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      Four Arrested in Killing of ‘General Hospital’ Actor

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      The police said they arrested three men on murder charges in the fatal May 25 shooting of Johnny Wactor, 37, in Los Angeles. A fourth person was also charged.The authorities have arrested four men in the killing of “General Hospital” actor Johnny Wactor, who was shot dead in May as three men attempted to steal the catalytic converter from his vehicle in downtown Los Angeles.The Los Angeles Police Department on Thursday announced the arrests of Robert Barceleau, Leonel Gutierrez and Sergio Estrada. All three men are 18 and from Los Angeles County. They will face murder charges.They were arrested Thursday and were being held on $2 million bond, jail records show. A fourth man, Frank Olano, 22, was arrested on an accessory charge for helping at least one of the suspects evade the authorities.Mr. Wactor was gunned down at around 3:25 a.m. on May 25 when he returned to his parked vehicle after finishing a shift at a downtown Los Angeles bar where he worked. The 37-year-old came across three men who were in the middle of stealing his car’s catalytic converter.“When Wactor arrived at his vehicle, he was confronted by three individuals who had Wactor’s vehicle raised up with a floor jack and were in the process of stealing the catalytic converter,” the police said. “Without provocation, the victim was shot by one of the individuals.”The actor was walking with a co-worker and initially thought that his car was being towed, his mother, Scarlett Wactor, told ABC7 news.She added that one of the persons “looked up, he was wearing a mask, and opened fire.”Mr. Wactor was transported to the hospital by emergency workers where he was pronounced dead.The three men were able to get away in a stolen sedan, the police said in August.Mr. Wactor was known for appearing in more than 160 episodes of the soap opera “General Hospital” as the character Brando Corbin. He also appeared in other shows, including “Westworld” and in one episode of “Criminal Minds,” according to IMDb.Catalytic converter thefts have become more common across America in recent years.The emissions-control devices contain rare and expensive metals like palladium and rhodium, making them a hot target for thieves.In a Thursday evening phone call, Ms. Wactor said she was glad to hear that the arrests had been made and said she hoped the men are convicted.“It’s a great early birthday present for Johnny,” Ms. Wactor said.Her son, she said, would have been 38 on Aug. 31. More

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      Elon Musk Says Robotaxis Are Tesla’s Future. Experts Have Doubts.

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      Tesla says self-driving taxis will power its growth, but the company hasn’t said when such a service would be ready or how much it would increase profits.As sales of its electric cars have fallen, Tesla and its chief executive, Elon Musk, have sought to convince Wall Street that the company’s future lies not in the grinding business of making and selling cars but in the far more exciting world of artificial intelligence.In Mr. Musk’s telling, one of Tesla’s main A.I.-based businesses will be driverless taxis, or robotaxis, that can operate pretty much anywhere and in any condition. Tesla is very close to perfecting such vehicles and will easily secure regulatory approval to put them on roads, Mr. Musk said last week on a conference call to discuss the company’s second quarter results.Mr. Musk’s vision of autonomous vehicles, or A.V.s, is not limited to cars that drive themselves. He has also claimed that individuals who buy Teslas would be able to make money when they are asleep or at work by letting the company use their cars as robotaxis.The robotaxi service will, Mr. Musk has said, catapult Tesla’s stock market valuation, around $700 billion now, into the trillions of dollars.But first, a lot will have to go right.His idea would require major advances in technology and fundamental changes in the way people view cars. The experience of driverless taxi services like Waymo and Cruise in Phoenix, San Francisco and other cities raises questions about when such offerings will become profitable and how much money they will make.Tesla’s technology will face stiff competition from Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet, the parent company of Google; ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft; and Amazon’s self-driving business Zoox. Carmakers including General Motors, which owns Cruise, are also pursuing autonomous driving, along with Chinese tech and auto companies like Baidu and BYD.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Automakers Sold Driver Data for Pennies, Senators Say

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      Ron Wyden and Edward Markey urged the F.T.C. to investigate how car companies handled the data from millions of car owners.If you drive a car made by General Motors and it has an internet connection, your car’s movements and exact location are being collected and shared anonymously with a data broker.This practice, disclosed in a letter sent by Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts to the Federal Trade Commission on Friday, is yet another way in which automakers are tracking drivers, often without their knowledge.Previous reporting in The New York Times, which the letter cited, revealed how automakers including G.M., Honda and Hyundai collected information about drivers’ behavior, such as how often they slammed on the brakes, accelerated rapidly and exceeded the speed limit. It was then sold to the insurance industry, which used it to help gauge individual drivers’ riskiness.The two Democratic senators, both known for privacy advocacy, zeroed in on G.M., Honda and Hyundai because all three had made deals, The Times reported, with Verisk, an analytics company that sold the data to insurers.In the letter, the senators urged the F.T.C.’s chairwoman, Lina Khan, to investigate how the auto industry collects and shares customers’ data.One of the surprising findings of an investigation by Mr. Wyden’s office was just how little the automakers made from selling driving data. According to the letter, Verisk paid Honda $25,920 over four years for information about 97,000 cars, or 26 cents per car. Hyundai was paid just over $1 million, or 61 cents per car, over six years.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The F1 Season Is Not Turning Into a Red Bull Runaway

