Five Alarm: Nineteen people died yesterday, nine of them children, in a fire in a West Bronx apartment building.

  Another 44 were injured, 13 of them critically, after the occupants of the third-floor apartment where the fire started left in a hurry without closing the door that may have contained the flames and smoke, fire commissioner Daniel Nigro said at a news conference. Most of the injuries were attributed to smoke that filled the building.

  The fire in the 19-story building built in 1972 started at 11 am and turned into a five-alarm event with as many as 200 firefighters called to the scene. Investigators suspect it started with a space heater.

  It’s the worst fire in The Bronx since the Happy Land nightclub fire in 1990, which killed 87 people. And it’s the second multi-fatality apartment fire in a week. Just last Wednesday, 12 people died in a fire in Philadelphia.

Diplomacy: Under the threat of Russia invading Ukraine, diplomats from the US and Soviet Union met in Geneva today in an attempt to cool down the situation.

  With the NATO European defense alliance looking to admit Ukraine as a member, Russia sees that as a threat … or at least Vladimir Putin says it’s a threat … and he has amassed 100,000 troops on the Ukraine border ready to invade.

  Russia wants the West to curtail military activity in Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe, allowing them to re-assert their  Cold War influence and control of neighboring countries. The West says that’s a no-go and that countries should be free to choose their own military alliances.

Viral News: The US broke through the mark of 60 million cases of Covid-19; 60,090,639 cases and over 837,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic nearly two years ago.

Play On: An Australian judge has ordered the release of Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic from immigration detention giving him a renewed shot at playing for his record 21st Grand Slam title. Djokovic has refused to be vaccinated for Covid-19 and even tested positive last month.

  The Open begins play on the 17^th.

  During a court hearing government lawyers warned that the immigration minister could still cancel Djokovic’s visa and kick him out of Australia, which would lead to an automatic three-year ban on his re-entering the country.

Clock Beater: The Los Angeles Chargers at one point yesterday were 15 points behind the Raiders in a quest to make the NFL playoffs. Then the game ended in a tie, sending it into sudden-death overtime. With two seconds left on the clock, the Raiders’ Daniel Carlson kicked a 47-yard field goal to win 35-32 and take a spot in the playoff bracket.  

The Obit Page: Comedian Bob Saget, the star of the popular television sitcom “Full House” and a popular act on the standup circuit, was found dead yesterday in an Orlando hotel room. He was 65.

  There appeared to be no obvious cause of death. Saget was in Florida on a tour of performances. 

  The ABC sitcom that made Saget a star ran for eight years starting in 1987. It featured, among others, the child twins Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen in one role. 

  He later became familiar to a second  generation of sitcom fans on CBS’s “How I Met Your Mother”  as narrator and the voice of Ted Mosby. He also hosted “America’s Funniest Home Videos.” 

  The comedian was married only in 2018 to Kelly Rizzo, 42, who has a travel and food website called “Eat Travel Rock TV.” 

  Saget was mostly known, at least on television, for being squeaky clean. He once said, “I am basically just a nine-year-old boy that evolved.” But he could play “blue” as well. He was in the movie  “The Aristocrats” about the competition among comics to tell the filthiest version of one of the dirtiest jokes known to the business.

The Spin Rack: Toyota became the top-selling car company in 2021, beating General Motors, which has dominated the industry since 1931. Car production has been slowed by a shortage of computer chips, but Toyota had put away a stash of chips allowing the company to keep production lines running at full throttle. — The Kazakhstan government says the country is now “stabilized” with government buildings and institutions back under state control, but as many as 164 people died during the unrest and  6,000 people have been detained. — Ten people died on a Brazilian lake when massive portions of a vertical cliff fell on a cluster of pleasure boats. Two boats were sunk outright and an additional thirty people were injured.  

Penny Pinching: The Labor Department has filed a complaint of employer-retaliation against the owner of an auto repair shop in Peachtree City, Georgia who paid a former employee’s $915 final check with 91,515 oily pennies dumped in the man’s driveway.

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