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Crash saves American teenager whose car suddenly sped up to 193 kph

Crash saves American teenager whose car suddenly sped up to 193 kph
This image taken from police dash camera footage shows a Minnesota trooper passing 18-year-old Sam Dutcher after the Honda Pilot he was driving began to accelerate over 100 miles per hour in western Minnesota on Sept. 17, 2024. (Minnesota State Patrol via AP)
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Updated 04 October 2024
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Crash saves American teenager whose car suddenly sped up to 193 kph

Crash saves American teenager whose car suddenly sped up to 193 kph
  • With his Honda SUV's brake not working and the vehicle accelerating, Sam Dutcher drove into road less traveled while asking for help
  • A last-ditch plan averted disaster, with a trooper speeding in front of the Honda and telling Dutcher to crash into the rear of his squad
Updated 04 October 2024
AP
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Sam Dutcher had just finished running errands when the 18-year-old’s Honda Pilot suddenly began to accelerate, even though his foot wasn’t on the gas pedal. The brake wouldn’t work, he couldn’t shift into neutral, and before long, the runaway SUV was speeding into the western Minnesota countryside with no way to stop.
“I had the brake to the floor,” Dutcher said Thursday, but the SUV kept going faster and faster, eventually reaching 120 mph (193 kpm).
A last-ditch plan averted disaster that September evening — a trooper sped in front of the Honda and Dutcher was told to crash into the rear of his squad car, allowing it to ease safely to a stop moments before reaching a dangerous intersection.
“That was really all I could think of that was going to get him stopped in time,” Minnesota Trooper Zach Gruver said. “We kind of just ran out of time and distance. I really didn’t know of any other way.”
Dutcher, who graduated high school in May and is studying auto mechanics, was driving to the family home near West Fargo, North Dakota, around 7:30 p.m. on Sept. 17 when he realized something was wrong.
“I went to take my foot off the accelerator,” Dutcher recalled. “It wouldn’t slow down.” As the SUV gained speed, Dutcher had two options: Stay on a two-lane road and drive into Minnesota, or hop onto the interstate. Figuring traffic would be lighter, he chose the road less traveled.
Dutcher tried using voice command on his phone to call 911, but it didn’t work. So he called his mom.

Catherine Dutcher was in the drive-thru line at Hardee’s. In her 911 call, she mentioned that the Honda had just been in the shop because the accelerator was apparently getting stuck. Authorities suspect that the SUV’s computer malfunctioned.
The family should take the vehicle in to a dealership for an inspection, a Honda spokeswoman told The Associated Press. The company could not comment further until an inspection was done, she said.
As the Honda sped into Minnesota, Clay County Deputy Zach Johnson reached Dutcher by phone. Dash camera video shows Johnson talking Dutcher through possible solutions. Nothing worked.
Meanwhile, all Catherine Dutcher could do was worry. When she called 911 for an update, she broke.
“They said they’ve got several officers going to him as well as medical,” she recalled. “At that point I kind of lost it because I just imagined him being either seriously injured or dead. I didn’t know how they were going to stop a car that was going that speed.”
Gruver heard what was going on through his radio. His Dodge Charger eventually caught up with the Honda as it was approaching the town of Hitterdal, Minnesota, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from where the problem began.
Only about 200 people live in Hitterdal, but the highway runs through an area with a couple of stop signs, a railroad crossing and an intersection with another highway.




This photo provided by Catherine Dutcher shows Sam Dutcher with Minnesota State Patrol Trooper Zach Gruver at the Travel Center in Moorhead, Minnesota, on Sept. 25, 2024. (Catherine Dutcher via AP)

Gruver raced ahead to keep traffic at bay. His dashcam video showed the Honda zipping quickly past him through town. Dutcher said the SUV was going about 120 mph (193 kph).
Soon, another worry: Johnson warned Gruver that the highway ended at a T-intersection about four miles (6.4 kilometers) away — a two-minute drive at racing speed.
Law enforcement came up with a plan on the fly: Dutcher should drive into the back of Gruver’s squad car as both vehicles were moving.
“Yes, run into the back of his car,” Johnson urged Dutcher in a conversation captured on dashcam video.
The 2022 Honda’s crash mitigation system kicked in at the point of impact, helping ease the collision, Gruver said. The Honda was going about 50 mph (80 kph) when it struck the trooper’s vehicle. From there, Gruver was able to gradually slow to a stop.
Gruver, a married 30-year-old expecting his first baby, was impressed by the young driver who was able to navigate a runaway vehicle at unimaginable speeds.
“Sam did great,” said Gruver, who has been a trooper for over three years. “I don’t think there’s a whole lot of people that could deal with that pressure.”

