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After two mass shootings in the span of five days — including one Wednesday in San Bernardino, California — America’s frequent rash of gun violence is again in the spotlight. 

And the data backs up the impression that this happens more often in the US than in other countries.

The Americas have by far the worst gun problem in the world, with the weapons used in 66% of homicides. That compares to 13% to 28% in other regions, according to a 2013 United Nations report.

The region, which includes North America, South America, and the Caribbean islands, also has the world’s highest murder rate, at 16.3 per 100,000 people. That compares to a global average of 6.2 per 100,000, according to the report.

Here’s a chart of homicide mechanism by region:

To be fair, war and conflict-related killings are not included in the UN chart because they are “outside the realm of intentional homicide,” according to the UN report. Had these deaths been included, that would likely change the share of firearm homicides in some regions.

Still, even Europe is starkly different from the Americas when it comes to gun homicides. The largest share of homicides in Europe come from the “other” category. And at 3 murders per 100,000 people, the region is safer overall than the Americas.

Unsurprisingly, Europe also has a much lower gun-ownership rate than the US. Many European countries have fewer than 40 guns per 100 people, whereas the US has closer to 90 guns per 100 people.

Guns are used in an even greater share of murders in the US than across the Americas, at 68%:

This has a lot to do with domestic gun laws, as states with loose firearm regulations also have a higher number of gun deaths each year. The US also has far more assault deaths per capita than other industrialized nations.

South America has also become more violent in recent years. Honduras has the highest murder rate in the world, and Mexican drug cartels have worsened the violence in Central America. The UN report noted that organized crime and gangs account for 30% of homicides in the Americas.

SEE ALSO: At least 14 people dead after shooting in San Bernardino, California

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Yahoo’s board of directors finished its first of three days of meetings on Wednesday without reaching a decision on whether to press ahead with the planned spinoff of its stake in Chinese ecommerce company Alibaba, according to CNBC’s David Faber. 

The board meetings come amid media reports that Yahoo is considering selling its core internet business, either in addition to or instead of the Alibaba spinoff. 

Such a sale would mark an abrupt change of plans at the company, which has been trying to revitalize its business for more than three years under CEO Marissa Mayer, while spinning off the ancillary Asian investments in a transaction expected to close in January. Private equity firms and telecommunications companies such as Verizon have been cited as among the potential buyers of Yahoo’s core business in recent media reports and analyst notes.

But people at two potential bidders told Business Insider on Wednesday that they are not exploring any kind of deal to acquire Yahoo’s internet business at this time.

One said the report of the Yahoo sale was overblown, noting that the firm had looked at Yahoo earlier, but that it wasn’t for sale and that the company needs to fix a lot of things before it could begin a sales process. 

Re/code’s Kara Swisher also tweeted that there is “no process in place” for any sale and that the company has not hired any new bankers, other than Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, who were hired a year ago to fend off activist investors. 

Yahoo’s online properties remain some of the most visited in the world, with hundreds of millions of monthly visitors. But the company remains far behind web rivals such as Google and Facebook in terms of user engagement and advertiser budgets.

Activist shareholder Starboard wrote a letter to Yahoo last month urging it to halt its plan to spin off its 15% stake in Alibaba through a complex tax-free spinoff that Yahoo hopes to complete by January. Starboard said the risk of incurring taxes on the deal, especially after the IRS refused to bless the transaction ahead of time, was too great.

SEE ALSO: The inside story of why Marissa Mayer’s most trusted executives have given up on Yahoo

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NOW WATCH: Here’s Everything Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Just Said About Alibaba

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With the speaker of Brazil’s lower house of congress introducing impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff, here’s what comes next:

—A special commission of 66 members of the House of Deputies, with representatives from all political parties, will be formed to decide whether impeachment proceedings should go before the full lower house.

—If advanced by the commission, the impeachment measure would be debated and voted on by the House of Deputies.

—Impeachment would require support from two-thirds, or 342 members, of the lower house. If that happened, Rousseff would be replaced for six months by her vice president while the Senate considered whether she should be permanently removed as president.

—Permanent removal would require the support of two-thirds of senators.

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BOSTON (AP) — Don’t expect any more blockbusters from the Boston Red Sox this offseason, new baseball boss Dave Dombrowski said after announcing a deal with outfielder Chris Young on Wednesday.

The two-year, $13 million contract to make Young a fourth outfielder comes a day after the Red Sox agreed to give potential ace David Price the biggest deal ever for a pitcher: $217 million over seven years. That agreement has not been announced, but a person with knowledge of the negotiations described it to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because Price must still pass his physical.

