Germany’s disease control center, the Robert Koch Institute, reported 58,912 new infections on Wednesday and another 346 deaths, raising the total pandemic death count up to 112,925. The figure was up 47 percent from the same day last week, Reuters reported. Last month, the German parliament approved legislation that would mandate hospital and nursing home staff to either be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or show that they have recovered from the virus by mid-March....

Joachim Low’s side lifted the trophy in Brazil with a 1-0 victory thanks to Mario Gotze’s extra-time goal. After 10 wins from 10 in qualifying, Germany are well backed to defend their title and Muller is confident Low’s squad has the quality to go all the way in Russia. “Individually, without a doubt [we are better],” he told reporters. “But football has developed considerably. “Other countries have also come on leaps and bounds and their players have become much more technically refined....

The Germany forward was taken off in the second minute of stoppage time in his country’s 2-1 victory in Sunday’s UEFA Euro 2016 qualifier with Scotland after appearing to injure himself when attempting to pull away from a Charlie Mulgrew challenge. And Dortmund has now confirmed that Reus has sustained a partial tear of ligaments in his left ankle. The injury is strikingly similar to the one he suffered while on Germany duty in a friendly win over Armenia in June, a blow that kept him out of a successful World Cup campaign for Joachim Low’s men....

Also known as the “right to erasure”, the “right to be forgotten” rule gives EU citizens the right to request that data about them be deleted. In a statement released on Wednesday, the judges said that while it was allowable for search engines to provide news reports on current crimes, “the justifiable public interest in reports that made perpetrators identifiable decreased over time.” The man hoping to be forgotten was part of a major news story in Germany in 1982....

Director and choreographer Dan Siretta’s idea to turn George and Ira Gershwin’s 1926 musical Oh, Kay! into an all-black show is no gimmick. There’s an intriguing logic to his notion: hey, let’s move this romantic tale of the bootlegging era from the white upper-crust world of the Hamptons to the black upper-crust world called Strivers’ Row in 1920s Harlem. David Merrick liked the idea so much that he’s brought the show (first produced at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut) to Broadway....

The amount of venture capital lost on personal digital assistants in the early ’90s could fund an entire light-rail system. But the inventors at Palm Computing learned from the glitches of others. Functionality and size won out over gratuitously glitzy features. And instead of teaching the machine to recognize handwriting, the designers gambled that users would be willing to learn the Pilot’s own special shorthand, a simplified alphabet called Graffiti–no dotting the i’s or crossing the t’s....

Transportation reality, of course, has not worked out that way. But the concept, called automated highway systems, or AHS, is gaining new momentum. Its proponents say computers could take over the steering wheel as early as 2015, and Washington is spending $160 million to study, the idea. “The automated highway system is not a pipe dream any more than the construction of our inter-state-freeway system was after the second world war,” says Mike Doble, a technology manager for Buick....

The 2022 NFL regular season heads into its final Sunday with 14 games on the docket and the final playoff spot in each conference hanging in the balance. The Green Bay Packers (NFC) and New England Patriots (AFC) face win-and-in scenarios, while the Detroit Lions, Seattle Seahawks, Miami Dolphins, and Pittsburgh Steelers all need to win and get varying degrees of help. With more than half the league eliminated from playoff contention and others likely to rest starters, some of the Week 18 NFL odds look puzzling....

‘Superfly’ Jimmy Snuka dies Wrestling legend Jimmy Snuka passed away on Sunday at the age of 73 after battling stomach cancer. During the height of his career, “Superfly” Jimmy Snuka was one of the top stars of the WWE during the 1980’s. Many remember his crowd-pleasing, dazzling dives off the top rope and even off the top of cages. A feud with “Rowdy” Roddy Piper would provide one of the most notable memories of his career when Piper hit him over the head with a coconut while insulting his South Pacific heritage....

Such is Homo teenageris. But while the adolescent mind has been well documented, the reason kids passing through and just beyond puberty seem to be members of a different species has been a puzzle, though raging hormones and simple rebellion are handy scapegoats. It turns out there’s a good reason adolescent brains seem different: they are. Contrary to the notion that the brain has fully matured by the age of 8 or 12, with the truly crucial wiring complete as early as 3, it turns out that the brain is an ongoing construction site....

In a practical sense, Raytheon might seem the obvious choice. Britain is a longtime buyer of U.S. defense products. More important, as Raytheon CEO Daniel Burnham pointed out last week at the Paris Air Show: “We have a missile, and the competition doesn’t.” But financial practicality isn’t the point here. This missile deal comes at a pivotal moment for a unifying Europe, which puts Raytheon at a serious disadvantage–no matter how good its technology....

Sammy was a healthy infant in 1996, when Liz and her husband scraped together the down payment on a rambling Victorian house in the Smith Hill section of Providence, R.I. The place needed work, and the $42,000 purchase price was a stretch for the young working-class couple. But they took the leap, figuring they could spend the rest of their lives restoring it. Four months later Sammy’s pediatrician detected an unusual concentration of lead in his blood, and a follow-up test yielded a reading of 56 micrograms per deciliter–more than five times the official hazard level....

Negotiations between the Getty and the Italians over the return of certain artworks stalled last November but were jump-started last month, when Italy issued a threat to sever all cultural ties with the Getty unless they came to terms by Aug. 1. (As the Los Angeles Times pointed out, this could have hurt the Italians more than the Malibu museum, as the Getty foundation gives hefty grants to Italian cultural causes and cooperates in scholarship and conservation....

Golovkin and Derevyanchenko will enter the ring at Madison Square Garden on Saturday and battle for the vacant IBF middleweight title, which Alvarez left behind when he couldn’t reach an agreement with Derevyanchenko. Alvarez tried to avoid the mandatory opponent in favor of a matchup with Demetrius Andrade, but when his plan fell apart, he elected to jump weight classes for a fight with Sergey Kovalev. Now Golovkin (39-1-1) is looking to win the title dropped by his rival....

Maxwell was found guilty of five out of the six counts she was charged with, including sex trafficking of minors. She was also convicted of conspiracy to transport a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, transporting a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors, and conspiracy to entice a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts....

The British socialite was Jeffrey Epstein’s former lover and is accused of having groomed underage girls for him to abuse. The U.S. District Court is preparing to pick a jury but Maxwell’s legal team has requested secrecy on the basis of what it described as “intense negative media coverage.” They argued that an unusually careful selection process will be necessary to find jurors who have not already made up their minds about her....

Krista van der Linde, from the World Wildlife Fund for Nature New Zealand, was lead author of a study looking at leopard seal diets. She said this is the first recorded case of leopard seals feeding on sharks anywhere in the world. “When we founded LeopardSeals.org, I knew we were going to find some interesting things, but this is the next-level of incredible. “We were blown away to find that sharks were on the menu, but then we also found Elephant fish and Ghost sharks were also being hunted by the leopard seals....

Sunspots are dark areas on the sun’s surface that are associated with intense bursts of radiation. They appear dark because they are cooler than other parts of the sun’s surface. Sunspots are relatively cool because they form over areas where the sun’s magnetic fields are particularly strong—so strong that they prevent some heat within the sun from reaching its surface. These tangled magnetic fields can sometimes suddenly reorganize themselves. When that happens, a sudden explosion of light and radiation is propelled away from the sun in the form of a solar flare....

The news came as no surprise with the Thursday road game this week. Wilson left in the first half of last Sunday's loss to Philadelphia with numbness in his neck area, and the team had checked him for a possible concussion or spinal injury. The team later said it kept him out of the game in the second half as a precaution, and Wilson told reporters that he felt "fine" afterward....