For years, ultra-Orthodox Jewish families priced out of increasingly expensive Brooklyn neighborhoods have been turning to the suburbs, where they have taken advantage of open space and cheaper housing to establish modern-day versions of the European shtetls where their ancestors lived for centuries before the Holocaust. 
The expansion of Hasidic communities in New York’s Hudson Valley, the Catskills and northern New Jersey has led to predictable sparring over new housing development and local political control. It has also led to flare-ups of rhetoric that some say is cloaked anti-Semitism. 
Now, a pair of violent attacks on such communities, just weeks apart, worry many that intolerance is boiling over. 
On December 10, a man and woman killed a police officer and then stormed into a kosher grocery in Jersey City, fatally shooting three people inside before dying in an hourslong gunfight with police. The slayings happened in a neighborhood where Hasidic families had recently been relocating. 
And on Saturday, a man rushed into a rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York, during a Hanukkah celebration, hacking at people with a machete. Five people were wounded. Federal prosecutors said the man charged in the attack, Grafton Thomas, had written journals containing anti-Semitic comments and a swastika and had researched Adolf Hitler’s hatred of Jews online. 
Inflammatory rhetoric
At a meeting Monday hosted by U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in Rockland County, where Monsey is, some Jewish leaders said inflammatory rhetoric on social media and from local elected officials had contributed to an atmosphere ripe for anti-Semitic violence. 
Days after the killings in Jersey City, a local school board member there, Joan Terrell-Paige, assailed Jews as “brutes” on Facebook, saying she believed the killers were trying to send a message with the slaughter. “Are we brave enough to explore the answer to their message?“ she asked. 
A widely condemned political ad last summer created by a local Republican group claimed that an Orthodox Jewish county legislator was “plotting a takeover” that threatens “our way of life.” 
Whether any of that heated rhetoric was a factor in the recent violence is unclear, but the legislator targeted in the video ad said that kind of hostile language has repercussions. 
“In the last few years in Rockland County I have seen a rise in hate rhetoric, and I was able to foresee it would end in violence,” said county legislator Aron Wieder. “You have seen on social media where the Orthodox community has been called a cancer, leeches, people who don’t pay taxes. It has become normal and accepted to say derogatory and hateful things about Jewish people.” 
Swastikas have been scrawled around the county, and frightened parents are asking law enforcement for more visible security at synagogues and schools, Wieder said. 

