A driver was charged with assault after plowing into a crowd outside a Hollywood nightclub early Saturday, police said, injuring 30 people, with bystanders attacking and shooting the driver before he was detained by authorities.The suspect, identified as 29-year-old Fernando Ramirez, was charged on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) spokeswoman Rosario Cervantes told AFP.Ramirez had been “undergoing surgery” at a local hospital after suffering a gunshot wound from the incident.”He is not free to leave, he is in the custody of Los Angeles Police Department,” LAPD Commander Lillian Carranza told local news station KCAL.Ramirez had been kicked out of The Vermont Hollywood nightclub in East Hollywood before he deliberately rammed his vehicle into the crowd, US media reported.Based on reviewing a video of the incident, “when he hit bystanders, it was an intentional act,” the Los Angeles Times quoted LAPD Captain Ben Fernandes as saying.The crowd pulled Ramirez out of the car, reportedly a Nissan Versa sedan, and attacked him in the chaos that followed the car ramming, which took place around 2:00 am (0900 GMT), police detailed.Authorities were still searching for a gunman who shot and wounded the driver before fleeing on foot, Cervantes said.Footage posted on social media showed panicked people running outside the club and victims sprawled on a blood-stained sidewalk, while others sobbed nearby.”When officers arrived, they found the driver being assaulted by bystanders and determined he had sustained a gunshot wound,” a police statement said.More than 100 firefighters responded to the scene in East Hollywood.”We have 30 victims, 18 females and 12 males between the ages of the mid-twenties to early thirties,” Carranza said.Seven were in critical condition and six were in serious condition, authorities said. Ten suffered minor injuries while seven left the hospital against medical advice.- ‘Heartbreaking tragedy’ -Many clubgoers were outside when the car plowed into the crowd, a taco truck and a valet stand. “They were all standing in line going into a nightclub. There was a taco cart out there, so they were … getting some food, waiting to go in. And there’s also a valet line there,” Los Angeles Fire Department Captain Adam Van Gerpen told ABC News.”The valet podium was taken out, the taco truck was taken out, and then a large number of people were impacted by the vehicle.”At dawn Saturday, a tow truck hauled away the car, its bumper torn off. Club employees power washed the sidewalk outside The Vermont Hollywood, which had been hosting a reggae and hip-hop event.Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass called the incident “a heartbreaking tragedy.””The hearts of Angelenos are with all of the victims impacted this morning — a full investigation into what happened is underway,” she said in a statement.The Vermont Hollywood club said on social media it was “deeply saddened by the tragic incident.”The area of the car ramming is near Hollywood landmarks including Sunset Boulevard and the Walk of Fame — a sidewalk emblazoned with stars commemorating movie industry figures.

Unknown to the general public just three years ago, Jensen Huang is now one of the most powerful entrepreneurs in the world as head of chip giant Nvidia.The unassuming 62-year-old draws stadium crowds of more than 10,000 people as his company’s products push the boundaries of artificial intelligence.Chips designed by Nvidia, known as graphics cards or GPUs (Graphics Processing Units), are essential in developing the generative artificial intelligence powering technology like ChatGPT.Big tech’s insatiable appetite for Nvidia’s GPUs, which sell for tens of thousands of dollars each, has catapulted the California chipmaker beyond $4 trillion in market valuation, the first company ever to surpass that mark.Nvidia’s meteoric rise has boosted Huang’s personal fortune to $150 billion — making him one of the world’s richest people — thanks to the roughly 3.5 percent stake he holds in the company he founded three decades ago with two friends in a Silicon Valley diner.In a clear demonstration of his clout, he recently convinced President Donald Trump to lift restrictions on certain GPU exports to China, despite the fact that China is locked in a battle with the United States for AI supremacy.”That was brilliantly done,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a governance professor at Yale University.Huang was able to explain to Trump that “having the world using a US tech platform as the core protocol is definitely in the interest of this country” and won’t help the Chinese military, Sonnenfeld said.- Early life -Born in Taipei in 1963, Jensen Huang (originally named Jen-Hsun) embodies the American success story. At nine years old, he was sent away with his brother to boarding school in small-town Kentucky.His uncle recommended the school to his Taiwanese parents believing it to be a prestigious institution, when it was actually a school for troubled youth.Too young to be a student, Huang boarded there but attended a nearby public school alongside the children of tobacco farmers. With his poor English, he was bullied and forced to clean toilets — a two-year ordeal that transformed him.”We worked really hard, we studied really hard, and the kids were really tough,” he recounted in an interview with US broadcaster NPR.But “the ending of the story is I loved the time I was there,” Huang said.