While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, Dec 26
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A woman attempts to walk through deep snow during a winter storm in Buffalo, New York, on Dec 24, 2022.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
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Savage US blizzard leaves 26 dead, power outages, travel snarls
A relentless winter storm brought Christmas Day danger and misery to millions of Americans Sunday as intense snow and frigid cold gripped parts of the eastern United States, with weather-related deaths rising to at least 26.
A crisis situation was unfolding in Buffalo, in western New York, where a blizzard has left the city marooned, with emergency services unable to reach high impact areas.
The Buffalo storm is “a crisis of epic proportion” and “the worst of the worst,” said New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a native of Buffalo, where eight-foot (2.4-metre) snow drifts against front doors and power outages in freezing temperatures have made for life-threatening conditions.
More than 200,000 people across several eastern states woke up without power on Christmas morning and many more had their holiday travel plans upended, although the five-day-long storm featuring blizzard conditions and ferocious winds showed signs of easing.
Six dead after bus plunges off bridge into river in Spain
AFP
Six people died and two were injured after a passenger bus careened off a bridge and plunged into an overflowing river in northwestern Spain, emergency services said on Sunday.
Two survivors – the vehicle’s 63-year-old driver and a female passenger – were pulled out of the river by firefighters with rope and taken to nearby hospitals with varying degrees of injury.
The driver tested negative for alcohol and drugs, a police spokesperson said.
King Charles invokes late Queen and faith in humanity in Christmas message
AFP
Britain’s King Charles invoked his late mother, Queen Elizabeth, in his first Christmas message to the nation as monarch and spoke of his faith in humanity at a time of “great anxiety and hardship”.
Charles said he shares with his “whole heart” his mother’s faith in God and people. He was speaking from St George’s Chapel, the final resting place of the late Queen and from where Elizabeth delivered a Christmas message in 1999.
“It is a belief in the extraordinary ability of each person to touch, with goodness and compassion, the lives of others and to shine a light in the world around them,” Charles said.
Two skiers remain missing after Austrian avalanche
AFP
Two people remained unaccounted for after an avalanche in the Lech/Zuers free skiing area in western Austria on Sunday that initially prompted a search for 10 people feared buried, the Austrian Press Agency (APA) reported.
The avalanche occurred at about 3pm (1400 GMT), APA said, adding that several helicopters and search teams deployed soon afterwards.
The suspicion that 10 people were buried by the avalanche was based on a skier’s video that showed “how the skiers come into contact with the avalanche”, APA quoted Hermann Fercher of the Lech/Zuers tourist office as saying.
Bloomberg has no interest in acquiring Dow Jones or Washington Post, spokesman says
REUTERS
Bloomberg L.P. has no interest in acquiring either Dow Jones or the Washington Post, a spokesman said in a tweet.
“There have been no conversations with anyone or either organization about an acquisition,” spokesman Ty Trippet said in the tweet, which was retweeted by billionaire owner Michael Bloomberg.
News website Axios reported on Friday that Bloomberg was interested in acquiring either Wall Street Journal parent company Dow Jones from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, or the Washington Post from Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos, citing a source familiar with Bloomberg’s thinking.