Topics: Honda Pilot Minnesota

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Germany hands over Australian ancestral remains held by museums for over 100 years

Germany hands over Australian ancestral remains held by museums for over 100 years
Updated 05 December 2024
AP
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Germany hands over Australian ancestral remains held by museums for over 100 years

Germany hands over Australian ancestral remains held by museums for over 100 years
  • The restitution is part of ongoing efforts by German museums and authorities to return human remains and cultural artifacts that were taken during colonial times
  • In this case, three sets of remains that had been in Berlin since 1880 were handed over along with two other sets of remains held in the northwestern German city of Oldenburg
Updated 05 December 2024
AP

BERLIN: Five sets of ancestral remains from Australia that had been in German museum collections since the 19th century were handed back at a ceremony Thursday that a community representative described as a sad but “very joyful” moment.
The restitution is part of ongoing efforts by German museums and authorities to return human remains and cultural artifacts that were taken during colonial times.
In this case, three sets of remains that had been in Berlin since 1880 were handed over along with two other sets of remains held in the northwestern German city of Oldenburg. They were received by four representatives of the Ugar Island community, part of the Torres Strait Islands off the northeastern tip of Australia.
“These ancestral remains were never meant to be here,” said Hermann Parzinger, the head of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which oversees Berlin’s state museums.
“They’re here because, during the colonial era and beyond, Europeans presumed to make other peoples and cultures the subject, or more often object, of their research — appropriating artifacts from cultures outside Europe on a scale that is almost unimaginable today and even desecrating the burial places of those communities in the process,” he said.
Around the turn of the 20th century, he added, Berlin museums set up a network of scientists, travelers, traders and others who sent back cultural items from around the world, and “in racing to compete with the other major European museums, they all too often disregarded the humanity and dignity of the peoples they encountered.”
The restitution of the remains from Berlin’s Ethnological Museum and the State Museum for Nature and Man in Oldenburg means that 162 sets of ancestral remains have now been returned to Australia from Germany, and about 1,700 from around the world, said Natasha Smith, Australia’s ambassador to Germany. She said the returns are “an extremely high priority” for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and the government.
“It’s sad, but it’s a very joyful moment,” Ugar Island representative Rocky Stephen said at the ceremony honoring the ancestors. “This is a process of healing that’s going to happen when they return back to us.”
“No matter (if) it was nearly a 40-hour journey to travel here, because it’s been 144 years they have been missed back at their home,” he said.
Berlin’s museums now aim to do “everything we can to make the repatriation possible” of remains whose countries and communities of origin can be identified and want to bring them home, Parzinger said.
More broadly, governments and museums in Europe and North America have increasingly sought to resolve ownership disputes over objects looted during colonial times.
In 2022, for example, Germany and Nigeria signed an agreement paving the way for the return of hundreds of artifacts known as the Benin Bronzes taken from Africa by a British colonial expedition more than 120 years ago.

Topics: Germany Australia ancestral remains

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Study of 700-year-old handwriting unveils leading Byzantine painter’s identity

Study of 700-year-old handwriting unveils leading Byzantine painter’s identity
Updated 05 December 2024
AP
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Study of 700-year-old handwriting unveils leading Byzantine painter’s identity

Study of 700-year-old handwriting unveils leading Byzantine painter’s identity
Updated 05 December 2024
AP