FILE – Orthodox Jewish children cross a street in Monsey, N.Y. With the rapid growth of Orthodox communities outside New York City has come civic sparring that some fear fueled recent violence in the area.Bigoted messages have gone unchecked for years, said Rabbi Yisroel Kahan, administrative director of the Oizrim Jewish Council. He pointed to hateful comments on social media and false online rumors that have spilled over into everyday life. 
“It has been tolerated for far too long,“ he said. 
Hasidic families began migrating from New York City to suburban communities in the 1970s, hoping to create the sort of cohesive community some recalled from Europe. 
Rockland County, 15 miles (24 kilometers) northwest of Manhattan, now has the largest Jewish population per capita of any U.S. county, with 31%, or 90,000 residents, being Jewish. The ultra-Orthodox population is highly visible in small towns like Monsey, where bearded Hasidic men in black overcoats and fedoras converse in Yiddish along the sidewalks and Orthodox women wear modest black skirts and head scarves as they go about their daily errands. 
Resentment of newcomers
In small towns everywhere, resentment of newcomers and “outsiders” isn’t uncommon. Proposals for multifamily housing complexes in sleepy communities of single-family homes often trigger fervent opposition complete with lawn signs and rowdy town board meeting crowds. 
Yet the tone of the debates over growth in some areas where Hasidic families have been moving has been more intense. 
In East Ramapo, there were legal fights after Hasidic voters, who generally do not send their children to public schools, elected a majority of members of the local school board. 
Some towns have enacted zoning changes forbidding new houses of worship. In several communities in New Jersey, including Toms River and Jersey City, officials pushed back against an influx of Jewish families by enacting so-called “no knock” ordinances, barring real estate agents representing the Hasidic community from going door to door, offering to buy homes. 
In the small town of Chester, 60 miles north of New York City in Orange County, New York Attorney General Letitia James recently announced action to fight housing rules that she said were being used to improperly prevent an influx of Hasidic Jews. Local officials have denied anti-Semitism was behind opposition to plans to build over 400 homes in the town of 12,000 residents. 
Special needs
Rockland County Executive Ed Day said the arguments over housing density involve legitimate policy issues and are the biggest challenge when it comes to accommodating the growing Orthodox Jewish community. 
The Orthodox community has special needs, he said, like housing for large families and residences within walking distance to a synagogue. That creates “demands that are counter to many of the communities they’re residing in,“ Day said. 
Questionable zoning decisions, he said, lead to resentment. 
“Now the words start. Now the worst words continue. And this is where you have the problem,” Day said. 
Authorities haven’t offered an explanation yet for what they think motivated the Jersey City attackers and Thomas to select their targets. 
Thomas’ lawyer and family have said he has struggled for years with mental illness and hadn’t previously shown any animosity to Jews. He had grown up in New York City but was living with his mother in a small town about a 30-minute drive from Monsey. 
Rabbi David Niederman, executive director of the Brooklyn-based United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg, said he is offended by references to tensions over housing and population growth in discussions about the Monsey and the Jersey City attacks. 
“If you have tensions, what you do is you sit down at a table; that’s how you deal with tensions,” Niederman said. “You don’t go out and murder people. You don’t go out with a butcher knife and almost kill a whole congregation.” 
Those violent attacks, he said, were motivated by “pure hatred.“ 

