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Collin Carter-19 year old got sentenced to 7 years in prison for killing his two bestfriends in a car wreck.

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FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports

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INDEPENDENCE, Mo. -- A Lee's Summit teenager pleaded not guilty Monday to two counts of involuntary manslaughter and one count of second degree assault.

Collin Carter is accused of causing a deadly crash in February that killed two friends traveling with him.

Some witnesses claimed the 18-year-old may have been traveling more than 80 miles an hour when he lost control of the car and crashed.

But after appearing in court to waive his preliminary hearing and pleading not guilty, Carter's lawyer called those statements wildly inaccurate. John Picerno says the state's crime scene investigator could only determine that Carter's car was traveling 46 miles an hour when it hit another vehicle.

Picerno says in February, Carter's car passed another vehicle on Pryor Road and then began to fishtail. Carter is accused of losing control, and the car rolled over into oncoming traffic where it collided with another vehicle.

"He was on a ventilator for a significant period of time," Picerno said. "His buddy who passed away, when the car rolled and flipped over, actually was on top of him. The fact of the matter is at this point we don't even know if Colin was driving. We have to conduct an investigation. He doesn't know whether he was driving. He has no memory of it, and he was found in the passenger seat."

The crash killed Carter's friends, Nathan Giron, 18, and Courtney Rardin, 18. The three were going to get something to eat after school. Picerno also is upset over reports that Carter may have been intoxicated. He says prosecutors are not claiming that, although court documents say a depressant drug was detected in Carter's system after the accident. Picerno suspects paramedics gave Carter the drug following the crash because he was hysterical at the scene and rescue workers could not calm him down.

"It's always tough," Picerno said. "These are boyhood friends of his. I think we can all think back, those of us who have children, we know the fear that we have when our child gets behind the wheel. We think back to our own age of how we operated a motor vehicle when we were 18-years old."

Picerno calls the case a tragedy, not a criminal act and says the teen should not be convicted of a felony or spend any time behind bars.

Carter is scheduled to be back in court on April 27.

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Lee's Summit teen pleads not guilty in crash that killed two friends

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INDEPENDENCE, Mo. -- A Lee's Summit teenager pleaded not guilty Monday to two counts of involuntary manslaughter and one count of second degree assault. Collin Carter is accused of causing a deadly crash in February that killed two friends traveling with him.

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Conor McGregor might not be taking a long hiatus from the UFC after all but his return may depend on the new UFC owners sitting down and talking to their biggest cash cow.

Following his stunning second round TKO over Eddie Alvarez in November, McGregor remarked that he was looking to meet with UFC brass about receiving some sort of equity or possible ownership deal after raking in record breaking numbers for the company in his last few fights.

McGregor said he wasn't going to fight again until he had a chance to meet with the new owners while also awaiting the birth of his first child in May. UFC president Dana White later said he expected McGregor to be out of action for the next 10 months, which means the current lightweight champion wouldn't return until the second half of 2017.

Now McGregor says that there's a chance he would come back before that date, but he's still not signing on for any bout until after he sits down to talk with WME-IMG co-CEO's Ari Emanuel and Patrick Whitesell to discuss his future.

"As far as a break, I don't know. I know Dana's (White) been on record been like 10 months, he's taking 10 months. What do you say 10 months? Originally I thought the baby was being born in March and then it was May and then I was like maybe I could get another one. But I just don't know," McGregor explained when speaking to RTE Sport in Ireland.

"I'm weighing up my options. Again, I expect that conversation, I expect them to fly that jet to me. Ari (Emanuel), Patrick (Whitesell), the new owners from WME-IMG, the guys that bought the UFC for $4 billion, I want to speak to them."

Conor McGregor talks to Clare McNamara after a year which he call the 'culmination of his life's work'. https://t.co/0AY8QPqGyu

- RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) December 17, 2016

McGregor says since the UFC sale happened back in July, he still hasn't sat down and had a legitimate business meeting with the new owners despite headlining two monstrous cards in August against Nate Diaz and again in November for his fight with Alvarez.

Most recently, McGregor says his only contact with the UFC has been through the news he's received through the media saying he's been stripped of his featherweight title just 14 days after becoming the first ever simultaneous two division champion.

Of course, White warned McGregor that if he won two belts he would eventually have to give one of them up, but the Irishman sais that's all he's heard since making history at UFC 205 and not much else.

So McGregor has a message for the new UFC owners regarding his championships as well as his future with the promotion heading into 2017.

"I want to see what their plan is cause right now I don't know what anybody's plan is. All I know is they're trying to type onto a keyboard and say we're taking this belt and we're taking that belt, we're doing this, we're doing that - you ain't doing nothing without contacting me first," McGregor warned.

"I'm ready for anything. I did say I was going to take a break but a Christmas break, the holidays. At least give me the holidays off. We'll see what happens in the future."

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Conor McGregor sends a message to the new UFC owners

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Conor McGregor might not be taking a long hiatus from the UFC after all but his return may depend on the new UFC owners sitting down and talking to their biggest cash cow.