THESSALONIKI: Crime-solving techniques applied to a medieval illuminated manuscript in Paris may have solved a centuries-old puzzle — the true identity of a leading Byzantine painter who injected humanity into the rigid sanctity of Orthodox religious art.
A contemporary of Giotto, considered the father of Western painting, the artist conventionally known as Manuel Panselinos was equally influential in a totally different tradition that’s largely overlooked in the West.
But nothing is known of his life, and scholars now believe Panselinos was just a nickname that eventually supplanted the real name of the man for whom it was coined — likely Ioannis Astrapas, from the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki.
The art of Byzantium, that decorates churches across Greece, Serbia and other Orthodox countries, stands out for the stark formalism of its elongated, glowering saints, quasi-cubist mountains and doe-eyed Madonnas.
Work attributed to Panselinos, from the late 13th and early 14th centuries, is considered the finest produced in an empire that straddled Europe and Asia and endured from the fall of Rome until the capture of the imperial capital Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453.
Art historians had long suspected that the name — Greek for “full moon” — could have originated as a nickname for some member of the so-called Macedonian School of painting, based in Thessaloniki.
Recent research by a Greek monk and linguistics scholar linked “Panselinos” with Macedonian School painter Astrapas. Now court handwriting expert Christina Sotirakoglou has matched lettering on a manuscript tentatively attributed to Astrapas with characters on a church painting in northern Greece, long seen as Panselinos’ best work.
Father Cosmas Simonopetritis, a former senior administrator in Mount Athos, the semiautonomous monastic community where the Protato church stands, says Sotirakoglou’s and his own research “clearly prove” Panselinos’ real identity.
“Panselinos was a real person, and (the name) was just the nickname by which Ioannis Astrapas became known,” he told The Associated Press.
Constantinos Vafiadis, a professor of Byzantine art in Athens who was not involved in the studies, said he found merit in the nickname theory and Astrapas link, even though it appeared more than one painter had undertaken the Protato project.
“I agree with attributing part of the paintings to Ioannis Astrapas,” he said. “But again there remains much ground for future research into that person, because other Mount Athos monuments from the same period have not yet been sufficiently published.”
“Panselinos” — a role model for generations of painters — and his contemporaries are associated with a renaissance of kinds in Orthodox art that revived forms and techniques inherited from antiquity. Facial expressions acquired a deeper humanity, and greater attention was paid to proportion and depth of field in composition.
Father Cosmas said Astrapas was an “extremely gifted painter ... with vast knowledge who harmonically combined the ancient, classical world with Orthodox Byzantine spirituality.”
“And that ... makes his work unique worldwide,” he added.
Artists’ signatures were not common at the time, although some survive from members of the Astrapas family. There are none by “Panselinos.”
The trail started with earlier research linking Astrapas with the artist and scholar who wrote and illustrated Marcian Codex GR 516, an early 14th century Greek handwritten text treating subjects from astronomy to music theory. Among the painted illustrations was a full moon.
“For me ... that was the main proof,” Father Cosmas said.
With a name found for the hand that produced the manuscript, the next step was to check its style against writing on the Protato painting, traditionally linked with “Panselinos.”
“Mrs Sotirakoglou, who is a handwriting expert, filled in that blank,” Father Cosmas said.
There was one problem: Women have for more than 1,000 years been banned from entering Mount Athos.
“I was forced to study the Protato paintings based on photographs,” Sotirakoglou, who works as a court consultant on identifying or authenticating handwriting in criminal cases, told the AP.
“(The work) was very difficult, because the writing on the wall paintings is in capital letters, and the painters subdued their personal handwriting to conform” with the traditional format, she said — rather like anonymous letter-writers’ attempts to disguise their true style. “The Marcian codex is written in very small lower-case letters.”
The first clue came from the Greek letter Phi, the English F.
“It’s a Phi that stands out, and is similar” in both the manuscript and the Protato painting, she said. “Matches also followed with other letters, T, with its proportions, which is bigger, covering the other letters and is topped with a curve, the proportions of the K.”
“But when the Phi was revealed, the code of the writing was broken and the job became much easier,” she added.
Father Cosmas said that during his administrative duties on Mount Athos he attended services at the Protato church on a daily basis.
“That’s where my desire was born ... to explore the mystery around the name and the identity of Panselinos,” he said, adding that he thinks the artist “has now acquired his true identity.”

