A lorry has ploughed into a busy Christmas market in the heart of Berlin, killing nine people and injuring many more, police say. Police say they suspect it was a deliberate attack. Video shows stalls knocked over and people lying injured. A suspicious person has been arrested nearby, while a passenger was found dead, police say. The market is at Breitscheidplatz, close to the Kurfuerstendamm, the main shopping street in the city's west. Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert, tweeted to say: "We are in mourning for the dead and hope that the many injured can get help."
There are now reports from local police that 12 people have been confirmed killed in the attack.
https://twitter.com/polizeiberlin/status/810940347006197760
A man stormed into a Zurich mosque on Monday evening and opened fire on people praying, injuring three, Swiss police said.
They said they had collected evidence inside the building and would make more details available on Tuesday. They declined to comment on the potential motive.
Two of the three men -- aged 30, 35 and 56 -- were seriously injured in the attack shortly after 5:30 p.m. local time (1630 GMT) near the main train station in Switzerland's financial capital, Zurich police said.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2016, @02:07AM
The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a truck, is a good guy with a truck!
(Score: 5, Troll) by n1 on Tuesday December 20 2016, @02:17AM
Pedestrian only areas and footpaths are very dangerous and anti-freedom, the liberal elite only created them to make it easier for the terrorists to kill hard working westerners.
The strangest thing though is the Christmas market... I thought Christmas had been outlawed in Europe to placate the same liberals...
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday December 20 2016, @05:28AM
To get the elusive (Score:5, Troll), you needed to get upmodded twice, but not the same upmod (Insightful and Touché), downmodded with Troll, which becomes the label on the post, and then to +5 with +2 Underrated, which does not affect the label.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by chucky on Tuesday December 20 2016, @05:29AM
I don't really think this should be modded 'troll'. In my part of the world you'd perhaps call it highly sarcastic, but it's not necessarily trolling, especially the last part:
I thought Christmas had been outlawed in Europe to placate the same liberals.
Things happened in Europe in the past. In 1950s, communists in Central European countries tried to get rid of Christmas and replace them with New Year, like in Russia. Then in present times, hearing and reading about towns where they wouldn't have Christmas trees, just so that they don't hurt feelings of non-Christians, is quite disturbing. Would a conservative come up with such an idea? Hardly.
So no, even though you may not like what was written, modding this troll shows me lack of sense of dark humor rather than anything else.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2016, @08:29AM
Then in present times, hearing and reading about towns where they wouldn't have Christmas trees, just so that they don't hurt feelings of non-ChristiansThen in present times, hearing and reading about towns where they wouldn't have Christmas trees, just so that they don't hurt feelings of non-Christians
That doesn't even make sense, the "Christmas" tree is not related to Christianity, but stolen from older winter solstice traditions. If it had anything to do with Christ, it would have been a palm tree.
Up here we celebrate Yule (Danish: Jul), and our Yule-tree looks just about the same as your Christmas tree, though we have birds (glass or plastic, not living birds) among the things decorating the tree. Both the birds and the tree represent the celebration of the calendar starting to go towards longer days and spring. Oh, and guess why Yule falls just a few days after the shortest day of the year...
The Christmas tree has as much to do with Christmas as Santa Claus, representing consumerism dressed in the corporate colors of the Coca Cola Company.
(Score: 2) by chromas on Saturday December 24 2016, @04:09AM
To be fair, there's probably not much about Christianity that isn't stolen; floods, prophets, magicians, saints. Import the best traditions from all the other guys and Make Religion Great Again. It's gonna be yuuule!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by mojo chan on Tuesday December 20 2016, @08:35AM
This is a myth. For example, it was reported that Birmingham tried to replace Christmas with "Winterval", but it's not true. It was some little scheme the council came up with to try to involve the non-Christian shops in Christmas, but the actual Christmas stuff carried on unabated with lights and tress and all that shit.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2, Funny) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday December 20 2016, @12:18PM
Holy shit, I didn't even realize the true mastermind behind the elimination of Christmas. Here I thought it was gay faggots. It was the baby New Year [wikipedia.org] all along! Slaughter it! It's a demon from the burning hells that's taken the form of a cherub! Shout “Merry Christmas!” at it until it melts!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2016, @12:24PM
As mojo chan points out, it's a good troll precisely because so many people seem to believe this "ZOMG muslims and librulz poltical correctness police are killing christmas and/or any other thing!" The USA's own post-truth pioneer was pulled up on his comments about london a year back, yet an awful lot of people still seem be parroting the lines about no-go Muslim-only areas or that places like Birmingham regularly chop the hands off white people or some other bullshit.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-elections/trumpfacts-twitter-ridicules-donald-trump-s-radicalised-london-claims-a6766176.html [independent.co.uk]
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/donald-trump-uk-should-thank-him-london-radicalised-police-scared-no-go-a6767606.html [independent.co.uk]
I used to live next door to a small mosque in an area of london that was heavily* pakistani and the most discomfort it caused me was when, during the big religious festivals like ramadan, there were too many people praying so they'd spill out on to the street and you'd open the front door to a couple of dozen people kneeling on prayer mats on the pavement. Oh, the horror.
n1, have a +1 from me. Nicely done :)
* Heavily by London standards anyway, I think it was about 10-15% of the area were of pakistani extraction and judging by the accents about half of them were british-born. As any fule no, eating turkey at christmas is like nailing an egg to the cross, so wishing everybody a merry one :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2016, @01:53PM
The problem comes when you get caned for not joining them on the ground to pray
If you you don't see this then you deserve what is coming
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2016, @02:17PM
I'm not sure, but I think GP would have noticed if s/he were caned or beheaded for not joining them in prayer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2016, @04:22PM
Not joining them on the ground to pray gets you drunk? [cambridge.org] ;-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 22 2016, @02:06AM
No, caned.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2011-05-23/indonesias-aceh-defends-public-caning [pri.org]
They claim that their sharia law only applies to muslims. Problem is, once the muslim population is dominant then sharia applies to everyone.
http://mashable.com/2016/04/14/aceh-public-caning/#xRUPLBFR9uqw [mashable.com]
There are many examples of what happens when muslim populations exceed 50% of a population. Goodbye country, time to move somewhere else that doesn't have muslims.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday December 20 2016, @12:18PM
Actually, the last people to try to ban Christmas in western nations were the Puritans, in the 1600's, because they felt that it was pagan idolatry and encouraged idle drunkenness. This is one of the many instances where Puritans demonstrated that their real core belief was a lingering fear that somewhere, somebody was having a good time.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.