Blaze at Vietnam condos takes 13 lives
HANOI, Vietnam -- At least 13 people were killed and 28 were injured in an overnight fire at a condominium complex in southern Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City, with police saying Friday that it was unclear if anyone was missing.
State media outlets quoted the city's police and fire department as saying police rescued more than 100 residents while more than 1,000 escaped the fire themselves.
The Tuoi Tre newspaper quoted Ho Chi Minh City Mayor Nguyen Thanh Phong as saying he was told by residents that the fire alarm system did not work and residents alerted others to the fire.
The three buildings with 14 to 20 floors have more than 700 apartments. They were built six years ago in Vietnam's southern commercial hub, formerly called Saigon.
Reports said most people died of suffocation or from jumping from high floors.
The official Vietnam News Agency said more than 200 firefighters worked more than an hour to get the fire under control.
The fire started in the basement garage, with reports saying doors that separated the garage from the upper floors should have been shut, but they were opened, which allowed the smoke to rise to the upper floors.
13 Afghan civilians die in stadium blast
KABUL, Afghanistan -- A car bombing Friday outside a sports stadium in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province killed 13 people and wounded 40 others, an official said.
Aminullah Abed, the chief of the province's public health department, said the casualties were received at a hospital in the province's capital, Lashkar Gah, with six of the wounded in critical condition and many others burnt beyond recognition.
The explosion occurred after Afghan new year celebrations were winding down and revelers were on their way home, he added.
Provincial chief of police Abdul Ghafar Safi said the blast was carried out by a suicide bomber and that the target was civilians. No high-ranking officials were present or harmed at the stadium, he added.
The office of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani issued a statement condemning the "brutal terrorist attack."
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
Iraq native gets 34 years for U.K. bomb
LONDON -- A young Iraqi asylum seeker who told police that he had been trained by the Islamic State militant group was sentenced Friday to at least 34 years in prison for bombing a London subway train and injuring 51 people.
A judge gave Ahmed Hassan, 18, a life sentence with a requirement that he serve a minimum term of 34 years. A jury last week convicted Hassan of attempted murder in the September attack.
Judge Charles Haddon-Cave called Hassan "a dangerous and devious individual" and said he plotted the subway bombing with "ruthless determination" while pretending to be a model asylum seeker.
The homemade bomb he placed on a packed London Underground train only partially detonated at Parsons Green station. Prosecutors said there probably would have been fatalities if the device had functioned properly.
Poles rally against new abortion curb
WARSAW, Poland -- Thousands of people joined protests in Warsaw and other cities Friday against the conservative government's latest attempt to restrict abortion.
Many voiced anger more broadly at the policies of the ruling Law and Justice party, which has been accused by domestic critics and international bodies of eroding democracy and civic freedoms.
"This is against attempts at taking away our right to decide what we want," said Paulina Rudnik, a 44-year-old lawyer at the Warsaw protest.
In the crowds around her, people held banners including "Free choice" and "A woman is a human being" and chanted slogans demanding reproductive freedom.
Poland has one of the strictest laws in Europe, allowing abortion only if the woman's life is at risk, the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, or the fetus is damaged.
An attempt to ban all abortions in 2016 sparked mass nationwide protests by women dressed in black.
The proposed legislation would continue to allow abortions in cases where the mother's life is at risk or the pregnancy results from a crime. But it would ban abortions of irreparably damaged fetuses and those with Down syndrome.
A Section on 03/24/2018