World

Prosecutors will seek to have a German-Armenian man accused of ploughing a car through a crowd in central Berlin kept in psychiatric care after he showed signs of mental illness, a spokesman for the prosecution said Thursday.

The 29-year-old has shown “relatively strong” signs of suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, spokesman Sebastian Buechner said, a day after a schoolteacher was killed and 32 other people injured in the incident.

The suspect, who had an unspecified medication at his home, has also released his doctors from their confidentiality pledge, he added.

Further investigations will determine whether mental illness was the cause of the crime, but a political motive is currently being ruled out, Buechner said.

The suspect is accused of driving into passers-by in a busy shopping district in the German capital, mowing down a group of teenagers and killing their teacher before crashing through a shop window.

The rampage happened just across from Breitscheidplatz, where an Islamic State group sympathiser deliberately ploughed a truck into a Christmas market in 2016, killing 12. 

In Wednesday’s case, the silver Renault Clio with a Berlin licence plate first mounted the sidewalk, hitting the secondary school students on a class trip, before returning to the road and then ramming into the front of a perfume shop.

A female teacher with the group from a school in Bad Arolsen, a small town in the central state of Hesse, was killed and a male teacher was seriously injured. 

– Terrorism fears –

Frank Vittchen, a witness at the scene, told AFP he was sitting at a fountain nearby when he “heard a big crash and then also saw a person fly through the air”. 

The car drove “at high speed onto the pavement and didn’t brake”, he said, with its windows shattering from the impact.

Media reports of the suspect fleeing the scene and a confession letter found in the car had stoked fears the incident may have been a terrorist attack.

However, Berlin interior minister Iris Spranger had on Wednesday said there was no “conclusive evidence of a political act” and the attack seemed to have been “committed by someone suffering from psychological problems”.

Germany has seen several car rammings since the deadly 2016 Christmas market assault, with most carried out by people who were found to have psychological issues.

In December 2020, a German man ploughed his car through a pedestrian shopping street in the southwestern city of Trier, killing four adults and a baby.

Earlier the same year, a German man rammed his car through a carnival procession in the central town of Volkmarsen, injuring dozens of bystanders, including children. He was sentenced to life in jail last year.

In January 2019, another German man injured eight people when he drove into crowds on New Year’s Eve in the western cities of Bottrop and Essen. He was later taken into psychiatric care.

In April 2018, a German crashed his van into people seated outside a restaurant in the city of Muenster, killing five before shooting himself dead. Investigators later said he had mental health problems.

During the football World Cup in Germany in 2006, a German man rammed his car into crowds gathered to watch a match at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, injuring some 20 people. The driver was later committed to a psychiatric hospital.

A giant crocodile-faced dinosaur, discovered on the Isle of Wight by one of Britain’s best fossil hunters, was probably the largest predator ever to stalk Europe, scientists said on Thursday.

Most of the bones of the two-legged spinosaurid were found by the late local collector Nick Chase, who dedicated his life to combing the beaches of the island on England’s southern coast for dinosaur remains.

Researchers at the University of Southampton then used the few bones available to identify what they have called the “White Rock spinosaurid”, they said in a study published in the journal PeerJ.

“This was a huge animal, exceeding 10 metres (33 feet) in length and judging from some of the dimensions, probably represents the largest predatory dinosaur ever found in Europe,” said Chris Barker, a PhD student who led the study.

While admitting it would be better to have more bones, Barker told AFP the “numbers don’t lie — it is bigger than the biggest known specimen” previously found in Europe.

Thomas Richard Holtz, a vertebrate paleontologist from the University of Maryland not involved in study, agreed that the new find “does seem to be larger” than a huge predator whose fossilised remains were discovered in Portugal.

Matt Lamanna, a dinosaur palaeontologist at Carnegie Museum of Natural History in the US, praised the “excellent, thorough study of the specimen” given the lack of bones, but said it was difficult to compare sizes.

For example, he said the biggest known spinosaurid, the Spinosaurus, was likely the longest such dinosaur “but it probably wasn’t as heavy” as the Tyrannosaurus rex or the Giganotosaurus — “the latter of which is about to become super-famous thanks to the new ‘Jurassic World’ movie”.

