Rio de Janeiro hospital fire kills at least 11
A fire raced through a hospital in Rio de Janeiro late Thursday night, forcing staff to wheel patients into the streets on stretchers or in wheelchairs and killing at least 11 people, many of them elderly.
Four firefighters were hospitalized after battling the overnight blaze at Badim Hospital, and about 90 patients were transferred to other hospitals, the fire department said.
Most victims died of asphyxiation as smoke filled the wards, and some died when life-support equipment stopped working in the fire, said Gabriela Graca, director of the state Institute of Forensic Medicine.
Carlos Outerelo was visiting his sick mother when the fire started Thursday night. The 90-year-old woman, Berta Goncalves Berreiros Sousa, was among the dead.
“They said to stay closed off in the rooms so the smoke couldn’t get in, and that it was under control. But in reality, it wasn’t under control,” Mr. Outerelo said outside the morgue where his mother’s body was taken.
As the fire burned, medical workers in surgical masks rolled equipment in the road as smoke billowed from the building. Television images showed staff tending to patients sitting in wheelchairs with IV poles beside them in the street, some on sheets and mattresses.
Mugabe burial delayed
The burial of Zimbabwe’s founding president, President Robert Mugabe, will be delayed for a month until a special site can be built at the national Heroes’ Acre monument, a family spokesman said Friday — the latest turn in a dramatic tussle between his family and the country’s current leader, a once-trusted deputy who helped oust Mugabe from power.
The decision to build a new resting place for the exleader, who died at age 95 in Singapore last week, came after consultations with influential traditional chiefs, Mugabe’s nephew, Leo Mugabe, told reporters. The announcement followed days of controversy over where he should be laid to rest, with Mugabe’s widow, Grace, insisting on a private burial rather than the elaborate state funeral planned by the government.
The wrangle over the burial highlighted the lasting acrimony between President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who helped oust Mugabe in 2017, and Mugabe’s widow, Grace, and other family members. Mr. Mnangagwa met with them to try to resolve the burial dispute and on Thursday said his government would respect the family’s wishes, adding they have “the full support of the government.”
Meanwhile, Mugabe’s body was on view at Rufaro Stadium for a second day Friday. A stampede on Thursday injured several people trying to view it.
Assange stays locked up
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, must remain in prison until an extradition hearing next year, a judge in London ruled Friday, citing a “history of absconding,” according to British news agencies.
Assange had been scheduled to be released next week, after serving a 50week sentence for jumping bail in 2012 and taking refuge in Ecuador’s London embassy rather than accepting extradition to Sweden to face a rape accusation.
But he is wanted in the U.S., where he faces charges of conspiracy to hack government computers, and of obtaining and publishing secret documents in 2010.
Assange has also been under attack for Wikileaks’ release during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign of thousands of Democratic Party emails stolen by Russian hackers, in what investigators say was an effort to damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign.