New fires blamed on arsonists hit Australia Wednesday as the toll from deadly blazes was likely to rise on the macabre discovery that charred remains initially identified as single bodies were in fact couples fused together by the heat. The latest fires broke out Tuesday night, even as emergency workers were struggling with the aftermath of bushfires that have so far killed 181 people and burned huge tracts of the countryside in southeastern Australia. John Brumby, the premier of the hard-hit state of Victoria, said many of 20 fires burning Wednesday were suspected to have been started by arsonists — an act described earlier by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as “mass murder.” “There seems little doubt these were deliberately lit — a number of them last night,” Brumby said on national television