– Why the long face? –

The White Rock spinosaurid — which the researchers hope to formally name as a new species — is from the Early Cretaceous period and is estimated to be around 125 million years old.

Barker said that makes it the youngest spinosaurid found in Britain, two or three million years younger than the well-known Baryonyx.

Spinosaurids are known for their elongated heads. Rather than having the boxy skull of a Tyrannosaurus rex, their faces look more like that of a crocodile.

A leading theory to explain this trait is that they hunted in water as well as on land.

“They’re kind of like storks and herons, wading in and snatching fish from the surface,” Barker said.

The White Rock spinosaurid was discovered in a coastal lagoon environment where few dinosaur fossils are normally found.

“It helps start to paint a picture of what animals were living in the time, which is a very poorly known part of English palaeontological heritage,” Barker added.

The team had already identified two new spinosaurid species on the Isle of Wight, including the Ceratosuchops inferodios — dubbed the “hell heron”.

“This new animal bolsters our previous argument — published last year — that spinosaurid dinosaurs originated and diversified in western Europe before becoming more widespread,” study co-author Darren Naish said.

– Collector’s ‘uncanny ability’ –

The palaeontologists paid tribute to Chase, who always donated whatever bones he found to museums.

“Most of these amazing fossils were found by Nick Chase, one of Britain’s most skilled dinosaur hunters, who sadly died just before the Covid epidemic,” said study co-author Jeremy Lockwood, a PhD student at the University of Portsmouth.

Barker said Chase’s “uncanny ability” to find bones showed that “it’s not just professional palaeontologists who are making impacts in the discipline”.

The discovery “highlights the fact that collectors have a big role to play in modern palaeontology and their generosity helps move science forwards”, he added.

And if there any aspiring fossil hunters hoping to pick up where Chase left off, the palaeontologists would welcome more White Rock spinosaurid bones.

“We hope that a passerby might pick up some bits and donate them,” Barker said.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Thursday sought to reset his embattled leadership with vows to tackle Britain’s cost-of-living crisis, including contentious new measures to boost home ownership.

After narrowly surviving a no-confidence vote among his own Conservative MPs on Monday, Johnson is under pressure to turn the page on a series of scandals including lockdown-breaching parties in Downing Street.

In a speech in Blackpool, northwest England, he promised new reforms “to help people cut costs in every area of household expenditure — from food to energy to childcare to transport and housing”. 

“This government is on the side of the British public in coping with those pressures,” Johnson insisted.  

The scale of the inflationary crisis hitting millions of Britons was underlined as the price of filling up the average family car topped £100 ($125) for the first time, according to the RAC motoring group.

RAC spokesman Simon Williams called it “a truly dark day” for hard-pressed drivers, and urged the government to slash sales tax on petrol and diesel.

Johnson said much of the crisis was caused by factors beyond the government’s control, such as the impact of the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

But with two difficult by-elections coming up this month, unhappy Tory MPs want bolder measures including tax cuts after 40 percent of them voted against Johnson on Monday.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has warned that Britain must cut taxes or raise spending, forecasting it will suffer the developed world’s weakest economic growth next year.

Johnson did not promise any such cuts in Blackpool, although he and his finance minister Rishi Sunak are working on another tax-focussed speech for the coming days. 

Johnson did warn against a “wage-price spiral” by workers, and signalled no compromise with Britain’s biggest rail union, which is planning to shut down the train network this month to press wage demands.

– Back to the 80s –

Updating a signature policy of 1980s predecessor Margaret Thatcher, Johnson’s speech detailed a plan to enable more low-income renters to buy their own social housing in England.

Senior minister Michael Gove told Sky News that “home ownership is not just good for individuals, it’s good for society overall”.

He vowed the measures would help redress a crippling shortage in housing stock that has seen both purchase and rental prices rocket well out of reach of many Britons, especially younger adults.

But the opposition Labour party noted that the plan would need billions in extra money, which Gove admitted was not on offer, relying instead on existing funding at a time when the Treasury is already trying to rein in government spending.

“By their own reckoning, this will help a few thousand families a year,” senior Labour MP Lisa Nandy told BBC radio.

“For those families that will be very welcome,” she said, while warning it could make “the housing crisis worse for everybody else”.

