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Man who drove into pedestrians in Berlin convicted of murder

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 17:49:15 GMT

BERLIN (AP) — A German court has convicted a 30-year-old man who drove into groups of pedestrians in Berlin last year of one count of murder and 16 counts of attempted murder, ordering him to be permanently held in a psychiatric hospital.The Berlin regional court concluded that the driver, a German citizen born in Armenia, was in a psychotic state when he drove onto the sidewalk in a popular shopping district in the west of the capital in June, killing a teacher and injuring eleven students on a school trip. A pregnant woman, a teenage girl and two men were also injured.The driver was detained by passers-by before being arrested by police.The court also banned the man from driving for life.The Associated Press

Credit Suisse investors sue after facing billions in losses

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 17:49:15 GMT

LONDON (AP) — A group of Credit Suisse investors have sued Swiss financial regulators after a government-engineered takeover of the struggling bank by rival UBS left them with billions in losses.The investors are contesting an order by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, or FINMA, that wiped out about 16 billion Swiss francs ($17.3 billion) in higher-risk Credit Suisse bonds as part of an emergency rescue last month, lawyers said Friday.The hastily arranged, $3.25 billion deal prevented the downfall of Switzerland’s second-largest bank after its stock plunged and customers rushed to pull out their money amid fears about long-running troubles at Credit Suisse and upheaval in the global financial system after the collapse of two U.S. banks.“FINMA’s decision undermines international confidence in the legal certainty and reliability of the Swiss financial center,” said Thomas Werlen, managing partner in Switzerland for law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sull...

China FM: Taiwan, foreign supporters ‘playing with fire’

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 17:49:15 GMT

BEIJING (AP) — China’s foreign minister warned Taiwan and its supporters on Friday that they are “playing with fire” if they go against Beijing’s demand to exert control over the self-governing island democracy.Qin Gang’s remarks came at the end of a speech espousing China’s contribution to the global economy and the interests of developing nations, in which he repeatedly praised Communist Party Secretary General Xi Jinping’s Global Security Initiative.The concept is the latest of China’s moves to position its single-party political system, with its claim to social stability and economic growth, as an alternative to the Western liberal approach that largely defines international relations.Toward the end of his speech in the financial hub of Shanghai, Qin turned to what China calls the “Taiwan problem.” While China has taken a consistently hard-line position on Taiwan, it has usually delegated threatening statements to spokespeople or lower-lever diplomats speaking throug...

Family joins rescued Indian climber being treated in Nepal

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 17:49:15 GMT

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — An Indian climber who was rescued after spending three days trapped in a 300-meter (980-foot) -deep crevasse on Mount Annapurna, the world’s 10th-highest mountain, was joined by his family at a hospital in Nepal where he is receiving treatment.Anurag Maloo fell into the crevasse on Monday. After several attempts, he was finally rescued on Thursday and is being treated in Kathmandu, the capital. His condition has not been released.Members of Maloo’s family flew to Kathmandu to join him at the hospital. His parents, who live in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan, were distraught when they heard the news Monday that their son was missing. They told the Indian Express newspaper that Maloo, 34, was climbing Annapurna and was at Camp 3 of the four camps on the mountain when he was asked to descend due to poor health, which is common during the difficult climb. “While coming down, he slipped and fell in a crevasse between Camp 3 and Camp 2,” his fath...

UN’s weather agency: 2022 was nasty, deadly, costly and hot

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 17:49:15 GMT

Looking back at 2022’s weather with months of analysis, the World Meteorological Organization said last year really was as bad as it seemed when people were muddling through it. And about as bad as it gets — until more warming kicks in.Killer floods, droughts and heat waves hit around the world, costing many billions of dollars. Global ocean heat and acidity levels hit record highs and Antarctic sea ice and European Alps glaciers reached record low amounts, according to the United Nations’ climate agency’s State of Global Climate 2022 report released Friday.While levels have been higher before human civilization, global sea height and the amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and methane in the air reached highest modern recorded amounts. The key glaciers that scientists use as a health check for the world shrank by more than 1.3 meters (51 inches) in just one year and for the first time in history no snow survived the summer melt season on Switzerland’s gla...

