Weekend Edition.

Stolen bases. The Panama Canal. The future coming at you.

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1. The future coming at you. Watch the video. (Source: x.com)

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2. Germany:

Germany is reeling after an attacker drove a car into a Christmas market in the eastern city of Magdeburg, killing five people, in an incident that’s likely to inflame debate over public safety ahead of federal elections in February.

The Friday evening assault recalled a similar attack in Berlin in 2016, when a driver plowed a truck into a crowd, leaving 13 dead. That sparked an increase in security, including a proliferation of bollards and barriers, to hinder vehicles from entering the marketplaces that pop up in the thousands across Germany in the run-up to Christmas.

The number of fatalities has risen to five and more than 200 people were injured, Saxony-Anhalt state premier Reiner Haseloff said. More than 40 are so seriously wounded “that we have to be very concerned about them,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said during a visit to the state capital on Saturday.

The suspect, a doctor of Saudi Arabian origin who works in the region, drove a rental vehicle into the crowd and was taken into custody, Haseloff said. Authorities investigating the motive behind the attack believe the perpetrator acted alone. (Source: bloomberg.com)

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3. The New York Times:

Over the past few years, violence by the Pakistani Taliban and other Islamist militant groups has surged in parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, in northwestern Pakistan. Experts attribute the increase to the Afghan Taliban’s seizure of power in neighboring Afghanistan in August 2021.

Simultaneously, ethnic separatist groups in the southwestern province of Baluchistan have regained momentum, increasingly targeting security forces and Chinese nationals involved in projects under the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s infrastructure investment program. The separatists accuse Pakistan’s government of allowing China to extract the region’s wealth.