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Berlin Christmas market attacker could be at large, authorities admit. An asylum seeker detained by police after a large truck was rammed into a Berlin Christmas market may not have been the driver, German authorities said Tuesday, leading to fears that the attacker could still be at large.Berlin Police President Klaus Kandt said that officials could not be certain that the man in custody -- who was picked up about a mile away from where 12 people were killed and 48 others injured -- was responsible for the attack on Monday evening.

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The world is on the brink of war that world leaders everywhere are comparing to the beginning of wwi in 1914

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football star punches women in the head

an Oklahoma judge has released 2014 video of Oklahoma running back Joe Mixon punching a women in the head at a restaurant
http://www.cnn.com/videos/sports/2016/12/17/joe-mixon-video-oklahoma-newday.cnn

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danaya vann - Russian 'methbot'  fraud steals 180 million in online ads 

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danaya vann - Russian 'methbot'  fraud steals 180 million in online ads 

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Russian cybercriminals have built a new high-tech fraud enterprise: Showing real ads to fake people.

The fraud has siphoned more than $180 million from the online ad industry, according to researchers.

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This summer, Adventures by Disney-- the guided tour arm of the Disney Company-- dipped its toe in the growing river cruising market, offering a Danube River cruise itinerary in partnership with AmaWaterways.

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This summer, Adventures by Disney-- the guided tour arm of the Disney Company-- dipped its toe in the growing river cruising market, offering a Danube River cruise itinerary in partnership with AmaWaterways.

River cruising has traditionally catered to a more mature consumer but the new 170 passenger AmaViola sold-out for the limited Adventures by Disney summer sailings.

Now, Adventures by Disney returns to the Danube for two holiday cruises this December. There are plenty of family friendly things on board-- from twinkling lights and dangling baubles, to spiced gingerbread cookies and spiked eggnog, to carols and music.
6 FREE THINGS TO DO AT DISNEY THIS HOLIDAY SEASON
You'll also get to visit historic and renowned old-world European Christmas markets during the trip. Here are some of the top features of a different type of Disney cruise.

1. Don't expect the typical Disney Cruise experience

Danube River cruises have been a staple of many river cruise lines, including AmaWaterways, for years, but there are notable differences for the Adventures by Disney itineraries. The AmaViola (which launched in April 2016), was built specifically with families in mind. Family-friendly features include larger staterooms that accommodate three- and four-person families as well as connecting staterooms for larger groups, these configurations are unusual compared to the typical river cruise ship staterooms for two.

In addition, shipboard common spaces provide specially designed activities geared towards kids, teens and adults such as: family karaoke, movie nights, a magic show, cooking classes, games, and more.

Kristin Karst, executive vice president and co-owner of AmaWaterways, says the holiday cruise offers great experiences multigenerational families will enjoy like visits to Europe's renowned Christmas markets in Budapest and Vienna, a Vienna Boys Choir Christmas performance in the Hofburg Palace Chapel and a special holiday-themed lunch.

"Adventure guides onboard accompany guests on every excursion and provide young travelers with a variety of kid-focused activities, giving the adults more time to explore Europe's wonders together."

Guides are a key differentiator-- and they're standard for the company's guided vacation group tours. On every trip, there are two Disney guides for every 40 people. They're also specially trained to cater to both chilldren and adult guests.

2. Europe goes above and beyond for the holidays

"Our goal was to create a European vacation that's active, immersive and easy for families," Heather Killingbeck, Director of Program Development & Operations for Adventures by Disney says.

"We often aim to tell the amazing stories of each town or city in active ways such as climbing above the trees in Germany and sliding down into salt mines in Austria, and more. In this way the kids have fun while learning about European history and culture."

This holiday Danube River cruise begins in Munich, Germany, the heart of Bavaria, for one of the region's oldest Christmas markets. After boarding the AmaViola in Vilshofen, Germany, the trip takes a week to sail down the Danube stopping at holiday markets in Austria and Slovakia before arriving in Budapest, Hungary.

"Parents especially told us that they loved the trip because their children didn't even realize how much they were learning," Killingbeck says. "For our holiday sailings we've added festive elements, such as a themed holiday party, gingerbread making, gift exchanges for the Junior Adventurers and more, making these trips the perfect way to savor the season with loved ones."
IS A DISNEY CRUISE REALLY WORTH THE COST?
3. The Disney details

Adventures by Disney's holiday Danube River cruise starts at $4,439/adult and $4,229/child (12 and under), compared to $3,800/person booked directly with AmaWaterways. You do pay a premium for the seamless door-to-door travel, two Disney guides, and a few Disney perks offered by Adventures by Disney.

A common criticism of all Adventures by Disney trips are their jammed-packed itineraries since each day features activities in the morning, afternoon, and sometimes evening as well. However, you can control your vacation destiny and can opt out of any planned excursions.

Dave Parfitt is a Rochester, N.Y.-based travel writer. He is the founder of Adventures by Daddy, a digital database offering family-friendly travel advice from a father's point of view.