“I feel good about the roster as it is. I think we’ve been able to address really our biggest needs,” Dombrowski said Wednesday during a conference call. “I think our major moves are done. But when you go into the winter meetings, you never know what happens.”

Young, 32, had been with the New York Yankees since August 2014, batting.252 with 14 homers and 42 RBIs in 318 at-bats this year. He hit .327 against left-handers this season; with its 37-foot-high Green Monster just 310 feet from the plate in left field, Fenway Park seems ideal for his swing.

“One of my major strengths is pulling the ball. I think that Fenway can be advantageous to that,” Young said. “Hopefully, my just-misses, I can get rewarded for that.”

A 2010 All-Star with Arizona, Young has a career .235 average with 169 homers and 528 RBIs over 10 seasons. He will receive $6.5 million in each of the next two years.

The announcement came a day after the Red Sox agreed to terms with Price to become the ace of a pitching staff that lacked one in 2015, when the once-proud ballclub went 78-84 for its third last-place finish in four years. Red Sox spokesman Kevin Gregg said at the beginning of the conference call that the team would not be discussing Price.

But Young said the news was encouraging as his new team tries to bounce back.

“It’s a great feeling to be on a team that’s trying to make those moves and go all the way,” he said. “I think that sends a message to your team, I think that sends a message to your fans of what the goal is.”

Dombrowski said at the end of the season that his goals were to add a pitcher for the front of the rotation and a fourth outfielder to shore up a lineup that is expected to include youngsters Rusney Castillo, Jackie Bradley Jr. and Mookie Betts. Manager John Farrell said Young could play himself into the lineup as more than just a reserve.

“He was at the top of our list,” Dombrowski said. “He fits really what we were looking for as a player.”

Right-hander Roman Mendez was designated for assignment to clear a roster spot.

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Follow Jimmy Golen on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/jgolen .

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What is YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki’s favorite video?

The one that convinced her Google needed to buy YouTube.

In 2006, Wojcicki was overseeing Google video and in charge of its acquisitions. The search giant was looking at YouTube, then a tiny unprofitable Silicon Valley startup, when Wojcicki stumbled upon a video of two boys in China lipsynching to the Backstreet Boys “As Long As You Love Me.” 

The video of the two boys outrageously lip-synching while their roommate did homework in the background was hilarious to the Google exec, she said onstage at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Next Gen Summit. 

“That was the video that made me realize that ‘Wow, people all over the world can create content, and they don’t need to be in a studio,'” Wojcicki said. 

A light bulb went off in her head, and six months after the video was posted, Wojcicki led Google through the $1.65 billion acquisition of the video sharing site. She’s loved YouTube since she watched this video, and was named its CEO in February 2014.

Here’s the magical video:

SEE ALSO: A top VC firm just put together a stunning presentation on the state of startups

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NOW WATCH: One of the most incredible stunts in history has inspired a generation of daredevils and outlaws on Instagram and YouTube

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The International Atomic Energy Agency has completed its report on the military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program. 

The conclusion of the weaponization investigation is one of the major prerequisites for the full implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the landmark nuclear deal that Iran and a US-led group of six countries reached in July.

The investigation is mandated under a “roadmap” agreement reached between the IAEA and Iran on the same day as the JCPOA was completed.

And according to the 16-page IAEA document, which can be found here, Iran carried on forms of weaponization work until 2009, several years longer than publicly available information previously suggested.

According to the report, Iran halted most of its weaponization activities in 2003, a year in which Iran also voluntarily suspended uranium enrichment shortly after the US-led invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

It’s been strongly suspected that Iran carried out high-explosive tests applicable to developing ballistic triggers for a nuclear warhead at a military facility in Parchin in the early 2000s. Less established is the extent of Iran’s weaponization work after 2003.

The IAEA report suggests that even if the program was scaled down after the Iraq invasion, activities didn’t totally cease: “The Agency has no credible indication of activities in Iran relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device after 2009,” the summary of the report reads.

The post-2003 work includes “computer modeling of a nuclear explosive device” and “computer modelling studies of various component arrangements, which were only specific to nuclear explosive configurations based on implosion technology.”

In 2009, Iran was also reportedly involved in “a project … to determine equations of state 
[see here] for materials of concern,” a phrase referring to the engineering of controlled materials, like plutonium and uranium, for possible weaponization purposes.

According to the report, even past 2003, Iran was engaging in work that didn’t have a conceivable civilian use. (Arguably, however, Iran’s heavy water reactor at Arak, which opened in 2006 and will be dramatically modified under hte nuclear deal, doesn’t really have a conceivable civilian use, either.)

The report isn’t the first major piece of evidence for Iranian weaponization efforts after 2003.