…

Australia’s unprecedented wildfires are supercharged thanks to climate change, the type of trees catching fire and weather, experts say.
And these fires are so extreme that they are triggering their own thunderstorms.
Here are a few questions and answers about the science behind the Australian wildfires that so far have burned about 5 million hectares (12.35 million acres), killing at least 17 people and destroying more than 1,400 homes.
“They are basically just in a horrific convergence of events,” said Stanford University environmental studies director Chris Field, who chaired an international scientific report on climate change and extreme events. He said this is one of the worst, if not the worst, climate change extreme events he’s seen.
“There is something just intrinsically terrifying about these big wildfires. They go on for so long, the sense of hopelessness that they instill,” Field said. “The wildfires are kind of the iconic representation of climate change impacts.”
Q: Is climate change really a factor?
A: Scientists, both those who study fire and those who study climate, say there’s no doubt man-made global warming has been a big part, but not the only part, of the fires.
Last year in Australia was the hottest and driest on record, with the average annual temperature 2.7 degrees (1.5 degrees Celsius) above the 1960 to 1990, average, according to Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology. Temperatures in Australia last month hit 121.8 degrees (49.9 degrees Celsius).
“What would have been a bad fire season was made worse by the background drying/warming trend,” Andrew Watkins, head of long-range forecasts at Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology, said in an email.
Mike Flannigan, a fire scientist at the University of Alberta in Canada, said Australia’s fires are “an example of climate change.”
A 2019 Australian government brief report on wildfires and climate change said, “Human-caused climate change has resulted in more dangerous weather conditions for bushfires in recent decades for many regions of Australia.”
Q: How does climate change make these fires worse?
A: The drier the fuel — trees and plants — the easier it is for fires to start and the hotter and nastier they get, Flannigan said.
“It means more fuel is available to burn, which means higher intensity fires, which makes it more difficult — or impossible — to put out,” Flannigan said.
The heat makes the fuel drier, so they combine for something called fire weather. And that determines “fuel moisture,” which is crucial for fire spread. The lower the moisture, the more likely Australian fires start and spread from lightning and human-caused ignition, a 2016 study found.
There’s been a 10% long-term drying trend in Australia’s southeast and 15% long-term drying trend in the country’s southwest, Watkins said. When added to a degree of warming and a generally southward shift of weather systems, that means a generally drier landscape.
Australia’s drought since late 2017 “has been at least the equal of our worst drought in 1902,” Australia’s Watkins said. “It has probably been driven by ocean temperature patterns in the Indian Ocean and the long term drying trend.”
Q: Has Australia’s fire season changed?
A: Yes. It’s about two to four months longer, starting earlier especially in the south and east, Watkins said.
“The fires over the last three months are unprecedented in their timing and severity, started earlier in spring and covered a wider area across many parts of Australia,” said David Karoly, leader of climate change hub at Australia’s National Environmental science Program. “The normal peak fire season is later in summer and we are yet to have that.”
Q: Is weather, not just long-term climate, a factor?
A: Yes. In September, Antarctica’s sudden stratospheric warming — sort of the southern equivalent of the polar vortex — changed weather conditions so that Australia’s normal weather systems are farther north than usual, Watkins said.
That means since mid-October there were persistent strong westerly winds bringing hot dry air from the interior to the coast, making the fire weather even riskier for the coasts.
“With such a dry environment, many fires were started by dry lightning events (storms that brought lightning but limited rainfall),” Watkins said.
Q: Are people starting these fires? Is it arson?
A: It’s too early to tell the precise cause of ignition because the fires are so recent and officials are spending time fighting them, Flannigan said.
While people are a big factor in causing fires in Australia, it’s usually accidental, from cars and trucks and power lines, Flannigan said. Usually discarded cigarettes don’t trigger big fires, but when conditions are so dry, they can, he said.
Q: Are these fires triggering thunderstorms?
A: Yes. It’s an explosive storm called pyrocumulonimbus and it can inject particles as high as 10 miles into the air.
During a fire, heat and moisture from the plants are released, even when the fuel is relatively dry. Warm air is less dense than cold air so it rises, releasing the moisture and forming a cloud that lifts and ends up a thunderstorm started by fire. It happens from time to time in Australia and other parts of the world, including Canada, Flannigan said.
“These can be deadly, dangerous, erratic and unpredictable,” he said.
Q: Are the Australian trees prone to burning?
A: Eucalyptus trees are especially flammable, “like gasoline on a tree,” Flannigan said. Chemicals in them make them catch fire easier, spread to the tops of trees and get more intense. Eucalyptus trees were a big factor in 2017 fires in Portugal that killed 66 people, he said.
Q: How can you fight these huge Australia fires?
A: You don’t. They’re just going to burn in many places until they hit the beach, Flannigan said.
 “This level of intensity, direct attack is useless,” Flannigan said. “You just have to get out of the way. … It really is spitting on a campfire. It’s not doing any good.”
Q: What’s the long-term fire future look like for Australia?
 
A: With climate change, not every year will be catastrophic like this year, but “we’re going to see more bad fire years per decade in the future than we have in the past. And the bad fire years can be exceedingly bad,” Flannigan said.
 

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Donald Trump’s re-election team on Thursday said he was sitting atop a large campaign war chest, underlining the scale of the challenge facing the U.S. president’s Democratic rivals at the start of an election year. 
 
With the departure of Julian Castro on Thursday, 14 candidates are still in the running to take on Trump and are competing for much-needed donations that keep a campaign’s ground game and advertising operations going. 
 
In the fourth quarter of 2019, even as Trump was being investigated and ultimately impeached by the House of Representatives, he raised $46 million. It was his best fundraising period in a year that brought in $143 million for his re-election efforts, the campaign announced. 
 
And while Democrats are now raising funds to compete against one another ahead of the general election in November, Trump has the luxury of stockpiling funds until his opponent is selected. 
‘Unstoppable’
 
Trump’s campaign now has $102.7 million in cash on hand. “The president’s war chest and grassroots army make his re-election campaign an unstoppable juggernaut,” campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement. 
The president faces an upcoming trial in the Senate, where members of his Republican Party hold a majority of seats. 
Trump himself argued that the impeachment drama, while embarrassing for his legacy, has led to a flood of donations. He retweeted a report that described his campaign raising $10 million in the two days following the House impeachment vote. 