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Disney hops on the river cruising trend with holiday tours down the Danube

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This summer, Adventures by Disney-- the guided tour arm of the Disney Company-- dipped its toe in the growing river cruising market, offering a Danube River cruise itinerary in partnership with AmaWaterways. River cruising has traditionally catered to a more mature consumer but the new 170 passenger AmaViola sold-out for the limited Adventures by Disney summer sailings.

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China says it has handed over U.S. drone taken in South China Sea

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Trump secures victory in Electoral College, as bid to flip electors flops

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apple owes over 2 million dollars for not giving workers meal breaks

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Donald Trump is preparing to create an infrastructure “task force”

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The Russian Ambassador to Turkey, Andrey Karlov, was assassinated yesterday.

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ISTANBUL - Russia's ambassador to Turkey was assassinated at an Ankara art exhibit on Monday evening by a lone Turkish gunman shouting "God is great!" and "don't forget Aleppo, don't forget Syria!" in what the leaders of Turkey and Russia called a provocative terrorist attack.

The gunman, described by Turkish officials as a 22-year-old off-duty police officer, also wounded at least three others in the assault on the envoy, Andrey G. Karlov, which was captured on video. Turkish officials said the assailant was killed by other officers in a shootout.

The assassination, an embarrassing security failure in the Turkish capital, forced Turkey and Russia to confront a new crisis tied directly to the Syrian conflict, now in its sixth year.

The longer-term implications for the Russia-Turkey relationship, which had been warming recently after plunging a year ago, were not immediately clear. But some analysts played down the notion that the assassination would lead to a new rupture, saying it could conversely bring the countries closer together in a shared fight against terrorism.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said on Russian television that Mr. Karlov had been "despicably killed" to sabotage ties with Turkey. Mr. Putin spoke with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, by phone, and the two leaders agreed to cooperate in investigating the killing, and in combating terrorism broadly.

In an emergency meeting with Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov and other top officials, Mr. Putin said, "There can be only one answer to this - stepping up the fight against terrorism, and the bandits will feel this."

Mr. Erdogan, in a speech late Monday night, said the assassination was a provocation meant to derail efforts by Turkey and Russia to collaborate more closely on regional issues and economic ties.

"We know that this is a provocation aiming to destroy the normalization process of Turkey-Russia relations," Mr. Erdogan said. "But the Russian government and the Turkish republic have the will to not fall into that provocation."

The assassination came after days of protests by Turks angry over Russia's support for the Syrian government in the conflict and the Russian role in the killings and destruction in Aleppo, the northern Syrian city.

The Russian envoy was shot from behind and immediately fell to the floor while speaking at an exhibition of photographs, according to multiple accounts from the scene, the Contemporary Arts Center in the Cankaya area of Ankara.

The gunman, wearing a dark suit and tie, was seen in video footage of the assault waving a pistol and shouting in Arabic: "God is great! Those who pledged allegiance to Muhammad for jihad. God is great!"

Then he switched to Turkish and shouted: "Don't forget Aleppo, don't forget Syria! Step back! Step back! Only death can take me from here."

Image

People huddled during the shooting in the art gallery. Credit Burhan Ozbilici/Associated Press

Hasim Kilic, a Turkish photographer for the Hurriyet news organization who witnessed the attack and sold his images to Reuters, said in a telephone interview that the gunman had fired seven shots at the ambassador - "four from behind, three while the body was on the ground" - as guests screamed and scrambled to hide.

Mr. Kilic, who was crouched behind a cocktail table about 12 feet away, said the gunman had ordered everyone else out and refused a security guard's request to drop his weapon. "Call the police, and I will die here," Mr. Kilic quoted the assailant as saying.

Turkish officials said the gunman was killed after a shootout with Turkish Special Forces.

He was identified by Turkey's interior minister as Mevlut Mert Altintas, from the western province of Aydin and a graduate of a police college in Izmir. Local news reports said that Mr. Altintas's mother and sister had been arrested and that a computer had been confiscated from their house.

While it was too early to tell if the gunman acted alone, his use of jihadist slogans and his invocation of Syria raised the possibility that he was a member, or at least a sympathizer, of an Islamist group like Al Qaeda's Syria affiliate or the Islamic State, two organizations that Turkey has been accused by allies, including the United States, of supporting in the past.

Russia's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, told the Rossiya 24 news channel that Mr. Karlov had died of his wounds in what she described as a terrorist attack. Turkey's Interior Ministry said the ambassador had died at Guven Hospital in Ankara.

Russian news agencies said the ambassador's wife fainted and was hospitalized after learning of her husband's death. They also said that as a precaution, Russian tourists in Turkey had been advised against leaving their hotel rooms or visiting public places.

The gunman after shooting the Russian ambassador. Credit Burhan Ozbilici/Associated Press

Russia's Tass news agency said that Mr. Karlov had been shot from behind while finishing remarks at the opening of an art exhibition titled "Russia Through Turks' Eyes."

Mr. Karlov, who started his career as a diplomat in 1976, worked extensively in North Korea over two decades, before changing regions in 2007, according to a biography on the Russian Embassy's website. He became ambassador in July 2013.

