was walking out of the church and another group was coming in.
He said security guards at the church were suspicious of two men on a motorcycle who wanted to enter the building and when they went to confront them, one of the men detonated his explosives.
YANGON, Myanmar — Myanmar security forces opened fire Sunday on a crowd attending the funeral of student who was killed on the bloodiest day yet of a crackdown on protests against last month’s coup, local media reported.
The escalating violence — which took the lives of at least 114 people Saturday, including several children under 16 — has prompted a U.N. human rights expert to accuse the junta of committing “mass murder” and to criticize the international community for not doing enough to stop it.
But it has not so far stopped either the demonstrations against the Feb. 1 takeover — or the violent response of the military and police to them. Local outlet Myanmar Now reported that the junta’s troops shot at mourners at the funeral in the city of Bago for Thae Maung Maung, a 20-yearold killed on Saturday.
Torrential rains across Tennessee flooded homes and at least one church and left roads impassable, prompting dozens of people to be rescued in the Nashville area.
Authorities said four bodies were found Sunday in the flood’s aftermath. Nashville received more than 7 inches of rain, the second-highest two-day rainfall total ever recorded, Mayor John Cooper said at a news conference Sunday.
SUEZ, Egypt — Two additional tugboats sped Sunday to Egypt’s Suez Canal to aid efforts to free a skyscraper-sized container ship wedged for days across the crucial waterway, even as major shippers increasingly divert their boats out of fear the vessel may take even longer to free.
The tugboats will nudge the quarter-mile-long Ever Given as dredgers continue to vacuum up sand from underneath the vessel and mud caked to its port side, said Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, which manages the Ever Given.
Excavators dug Sunday on the eastern wall of the Suez Canal, hoping to free the bulbous bow of the Ever Given that plowed into the embankment, satellite photos showed.
Workers planned to make two attempts Sunday to free the vessel coinciding with high tides helped by a full moon Sunday night, a top pilot with the canal authority said.
ATLANTA — Members of Congress laid flowers Sunday at the three massage businesses in Georgia where a gunman killed eight people, six of them women of Asian descent, and demanded that prosecutors charge the suspect with a hate
crime. The congressional delegation included members of the Asian Pacific American Caucus, which said Asian Americans have faced increased hostility since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.
The lawmakers said they wanted to experience the shooter’s roughly 30-mile trip from Cherokee County, where police say he killed four people at Youngs Asian Massage, to Atlanta, where he is accused of shooting and killing four more people at two businesses across the street from each other.
CAMARILLO — The average U.S. price of regular-grade gasoline jumped a nickel per gallon over the past two weeks to $2.94.
Industry analyst Trilby Lundberg of the Lundberg Survey said Sunday that the price at the pump might be near its peak as gasoline supply evens out across the country. The price of gas has spiked 77 cents per gallon since Nov. 20 and is at the highest point since May 2019.
The highest average price in the nation right now is $3.94 a gallon in the San Francisco Bay Area. The lowest average is $2.54 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
JOHANNESBURG — Rebels fought the Mozambican army Sunday for the fifth straight day for control of the strategic northern town of Palma, as reports came in that dozens of civilians have been killed and bodies were littering the streets. The fate of scores of foreign energy workers was also unknown.
Some of the dead had been beheaded, according to Human Rights Watch. An attempt by expatriate workers to flee to safety came under heavy fire, causing many deaths, according to local reports. The battle for Palma highlights the military and humanitarian crisis in this Southern African nation on the Indian Ocean. The three-year insurgency of the rebels, who are primarily disaffected young Muslim men, in the northern Cabo Delgado province has taken more than 2,600 lives and displaced an estimated 670,000 people, according to the U.N.
PARIS — Critical care doctors in Paris say surging coronavirus infections could soon overwhelm their ability to care for the sick in the French capital’s hospitals, possibly forcing them to choose which patients they have the resources to save.
The sobering warnings were delivered Sunday in newspaper opinions signed by dozens of Paris-region doctors. They came as French President Emmanuel Macron has been vigorously defending his decision not to completely lockdown France again as he did last year. Since January, Macron’s government has instead imposed a nationwide overnight curfew and followed that with a grab-bag of other restrictions.
LOS ANGELES — Eddie Murphy was inducted into the NAACP Image Awards Hall of Fame at the organization’s show that highlighted works by entertainers and athletes of color.
After Murphy accepted his induction award Saturday night, the actor-comedian said he was “very moved” by the honor. He was presented the award by his longtime friend and “Coming 2 America” co-star Arsenio Hall.