The government plan focusses on making it easier for benefit claimants to save towards a mortgage deposit. 

But it said little about building new homes in England, which is often hampered by local planning objections.

Housing policy expert Toby Lloyd doubted the plan would have much effect.

“I’d be very surprised if it happens in anything like the scale they expect, and if it does I don’t expect it to have that much impact,” he told BBC radio.

– Fight with EU –

Under current Conservative party rules, Johnson cannot be challenged again for a year, which leaves little time for any new leader to emerge before the next general election due by 2024.

But Johnson’s Tory enemies still appear to be manoeuvring, with reports that he faces “vote strikes” to paralyse the government’s legislative agenda. 

Such tactics hurt Theresa May’s three-year stint in Downing Street, before she was brought down in 2019 by Johnson and his allies over how to execute Britain’s exit from the European Union.

Johnson is set to launch another counter-offensive on the Brexit front, by introducing legislation next week to rewrite a pact with the EU governing trade with Northern Ireland, unless Brussels agrees to changes.

Gove denied the prime minister was seeking to appease Brexit hardliners on the Tory backbenches after this week’s vote.

The UN atomic energy watchdog said on Thursday that Iran was removing 27 surveillance cameras at its nuclear facilities, warning this could be a “fatal blow” to negotiations to revive a landmark deal.

Talks began in April last year to bring the United States back to the 2015 accord, lifting sanctions, and Iran back into compliance, limiting its nuclear activities.

But negotiations have stalled since March, and raising tensions, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) members on Wednesday passed a resolution censuring Iran over its lack of cooperation with the watchdog.

Iran has condemned the motion as “unconstructive”, announcing earlier on Wednesday that it had disconnected some IAEA cameras monitoring its nuclear sites.

“What we have been informed is that 27 cameras … are being removed in Iran,” IAEA chief Rafael Grossi told reporters on Thursday. 

“So this of course poses a serious challenge to our ability to continue working there.”

Grossi urged Iran to engage with him “immediately”. 

He said if a solution was not found within three to four weeks to the issue, this would be “a fatal blow” to negotiations.

Grossi said about 40 monitoring cameras remained in the Islamic republic.

– ‘Firm stance’ –

Wednesday’s motion — approved by 30 of the 35 members of the IAEA board of governors, with only Russia and

 China voting against — was the first to criticise Iran since June 2020.

Iran’s foreign ministry criticised the resolution — submitted by the United States, Britain, France and Germany — as a “political, unconstructive and incorrect action”.

The resolution came after the IAEA said Iran continued to fail to explain adequately the previous discovery of traces of enriched uranium at three sites which Tehran had not declared as having hosted nuclear activities.

Iran, which had already responded angrily to Grossi’s decision to visit Israel ahead of the board of governors meeting, accused the watchdog of relying too much on “fabricated” Israeli intelligence reports.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett welcomed the IAEA’s censure of Iran.

“We see here a firm stance by the countries of the world regarding the distinction between good and evil, as they clearly state that Iran is concealing things,” Bennett said before heading to the United Arab Emirates, a fellow Iran critic, for a previously unannounced visit on Thursday.

After the resolution was adopted, the US, Britain, France and Germany urged Iran “to fulfil its legal obligations and cooperate with the IAEA”.

The US State Department said that if confirmed, Iran’s reported counter-measures were “extremely regrettable” and “counterproductive” to attempts to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.

The foreign ministry in Tehran said besides deactivating the cameras in response to the IAEA censure motion, Iran has also installed additional advanced centrifuges for uranium enrichment.

– Nuclear ambitions –

The landmark agreement set limits to Iran’s nuclear activities in return for relief from international sanctions. But it has been in disarray since then US president Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from it in 2018 and reimposed crippling sanctions.

In response, Iran, which has repeatedly denied any ambition to develop a nuclear weapons capability, began rolling back on its own commitments under the deal.

European capitals have expressed mounting concern over how far Iran has gone in resuming nuclear activities since the US began reimposing sanctions.

Iran has built up large stockpiles of enriched uranium, some of it enriched to levels far higher than those needed for nuclear power generation.

The IAEA head said on Monday it would be “a matter of just a few weeks” before Iran could obtain sufficient material needed for a nuclear weapon if it continues to develop its programme.

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