Around the world
ARSON? A fire set Monday in a building occupied mostly by Turks left 20 people injured, including four children, police in Remscheid, Germany, said. They said a racist or anti-foreigner motive could not be ruled out. The fire was discovered on the stairs of the four-story building at 3:20 a.m., a police spokesman in nearby Wuppertal said. An accelerant was used. The residents of the house included 41 Turks, and an Italian and a German. Most of the victims suffered smoke inhalation.MAHARAJA DIES: Brajendra Singh, a sportsman and conservationist who was the last royal Maharaja of the Bharatpur area of northwestern India, has died. He was 76. Singh collapsed after a heart attack at his palace in Rajasthan state on July 8 and died later that day. Singh served as a lawmaker in the Indian Parliament and his state legislative assembly. But he lost the first parliamentary election he entered as an ordinary citizen after the Indian government abolished royalty in 1970.
TOLL RISES: The death toll in a shopping mall collapse rose sharply Monday when rescue workers in Seoul, South Korea, found dozens of bodies, many decomposing in pockets of air under the concrete ruins. Nearly 18 days after the collapse of the five-story Sampoong Department Store, the death toll stood at 401 this morning. Rescuers recovered 55 bodies Sunday and 24 more Monday morning. About 270 people were still listed as missing and more than 900 hurt, many of them seriously.
EXTRADITED: A court in Bangkok, Thailand, Monday ordered a former Thai lawmaker extradited to the United States to stand trial on charges he smuggled 49 tons of marijuana there. The court ordered Thanong Siripreechapong detained and set extradition within 15 days, to give him a chance to appeal. Thanong, 43, is accused of making millions smuggling drug shipments to the West Coast of the United States between 1973 and 1987. About a dozen other defendants have been convicted of drug trafficking in connection with the cases.
Across the country
ON STRIKE: Security guards in riot gear faced off against pickets at a distribution center in Detroit, and two men armed with a club and an ax handle were arrested for swiping papers as a newspaper strike rolled into its fourth day Monday. There are no talks planned between the six striking unions representing 2,500 employees at the The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press and Detroit Newspapers, the company that runs the papers' business operations.
HOSPITALIZED: Vice President Al Gore's mother, who appeared to recover quickly after suffering a heart attack and stroke earlier this month, was returned to a Nashville hospital the day after she was released. Pauline Gore, 82, was brought to Vanderbilt University Medical Center about 11:30 p.m. Sunday by ambulance from her home in Carthage, a hospital spokesman said. "Mrs. Gore was brought in for observation and is in fair condition," said the spokesman, John Houser. He said no additional information was immediately available.
STILL ROLLIN': The first trains of a New York commuter rail line left on time Monday morning with riders wary that the day's commute could get messy after talks aimed at averting a strike have collapsed. Metro-North got 400 buses ready to roll in preparation for a walkout, and riders braced for uncertainty as a strike loomed for the trains which run to northern New York and Connecticut.
CRASH: A trolley car rammed into another car that was letting off passengers in a Boston subway station Monday, injuring 27 people. Among the injured were the driver of the second trolley, who was still trapped in the train more than a half-hour after the 9:45 a.m. accident. The crash involved two outbound trolleys in the station under Copley Square in the fashionable Back Bay section.
Other news
BRITISH POET and essayist Sir Stephen Spender, an ardent defender of free expression who believed writers had a duty to society, has died in London. He was 86. . . . A COMPACT car collided with a pickup truck in Deer Park, Wash., ejecting and killing all five passengers of the car. . . . GOVERNMENT SOLDIERS killed at least 17 Tamil separatist rebels in two separate clashes in northern Sri Lanka, a military statement from Colombo said Monday.