Japan’s famous sake joins UNESCO’s cultural heritage list

Japan’s famous sake joins UNESCO’s cultural heritage list
Updated 05 December 2024
AP
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Japan’s famous sake joins UNESCO’s cultural heritage list

Japan’s famous sake joins UNESCO’s cultural heritage list
Updated 05 December 2024
AP

LUQUE: Sake is perhaps more Japanese than the world-famous sushi. It’s brewed in centuries-old mountaintop warehouses, savored in the country’s pub-like izakayas, poured during weddings and served slightly chilled for special toasts.
The smooth rice wine that plays a crucial role in Japan’s culinary traditions was enshrined on Wednesday by UNESCO on its list of the “intangible cultural heritage of humanity.”
At a meeting in Luque, Paraguay, members of UNESCO’s committee for safeguarding humanity’s cultural heritage voted to recognize 45 cultural practices and products around the world, including Brazilian white cheese, Caribbean cassava bread and Palestinian olive oil soap.
Unlike UNESCO’s World Heritage List, which includes sites considered important to humanity like the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, the Intangible Cultural Heritage designation names products and practices of different cultures that are deserving of recognition.
A Japanese delegation welcomed the announcement in Luque.
“Sake is considered a divine gift and is essential for social and cultural events in Japan,” Takehiro Kano, the Japanese ambassador to UNESCO, told The Associated Press.
The basic ingredients of sake are few: rice, water, yeast and koji, a rice mold, which breaks down the starches into fermentable sugars like malting does in beer production. The whole two-monthlong process of steaming, stirring, fermenting and pressing can be grueling.
The rice — which wields tremendous marketing power as part of Japan’s broader cultural identity — is key to the alcoholic brew.
For a product to be categorized Japanese sake, the rice must be Japanese.
The UNESCO recognition, the delegation said, captured more than the craft knowledge of making high-quality sake. It also honored a tradition dating back some 1,000 years — sake makes a cameo in Japan’s famous 11th century novel, “The Tale of Genji,” as the drink of choice in the refined Heian court.
Now, officials hope to restore sake’s image as Japan’s premier alcoholic drink even as the younger drinkers in the country switch to imported wine or domestic beer and whiskey.
“It means a lot to Japan and to the Japanese,” Kano said of the UNESCO designation. “This will help to renew interest in traditional sake elaboration.”
In Tokyo, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, in a statement, said he was “delighted” by the inscription of traditional sake-making, the traditional technic that Japan is proud of. Ishiba congratulated those who dedicated to preserving and promoting the tradition.
Also, Japanese breweries have expressed hope that the listing could give a little lift to the country’s export economy as the popularity of sake booms around the world and in the United States amid heightened interest in Japanese cuisine.
Sake exports, mostly to the US and China, now rake in over $265 million a year, according to the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association, a trade group.
Japan’s delegation appeared ready to celebrate on Wednesday — in classic Japanese style.
After the announcement, Kano raised a cypress box full of sake to toast the alcoholic brew and cultural rite.

Topics: Japan

Eminem’s mother Debbie Nelson, whose rocky relationship fueled the rapper’s lyrics, dies at age 69

Debbie Nelson, mother of rap star Eminem, appears in Mount Clemens, Mich., on April 10, 2001. (AP)
Debbie Nelson, mother of rap star Eminem, appears in Mount Clemens, Mich., on April 10, 2001. (AP)
Updated 04 December 2024
AP
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Eminem’s mother Debbie Nelson, whose rocky relationship fueled the rapper’s lyrics, dies at age 69

Debbie Nelson, mother of rap star Eminem, appears in Mount Clemens, Mich., on April 10, 2001. (AP)
  • Eminem has disparaged his mother in songs such as the 2002 single “Cleaning Out My Closet”
Updated 04 December 2024
AP