FILE – Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont speaks during his Bernie’s Big New Year’s Bash, Dec. 31, 2019, in Des Moines, Iowa.Among Trump’s would-be challengers, Senator Bernie Sanders has so far raked in the most — $34.5 million in 2019’s final three months — of any Democratic contender. That pushed his total to date to $96 million. 
 
The Sanders team also said it topped the threshold of 5 million individual donations, a figure not reached by his 2016 campaign until March of that year. 
 
“Together, we’re proving you don’t need to beg the wealthy and the powerful for campaign contributions in order to win elections,” Sanders said. 
 
Democratic rival Pete Buttigieg also posted strong numbers, raising $24.7 million in the fourth quarter. That pushed his 2019 total to more than $76 million. 
 
Buttigieg — who until Wednesday served as mayor of South Bend, Indiana — has been a campaign surprise and leads in polling in Iowa, the state that votes first in the nomination race, on February 3. 

FILE – Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden takes a selfie during a campaign stop in Exeter, N.H., Dec. 30, 2019.Front-runner Joe Biden, the former vice president, raised $22.7 million in the last quarter of 2019, his best quarterly performance yet, his campaign said. Results for Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Amy Klobuchar were not yet available. 
One candidate showing unexpected resilience was Andrew Yang, an Asian American entrepreneur with no political experience who remains in contention against far more established party figures. 
 
Yang raised $16.5 million in the fourth quarter, capping a dramatic uptrend from early 2019 when he was a virtual unknown. 
 
But while Biden, Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg and Klobuchar have qualified for the next Democratic debate, on January 14, Yang has not. 
 
Neither have Senator Cory Booker, Representative Tulsi Gabbard or billionaire Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York who jumped into the race in November. 
 
Castro, 45, also failed to meet the qualifications. His exit means the Democratic field becomes whiter and older, although two women and one gay candidate, Buttigieg, will be in January’s debate. 
 
Other Democratic candidates saluted Castro. 
 
“Your voice and campaign were invaluable in sticking up for underrepresented communities and pushing the field forward,” said Booker, the only remaining African American candidate in the top 10. 

…

At least 48 people were killed and more than 200 wounded in tribal fighting in Sudan’s strife-torn Darfur, the Red Crescent said on Thursday.
The armed clashes broke out on Sunday night in El Geneina, capital of West Darfur state, and continued until Monday between Arab and African tribes during which several houses were torched, it said.
At least 48 people were killed and their bodies transferred to a morgue in the city and 241 wounded, including 19 in critical condition who were flown to Khartoum for treatment, it said in a statement.
“This morning the situation is calm,” it said, adding that several homes had been torched.
The Khartoum government imposed a curfew across West Darfur on Monday and has launched an investigation into the bloodshed, while a delegation of senior officials visited the area.
The government also deployed troops to El Geneina to restore order.
Residents of El Geneina who spoke to AFP by phone said security forces were patrolling main roads in the city, confirming that the fighting had subsided.
According to Sudanese media, the fighting erupted after a row between two people.
A woman reached by phone said she had fled the Krinding camp for displaced Masalit, a non-Arab ethnic group, near El Geneina after assailants torched tents there.
“Our tents were set on fire. We have no food and only the clothes on our back and there are bodies littering the ground,” she told AFP.
In January 2016, six people were killed in unrest in West Darfur following violence involving Masalit tribesmen and members of the Arab Beni Halba tribe.
Those clashes sparked rallies in Khartoum, with protesters marching to the prime minister’s office and the justice ministry carrying signs calling for an “end to massacres in the camps of the displaced” and on authorities to punish the culprits.
Darfur – made up of five states – spiraled into conflict in 2003.
The Darfur fighting broke out when ethnic minority rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated government of now ousted president Omar al-Bashir, which they accused of marginalizing the region.
The conflict left around 300,000 people dead and displaced 2.5 million others, the UN says.
Bashir, who is behind bars for corruption and awaiting trial on other charges, is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in Darfur.
Sudan said on December 22 it had opened a probe into crimes committed in Darfur.

