News Headlines - 12 December 2018

▽Theresa May survives confidence vote of Tory MPs - BBC News

Prime Minister Theresa May has won a vote of confidence in her leadership of the Conservative Party by 200 to 117.
After securing 63% of the total vote, she is now immune from a leadership challenge for a year.

▽Italy offers to lower deficit to 2.04% of GDP in 2019: Conte

Italy has made an offer to the European Commission to lower its deficit to 2.04 percent of GDP in 2019, Prime Minister Guiseppe Conte said on Wednesday, in a bid to avoid financial penalties from Brussels.
After meeting with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, Conte said that additional resources had given Italy more financial wriggle room... Conte said that the budget could be revised down from a proposed deficit of 2.4 percent to 2.04 percent, due to the "recovered" financial resources.

▽Daimler to buy $23 billion of battery cells for electric car drive | Reuters

Daimler will buy battery cells worth more than 20 billion euros ($23 billion) by 2030 as it readies mass production of hybrid and electric vehicles, the maker of Mercedes-Benz cars said on Tuesday.

▽Chaos and the chocolate factory as leak smothers German street | The Guardian

The German newspaper Soester Anzeiger reported that a “small technical defect” involving a storage tank caused the chocolate to spill out from the DreiMeister chocolate factory in Westönnen.
After hitting the chilly pavement, the milk chocolate quickly hardened.
About 25 firefighters worked to pry the chocolate off with shovels. They also used hot water and torches to remove remaining bits from cracks and holes.

▽Why 10pm on Christmas Eve (or Christmas Day) could be deadly

On an average day, 50 heart attacks were recorded, but on Christmas Eve the number jumped to 69, a 37 per cent increase, with incidents clustering around 10pm, after a day of coping with relatives, eating and drinking too much... The risk of suffering a heart attack also rises by 22 per cent on Boxing Day. Winston Churchill is said to have suffered a heart attack on December 26 in 1941 while opening a window at the White House following a speech to congress.