Toyota’s new president vows to step up electric vehicle push

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 17:49:15 GMT

TOKYO (AP) — Toyota’s new president Koji Sato has promised what he called an aggressive shift on “electrification,” while acknowledging criticism that Japan’s top automaker has fallen behind in actual volumes of electric vehicles sold compared to its rivals. “We like to see that as people cheering Toyota on,” to play catchup in electric cars, Sato told reporters Friday at Toyota Motor Corp.’s Tokyo headquarters.“If we look at in practical terms of the situation today, we have done a great deal in reducing carbon emissions,” he said, defending the automaker’s record on other gas-sipping technologies. Toyota is a leader in hybrids, which have both a gasoline engine and electric motor, and Sato stressed that different markets have varying powertrain needs, with emerging markets being slower to adopt pure electric vehicles. But he said pure electric vehicles allow for more software functions because of their connectivity and other features, stressing that Toyota’s electric vehicle...

Russia's air force accidentally bombs its own city

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 17:49:15 GMT

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia's military acknowledged that a bomb accidentally dropped by one of its warplanes caused a powerful blast in a Russian city not far from Ukraine's border, injuring two and scaring local residents.Belgorod, a city of 340,000 located about 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of the Russia-Ukraine border, has faced regular drone attacks during Russia's current military operation in Ukraine. Russian authorities blamed the earlier strikes on the Ukrainian military, which refrained from directly claiming responsibility for the attacks.The explosion late Thursday was far more powerful than anything Belgorod residents had experienced before. Witnesses reported a low hissing sound followed by a blast that made nearby apartment buildings tremble and shattered their windows.It left a 20-meter (66-foot) -wide crater in the middle of a tree-lined boulevard flanked by apartments, damaged several cars and threw one vehicle onto a store roof. Two people were injured, and a third perso...

18 states, including IL, urge recall of Kia, Hyundai cars due to high rate of thefts

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 17:49:15 GMT

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Attorneys general in 18 states, including Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, urged the federal government Thursday to recall millions of Kia and Hyundai cars because they are too easy to steal, a response to a sharp increase in thefts fueled by a viral social media challenge.Some Kia and Hyundai cars sold in the United States over the last decade do not have engine immobilizers, a standard feature on most cars that prevents the engine from starting unless the key is present.Videos circulating on the social media service TikTok have shown how people can start Kia and Hyundai models by using only a screwdriver and a USB cable. In Los Angeles, thefts of Hyundai and Kia cars increased by about 85% in 2022, now accounting for 20% of all car thefts in the city, according to the California attorney general's office.These social media-inspired thefts have often ended in tragedy, with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration blaming the stolen car tren...

Racial gap in US stroke deaths widened during pandemic

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 17:49:15 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — The longstanding racial gap in U.S. stroke death rates widened dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic, government researchers said Thursday.Stroke death rates increased for both Black and white adults in 2020 and 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study. But the difference between the two groups grew about 22%, compared with the five years before the pandemic.“Any health inequity that existed before seems to have been made larger during the pandemic," said Dr. Bart Demaerschalk, a stroke researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix who was not involved in the new study. “This is another example of that.”During a stroke, something blocks or reduces blood flow to part of the brain or a blood vessel in the brain bursts. It can result in brain damage or long-term disability and is the nation's fifth leading cause of death.Until about a decade ago, the U.S. stroke death rate was falling because of improved treatment and reduced smoking r...

Americans bought almost 60 million guns during the pandemic

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 17:49:15 GMT

One-fifth of U.S. households purchased guns during the pandemic, a national arming that exposed more than 15 million Americans to firearms in the home for the first time, academic studies show. Americans purchased nearly 60 million guns between 2020 and 2022, according to an analysis by The Trace, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that tracks gun violence. Yearly gun sales are running at roughly twice the level of 15 or 20 years ago.  All the new weapons may be fueling a historic surge in gun deaths, which reached record highs during the same period.  “It’s a totally different type of gun ownership now,” said John Roman, a senior fellow in the Economics, Justice and Society Group at NORC, a research organization based at the University of Chicago.  “It’s not a rifle stored away somewhere that you take out twice a year to go hunting. It’s a handgun, probably a semiautomatic handgun, that you keep in your bedside table or in your glove compa...