The attack was a rare instance of an assassination of a Russian envoy. Historians said it might have been the first since Pyotr Voykov, a Soviet ambassador to Poland, was shot to death in Warsaw in 1927.

For many Russians, the assassination is likely to recall the 19th-century killing in Tehran of Aleksandr Griboyedov, a poet and diplomat who died after a mob stormed the Russian Embassy. That episode is remembered as the most severe insult to Russia's diplomatic corps in the country's history.

More recently, the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah, now allied with Russia in Syria, kidnapped four Soviet diplomats in 1985, killing one and releasing three a month later.

The United States, which has tangled bitterly with Russia over the Syrian conflict, quickly condemned the assassination in Ankara. In a statement, Secretary of State John Kerry called it a "despicable attack, which was also an assault on the right of all diplomats to safely and securely advance and represent their nations around the world."

The Turkish police secured the area outside the art gallery after the attack. Credit Erhan Ortac/Getty Images

Other prominent officials who often criticize Russia's actions in Syria and elsewhere also offered their condolences. "No justification for such a heinous act," Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of NATO, said on Twitter. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations said he was "appalled by this senseless act of terror."

President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has been accused by critics of aligning with Russia, said in a statement that Mr. Karlov had been "assassinated by a radical Islamic terrorist."

The assassination also illustrated the long reach of the Syrian war. It has destabilized Europe with hundreds of thousands of refugees, spawned terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels, and led to the rise of the Islamic State, which controls territory across Iraq and Syria.

When the war began, Turkey was rising and confident, and Mr. Erdogan, then its prime minister, began supporting rebels seeking the ouster of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. Preoccupied with bringing Mr. Assad down, Turkey opened its borders to weapons and fighters flowing to the rebels, turning a blind eye, for a time, when the opposition turned increasingly Islamist.

As the war ground on, the consequences for Turkey were profound. It was overwhelmed with refugees - more than three million now reside in the country - and the rise of the Islamic State led to terrorist attacks within Turkey's borders.

In the fall of 2015, Russia entered the conflict in support of the Syrian government, reinforcing Mr. Assad at a weak moment and dealing a blow to Turkey's ambitions in Syria. Relations between Turkey and Russia reached a low point in November 2015 after Turkey shot down a Russian jet near the Syrian border.

But this year, in an effort to restore relations, Mr. Erdogan, now Turkey's president, met with Mr. Putin in St. Petersburg, and ever since the two countries have largely put aside their differences on Syria and focused on improving economic ties. In August, when Turkey's military went into Syria to push the Islamic State out of the border town of Jarabulus, the move was widely seen as having been made with the tacit approval of Russia.

For Turkey, the Ankara attack resonated in the Turkish collective memory: Turkey lost many diplomats in the 20th century to Armenian militants in a campaign to avenge the Armenian genocide during World War I.

"Turkey is very aware of the size of this failure, and I think the government will make every effort to investigate this fully," Sinan Ulgen, a Turkish former diplomat who is the chairman of the Center for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies, an Istanbul research organization, said of the Russian diplomat's assassination. "I don't expect any crisis between Turkey and Russia."

Since the Turkish military incursion into Syria in August, Mr. Erdogan's criticism of Russia over Syria had been muted. But Mr. Erdogan faced a dilemma: Even as he was warming to Russia, he faced a Turkish public, not to mention the Syrian refugees within Turkey, angry over Russia's role in the bombing of Aleppo.

On Monday evening in Istanbul, just after the assassination, a group of protesters gathered outside the Russian consulate on Istiklal Avenue, the city's largest pedestrian street. The gathering was more street theater than protest, with two men lying on the street, shrouded in bloody sheets and the Syrian flag, and surrounded by candles, to represent the killings in Aleppo.

Mohammed al-Shibli, a Syrian activist who participated, said, "I felt extreme happiness when I heard the news" of the assassination.

He continued: "This is the first step in getting justice for the Syrian people. The ambassador is not innocent. He represents the foreign policy of his murderous state and thus he is a murderer, as well. Now we are waiting for revenge against everyone who shed blood in Syria."

Correction:

Tim Arango reported from Istanbul, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Reporting was contributed by Ivan Nechepurenko, Oleg Matsnev and Andrew E. Kramer from Moscow, Safak Timur and Karam Shoumali from Istanbul, Sewell Chan from London, Gardiner Harris from Washington and Bryant Rousseau from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Russia's Envoy Gunned Down By Lone Turk. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Russian Ambassador to Turkey Is Assassinated in Ankara

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ISTANBUL - Russia's ambassador to Turkey was assassinated at an Ankara art exhibit on Monday evening by a lone Turkish gunman shouting "God is great!" and "don't forget Aleppo, don't forget Syria!" in what the leaders of Turkey and Russia called a provocative terrorist attack.

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Super Mario Run Is A Bust? Nintendo Stocks Are Down!

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Super Mario Run Is A Bust? Nintendo Stocks Are Down!

