Shooting at video game tournament: 3 dead including suspect
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A gunman opened fire Sunday at an online video game tournament as it was being livestreamed from a Florida mall, killing two people and then fatally shooting himself in an attack that sent several others to hospitals, authorities said.
Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams said authorities believe the 24-year-old from Baltimore carried out the attack using at least one handgun at the Jacksonville Landing, a collection of restaurants and shops along the St. Johns River. He said the man died from a self-inflicted gunshot, adding authorities were still making final confirmation of his identity with the FBI assisting them in Baltimore.
Nine other people were wounded by gunfire and all were in stable condition Sunday evening after going to hospitals, Williams said. He added that two others were hurt as people sought to flee the gunfire in the panic and chaos that ensued.
The shooter was in Jacksonville for the “Madden NFL 19” video game tournament, authorities said. The games maker, EA Sports, lists him as a 2017 championship winner.
Pope apologizes for ‘crimes’ against Irish women, babies
DUBLIN — Pope Francis issued a sweeping apology Sunday for the “crimes” of the Catholic Church in Ireland, saying church officials didn’t respond with compassion, truth or justice to the many children and women who were abused over generations.
Francis was interrupted by applause from the crowd of 300,000 as he read the apology out loud at the start of Mass in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, the largest gathering of his two-day trip. It was a response to the tens of thousands of Irish children sexually and physically abused at Catholic Churches, schools and workhouses, and the women who were forced to live and work in laundries and give up their children if they got pregnant out of wedlock.
“We ask forgiveness for those members of the hierarchy who didn’t take responsibility for this painful situation, and who kept silence,” Francis said. “May the Lord keep this state of shame and compunction and give us strength so this never happens again, and that there is justice.”
Hundreds of kilometers (miles) away, a few hundred somber protesters marched through the Irish town of Tuam and recited the names of a 796 babies and young children who died at a Catholic-run orphanage there, most during the 1950s. The children were buried in a mass grave in a septic area of the grounds.
“Elizabeth Murphy, 4 months. Annie Tyne, 3 months. John Joseph Murphy, 10 months,” the protesters said.
8 people, 6 of them kids, killed in Chicago apartment fire
CHICAGO — Eight people, including six children, were killed when a fire broke out before dawn Sunday at a Chicago apartment in one of the deadliest fires in the nation’s third-largest city in years, officials say.
Two other people were hospitalized in very critical condition, Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Merritt said. One of the children who died was an infant, according to Fire Commissioner Jose Santiago.
“We have not had this in many, many, many years — this amount of fatalities and injuries in one location,” he said.
A makeshift memorial along a nearby sidewalk included crosses for each child who died — a small Mickey Mouse doll set next to one. The Rev. Clifford Spears of Saint Michael Missionary Baptist Church led a crowd that gathered in prayer, the Chicago Tribune reported. A candlelight vigil was planned for Sunday night.
Officials had not released the names or ages of the victims, all of whom were in the same residence, Merritt said. The cause of the blaze hasn’t been determined.
For McCain, a cross-country farewell from public, presidents
WASHINGTON — Two former presidents are expected to speak at Sen. John McCain’s service and he will lie in state in both the nation’s capital and Arizona as part of a cross-country funeral procession ending with his burial at the U.S. Naval Academy, according to plans taking shape Sunday.
McCain had long feuded with President Donald Trump, and two White House officials said McCain’s family had asked, before the senator’s death, that Trump not attend the funeral services. Vice President Mike Pence is likely to attend, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private discussions.
A day after McCain died of brain cancer at 81, his family, friends and congressional and state leaders were working out details of the farewell to the decorated Vietnam War hero, prisoner of war and six-term senator.
His office said that McCain will lie in state in the Arizona State Capitol on Wednesday. A funeral will be conducted at North Phoenix Baptist Church on Thursday with former Vice President Joe Biden speaking.
Gentle humor was the lifeblood of playwright Neil Simon
NEW YORK — When master playwright Neil Simon accepted the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2006, he was visibly nervous. But his gentle humor was evident.
“It took me six years to write my first play,” he said, recalling that he found the title for “Come Blow Your Horn” from one of his daughter’s nursery rhyme books. He said it turned out to be “a so-so play” that was turned into “a so-so movie” with Frank Sinatra.
But it was successful enough that Simon considered calling his subsequent works “The Sheep’s in the Meadow” and “The Cow’s in the Corn.”
“For the first time,” he said, “I had money in the bank. Yes, sir, yes sir, three bags full!”
Simon, who died Sunday at 91, was a meticulous joke-smith, peppering his plays, especially the early ones, with one-liners and humorous situations that critics said sometimes came at the expense of character and believability.
From wire sources
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Pope on McCarrick claims: “I won’t say a word about it.”
ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE — Pope Francis declined Sunday to confirm or deny claims by the Vatican’s retired ambassador to the United States that he knew in 2013 about sexual misconduct allegations against the former archbishop of Washington, Theodore McCarrick, but rehabilitated him anyway.
Francis said the 11-page text by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, which reads in part like a homophobic attack on Francis and his allies, “speaks for itself” and that he wouldn’t comment on it.
Francis was asked by a U.S. reporter during an airborne press conference Sunday if Vigano’s claims that the two discussed the McCarrick allegations in 2013 were true. Francis was also asked about Vigano’s claims that McCarrick was already under sanction at the time, but that Francis rehabilitated him.
Francis said he had read Vigano’s document and trusted journalists to judge for themselves.
“It’s an act of trust,” he said. “I won’t say a word about it.”