A 2012 Israeli intelligence cable that Al Jazeera obtained and published in 2014 concluded that Iran had made no decision on building a nuclear weapon.

But scientists involved in the pre-2003 weaponization work had “formed an organization called SPND [Organization of Defense Innovation and Research]” under Iran’s Ministry of Defense, “for the purpose of preserving the technical ability and the joint organizational framework of Iranian scientists in the R&D of nuclear weapons, and for the purposes of retaining the skills of the scientists.”

Iran’s post-2003 activities might have been as seemingly minimal as warhead-related computer modeling and maintaining the human infrastructure needed to one day restart a weaponization project.

Even so, the IAEA report suggests that Iran was keeping a weaponization option open six years longer than had previously been believed. Iran’s weaponization knowledge and infrastructure may be more advanced, and less stale, than open-source information suggested.

That might make it easier for Iran to construct a nuclear warhead if it ever decided to do so — especially if Iran has access to information garnered from its ally North Korea’s three nuclear-weapons tests. But it’s unlikely to have any effect on the implementation of the nuclear deal.

As The Wall Street Journal notes, the US believes that Iran’s formal obligations under the IAEA “roadmap” meant that Tehran did not actually have to fully cooperate with the agency’s probe.

According to a July 2015 US State Department document circulated among congressional offices and obtained by Business Insider, the Obama administration believed that “an Iranian admission of its past nuclear weapons program is unlikely and is not necessary for purposes of verifying JCPOA commitments going forward.”

“US confidence on this front is based in large part on what we believe we already know about Iran’s past activities,” the document read.

SEE ALSO: The US never really expected Iran to come clean about a key aspect of its nuclear program

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NOW WATCH: Animated map shows every nuclear-bomb explosion in history

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CORAL GABLES, Fla. (AP) — Mark Richt is going back to where his college career began.

The former Miami quarterback has reached a tentative agreement to be the Hurricanes’ next head coach, pending the completion of contract talks, a person with knowledge of the negotiations told The Associated Press. The person spoke Wednesday on condition of anonymity because the deal has not been signed and the university has not announced the hire publicly.

Richt spent the last 15 seasons as the head coach at Georgia, averaging nearly 10 wins a season and leading the Bulldogs to a pair of Southeastern Conference championships.

He is a South Florida native and played for Howard Schnellenberger at Miami, when the Hurricanes were just becoming the program that would win five national championships in 19 seasons.

Richt takes over a Miami program that hasn’t won more than nine games in a season since 2003, and hasn’t won a bowl game since 2006.

He was mentioned as a potential fit for Miami almost as soon as the Hurricanes fired Al Golden in October, with five games left on this year’s regular-season schedule and one day after the Hurricanes endured the worst loss in school history — a 58-0 defeat to Clemson.

When it became known that Richt and Georgia were parting ways, speculation immediately centered on him being Miami’s front-runner even though other candidates were in the mix. Many fans campaigned for months with hope that Miami would hire Butch Davis, who left the school in 2000 and went 52-59 in his subsequent stops with the Cleveland Browns and North Carolina.

But in the end, it was Richt — who, in his farewell news conference from Georgia earlier this week, suggested that he might not coach again after more than three decades of constantly working.

Three days later, he was set to take over at his alma mater.

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Months after initially reporting on the high levels of viruses in waterways that will serve as venues in the 2016 Rio Olympics, the Associated Press is back with another disturbing investigation. According to the AP, the virus and human waste-filled waterways of Guanabara Bay are more contaminated than previously thought — and could pose a real danger to athletes.

The Guanabara Bay pollution is part of a larger problem in Rio de Janeiro, which doesn’t properly collect or treat much of its sewage. As a result, raw sewage flows into the bay from rivers and storm drains. The problem has been gradually getting worse for decades, according to David Zee, an oceanography professor at Rio’s state university.

While initially it appeared that the water pollution was worse closer to shore, the AP’s newest investigation indicates that the virus levels are just as high further into the bay, where athletes will be competing.

When the AP first performed tests in July, levels of human disease-causing adenoviruses in Guanabara Bay, which will host Olympic sailing events, were up to 1.7 million times higher than what’s considered a “safe” level in US and European waters. Adenoviruses can cause ear infections, conjunctivitis, and tonsillitis, among other things.  They can potentially last in water from months to years. 

According to Zee, no one really knows how dangerous these levels of viruses are for Olympic sailors, who will likely be splashed with it during competition. The viruses and bacteria in the water could easily infect a cut or scrape, and would be especially dangerous if the water splashed onto their mouths or into their noses.“We don’t have enough data to compare [to other bodies of water]. Even in the US, there are only two states, Hawaii and California, that track viruses,” Zee tells Tech Insider. “Now the Rio government is starting to think about it, but there’s not enough time before the Olympics.” 