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In I'm not surprised news; Nintendo's stocks have dropped 11% since the release of Super Mario Run. Why? The game is mediocre at best & the business model for the game is a joke. Who in their righ

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Woman sells positive pregnancy tests on Craigslist for college money

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News | FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports

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Watch live: Want to watch Fox 4's newscast? Click here. NORTH KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Firefighters are still battling hot spots at a business building in downtown North Kansas City Wednesday. As soon as the hot spots are put out, investigators can begin looking into what caused the fire.

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on Monday night football Jordan Reed got throughout for punching Kurt Coleman in the face mask.

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Cowboys are 12-2

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How two 25-year-old college dropouts built a watch company that made $60 million this year

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Donald Trump fired back at Bill Clinton on Tuesday after the former president was quoted mocking the incoming president's intelligence and blaming FBI Director James Comey and "angry, white men" for Hillary Clinton's defeat.

The comments emerged after an editor at the Bedford-Pound Ridge Record Review caught an impromptu Q-and-A with Bill Clinton at a New York bookstore and published the details in the paper's print edition. The editorial did not appear online but the contents were reported by Politico.

"He doesn't know much," Clinton said when asked if Trump was smart. "One thing he does know is how to get angry, white men to vote for him."

He also said Trump called him the day after the election.

Trump, on Twitter, disputed that detail and tried to turn the tables on the former president - questioning the Clinton team's grasp of what it took to motivate voters in key swing states.

Bill Clinton stated that I called him after the election. Wrong, he called me (with a very nice congratulations). He "doesn't know much" ...
- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 20, 2016

especially how to get people, even with an unlimited budget, out to vote in the vital swing states ( and more). They focused on wrong states
- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 20, 2016

"They focused on wrong states," Trump wrote, in an apparent reference to post-election reports that detailed how the Clinton campaign failed to focus their resources and get-out-the-vote efforts on key Midwestern states that helped swing the election to Trump in the end.

Clinton later tweeted back: "Here's one thing @realDonaldTrump and I can agree on - I called him after the election."

Still pointing fingers: The Clinton political machine's final malfunction?#Election2016 pic.twitter.com/PZfoy4x8G5
- Fox News Research (@FoxNewsResearch) December 20, 2016

Clinton, though, had placed the blame for Hillary Clinton's defeat squarely at the feet of Comey, who announced 11 days before the election that the FBI was reviewing newly discovered emails for any ties to the investigation of Hillary Clinton's secret server. Comey told Congress two days before the election the FBI didn't find any new evidence.

"James Comey cost her the election," Clinton said during the discussion at the New York bookstore.

Clinton also said he believed the allegations that Russia was responsible for a series of pre-election hacks that revealed embarrassing - and politically damaging - acts by some prominent Democrats associated with Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Clinton doubled down Monday as he cast his electoral vote for his wife in Albany, N.Y.

According to CBS News, he said she battled "through that bogus email deal" and "prevailed" but "at the end we had the Russians and the FBI deal and she couldn't prevail against them."

Trump's victory was affirmed in the Electoral College on Monday.

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Trump fires back at Bill Clinton over election comments

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Donald Trump fired back at Bill Clinton on Tuesday after the former president was quoted mocking the incoming president's intelligence and blaming FBI Director James Comey and "angry, white men" for Hillary Clinton's defeat.

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The panthers won last night against the Redskins

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An asylum seeker detained by police after a large truck was rammed into a Berlin Christmas market may not have been the driver, German authorities said Tuesday, leading to fears that the attacker could still be at large.

Berlin Police President Klaus Kandt said that officials could not be certain that the man in custody -- who was picked up about a mile away from where 12 people were killed and 48 others injured -- was responsible for the attack on Monday evening.

German authorities are investigating the incident as a terror attack.

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Police said they didn't have enough evidence to hold a man they'd earlier described as a suspect in the Monday night truck assault that left 12 people dead and 48 injured. The dead include a man found shot inside the truck.

There may be more than one suspect at large, armed and dangerous, Peter Frank, general prosecutor at Germany's Federal Court of Justice, told journalists.

The ISIS-affiliated Amaq news agency released a statement saying Monday night's attack was carried out by "a soldier of the Islamic State" in response to calls by the group's leadership to target citizens of international coalition countries.

CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank said ISIS often uses this terminology to refer to attacks by alleged sympathizers in the West.

"This should not be taken to mean the group is claiming it directed this attack," Cruickshank said. "Investigators have not uncovered any links to ISIS."

German authorities are investigating the attack as an act of terror. Chancellor Angela Merkel told journalists that we must "assume this is a terrorist attack."

Latest developments

Prosecutor: Forensic tests haven't confirmed man was in truck's cabin.

Mourners pack nearby church at memorial for victims.

Officials say several people could have been involved in the attack.

A weapon used in the attack has not yet been found.

Chancellor Angela Merkel visited the site where 12 people died.

Attacker at large?

Berlin police called on the public to remain alert as confusion swirled over who was driving when the truck barreled over a curb into the crowded market.

"They're really back to square one in terms of this investigation. ... It may well be a scenario of a manhunt, a race against time to arrest this individual before they can strike again," Cruickshank said.