…

An Iraqi activist was shot dead overnight in Baghdad, a police source told AFP on Thursday, as anti-government rallies carried on despite a separate day-long siege of the U.S. embassy.
The activist, Saadoun al-Luhaybi, was shot in the head in a southwestern neighborhood of the Iraqi capital, the police source said.
He had been taking part in youth-led demonstrations rocking Iraq since early October that have demanded the ouster of a governing class seen as corrupt, inept and beholden to Iran.
The protesters have occupied Baghdad’s iconic Tahrir Square, just across the river Tigris from the Green Zone, home to government offices, the United Nations headquarters and foreign embassies.
On Tuesday, an angry mob marched into the Green Zone and to the US embassy, outraged over American air strikes that killed fighters from the Hashed al-Shaabi military force.
They besieged the embassy for just over 24 hours, leaving on Wednesday afternoon after an order from the Hashed.
The anti-government demonstrators who have been taking to the streets for months insist their movement is entirely unrelated to the crowds that besieged and vandalized the American mission.
“We’ve got nothing to do with that,” one demonstrator in the southern protest hotspot city of Diwaniyah told AFP.
Protesters still occupied the streets in the city, where they have shut down most government offices and schools.
They briefly allowed local government offices to reopen to let employees receive their salaries at the end of the year, an AFP correspondent said.
Violence also hit the southern city of Nasiriyah overnight, with two activists surviving separate attempts on their lives.
Around a dozen activists have died in targeted killings across the country, among the nearly 460 lives lost in protest-related violence over the past three months.
Demonstrators have warned that these killings, along with kidnappings and different forms of harassment, are an attempt to scare them into halting their movement.
“What happened in front of the U.S. embassy was an attempt to draw people’s eyes away from the popular protests now in their fourth month,” said Ahmed Mohammad Ali, a student protester in Nasiriyah.
“We’re still here, protesting for change and hoping for victory,” he told AFP.
 

