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KREMENCHUK, Ukraine (AP) — Russian long-range bombers struck a crowded shopping mall in Ukraine’s central city of Kremenchuk with a missile on Monday, raising fears of what President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called an “unimaginable” number of victims in “one of the most daring terrorist attacks in European history.” Zelenskky said that many of the more than 1,000 civilians inside the mall managed to escape. Giant plumes of black smoke, dust and orange flames emanated from the wreckage, with emergency crews rushing in to search broken metal and concrete for victims and put out fires. Onlookers watched in distress at the sight...

For years, friends walked through the mall, chuckling as they passed that funny counterculture store, on their way to the department store that served as an anchor at that end of the mall. They only came for the big department store, for its holiday sales and gift cards, and the licensed sweatshirts and jackets that they wore everywhere. They never noticed, but they often passed another group, going the other way. That group would enter at the department store entrance because they liked parking there, but they’d never shop in it; they liked the little boutiques down the aisles; that’s...

It’s time once again to reminisce about the days of Christmas Past when shopping entailed a trip downtown to visit the Five and Dimes and your local department stores. From the heyday of downtowns we transitioned first to the era of suburban malls, enclosed meccas of commerce featuring anchor stores, hot pretzels, cheap boutiques and endless parking lots. That vignette too has morphed into Christmas Past as once great malls have become wastelands of obsolescence. By and large they now sit empty awaiting a rebirth. Somewhere along the line the wizards of marketing decided that people really wanted to be...

In an interview given roughly twenty years ago when Amazon was largely a peddler of books, CDs, and DVDs, founder Jeff Bezos observed to a reporter that his nascent company would never replace the shopping center experience. Bezos plainly saw how shopping centers and malls gave people a happy feeling of community, of a physical place to go, and he knew Amazon couldn’t recreate it. Bezos’s acknowledgement of Amazon’s limits proved a window into the company’s future. Amid rising pessimism about the future of bricks & mortar retail, Bezos is an optimist. He is investing many billions in the physical...

A man accused of driving an SUV through a suburban Chicago shopping mall is facing a state terrorism charge, authorities announced Sunday. Police in Schaumburg announced early Sunday morning that the Cook County state’s attorney had authorized the charge against Javier Garcia, 22, of Palatine, Illinois. Garcia also was charged with felony criminal damage to property. Garcia was scheduled to appear in bond court on Sunday. Under Illinois law, the Class X felony of terrorism can apply if the suspect is believed to have caused more than $100,000 in damage to any building containing five or more businesses, according to...

BEACHWOOD, Ohio - The Beachwood mall is on lockdown as police respond to an incident. Authorities would not elaborate on what happened, only saying the mall was on lockdown. A Nordstrom employee told News 5 the mall was placed on lockdown around 6:45 p.m. Videos posted to social media show people running through the mall. This is a developing story. News 5 will update as more information becomes available.

"If this doesn't give you chills nothing will"

Two brothers from Kosovo have been arrested by German police on suspicion of plotting to attack the country's largest shopping mall in Oberhausen, near the Dutch border. The men, aged 28 and 31, were arrested in Duisburg with Germany on high alert following Monday's attack on the Christmas market in Berlin that killed 12 and injured 49. "Friday morning (23 December, around 00:45 hours) special units in Duisburg took two suspicious men into custody," Essen police said in a statement, "The 28-year old and 31-year-old brothers born in Kosovo are suspected of having prepared a possible attack on the CentrO...

St. Cloud, Minn. (AP) — Police said multiple people were injured at a St. Cloud, Minnesota, shopping mall on Saturday evening in an attack possibly involving both shooting and stabbing. The suspect is believed to be dead, St. Cloud Police Sgt. Jason Burke told the St. Cloud Times. He said the attack at the Crossroads Center mall started with a stabbing, and there are multiple injuries but he did not give a number.

A gunman who witnesses say was wearing camouflage and a white plastic mask opened fire in a shopping mall near Portland, Ore., in a rampage that left three dead, including the shooter, and multiple wounded, police said. Authorities say police "neutralized" the gunman but have yet to elaborate on how he died. Witnesses described a harrowing scene, as the gunman appeared to be dressed in body armor while firing off an estimated 60 shots from a semi-automatic rifle. One witness told KPTV that the gunman ran past her and her boyfriend and "had the look of death in his eyes."

