At least 3 killed and others injured in train derailment in southern Germany
Federal and local police said the cause of the crash near Riedlingen, roughly 158 kilometers (98 miles) west of Munich, remains under investigation. Photos from the scene showed parts of the train on its side as rescuers climbed atop the carriages.
It was not immediately clear how many people were injured. Roughly 100 people were onboard the train when at least two carriages derailed in a forested area around 6:10 p.m. (1610 GMT).
Storms passed through the area before the crash and investigators were seeking to determine if the rain was a factor.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, in a post on social platform X, said he mourned the victims and gave his condolences to their families.
Deutsche Bahn, Germany's main national railway operator, said in a statement that it was cooperating with investigators. The company also offered its condolences.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
Death toll soars in Russian strike on Kyiv
Among the dead were five children, the youngest two years old, and 159 were injured, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a post on Telegram. He said that in July alone, Russian forces launched about 3,800 drones, 260 missiles — including 128 ballistic missiles — and 5,100 guided bombs. In June, an overnight attack killed 28 people. Advertisement Zelensky called the overnight attack on Thursday 'a vile blow' and said it demonstrated that additional pressure on Moscow was needed and that Ukraine's Western allies should tighten their sanctions regime against the Kremlin. President Trump has been threatening to do just that. 'No matter how much the Kremlin denies their effectiveness, [the sanctions] are working and must be stronger — to hit everything that allows such strikes to continue,' Zelensky wrote, after receiving a report on the strike from Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko. Trump appears ready to slap additional sanctions on Moscow in a bid to pressure Russia to accept a ceasefire. On Thursday, Trump called the airstrikes on Ukraine 'disgusting' and 'a disgrace,' though he questioned whether sanctions would influence Russian President Vladimir Putin. Advertisement 'I don't know that sanctions bother him,' he said. 'I don't know if that has any effect, but we're going to do it.' The Patriot transfer to Ukraine was made possible by an agreement with the US that Germany would be 'the first nation to receive newly produced, latest-generation Patriot systems at an accelerated pace,' which Berlin would pay for, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said in a statement. The delivery to Ukraine would also include 'additional system components within the next two to three months,' Pistorius said. Ukrainian officials have not commented on the German transfer. However, Patriot antiaircraft systems are highly valued for their ability to shoot down cruise and ballistic missiles, which Russian forces have been firing at Ukrainian targets in clusters, combined with waves of drones, to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses. Ukraine's air force said that Thursday's overnight attack involved more than 300 drones across Ukraine, 21 of which struck targets, and Kyiv bore the brunt. The Ukrainian military also said that eight cruise missiles were fired, five of which penetrated its air defenses. Media reports indicated that all the missiles were directed at Kyiv. One missile partially destroyed an apartment block in a western district of the capital, burying more than a dozen people under rubble. Trump also has been threatening secondary sanctions that would penalize buyers of Russian oil, mainly China and India, potentially starving Russia of funds for its war machine, but so far, he has refrained from imposing them, arguing this could alienate Moscow and reduce hopes of reaching a peace deal. Advertisement Russia, meanwhile, has launched deadly attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, while grinding forward and seizing more territory in eastern Ukraine. Russia has struck playgrounds, maternity hospitals, apartment buildings, civilian buses, and other civilian targets. Russia's Ministry of Defense insists that Russia attacks military targets with 'precision strikes.' Earlier in the week, Trump tightened the deadline to 10 days from 50 days for Russia to agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine or face new sanctions. Trump said that his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, would fly to Russia to meet with officials after visiting Gaza and Israel. Witkoff has met Putin four times in solo meetings in a bid to broker a peace deal, eschewing State Department experts on Russia, and using an interpreter supplied by the Kremlin on at least one occasion. He initially appeared to credit Putin with a will to end the war in return for keeping the territory Russia has seized and shutting Ukraine out of NATO. Those hopes proved overly optimistic. On Thursday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a radio interview that senior US officials were in contact with their Russian counterparts this week but made 'no progress' on securing a ceasefire. Trump has suggested that he is losing patience with Putin after phone conversations in which Putin appeared conciliatory, only to launch new airstrikes, while Ukraine has accepted Trump's call for a ceasefire, Rubio suggested. 'And I think what bothers the president the most is he has these great phone calls where everyone … claims, 'Yeah, we'd like to see this end, if we could find a way forward,' and then he turns on the news and another city has been bombed, including those far from the front lines,' Rubio said. Advertisement 'So, at some point, [Trump has] got to make a decision here about how much to continue to engage in an effort to do ceasefires if one of the two sides is not interested in one,' Rubio said. On Friday, Putin said that any disappointments in the progress of peace talks arose from 'excessive expectations.' 'Negotiations are always in demand and always important, especially if it is a desire for peace. I evaluate them positively overall,' Putin told journalists after meeting Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko at Valaam island in Karelia, in northwest Russia. Putin said Russia's conditions had not changed. Those conditions have long been tantamount to Ukraine's surrender. Putin said Russia needed 'a lasting and durable peace on good basic foundations that would satisfy both Russia and Ukraine and would guarantee security of both countries.'