…

White evangelical Protestants stand noticeably apart from other religious people on how the government should act on two of the most politically divisive issues at play in the 2020 presidential election, according to a new poll of Americans from various faith backgrounds.
Asked about significant restrictions on abortion — making it illegal except in cases of rape, incest or to threats to a mother’s life — 37% of all Americans responded in support, according to the poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Those abortion limits drew 39% support from white mainline Protestants, 33% support from nonwhite Protestants and 45% support from Catholics, but 67% support from white evangelical Protestants.
A similar divide emerged over whether the government should bar discrimination against people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in workplaces, housing or schools. About 6 in 10 Catholics, white mainline Protestants and nonwhite Protestants supported those protections, compared with about a third of white evangelical Protestants.
The differences between white evangelicals and other religious Americans, as well as the non-religious, were less stark on other policy issues examined in the poll. But its findings nonetheless point to an evangelical Protestant constituency that’s more firmly aligned with President Donald Trump’s agenda than other Americans of faith. White evangelicals were also more likely than members of other faiths to say religion should have at least some influence on policymaking.
Rev. Franklin Graham, son of the late Rev. Billy Graham and one of Trump’s most stalwart evangelical supporters, pointed to Trump’s record on abortion as a key driver of the president’s support from his religious community.
“I don’t think evangelicals are united on every position the president takes or says, but they do recognize he is the most pro-life-friendly president in modern history,” Graham said in a recent interview. “He has appointed conservative judges that will affect my children and grandchildren’s lives, long after he’s gone.”
Indeed, white evangelical Protestants’ preference for a religious influence on abortion policy outdrew most other issues examined in the poll. About 8 in 10 white evangelicals said religion should have at least some influence on abortion policy. A similar share said that of poverty, compared with about 7 in 10 saying the same about education and roughly 6 in 10 saying that about income inequality, immigration and LGBT issues.
Trump has embraced a staunch anti-abortion agenda, and his administration has opposed legislation supported by Democrats seeking to challenge him in 2020 that would extend broad anti-discrimination protections for LGBT individuals.
“There is nobody, except a few wackos who are one-half of 1%, that would ever want to discriminate against some of these groups,” said Stephen Strang, founder of the Christian magazine Charisma and author of a forthcoming book backing Trump’s reelection.
“But what happens is, this legislation is criminalizing long-held beliefs that we believe are scriptural,” Strang added, referring to conservative evangelicals’ opposition to same-sex marriage.
About 8 in 10 white evangelical Protestants approve of the president’s job performance, according to the poll, which asked respondents to self-identify as born-again or evangelical.
Trump’s reelection campaign plans to showcase that high level of support in Miami on Friday, with the president set to unveil an “Evangelicals for Trump” coalition.
But not every Trump-backed policy found strong support in the poll from white evangelical Protestants. A majority of white evangelicals opposed an immigration policy that separates children from parents who are detained entering the country illegally, although nonwhite Protestants and white mainline Protestants opposed that policy by slightly larger margins.
“I disagree with the president on that one,” said Dorothy Louallen, 87, of Dunlap, Tenn., who described herself as a born-again Christian opposed to abortion and said “I really don’t think government and churches should be involved.”
The poll also showed a majority of white evangelical Protestants supporting higher taxes on the wealthy, albeit by smaller margins than the other major religious groups surveyed, as well as the non-religious. Trump signed a GOP tax bill in 2017 that cut taxes for the middle class but delivered a larger tax break for the wealthiest Americans.
Similarly, about half of white evangelicals showed support for increasing government aid to the poor, similar to that policy’s support from Catholics and white mainline Protestants. About 7 in 10 nonwhite Protestants supported more government assistance for the poor. More than 600,000 low-income Americans are set to lose access to food stamps under new work requirements proposed by the Trump administration.
In addition, about 6 in 10 white evangelicals supported regulating the levels of carbon dioxide that power plants can emit, a climate change-fighting measure that Trump has weakened and that majorities of other religious groups also support, as well as those without a religious affiliation.
Americans without any religious affiliation registered stronger opposition in the poll than people of specific faiths to abortion restrictions (72%) and stronger support than people of specific faiths for government action to shield people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender from discrimination (83%). About one-quarter of Americans currently align with no religious faith, a figure that’s risen notably over three decades, according to the General Social Survey.
However, some Americans of faith continue to defy easy characterization — a trend that promises to scramble the electorate’s moral calculus heading into a 2020 campaign where Democrats have shown strong interest in connecting with voters of faith, even evangelicals whom Trump is often assumed to have locked down.
Courtney Lester, 29, of Macon, Ga., said she was baptized in the Baptist faith but “can’t say I’m in one set religion.”
Once policymakers “mix religion with politics, that’s when things get very mixed up,” Lester added, noting that she is “not here to judge anyone” of a different sexual orientation and praising immigrants for making America “great the first time.”
Lester, who is undecided in the election, said faith should play the same role in politics that it does in medicine: Doctors, she said, prioritize health rather than asking “‘Who is your God?’ before (they) see if you have the flu.”
The AP-NORC poll of 1,053 adults was conducted Dec. 5-9 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.0 percentage points. Respondents were first selected randomly using address-based sampling methods and later were interviewed online or by phone.

