STORY: :: A New York taxi jumping the sidewalk

injures 7 people on Christmas Day

:: Police said the incident happened after

the cab driver suffered a medical episode

:: December 25, 2024

:: New York

The incident took place in Midtown Manhattan near Macy’s flagship store in Herald Square near the corner of West 34th Street and Avenue of the Americas, or Sixth Avenue. The store, with its elaborately decorated display windows, is a magnet for tourists and native New Yorkers around the holidays.

In addition to the 58-year-old taxi driver, the injured included a 9-year-old boy, two women aged 49 and four other women aged 19, 37 and 41, police added.

One 49-year-old woman with a leg injury, the 9-year-old boy who suffered a cut and the 41-year-old woman who sustained an injury to her head were taken to hospital, police said.

The remaining three pedestrians declined medical attention, according to police, which added that all injuries were non-life-threatening.

Media images of the cab showed a heavily damaged vehicle with broken parts and dents all over it.

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Russia has carried out a Christmas Day attack on Ukraine’s energy system, leaving more than half a million people without heating, water and electricity. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the attack, the 13th large-scale assault of 2024 on the country’s grid, was “deliberate” and not a coincidence. “What could be more inhuman?” he wrote on X.

About 50 of the 70 missiles fired in the attack were intercepted, along with a “significant” portion of the more than 100 attack drones deployed, he added.

This year Ukrainians marked Christmas Day on December 25 for the second time, after switching to the western Gregorian calendar last year. The decision to stop celebrating Christmas on January 7 in line with the Orthodox calendar was made by Kyiv to break with Russian influence.

Oleh Syniehubov, governor of Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region, told Ukraine’s national television news that the attack had left more than 500,000 people without heating, water and electricity.

Temperatures across Ukraine are around freezing point.

Heating supplies were also cut in some areas of Ukraine’s Ivano-Frankivsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions, in the west and south of the country. 

Ukraine’s energy grid operator, Ukrenergo, urged consumers to limit consumption by not switching on multiple appliances at once, adding that the system was still recovering from the previous Russian attack on December 13.

Ukraine’s largest private energy company, DTEK, said that its power stations had been damaged and one of its long-term employees killed.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andriy Sybiha, said on X that the attack reflects Russian President Vladimir Putin’s response to “those who spoke about illusionary ‘Christmas ceasefire’”.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said last week that Zelenskyy had rejected his proposal for a ceasefire and prisoner exchange on the January 7 Orthodox Christmas.

Ukraine denied that such a proposal was ever on the table, asking Hungary to “refrain from manipulations” regarding the war. On Friday, Heorhii Tykhyi, spokesperson for Ukraine’s foreign ministry, described it as “PR, a move” by Orbán.

American Airlines passengers across the U.S. endured a sudden disruption of service on Christmas Eve, as a “technical issue” forced the airline to request a nationwide ground stop of its operations.

“The ground stop has now been lifted,” the Federal Aviation Administration told NPR shortly after 8 a.m. ET.

On Facebook and X, passengers shared stories of boarding planes early on Christmas Eve — only to be left waiting on the tarmac. In some cases, they described being told the flight would return to its gate so everyone onboard could deplane.

The ground stop lasted for about one hour, according to the airline.

 “We sincerely apologize to our customers for the inconvenience this morning,” the airline said.

In a statement sent to NPR, American says the widespread delays were caused by a “vendor technology issue” affecting systems that are needed for a flight to be “released” — one of the final key steps before a plane takes off from an airport.

Early circumstances around Tuesday’s outage seemed ominous, reminding travelers of a nightmare scenario that played out two years ago when computer problems fueled a meltdown for Southwest Airlines as it tried to cope with bad weather during the holidays.

Southwest stranded millions of travelers — and was later ordered to pay a $140 million civil penalty.

Aviation industry veterans like George Hamlin, a consultant, notes that Southwest took the brunt of the blame for the meltdown — but, he adds, “now we’re finding out that it’s a larger, more endemic problem than that.”

Delayed American Airlines passengers who posted to social media Tuesday said pilots blamed the slowdown on a computer system that aims to ensure an optimal center of gravity by balancing planes’ cargo weight and other factors.

Winter weather also threatens to snarl Christmas Eve travel, including storms along the East and West Coasts of the U.S.

The FAA’s operations page shows nearly a dozen airports were deicing planes Tuesday morning, including at Philadelphia International, and Dulles International and Reagan National outside Washington, D.C.

If you’re flying, the FAA recommends checking your airline’s flight status updates for potential delays. As of 9 a.m. ET, the FlightAware website’s “Misery Map” showed some 544 flights had been delayed and five canceled since 6 a.m. Nearly 120 of those delays were at Charlotte, N.C.’s, airport.

Nearly 12.7 million passengers are expected to fly on American Airlines this winter holiday season, comprising more than 118,000 flights, according to the airline. The most-traveled days in that span are both Fridays, ahead of and just after Christmas.

NPR’s Joel Rose contributed reporting.