2 days ago
Horst Mahler, a German Holocaust denier who was once a far-left militant, dies at 89
BERLIN -- Horst Mahler, a founding member of the left-wing Red Army Faction militant group who later became a right-wing extremist and accumulated a series of convictions, including for Holocaust denial, has died, a lawyer who represented him said Monday. He was 89. Mahler died on Sunday at a hospital in Berlin, Jan Dollwetzel, who represented Mahler at a trial in 2023, told German news agency dpa. Mahler, born on Jan. 23, 1936, became a lawyer and in 1969 defended militants Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin in a trial. Shortly afterward, he went on to found the Red Army Faction with them. The group, which emerged from German student protests against the Vietnam War, killed 34 people and injured hundreds of others in a violent campaign against what members considered U.S. imperialism and capitalist oppression of workers. It declared itself disbanded in 1998. In 1970, Mahler was arrested and sentenced to 14 years in prison over various bank robberies with a far-left motivation. He distanced himself from his extremist past while in custody and was released after 10 years. In 1987, he was readmitted to practice as a lawyer with the help of his then-defense attorney, Gerhard Schröder, who would later become German chancellor. In the 1990s, Mahler switched to the opposite political extreme, becoming a member of the far-right National Democratic Party for a few years. He represented the party in 2001 in its case against an unsuccessful attempt by authorities to ban it. Mahler racked up several convictions for denying the Holocaust, which earned him sentences totaling 10 years, and while in prison wrote a 200-page antisemitic screed that was put on the internet by unknown culprits. In 2017, he fled to Hungary after being ordered to return to prison following a break from serving his sentence due to serious illness. Mahler said after he was arrested that he had requested asylum, but his claim was not confirmed by authorities. He was extradited to Germany and returned to prison. Mahler was released in October 2020 and lived in Kleinmachnow, just outside Berlin. Another trial against him was shelved in April 2023 for health reasons and never resumed.
UPI
2 days ago
- UPI
After decade in court, Samsung, South Korea face new test
Samsung Electronics Executive Chairman Jay Y. Lee was exonerated July 17 by the Korean Supreme Court after being charged with offering bribes to the Park administration in exchange for government support for a merger between Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries. File Photo by Jeon Heon-Kyun/EPA/Pool SEOUL, July 30 (UPI) -- When South Korea's Supreme Court acquitted Samsung Electronics Executive Chairman Jay Y. Lee on July 17, it closed a legal saga nearly a decade in the making. But the decision may mark more than the end of a courtroom drama. It could signal a shift in how the country reconciles its democratic institutions with its corporate giants. The case's origins trace back to late 2016, when a sprawling, influence-peddling scandal involving then-President Park Geun-hye and her confidante, Choi Soon-sil, led to mass protests and ultimately impeachment. Lee was accused of offering bribes to the Park administration in exchange for government support for a merger between Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries -- a deal allegedly designed to consolidate Lee's control of the Samsung empire. Those charges led to his arrest in 2017, a conviction and a partial prison sentence -- later overturned and retried multiple times. But the legal fight didn't end there. In 2018, the influential civic group People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, or PSPD -- known in Korean as "Cham-yeo Yeon-dae" -- filed a complaint that sparked a second wave of prosecutorial action. This time, the target was Samsung Biologics, a Cheil Industries subsidiary that was accused of inflating its value by approximately 4.5 trillion won (roughly $3.1 billion) to facilitate the earlier merger. That complaint triggered years of sweeping investigations, raids and indictments, culminating in more than 100 court appearances by Lee. In September 2023, prosecutors formally charged him and 10 other Samsung executives with 23 counts, including accounting fraud, capital markets violations and breach of trust. Lower courts in 2024 and 2025 found all defendants not guilty. The Supreme Court reviewed 229 pieces of evidence before unanimously affirming the acquittal. In most advanced democracies, such as the United States or France, double jeopardy rules would