Starting in the mid-1990s, "the mall genie was out of the bottle," says one mall analyst, "and it was never going to come back." While about 80% of the country’s 1,200 malls are considered healthy (vacancy rates of 10% or less), that compares with 94% in 2006; and more than 30 million square feet of malls are more than 40% empty, a threshold that signals the beginning of what one one analyst called "the death spiral." As The NY Times reports, like beached whales, dead malls draw fascination as well as dismay, "nobody ever thinks a mall is going to...

MallshootingThis may or may not be jihad, but it is certainly a planned, coordinated series of attacks. “Third shooting in shopping mall confirmed,” by Steve Robson, Mirror, October 22, 2014 (thanks to Marc): Police have now confirmed there has been a third shooting at the Rideau Centre shopping mall near to the Parliament building. Armed officers were rushing towards the scene with guns drawn.

Crocodile caught wandering around California mall ROSEVILLE, CA — Don't shed any tears for a crocodile that was captured wandering outside a pet store at a Northern California shopping mall. California Fish and Wildlife officials have taken custody of the croc, are feeding it rainbow trout and will likely donate it to a zoo. Police say the crocodile was apparently left outside the Roseville store by someone who didn't want it anymore. The animal had grown to 4-feet long, and its jaws had been wrapped shut with heavy-duty tape. There was a note identifying it as a Nile crocodile and...

CLACKAMAS, OR (KPTV) - A 22-year-old man from southeast Portland parked his car outside Macy's, rushed into the Clackamas Town Center mall food court and opened fire, killing two people Tuesday, investigators said. Jacob Roberts' AR-15 rifle then jammed, but he was able to get the gun working again. He shot and killed himself, sheriff's deputies said. Steve Forsyth, of West Linn, and Cindy Yuille, of northeast Portland, were killed by Roberts, authorities said. A third shooting victim, Kristina Shevchenko, survived and is being treated at Oregon Health & Science University hospital. Deputies said Roberts stole the rifle used...

Jacob Tyler Roberts, 22, was the masked man who stormed into Clackamas Town Center Tuesday afternoon, fatally shooting two people and wounding another before turning a gun on himself, police said. Roberts does not appear to have a criminal history in Oregon, according to court records. He had two speeding tickets earlier this year. Court records show that Roberts and a woman, Hannah Shoemake, were evicted last summer from their Happy Valley apartment. Roberts' mother answered her door at her Portland home, but declined to comment to an Oregonian reporter. "I loved my son very much," she said.

NOTE The following text is a quote: Superseding Indictment Charges Two Men with Conspiring to Provide Material Support to a Designated Foreign Terrorist Organization BOSTON, MA—Two men were charged today in a superseding indictment with one count each of conspiring to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization. United States Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz and Warren T. Bamford, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation - Boston Field Division, announced today that TAREK MEHANNA, 27, of Sudbury, Massachusetts, and AHMAD ABOUSAMRA, 28, who currently resides in Syria, were charged in a superseding indictment with one...

SNIPPET: "They say they police intelligence unit arrested Asdatul Sahirun on Sunday at a shopping mall in the capital's Malate tourist district."

SNIPPET: ""If these attacks were aimed at seizing control of Kandahar city, as the Taliban proclaimed, they failed," a senior official from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) told Reuters, on condition of anonymity. Shooting erupted after the first explosion hours earlier and insurgents opened fire from a five-storey shopping mall toward the governor's fortified compound, from where security forces returned fire as black smoke rose over the city."

The shopping malls of America will be among the next major terrorist targets. Malls make such obvious high-value targets that it's difficult to grasp why they haven't been hit up until now. Shopping malls are America's marketplaces, constantly packed with people, with uncontrolled entry, and openly vulnerable to any given form of attack. We need only consider the darkest days of the Iraqi terror campaign of 2006-2007 to grasp how the jihadis view marketplaces. Scarcely a week went by without another Iraqi marketplace bombing, with casualties largely consisting of women and children, mounting from the dozens to the hundreds. We...

Shots have been fired at a shopping centre in the town of Espoo, near the capital of Finland, Helsinki. An eyewitness said at least one person was left lying on the floor after shooting broke out, the national broadcaster YLE said on its website.