German authorities released the man they'd detained after the attack. "The results of the investigation thus far have not produced imminent suspicion against the accused," the general prosecutor said in a statement.

Investigators had initially described the asylum seeker they detained as a suspect. But a day later, they seemed to be backing off that claim.

"We possibly need to assume that we have not arrested the right one," Frank said.

"We do not know if there was one perpetrator or several perpetrators yet. We do not know if there was support given to the perpetrator."

Authorities didn't release the identity of the man they detained.De Maiziere said earlier that the man was "probably from Pakistan." He entered Germany on December 31, 2015, Interior Minister Thomas De Maiziere said, and his application for asylum had stalled.

So far, forensic tests haven't linked the man to the truck's cabin, the prosecutor said.

Berlin police turned to the public for help and tweeted that they'd received 508 leads. Police also asked citizens to upload any digital video and photos of the incident or possible suspects.

Stalls shuttered at normally busy market

While investigators searched for clues, the usually bustling Christmas market was eerily quiet, with stalls shuttered and nearby roads blocked off.

The sounds of a choir singing rang out as a terrorism expert spoke to CNN near the market.

"You have peace concerts, you have people laying down wreaths, you have people writing cards and people speaking silent prayers. This is completely unprecedented," said Peter Neumann, director of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization. "I don't think a lot of people are aware there's an attacker on the loose, potentially."

Those unable to enter the packed building waited outside in the winter air, many hugging each other, crying, or silently clutching candles.

Polish citizen found dead

Police identified the man found shot to death inside the truck as the original driver from Poland, reported German state media ARD.

He was not driving when the truck came through the market, police said. The gun has not been recovered, De Maiziere said.

The truck, which was owned by a Polish company, "was steered deliberately into the crowd," police said. It was carrying 25 tons of steel, according to Ariel Zurawski, the owner of the truck company. Zurawski told CNN affiliate TVN 24 the vehicle may have been hijacked.

Zurawski identified the slain man as his cousin, ARD said.

Zurawski said that his cousin was happy to be finishing his route from Italy to Berlin and was looking forward to returning to Poland after one last leg to Denmark.

"He was asking if he should be back home by Thursday night because he still needed to buy a Christmas gift for his wife," he said.

Merkel: 'Hard to bear'

Merkel visited the scene of the attack,saying earlier it would be "especially disgusting" if anyone in the attack had been given asylum.

Dressed in black and making her first public comments about the incident late Tuesday morning, she called for unity in the country.

"I know that it would be especially hard to bear for us if it was to be confirmed that a person (who) committed this act ... was given protection and asylum in Germany," Merkel said.

"This is a very difficult day. I, like millions of people in Germany, am horrified and deeply sad about what happened yesterday in Berlin."

Monday's attack could cause further political upheaval for Merkel, who has come under criticism over her government's generous acceptance of refugees. Germany has taken in more than 890,000 asylum-seekers in the past year, a much higher number than other European nations.

But a backlash has been growing, fueled in part by Islamist terror attacks in Germany and across the continent.

World leaders, including US President Obama and French President Francois Hollande, expressed support for Merkel and the German people.

'It felt like slow motion'

Before the attack on Monday evening it was a quintessential German Christmas scene at Breitscheidplatz: Trees strung with lights, vendors serving candied fruit and waffles, the smell of gluhwein -- German mulled wine -- wafting through the cold December air.

American Shandana Durrani was at the market, at the foot of the Keiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, and had stopped to reply to a text message when the truck rammed into the crowd at around 8 pm.

She was lucky to have stopped, she said, as the truck mounted the curb, mowing people and stalls down just 20 feet in front of her, sending everyone "running, scurrying, screaming."

"I heard some popping and thought maybe there was a guy with a gun," she told CNN.

"People just started running and dropping their gluhwein."

She said that it looked as if the driver had just mounted the curb and lost control, and that the whole thing probably lasted a mere 10 seconds.

"It probably didn't last very long, but it felt like it was in slow motion (as I ) tried to get away from it."

Security concerns

De Maiziere said thatChristmas markets would be closed Tuesday for a day of mourning. "But to cancel them would be wrong," he said, adding they would hopefully reopen the following day.

Münch, of the Federal Criminal Office, said that authorities had assessed the likelihood of an attack at Christmas markets recently.

The attack is similar to one in Nice, France, in July, when a truck rammed into a crowd gathered to see Bastille Day fireworks, killing 86 and injuring more than 200 people.

Terror groups including ISIS and a branch of al Qaeda have encouraged their followers to use vehicles to stage attacks.

The US and UK governments had warned their citizens of potential security threats in Germany.

The US government had issued a blanket travel warning for Europe, saying there was "credible information (which) indicates terrorist groups continue plotting possible attacks."

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berlin attack: isis claims it inspired truck assault - cnn

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Frederik Pleitgen, Angela Dewan, James Griffiths and Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN

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Berlin attack: ISIS claims it inspired truck assault

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Police said they didn't have enough evidence to hold a man they'd earlier described as a suspect in the Monday night truck assault that left 12 people dead and 48 injured. The dead include a man found shot inside the truck.