have barred further appeals after the first acquittal. In South Korea, no such rule exists, and this prolonged judicial exposure has raised profound questions about prosecutorial discretion and democratic balance. A corporate giant stalled by legal paralysis While Samsung's leadership was tied up in litigation, its competitors surged ahead. Since its $8 billion acquisition of Harman in 2017, the company had been unable to pursue any major deals -- until May, when it acquired German data-center cooling firm Flect for $1.45 billion. Inside Samsung, a new term emerged: sammuwon -- a blend of "Samsung" and gongmuwon (civil servant) -- used to describe an increasingly bureaucratic, risk-averse corporate culture. The absence of top-level decision-making stifled innovation at a time when the global tech race accelerated. The results were severe. In 2023, Intel surpassed Samsung as the world's leading chipmaker. Samsung's share in high-bandwidth memory -- a core technology for artificial intelligence -- slipped significantly. As of early 2025, Taiwan's TSMC dominated with 67.6% market share, while Samsung fell to 7.7%. Even China's SMIC narrowed the gap, trailing Samsung by just 1.7 percentage points. In smartphones, Apple dethroned Samsung after 13 years at the top. The company's market capitalization declined to 394 won in mid-2025 from 513 trillion won in April 2021. This wasn't simply a matter of poor timing. The leadership vacuum created by Lee's long legal battle contributed directly to strategic paralysis -- and to South Korea's weakened global tech positioning. Prosecutorial overreach or due process? Critics argue that prosecutors went too far. After the 2018 complaint by PSPD, investigators conducted raids across Samsung's network -- from its headquarters and biotech subsidiaries to even its data centers and U.S. investment partners like Goldman Sachs. Multiple requests for Lee's arrest were denied due to insufficient grounds, yet prosecutors pressed ahead, replacing investigative teams and broadening the scope of their case. In June 2023, a civilian-led investigative review panel recommended halting the probe. Prosecutors disregarded the advice. They proceeded with indictments in September 2023. That defiance of civilian oversight and judicial caution stirred debate not only about Samsung, but also about Korea's broader rule-of-law culture. The consistent acquittals at every level -- district, high court and finally the Supreme Court -- suggest that this wasn't merely a complex financial case. It was a political flashpoint in which Samsung served as both symbol and target. A strategic pivot from the Blue House The political backdrop to the final ruling is equally instructive. President Lee Jae-myung, a progressive long known for his populist critiques of the chaebol, had initially distanced himself from Korea's corporate elite. But recent months tell a different story. Amid rising economic headwinds -- including potential 25% U.S. reciprocal tariffs and rapid shifts in global supply chains -- Lee has made quiet overtures to the same conglomerates he once criticized. He has held private meetings with Jay Y. Lee, SK's Chey Tae-won and Hanwha's Kim Dong-kwan, and surprised many by appointing Park Yong-maan, former chairman of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, as South Korea's lead envoy for critical trade talks with Washington. This pivot suggests that the administration now recognizes what it once resisted: In times of geopolitical and economic upheaval, Korea's future depends on more than the public sector. It needs a competitive and globally integrated private sector. Beyond acquittal: toward a new compact For Jay Y. Lee, the acquittal brings not just personal vindication but a renewed mandate. His post-verdict statement -- "Samsung faces an existential crisis" -- rings with urgency. It reflects the mounting pressure to restore Korea's standing in AI, chips and advanced manufacturing. But this is not just Lee's test. It is also President Lee's. Can the government and business community now forge a more balanced social compact -- one that safeguards democratic accountability without strangling innovation? Can prosecutors focus on corruption, not corporate strategy? Can Korean capitalism mature beyond a binary of idolization and demonization? The Supreme Court's ruling may have closed the book on a decade of legal warfare. But it also opened the door to something far more consequential: a national conversation about how power -- public and private -- should be wielded in a modern democracy. The question now is whether Korea has the will -- and wisdom -- to seize the opportunity.