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      Max Verstappen is still firmly on top of the drivers’ championship, but McLaren is mounting a challenge for the team title.After Max Verstappen won four of the opening five Grands Prix this season, it appeared that he and Red Bull would again dominate.Last year, Red Bull and Verstappen rewrote the record books, defending their constructors’ and drivers’ titles. He also set the record for most wins in a season, 19 of 22 races.Following his fourth victory this year in the fifth race, in China, Verstappen ominously said that his car was “on rails” and that he “could do whatever I wanted to with it.”Since that race, the picture has changed. He has won three of eight Grands Prix. He has not won the last three, his longest winless drought since 2021, and there have been seven different winners.Over the team radio during the last race in Hungary, where he was fifth, Verstappen criticized the car and the strategy. He defended his anger, saying if people did not like his messages then “they can go home.”Verstappen criticized his racecar and the team strategy during the Hungarian Grand Prix.Tamas Kovacs/EPA, via ShutterstockWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ohio Mother Killed Trying to Stop a Carjacking With Her Son Inside

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      The woman, 29, was struck by her own vehicle after the suspects began driving away, the police said.Detectives in Columbus, Ohio, this weekend were searching for two men as they investigated the death of a woman who was fatally struck by her own vehicle while trying to stop a carjacking that occurred with her 6-year-old son in the car. Alexa Stakley, 29, was carjacked shortly before 1:30 a.m. on Thursday while picking up her son at the home of a babysitter after wrapping up a shift waiting tables, according to the police. After putting the sleeping 6-year-old inside her 2022 silver Honda SUV, Ms. Stakley walked back toward the babysitter’s house to retrieve an item, according to a police report. As she turned back, Ms. Stakley saw her moving. She was seen “running toward her Honda and was heard screaming for her child,” the police report said. Moments later, Ms. Stakley was struck by the vehicle, suffering a fatal wound to the head. Shortly afterward, two men were seen running away from the area, abandoning the vehicle nearby, the police said. Police officers found the child inside the car unharmed. Carjackings have been called “an important public safety threat” by the Department of Justice, which earlier this year announced it had established 11 task forces to combat the crime in areas of particular concern, like Philadelphia, Chicago and Tampa, Fla. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Two Dead After Being Struck By Pickup Truck in Downtown Manhattan

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      At least nine people were struck by the truck on the Lower East Side, the authorities said.Two people were killed and seven others were injured on Thursday night after being struck by a pickup truck near Water Street and Jackson Street in the Lower East Side, the authorities said.One person was taken into custody, and several of the injured were transported to hospitals, four of them in critical condition, the police said at a news conference on Thursday night. This is a developing story. More

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      Auto Sales Grew Slightly in Second Quarter

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      High interest rates, economic uncertainty and a cyberattack appear to have dampened sales in the three months between April and June.Most automakers on Tuesday, with the exception of Tesla, reported modest sales growth in the three months between April and June as high interest rates, persistently high vehicles prices, and uncertainty about the economy and the coming presidential election weighed on consumers.Sales in late June were also slowed by disruptions at car dealers stemming from a cyberattack on a company that supplies software and data services to dealerships.Cox Automotive, a market research firm, estimated that 4.1 million new cars and trucks were sold in the second quarter, up a little more from the same period in 2023. In the first six months of 2024, 7.9 million new vehicles were sold, an increase of 3 percent from the first half of last year, Cox said.Slow growth is likely to continue through the rest of the year, with consumers delaying big-ticket purchases until after the election, said Jonathan Smoke, Cox’s chief economist. “The market is roiled by uncertainty,” he said. “We probably can’t quite keep the pace of sales of the first half, but we aren’t expecting a collapse in sales, either.”Cox has forecast 15.9 million new cars and trucks will be sold this year. That would be an increase from the 15.5 million that were sold last year, but still well below the 17 million vehicles sold annually before the pandemic.General Motors said on Tuesday that it sold nearly 700,000 cars and light trucks in the United States in the second quarter, an increase of less than 1 percent from the same period last year. The company said it was its highest quarterly total since the fourth quarter of 2020.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Germany Hopes to Head Off a Trade War With China

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      As the European Union moves to impose tariffs on Chinese cars, Germany, with an auto industry deeply enmeshed with China, is stuck in the middle.With billions of dollars in trade between China and the European Union at stake, Germany’s second-highest cabinet official called on Saturday for the two sides to engage in talks to try to resolve an escalating dispute over tariffs.Robert Habeck, who is Germany’s vice chancellor and minister for economic affairs and climate, said that he expected talks to begin soon between China and European officials. He expressed a hope that tariffs could be avoided.Still, he added that tariffs could be justified if the commission’s concerns about China’s subsidies for its electric car industry were not resolved.This month, the European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, proposed tariffs of up to 38 percent on electric cars from China, on top of an existing 10 percent tariff on imported cars. The commission said it found that China’s electric car sector was heavily subsidized by the government and state-controlled banking system.“These tariffs are not punitive,” Mr. Habeck said, adding that the tariffs are intended to offset subsidies that violate World Trade Organization rules.But Chinese officials strongly criticized the European tariffs after meeting with him. Wang Wentao, the commerce minister, described them as protectionist and called on Germany to help end them. “It is hoped that Germany will play an active role in the E.U. and promote the E.U. and China to move toward each other,” the ministry said in a statement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More