- Leather jacket and tattoo -Brought home by his parents, who had by then settled in the northwestern US state of Oregon, he graduated from university at just 20 and joined AMD, then LSI Logic, to design chips — his passion.But he wanted to go further and founded Nvidia in 1993 to “solve problems that normal computers can’t,” using semiconductors powerful enough to handle 3D graphics, as he explained on the “No Priors” podcast.Nvidia created the first GPU in 1999, riding the intersection of video games, data centers, cloud computing, and now, generative AI.Always dressed in a black T-shirt and leather jacket, Huang sports a Nvidia logo tattoo and has a taste for sports cars.But it’s his relentless optimism, low-key personality and lack of political alignment that sets him apart from the likes of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Unlike them, Huang was notably absent from Trump’s inauguration ceremony.”He backpedals his own aura and has the star be the technology rather than himself,” observed Sonnenfeld, who believes Huang may be “the most respected of all today’s tech titans.”One former high-ranking Nvidia employee described him to AFP as “the most driven person” he’d ever met. – Street food -On visits to his native Taiwan, Huang is treated like a megastar, with fans crowding him for autographs and selfies as journalists follow him to the barber shop and his favorite night market.”He has created the phenomena because of his personal charm,” noted Wayne Lin of Witology Market Trend Research Institute.”A person like him must be very busy and his schedule should be full every day meeting big bosses. But he remembers to eat street food when he comes to Taiwan,” he said, calling Huang “unusually friendly.”Nvidia is a tight ship and takes great care to project a drama-free image of Huang. But the former high-ranking employee painted a more nuanced picture, describing a “very paradoxical” individual who is fiercely protective of his employees but also capable, within Nvidia’s executive circle, of “ripping people to shreds” over major mistakes or poor choices.

Fed up with rising gas prices, Nita Mexican voted last November for Donald Trump, who is increasingly popular among Native American communities which have long supported the political left.”A lot of the younger ones are for him now, including friends of our grandkids,” the 77-year-old member of the Navajo Nation reservation told AFP.As a Republican voter, Mexican was used to being in the minority in Tuba City, a small, remote hamlet in the Arizona desert, located on a plateau part of the vast Native American reservation.But in recent years, she has witnessed a change in attitudes towards the divisive US president. Like her, some neighbors have begun to blame immigration from Latin America for the unemployment and drug trade plaguing the impoverished reservation.”Trump is cleaning up America, it’s a good thing,” said Mexican, a former power plant employee who praised Trump’s hardline deportation policy.”America has to come first,” she said. “Us Natives, we are Americans and we should have the jobs first.”Rising inflation is an enduring concern in this isolated region, where cars are essential for getting around. Mexican and her husband Joe spend $40 a day on gasoline to tend to their sheep, which are kept in a pen some 25 miles (40 kilometers) away. The couple also provide financial support for some of their unemployed grandchildren.”Sometimes we don’t have enough to get groceries for the both of us,” Mexican said, adding that she would like Trump to “slow down” on his tariffs targeting multiple imported products.- Surprising inroads -Spanning the southwestern states of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, the Navajo Nation is the largest Native American reservation in the United States.Trump made surprising inroads in last year’s presidential election in the region that has been a Democratic stronghold since the 1980s.The Republican leader notably won by 17.1 points in Navajo County, double his margin of victory from four years earlier, and lost by just 19 points in Apache County, down from 33.6 in 2020.A similar trend was observed nationwide, from North Carolina to Montana, with Native American voters overall backing Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, but with much less enthusiasm than in the past.Like with Latino voters, more men than women from the minority group voted for Trump, according to polls.At her home, which does not get electricity, Gilberta Cortes said she “butts heads… all the time” with her 21-year-old son, who voted for Trump.”He talks about inflation, he says that cartels are ruining everything for Native Americans,” Cortes said.The 42-year-old mother is not as impressed by the billionaire president.She resents his mockery of the Native American origins of Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, whom he regularly refers to as “Pocahontas.”- ‘Favoritism’ -Laws enacted by Trump during his first term to probe the disappearance of thousands of Native American women did not persuade her either. “It was just favoritism so that he would get our votes,” said the left-wing voter.And the president’s anti-immigration rhetoric and policies have unsettled her further.Several Navajos have been stopped in recent months by immigration agents because of their skin color, according to some reservation officials.”You see a lot of racism… When I go out, I feel like I’m just walking on eggshells,” said Cortes.Trump’s climate change skepticism is also a concern, with many Native Americans claiming a spiritual connection to the environment.Cortes has had to forbid her children from playing outside in the summer because of heat waves, which are growing more intense in the Arizona desert.”If he drills oil like crazy and he makes cuts to environmental agencies, it’s gonna make things worse in the long run,” Cortes said.Elbert Yazzie thinks some of his friends will soon regret their decision.Trump’s recently passed signature spending bill is expected to shrink the federal food assistance program, among other cuts that could hit out at low-income Americans.”They voted for him because they thought there would be more jobs for us American citizens. But instead, he’s cutting off food stamps,” Yazzie told AFP from his caravan.”That’s going to affect a lot of people around here.”