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6 People Hurt in Knife Attack on Bus in Germany

A woman lights a candle at the site of an attack to commemorate the victims late Friday, Aug. 30 2024, in Solingen, Germany. (Sascha Thelen/dpa via AP)
A woman lights a candle at the site of an attack to commemorate the victims late Friday, Aug. 30 2024, in Solingen, Germany. (Sascha Thelen/dpa via AP)
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6 People Hurt in Knife Attack on Bus in Germany

A woman lights a candle at the site of an attack to commemorate the victims late Friday, Aug. 30 2024, in Solingen, Germany. (Sascha Thelen/dpa via AP)
A woman lights a candle at the site of an attack to commemorate the victims late Friday, Aug. 30 2024, in Solingen, Germany. (Sascha Thelen/dpa via AP)

Police arrested a 32-year-old woman after six people were hurt in a knife attack on a bus headed to a festival in western Germany. Authorities said Saturday that there was no evidence of a political motive.
Three of those attacked are in life-threatening condition, police said on Friday evening.
The knife attack took place in Siegen, east of Cologne. The bus was on its way to a local festival in the town and at least another 40 people were on board when the attack took place at about 7:40 p.m, The Associated Press reported.
Police and prosecutors said the six people wounded were aged between 16 and 30 and all were from the region. By Saturday morning, three of them had left the hospital after outpatient treatment.
Local authorities planned to go ahead with the festival.
The stabbing in Siegen happened a week after a knife attack in Solingen, a city in the same state of North Rhine-Westphalia, in which a suspected extremist from Syria who had avoided being deported is accused of killing three people and wounding another eight.
The Solingen attack prompted the governing coalition to draw up plans to tighten knife laws and make deportations easier.
Police said the woman arrested in Siegen was a German citizen with no immigrant roots.

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Brazil Blocks X after Company Refuses to Name Local Representative

Photo illustration of the logo of the social media platform X (former Twitter) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on August 30, 2024. (Photo by Mauro PIMENTEL / AFP)
Photo illustration of the logo of the social media platform X (former Twitter) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on August 30, 2024. (Photo by Mauro PIMENTEL / AFP)
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Brazil Blocks X after Company Refuses to Name Local Representative

Photo illustration of the logo of the social media platform X (former Twitter) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on August 30, 2024. (Photo by Mauro PIMENTEL / AFP)
Photo illustration of the logo of the social media platform X (former Twitter) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on August 30, 2024. (Photo by Mauro PIMENTEL / AFP)

Brazil started blocking Elon Musk’s social media platform X early Saturday, making it largely inaccessible on both the web and through its mobile app after the company refused to comply with a judge’s order.
X missed a deadline imposed by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes to name a legal representative in Brazil, triggering the suspension. It marks an escalation in the monthslong feud between Musk and de Moraes over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation.
To block X, Brazil’s telecommunications regulator, Anatel, told internet service providers to suspend users’ access to the social media platform. As of Saturday at midnight local time, major operators began doing so, The Associated Press reported.
De Moraes had warned Musk on Wednesday night that X could be blocked in Brazil if he failed to comply with his order to name a representative, and established a 24-hour deadline. The company hasn’t had a representative in the country since earlier this month.
“Elon Musk showed his total disrespect for Brazilian sovereignty and, in particular, for the judiciary, setting himself up as a true supranational entity and immune to the laws of each country,” de Moraes wrote in his decision on Friday.
The justice said the platform will stay suspended until it complies with his orders, and also set a daily fine of 50,000 reais ($8,900) for people or companies using VPNs to access it.
In a later ruling, he backtracked on his initial decision to establish a 5-day deadline for internet service providers themselves — and not just the telecommunications regulator — to block access to X, as well as his directive for app stores to remove virtual private networks, or VPNs.
The dispute also led to the freezing this week of the bank accounts in Brazil of Musk's satellite internet provider Starlink.
Brazil is one of the biggest markets for X, which has struggled with the loss of advertisers since Musk purchased the former Twitter in 2022. Market research group Emarketer says some 40 million Brazilians, roughly one-fifth of the population, access X at least once per month.
“This is a sad day for X users around the world, especially those in Brazil, who are being denied access to our platform. I wish it did not have to come to this – it breaks my heart,” X’s CEO Linda Yaccarino said Friday night, adding that Brazil is failing to uphold its constitution’s pledge to forbid censorship.
X had posted on its official Global Government Affairs page late Thursday that it expected X to be shut down by de Moraes, “simply because we would not comply with his illegal orders to censor his political opponents.”
“When we attempted to defend ourselves in court, Judge de Moraes threatened our Brazilian legal representative with imprisonment. Even after she resigned, he froze all of her bank accounts,” the company wrote.
X has clashed with de Moraes over its reluctance to comply with orders to block users.
Accounts that the platform previously has shut down on Brazilian orders include lawmakers affiliated with former President Jair Bolsonaro’s right-wing party and activists accused of undermining Brazilian democracy. X’s lawyers in April sent a document to the Supreme Court in April, saying that since 2019 it had suspended or blocked 226 users.