Debbie Nelson, the single mother of rapper Eminem whose rocky relationship with her son was known widely through his hit song lyrics, has died. She was 69.
Eminem’s longtime representative Dennis Dennehy confirmed Nelson’s death in an email on Tuesday. He did not provide a cause of death, although Nelson had battled lung cancer.
Nelson’s fraught relationship with her son, whose real name is Marshall Mathers III, has been no secret since the Detroit rapper became a star.
Eminem has disparaged his mother in songs such as the 2002 single “Cleaning Out My Closet.” Eminem sings: “Witnessin’ your mama poppin’ prescription pills in the kitchen. ... My whole life I was made to believe I was sick when I wasn’t.”
In lyrics from his Oscar-winning hit “Lose Yourself” from the movie “8 Mile,” his feelings seem to have simmered, referencing his “mom’s spaghetti.” The song went on to win best rap song at the 2004 Grammy Awards.
Nelson brought and settled a pair of defamation lawsuits over Eminem’s statements about her in magazines and on radio talk shows. In her 2008 book, “My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem,” she attempted to set the record straight by providing readers details about the rapper’s early life, writing that Eminem had forgotten the good times they had.
“Marshall and I were so close that friends and relatives commented that it was as if the umbilical cord had never been cut,” she wrote.
In 2004, she was dragged from her car on Eight Mile Road, the street in a Detroit suburb made famous by “8 Mile,” by a 16-year-old who was later sentenced to more than four years in prison. She suffered bruises and a broken foot.
The highly acclaimed rapper Eminem won for best hip hop act at the 2024 MTV EMAs and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022.
He announced in October that he was going to be a grandfather, saying his daughter Hailie Jade is pregnant by way of a touching music video that is a tribute to their relationship.
 

 

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Artist Jasleen Kaur wins Turner Prize for work exploring her Scottish Sikh identity
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Artist Jasleen Kaur wins Turner Prize for work exploring her Scottish Sikh identity

Artist Jasleen Kaur wins Turner Prize for work exploring her Scottish Sikh identity
Updated 04 December 2024
AP
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Artist Jasleen Kaur wins Turner Prize for work exploring her Scottish Sikh identity

Artist Jasleen Kaur wins Turner Prize for work exploring her Scottish Sikh identity
  • Named for 19th-century landscape painter J.M.W. Turner and founded in 1984 to reward young artists, the prize helped make stars of shark-pickling artist Damien Hirst, potter Grayson Perry, sculptor Anish Kapoor and filmmaker Steve McQueen
Updated 04 December 2024
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LONDON: An artist whose work exploring her Scottish Sikh identity includes a vintage Ford car draped in a crocheted doily won the UK’s prestigious Turner Prize on Tuesday, during a ceremony picketed by pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
Jasleen Kaur was awarded the 25,000-pound ($32,000) prize by actor James Norton at the Tate Britain gallery in London.
Kaur used her acceptance speech to express support for scores of demonstrators outside. She is among signatories to a letter demanding Tate, which runs several major British art museums, cut ties with donors who are linked to Israel over its war in Gaza.
“This is not a radical demand,” Kaur said. “This should not risk an artist’s career or safety.
“We need a proper ceasefire now,” she said.
The Israel-Hamas war has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, according to Hamas health officials in Gaza. Israel launched the war in response to the militant group’s Oct. 7, 2023 cross-border attack that killed some 1,200 Israelis and took more than 250 hostage.
A jury led by Tate Britain director Alex Farquhar praised the way 38-year-old Kaur “weaves together the personal, political and spiritual” through “unexpected and playful combinations of material.”
Her winning exhibition mixes sculpture, print, everyday items — including family photos, a Ford Escort car and the popular Scottish soda Irn Bru — and immersive music to reflect on her upbringing in Glasgow’s Sikh community.
Three other finalists – Pio Abad, Claudette Johnson and Delaine Le Bas – received 10,000 pounds ($12,670) each.
Named for 19th-century landscape painter J.M.W. Turner and founded in 1984 to reward young artists, the prize helped make stars of shark-pickling artist Damien Hirst, potter Grayson Perry, sculptor Anish Kapoor and filmmaker Steve McQueen.
But it has also been criticized for rewarding impenetrable conceptual work and often sparks debate about the value of modern art, with winners such as Hirst’s “Mother and Child Divided,” which consists of two cows, bisected and preserved in formaldehyde, and Martin Creed’s “Lights On and Off” — a room with a light blinking on and off – drawing scorn from sections of the media.
In 2019, all four finalists were declared winners after they refused to compete against one another, “to make a collective statement in the name of commonality, multiplicity and solidarity.”
In 2021, all five finalists were collectives rather than individual artists.
The award was initially open to artists under 50 but now has no upper age limit.
Works by the four finalists are on display until Feb. 16.

 

Topics: Jasleen Kaur

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