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'Mysterious power over humanity': How cats affect health

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They're a disaster for the environment: One conservancy organization has called cats the "ecological axis of evil." American cats kill between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds each year, and they've been implicated in dozens of mammalian extinctions. (The Australian government has funded research into the most efficient methods of cat control -- yielding products like a poison-laced kangaroo sausage called "Eradicat.")

Nearly half of house cats have physically attacked their owners.

Humans' relationship with cats is rife with paradox. There are an estimated 100 million pet cats in the U.S., and their ranks are only growing. "Cat culture" flourishes online. The cat-less can get their fix at "cat cafés" opening across Asia, Europe, and North America.

In " The Lion in the Living Room: How Cats Tamed Us and Took Over the World," journalist Abigail Tucker traces cats' journey from fearsome Near Eastern predator to global intruder, shedding light on how this baby-sized beast worked its way into so many homes.

Science of Us spoke with Tucker about the disturbing similarities between cats and lions, the reason cats failed to uphold the Rabbit Suppression Act of 1884, and the somewhat baffling question of why people put up with them.
You write that cats are a rather unlikely house pet. Why is that?
Cats are uniquely ill-suited for domestication. When people set out to domesticate the first animals, we targeted animals that were easy to keep in confined spaces, and animals that would eat a variety of things -- think of a pig or a goat, which will eat any old swill left over from your kitchen. Cats eat only fancy food, meat that we could eat ourselves.

We also tended toward animals that had social hierarchies that we could dominate. Dogs and cattle have lead animals, and we can control them by acting the alpha dog or the lead steer. But cats are solitary animals that don't have social hierarchies. They're hard to physically control, and they don't tolerate confinement well.

Usually, you don't have to write a 200-page book to figure out why we domesticated an animal. There's a purpose for the animal, and it's really clear: We want its meat or its milk or its fur or its labor. But what on earth did we want cats around for?

As I talked to scientists, it dawned on me that we weren't necessarily the ones who were driving this relationship. House cats sidled up to our first settlements 10,000 years ago, because of big changes we started making to the environment. All of these animals crept into our settlement and were eating our trash -- animals like badgers and foxes, in addition to small wildcats. They got into this new niche and exploited it.
So how did they trick us into feeding them and taking care of them?
For a long time, it was probably just an accident. But there are reasons that cats made the transition, but we don't have badgers or foxes as pets today. One reason is that cats have a set of physical features that, for completely accidental reasons, remind us of human babies.

Cats have big round eyes located right in the middle of their faces, because they're ambush predators and need good binocular vision. They have little noses, because they don't hunt by smell. They have round faces because they have short, powerful jaws. This set of features, which is actually just an expression of the way the cat hunts, looks to us like our infants. That gave them a leg up on the competition, and made them an intriguing and charming presence, rather than a straight-up nuisance, like a raccoon.
One justification people give for keeping cats around is that they hunt rodents. I was surprised to learn that cats aren't even that good at killing rats.
Cats are magnificent hunters, and they can hunt anything from butterflies to wallabies. They can kill rats but they have no reason to, in our cities. There's plenty of garbage for everybody. Cats and rats have been photographed sharing piles of trash. Why would these animals fight and risk their lives, when they could just comfortably graze together?

People have tried it before -- letting a feral cat colony go within a certain area, with the goal of keeping rat populations down. While they might kill a few rats, the populations of rats are so big that there's no way the cats can ever repress them.

In colonial Australia, there was this act called the Rabbit Suppression Act of 1884. The Australians released hordes of house cats, because they wanted them to kill off these invasive bunny rabbits, which the British had also released. They even built them little cat houses out in the wilderness, so they would have a place to live. But the cats didn't end up killing off the rabbits.

Cats can kill a gazillion rabbits, and there are still more rabbits -- they breed like rabbits. What the cats ended up doing was killing off other more vulnerable, native animals. Cats don't do their assignments the way that dogs do.
Pet owners like to say that caring for their dog or cat confers various health benefits -- mental as well as physical. But what do we really know about how having a cat affects our health?
There have been all these studies about toxoplasmosis, the cat-borne parasite that can get into human brain tissue. Some scientists think that there's a link between this parasitic disease and mental-health problems, especially schizophrenia.

Even if your cat doesn't give you toxoplasmosis, it may not be wonderful for your mental health. There are a few troubling studies that show that having a cat can decrease your likelihood of surviving a heart attack and increase high blood pressure.

People who have cats are less likely to be outside in the world, walking their cats, meeting other people in cat parks. And cats may not be as good a substitute for human companionship as other kinds of pets. Dogs and their owners have this lovely synergy -- they gaze into each other's eyes, and both of them have this flow of oxytocin going.

That doesn't happen so much with cats. In nature, cats don't live near other cats, and they don't have a good expressive repertoire. One way they communicate is by leaving pheromones and other smells around, which humans are completely oblivious to. We're really not built to communicate with each other.