…

The number of deaths in major air crashes around the globe fell by more than half in 2019, according to a report by an aviation consulting firm.
The To70 consultancy said Wednesday that 257 people died in eight fatal accidents in 2019. That compares to 534 deaths in 13 fatal accidents in 2018.
The 2019 death toll rose in late December after a Bek Air Fokker 100 crashed Friday on takeoff in Kazakhstan, killing 12 people. The worst crash of 2019 involved an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX plane that crashed March 10, killing 157 people.
The report said fatal accidents in 2018 and 2019 that led to the grounding of Boeing’s 737 MAX raised questions about how aviation authorities approve aviation designs derived from older ones, and about how much pilot training is needed on new systems.
The group said it expects the 737 MAX to eventually gain permission to fly again in 2020.
The report said the fatal accident rate for large planes in commercial air transport fell to 0.18 fatal accidents per million flights in 2019 from 0.30 accidents per million flights in 2018. That means there was one fatal accident for every 5.58 million flights.
The firm’s annual compilation of accident statistics stressed that aviation needs to keep its focus on the basics of having well-designed and well-constructed aircraft flown by well-trained crews.
Last year may have seen fewer deaths but did not equal the historic low of 2017, which saw only two fatal accidents, involving regional turboprops, that resulted in the loss of 13 lives.
This report is based on crashes involving larger aircraft used for most commercial passenger flights. It excludes accidents involving small planes, military flights, cargo flights and helicopters.

…

A factory caught fire and collapsed in the Indian capital Thursday, causing injuries to several people, including some fire officials.
A fire official said three people were rescued from the debris of the building in Peera Garhi area in western New Delhi. Thirty-five fire engines were at the site, and the rescue operation was continuing for some people feared trapped there. 
An eyewitness told New Delhi Television news channel he heard an explosion around 5 a.m. and the station reported the structure collapsed soon afterward.
The fire official spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to release the information. 
Poor safety standards are a frequent cause of fires in India. Last month, a fire believed to be caused by an electrical short circuit engulfed a building in New Delhi, killing at least 43 people.
 

…

Don Larsen, the journeyman pitcher who reached the heights of baseball glory when he threw a perfect game in 1956 with the New York Yankees for the only no-hitter in World Series history, died Wednesday night. He was 90.
Larsen’s agent, Andrew Levy, said the former pitcher died of esophageal cancer in hospice care in Hayden, Idaho. Levy said Larsen’s son, Scott, confirmed the death.
Larsen was the unlikeliest of characters to attain what so many Hall of Famers couldn’t pull off in the Fall Classic. He was 81-91 lifetime, never won more than 11 games in a season and finished an unsightly 3-21 with Baltimore in 1954, the year before he was dealt to the Yankees as part of an 18-player trade.
In the 1956 World Series, won in seven games by the Yankees, he was knocked out in the second inning of Game 2 by the Brooklyn Dodgers and didn’t think he would have another opportunity to pitch. But when he reached Yankee Stadium on the morning of Oct. 8, he found a baseball in his shoe, the signal from manager Casey Stengel that he would start Game 5.
“I must admit I was shocked,” Larsen wrote in his autobiography. “I knew I had to do better than the last time, keep the game close and somehow give our team a chance to win. Casey was betting on me, and I was determined not to let him down this time.”
No-windup delivery
The Dodgers and Yankees split the first four games and Stengel liked the deception of Larsen’s no-windup delivery. The manager’s instincts proved historically correct. The lanky right-hander struck out seven, needed just 97 pitches to tame the Dodgers and only once went to three balls on a batter — against Pee Wee Reese in the first inning.
In winning 2-0, the Yankees themselves only managed five hits against the Dodgers’ Sal Maglie, but scored on Mickey Mantle’s home run and an RBI single by Hank Bauer.
Larsen, selected MVP of the 1956 Series, had two close calls. In the second inning, Jackie Robinson hit a hard grounder that was deflected by third baseman Andy Carey to shortstop Gil McDougald, who threw out Robinson. In the fifth, Mantle ran down a long drive to left-center field by Gil Hodges. With two outs in the ninth, pinch-hitter Dale Mitchell took a third strike, completing the perfect game and sending catcher Yogi Berra dashing out from behind the plate to leap into Larsen’s arms. 
Their celebration remains one of baseball’s most joyous images.