Earlier this summer, a German sailor participating in an Olympics test event contracted a leg infection after sailing on the water, but doctors aren’t able to say the infection came specifically from the water. “It’s hard to figure out the origin of illness, stress can also decay immunity,” which makes someone more receptive to infection, notes Zee.

Viruses aren’t the only problem in Guanabara Bay. In July, the AP also found abnormally high levels of fecal coliform bacteria. Levels of the bacteria, which are linked to diseases like cholera and typhoid, were above normal in the bay, but not as high as the adenovirus levels. This could be because fecal coliform doesn’t survive as long as adenoviruses in water. 

Zee is advocating for an extensive river treatment system that collects trash and waste inside Guanabara Bay. Some river treatment units are in place, but not enough to fix the pollution problem entirely.

The challenge is convincing the city to pay for treatment. “If you give sewage treatment to one house, you can charge the cost to the house. But if you clean the river, who are you going to charge?” 

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San Bernardino (United States) (AFP) – A suspect in the mass shooting that killed at least 14 people in California on Wednesday is “down” following a shootout, police said.

“I know there is an active scene, there were shots fired and a suspect is down,” Sergeant Vicki Cervantes of San Bernardino Police told reporters.

A body could be seen near a bullet-riddled SUV, with dozens of police vehicles swarming around, according to live television footage.  

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Talks on a massive, government-wide spending bill hit a snag Wednesday as Republicans pressed demands to block new power plant rules, weaken financial services regulations and make it more difficult for Syrian and Iraqi refugees to enter the U.S.

Democrats, whose votes will be needed to carry the $1.1 trillion measure through the House, flatly rejected the initial offer from top Republicans. With little more than a week to pass a measure to avert a government shutdown, it’s likely that a short-term funding bill will be needed to keep the government open past the Dec. 11 deadline.

Republican aides characterized Tuesday night’s offer from House Speaker Paul Ryan and top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell as an opening move, but the White House weighed in sharply, saying it threatened a government shutdown.

Many lower-tier items in the massive measure have been worked out, leaving numerous policy provisions, known as “riders” as the main unresolved items.

“The effort they’re engaged in now is to lard the bill up with ideological riders,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters.

The initial GOP offer included provisions to block new Obama administration rules on power plant emissions, weaken the 2010 overhaul of financial regulations known as the Dodd-Frank law, and a contentious House-passed bill requiring greater scrutiny on Syrians seeking refuge in the U.S.

“They sent us an offer that was anti-worker, anti-labor, anti-education, anti-environment … anti-refugee,” said top House Appropriations Committee Democrat Nita Lowey of New York. Many provisions in the 12 spending bills drafted by House and Senate Republicans have been slapped with White House veto threats.

Neither Democrats nor Republicans would release the proposal, but a memorandum from House Democratic staff characterized it in broad strokes, citing “poison pill” riders on the environment, labor regulations, financial regulation and refugees. The proposal would not unravel President Barack Obama’s signature health care law, attempt to take away federal funding from Planned Parenthood or undo executive action on immigration.

Democrats said they would prepare a counter-offer.

The ill-will followed a story in Politico that quoted anonymous Republicans characterizing Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., as an obstacle to the talks and blaming her for slow progress on dozens of unresolved issues.

“We haven’t been talking to the press, we’ve been respectful, we’ve been open, understanding that we have to compromise and the rest — and then all of a sudden, they announce, ‘We’re telling the Democrats time is running out,'” Pelosi told her colleagues Wednesday morning. “Everything that we thought would have movement or that was still an open question, they just negated.”

Despite Wednesday’s blow-up, both sides remain committed to working out an agreement. The measure follows an October pact that awarded both the Pentagon and domestic Cabinet agencies about $33 billion above tight budget “caps” that many Republicans and virtually every Democrat opposed.

“We’re at the first stage of this leadership negotiation,” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, who’s been actively involved from her post as top Democrat of the Appropriations Committee. “We’re far apart on these policy riders and then on some money issues. But the policy riders are our biggest challenge.”

“We patiently await their offer,” said McConnell spokesman Don Stewart.

The Syrian refugee issue could become particularly contentious. House conservatives said Wednesday they would demand language in the spending bill at least as strong as legislation already passed by the House, with support from 47 Democrats, to greatly increase hurdles for Syrian and Iraqi refugees. “We have a constitutional duty to protect the American public,” said Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kansas.

Yet Obama threatened to veto that bill, and in the Senate more limited changes are being considered, leaving any resolution uncertain.

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AP Congressional Correspondent Erica Werner contributed to this report.

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