KIEV, Ukraine

Slain protester mourned as demonstrations spread

Thousands of Ukrainians chanted “Hero!” and sang the national anthem Sunday, as a coffin carrying a protester killed in clashes with police was carried through the capital, underscoring rising tensions in the country’s two-month political crisis.

Mikhail Zhiznevsky, 25, was one of three protesters who died in clashes Wednesday.

Protests against President Viktor Yanukovych continued to engulf the country, now beginning to spread to central and eastern Ukraine.

In Dnipropetrovsk, 240 miles southeast of Kiev, several hundred demonstrators tried to storm an administration building, but police drove them back with water sprayed from a fire truck in subfreezing temperatures, the Interfax news agency reported.

The protests began after Yanukovych shelved an agreement to deepen ties with the European Union, but they have been gripped by people seeking more radical action.

CHICAGO

Arctic air expected to put Midwest into deep freeze

An unusual weather pattern driving bitterly cold air from the Arctic Circle south across a huge swath of the Midwest is expected to send temperatures plummeting Monday from Minneapolis to Louisville, Ky., the latest punch from a winter that is in some areas shaping up as one of the coldest on record.

The region will remain in the grips of the deep freeze for 21/2 days, said meteorologist Mike Hudson of the National Weather Service in Kansas City, Mo.

In cities where temperatures reached the 40s, 50s and even higher Sunday, people will wake up Monday to temperatures ranging from the teens to well below zero.

The weather service said city after city will face wind chills well below zero Monday: minus 43 in Minneapolis, minus 23 in both Milwaukee and Chicago, minus 14 in Kansas City, minus 10 in St. Louis, and minus 3 in Louisville.

DARWIN, Australia

Search continues for boy taken by 13-foot crocodile

Rangers resumed hunting Monday for a 13-foot crocodile that snatched a 12-year-old boy and mauled his friend as they swam in a water hole in a popular Outback tourist destination in northern Australia.

The missing boy was taken by a saltwater crocodile as he and four other boys swam on Sunday at Mudginberri Billabong in Kakadu National Park, police said.

Moments earlier, his 12-year-old friend was mauled as he fought the crocodile and sustained deep wounds to both arms.

Signs throughout Kakadu warn visitors not to swim in waterways because of the crocodile danger.

KINGSTON, Jamaica

U.S. health officials probe illness aboard cruise ship

U.S. health officials on Sunday boarded a cruise ship docked in the U.S. Virgin Islands to investigate an illness outbreak that has stricken at least 300 people with gastrointestinal symptoms including vomiting and diarrhea.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that 281, or nearly 10 percent, of the 3,050 passengers aboard Royal Caribbean International’s Explorer of the Seas have reported getting sick during a Caribbean cruise that left Cape Liberty, N.J., on Tuesday. Twenty-two crew members also reported feeling ill.

During the previous port call in Puerto Rico, the ship underwent “extensive and thorough sanitizing” to help prevent more people from getting sick, said the Royal Caribbean spokeswoman.

– From news service reports

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