One of the fascinating things about cats is their adaptability. Even though they are fundamentally asocial animals, they've figured out how to manipulate their human hosts. Feral cats don't meow much, but in the presence of humans, cats learn how to communicate to get what they want. They purr in a manner that embeds this insistent, annoying, almost infantlike cry inside of a pleasant purr, to condition their owners to get them food.
But is it possible to know if cat owners' mental-health problems are the result of having a cat? Might someone who is already lonely or antisocial be more likely to get a cat?
I think it could be both. Somebody who is socially isolated to begin with, or unable to do the rigorous care that a dog needs, might be more likely to get a cat -- but having a cat can be isolating in and of itself. It's interesting that people persistently describe the internet as a digital cat park, where cat people can finally socialize via their pets.
I have seen a lot of articles lately about the cat-borne parasite toxoplasmosis. [One researcher blames the rise of insanity in the 19th century on the rise of toxoplasmosis-infected house cats. Another study says that people with toxoplasmosis are twice as likely to be in a car crash, and suggests that infected drivers have been distracted and worn out by persistent low-level sickness. Toxoplasmosis-infected prey animals like chimps and rats, which are usually repulsed by the urine of predators like leopards and rats, are attracted to it instead.] A lot of these stories seem a little bit hysterical. Do you think the fear around toxoplasmosis is warranted?
I do think a lot of them are overblown. Scientists agree that the parasite gets into our brain and can be very damaging to human fetuses and people with compromised immune systems, but there isn't a ton of support for the idea that cats are manipulating us via this parasite.

I think that the fact that we have glommed onto this idea, and we write so many stories about it, speaks to the fact that cats do have some kind of mysterious power over humanity. These stories about toxoplasmosis remind me of stories that used to come out six or seven hundred years ago about cats and sorcery -- that cats have dark powers we don't understand, that they're witches in disguise.
On that note, cat culture seems pretty female. Whether it's witches or "cat ladies," cats seem to always be associated with women -- what's that about?
From my experience drifting around the cat world, it does seem to be more of a female-centric passion. The simple, slightly sexist explanation is that cats' infantile-looking features prey particularly on female instincts.

There are some interesting ideas from evolutionary psychologists -- that a woman might use a cat to hone her parenting skills or, before having kids, to demonstrate her fitness as a mate. I think that people of both sexes could be guilty of that. It does seem like it's a good way for guys to meet women, to be a passionate public cat-man.
Why are cats such an ecological disaster? How did they end up in isolated island environments like Australia?
Cats are very good shipboard travelers. They don't need a lot of water; they don't need a lot of vitamin C, so they don't get scurvy. They've been able to endear themselves to sailors for the past 10,000 years and sail across the oceans, which are the major barrier to mammalian dispersal. It's usually hard for mammals to get to places like Australia. They have to ride on rafts or get blown in. A lot of islands don't have any mammals living on them at all, let alone apex predators that are hypercarnivores, like cats.

With just a few tweaks, the house cat is basically the king of beasts. Cat species are very different in terms of size, but the feline blueprint -- their behaviors and the proportions of their bodies -- is really consistent across species. You let it go in any environment and it's going to be able to kill anything that's smaller than it, and even things that are a little bigger. It's like a meat-eating machine.
You tell stories of house cats clawing and scratching their human owners, especially children. Why do cats so often turn on the people who feed them?
Cats and humans haven't lived locked inside the same places, in such numbers, until the last few decades or so. We talked about the implications for our mental health, but this arrangement might not be so great for cats' mental health, either. They can get really stressed out in our houses. A lot of things that we consider normal -- everything from the volume of our voices, to our thermostats, to the way that a child is playing with a toy -- can stress cats out.

There's evidence that to prevent cat-human violence, we need to go to more extreme lengths than I'd ever thought. Experts say that you need to give an entire room of your house for the cat's exclusive use. That you should make sure the cat has multiple litter boxes, one per floor, and extra ones for extra cats. That you should never rearrange your furniture. That you should try not to wear perfume. That houseguests are freaky for your cat.
You're coming at this subject as a lifelong cat-lover. Did learning all of this -- that cats are bad for your health, bad for the environment -- change your relationship with your cat? Why would you still want to have a cat?
I lost a lot of my sentimental regard for cats -- that "oh, my cute fur-baby" response. But I find that I marvel at them more. I can appreciate the backstory, how this little animal managed to carve out a place for itself in the world, and to become a dreaded invasive species and -- culturally speaking -- one of the most powerful animals on the planet.

To me, it's about the wonder of life, and how this animal has gotten so far in the world without giving us much in return. I think that makes our relationship more pure. Humans are so good at extracting what they want from the environment. With cats, we're not necessarily holding the reins. We don't even know what we want, but we love it.
The interview has been edited and condensed.

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cats' 'mysterious power over humanity' - cnn

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They're a disaster for the environment: One conservancy organization has called cats the "ecological axis of evil." American cats kill between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds each year, and they've been implicated in dozens of mammalian extinctions.

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China returns unmanned underwater drone to Navy, Pentagon says