STARKVILLE, Miss. — Fire gutted an apartment in a rundown Starkville complex Monday, killing three women and six children, most of them family members taken in because they had nowhere else to go, officials and neighbors said.
Investigators did not know what caused the blaze, though they did not suspect it was set. Several neighbors said the apartment complex had electrical problems, though complex owner Mildred Rollins said she was not aware of any such problems.
Maryland: Homeless man steals, crashes small plane
A homeless man trying to leave town in a stolen plane crashed the single-engine aircraft on a municipal airport runway without ever leaving the ground, police said. Calvin C. Cox, 51, remained in custody after he tried to fly away in the Piper Super Cub from Frederick early Monday. Police said Cox had lived in a tent in the nearby woods and somehow become familiar enough with the airport and airplanes that he was able to get inside a hangar and start the aircraft.
North Korea: American confirmed as detained
North Korea confirmed today that it detained an American man who illegally entered the country last week, following reports that a 28-year-old missionary from Arizona went to the communist nation on a mission to improve its human rights record. It didn’t identify the American man. However, the report comes as South Korean activists say American missionary Robert Park, 28, slipped across the frozen Tumen River into North Korea from China last week with letters calling for a change in North Korea’s leadership and an end to political prison camps.
China: British man executed
Britain said today that China executed a Briton convicted of drug-smuggling after rejecting a string of appeals from the British government and his relatives, who say the man was mentally unstable and unwittingly lured into the crime from a life on the street in Poland, by men playing on his dreams to record a pop song for world peace. Akmal Shaikh, 53, was the first European citizen executed in China in half a century.
Argentina: Gay marriage called first for Latin America
Two Argentine men were joined Monday in Latin America’s first legal same-sex marriage, traveling to Ushuaia to find a welcoming spot to wed. Gay rights activists Jose Maria Di Bello and Alex Freyre previously tried to marry in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires but were thwarted by city officials citing conflicting judicial rulings. Argentina’s Constitution is silent on whether marriage must be between a man and a woman, effectively leaving the matter to state and city officials. Earlier this month, lawmakers in Mexico City made it the city the first in Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage. Mayor Marcelo Ebrard is widely expected to sign the measure into law.
Pakistan: 33 Shiites killed in bombing
A suicide bomber on Monday struck a procession marking a key Shiite Muslim holy day in Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city, killing 33 people in an attack blamed on extremists. Outraged Shiites responded to one of the worst sectarian attacks in the country this year by setting fire to buildings and vehicles at the blast site and pelting security forces with stones, a sign of frustration by the minority sect, which has suffered frequent attacks by Sunni extremist groups who regard them as heretical.
Brazil: More needles pulled from boy
Doctors on Monday removed four more sewing needles from the neck of a 2-year-old boy who was stuck with dozens by his stepfather in an alleged plot to spite his wife. One of the four needles was dangerously close to his spine. Last week doctors removed 14 needles from the boy’s intestines, liver and bladder, and in an earlier surgery they extracted four needles from near the toddler’s heart and lungs. Police have accused the stepfather, 30-year-old Roberto Carlos Magalhaes, of attempted murder. Police also formally accused Magalhaes’ lover, 47-year-old Angelina Ribeiro dos Santos.
From Herald news services
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