FILE- New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra embraces pitcher Don Larsen as he leaps into Larsen’s arms at the end of Game 5 of the World Series against the Brooklyn Dodgers at New York’s Yankee Stadium, Oct. 8, 1956. Larsen pitched a perfect game.Out on the town before perfect game
Born Aug. 7, 1929, in Michigan City, Indiana, Larsen moved with his family to San Diego, where he went to Point Loma High School, the alma mater of another Yankees perfect game pitcher, David Wells. Larsen played basketball and baseball and was signed by the St. Louis Browns for a $500 bonus and $150 a month.
After two minor league seasons, Larsen hurt his arm and then spent two years in the Army. He was promoted to the Browns in 1953 and moved with the team to Baltimore the following year. He struggled through his 3-21 season but two of the wins were against the Yankees, who insisted he be included in the trade that also brought pitching star Bob Turley to New York.
Larsen started 1955 with the Yankees’ farm team in Denver, where he went 9-1 and developed the no-windup delivery. Promoted to the majors midway through the season, he finished 9-2 for New York. Larsen went 11-5 the next season and enjoyed the party atmosphere that came with playing for the Yankees, often running with Mantle, Billy Martin and Whitey Ford in their late-night rounds of the city. On the night before his perfect game, he had been out on the town, believing he was not in Stengel’s plans for the next day. 
Larsen pitched in three other World Series. He won Game 2 of the 1957 series against Hank Aaron and the Milwaukee Braves, but lost the decisive Game 7. He shut out the Braves 4-0 on six hits in Game 3 of the 1958 Series, when New York beat Milwaukee in seven games, and was back in the Bronx with the San Francisco Giants for the 1962 Fall Classic.
Record unbroken
Larsen retired in 1967 with an 81-91 record over 14 major league seasons. He later worked as a liquor salesman and paper company executive. When David Cone tossed a perfect game for the Yankees during the 1999 season, Larsen was in attendance after throwing out the ceremonial first pitch.
No other pitcher has thrown a perfect game in the postseason, but in 2010 the Phillies’ Roy Halladay pitched a no-hitter against the Cincinnati Reds during the National League Division Series. 
“They can never break my record,” Larsen would say of his game. “The best they can do is tie it. October 8, 1956, was a mystical trip through fantasyland. Sometimes I still wonder whether it really all happened.”
Late on Wednesday night, Cone tweeted “RIP my friend” with a photo of himself, Wells and Larsen together on the field at Yankee Stadium.
“We are deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Don Larsen, who remained a welcome and familiar face at our annual Old-Timers’ Day celebrations in the decades following his playing career,” the Yankees said. “He will be missed.”
In addition to his son, Larsen is survived by his wife of 62 years, Corrine, daughter-in-law Nancy, and grandsons Justin and Cody.

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The United States consulate in Mexico’s border city of Nuevo Laredo issued a security alert Wednesday, warning of gun battles and urging government employees to take precautions.
Gun battles have killed at least three people this week in the northern city bordering the Texas city of Laredo, media have said.
Nuevo Laredo is one of the Mexican cities where the U.S. government has sent asylum-seekers to wait as their cases are decided. 
“The consulate has received reports of multiple gunfights throughout the city of Nuevo Laredo,” it said in a Twitter post. “U.S. government personnel are advised to shelter in place.”
On Twitter, users purportedly from Laredo reported hearing gunfire ringing out from the neighboring Mexican city.
In a Twitter post late Wednesday, Francisco Cabeza de Vaca, the governor of Tamaulipas, the state home to Nuevo Laredo, blamed the attacks on its Cartel of the Northeast.
“After the cowardly attacks on the part of the Cartel of the Northeast in Nuevo Laredo, the (government of Tamaulipas) will not let down its guard and will continue acting with strength against criminals,” he wrote.
Tension over the cartels intensified in November when suspected cartel members massacred three women and six children of U.S.-Mexican origin in northern Mexico.
U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to designate the groups as terrorist organizations in response to a series of bloody security breaches triggered by cartel gunmen.

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