LOS ANGELES — A patient in the U.S. state of Louisiana has become the first person dead of bird flu, or H5N1, in the United States, authorities said on Monday.
The Louisiana Department of Health confirmed in a news release that the patient had been hospitalized with the first human case of highly pathogenic avian influenza.
The patient was over the age of 65 and was reported to have underlying medical conditions, said the department, adding that the patient contracted H5N1 after exposure to a combination of a non-commercial backyard flock and wild birds.
The department noted that the patient remains the only human case of H5N1 in the southeastern U.S. state and the department’s extensive public health investigation has identified no additional H5N1 cases nor evidence of person-to-person transmission.
While the current public health risk for the general public remains low, people who work with birds, poultry or cows, or have recreational exposure to them, are at higher risk, state officials warned, adding that the best way to protect people from H5N1 is to avoid sources of exposure.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a statement on Monday that the agency “is saddened” by the death.
“While tragic, a death from H5N1 bird flu in the United States is not unexpected because of the known potential for infection with these viruses to cause severe illness and death,” the agency added.
As of Monday, there have been 66 confirmed human cases of H5N1 bird flu in the United States since 2024 and 67 since 2022. Outside the United States, more than 950 cases of H5N1 bird flu have been reported to the World Health Organization; about half of those have resulted in death, according to CDC.
CDC pointed out that no person-to-person transmission spread has been identified. The agency said it has carefully studied the available information about the person who died in Louisiana and continues to assess that the risk to the general public remains low.
SYDNEY — An investigation has been underway after a man died in a house fire in northeastern Australia.
Police in the state of Queensland said in a statement on Tuesday that emergency services were called to the fire in the small town of Warwick, 130 km southwest of Brisbane, at 9:45 p.m. local time on Monday.
Firefighters deployed to the scene were able to prevent the fire from spreading to nearby properties and a subsequent search of the house located a 20-year-old man deceased inside.
“Two dogs also died as a result of the fire,” Queensland Police said.
A firefighter told Seven Network television that smoke in the house was thick, making the chances of surviving without a breathing apparatus very low.
JERUSALEM — An Israeli deputy company commander and another soldier were killed, and two others were injured, in a clash with militants in northern Gaza, the Israeli military said on Monday.
The military identified one of the dead as Eitan Israel Shiknazi, 24, from the settlement of Eli in the West Bank, a deputy company commander in the infantry Nahal Brigade’s 932nd Battalion. He “fell during combat” in the northern Gazan city of Beit Hanoun, the military said in a statement.
The name of the other fatality was not released because his family had not yet been notified, the military said, adding that he and the two injured soldiers also belonged to the 932nd Battalion.
Israel’s state-owned Kan TV reported that the four soldiers were hit by an anti-tank missile fired by militants at the building where they were staying.
The latest deaths brought the total number of Israeli soldiers killed to 827 since the beginning of the country’s multi-front war in October 2023.
According to the Gaza health authorities on Monday, Israeli strikes have killed 45,854 people and injured 109,139 others in the Palestinian enclave since the conflict.
MOSCOW – Eight people were killed after a fire broke out in a wooden apartment building in Russia’s western Kirov region, the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations (EMERCOM) said Sunday.
The fire occurred in the village of Kilmez, about 1,000 km northeast of Moscow. Initial reports indicated that seven people died, and an eighth body was discovered in the debris-cleaning process.
The EMERCOM teams are investigating the cause of the fire.
Kirov Governor Alexander Sokolov said that the building was home to 11 residents, primarily pensioners.
TOKYO — Two people died and three others went missing after a fishing boat capsized off Ibaraki Prefecture in eastern Japan early Monday, local media reported.
The fishing boat with 20 people aboard capsized at around 2:05 a.m. local time off a port in Kashima in Ibaraki Prefecture, northeast of Tokyo, Kyodo News reported, citing local authorities.
Fifteen people were rescued, and bodies of two men in their 50s and 60s were recovered, who were confirmed dead later, the report said.
The Japan Coast Guard believes that the boat may have capsized because too many fish got caught in the net, causing it to lose balance.
The coast guard and others are continuing their search for the missing.
This photo was posted by cartoonist Ann Telnaes on her website, with a caption saying it was a rough draft of the cartoon “killed” by Washington Post.
A cartoonist has decided to quit her job at the Washington Post after an editor rejected her sketch of the newspaper’s owner and other media executives bowing before President-elect Donald Trump.
Ann Telnaes posted a message Friday on the online platform Substack saying that she drew a cartoon showing a group of media executives bowing before Trump while offering him bags of money, including Post owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Telnaes wrote that the cartoon was intended to criticize “billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump.”
Several executives, Bezos among them, have been spotted at Trump’s Florida club Mar-a-Lago.
She accused them of having lucrative government contracts and working to eliminate regulations.
Telnaes said that she’s never before had a cartoon rejected because of its inherent messaging and that such a move is dangerous for a free press.
“As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable,” Telnaes wrote.
“For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say ‘Democracy dies in darkness.’”
The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists issued a statement Saturday accusing the Post of “political cowardice” and asking other cartoonists to post Telnaes’ sketch with the hashtag #StandWithAnn in a show of solidarity.
“Tyranny ends at pen point,” the association said. “It thrives in the dark, and the Washington Post simply closed its eyes and gave in like a punch-drunk boxer.”
The Post’s communications director, Liza Pluto, provided The Associated Press on Saturday with a statement from David Shipley, the newspaper’s editorial page editor. Shipley said in the statement that he disagrees with Telnaes’ “interpretation of events.”
He said he decided to nix the cartoon because the paper had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and was set to publish another.
“Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force. … The only bias was against repetition,” Shipley said.
MOSCOW — A Russian war correspondent was killed and four other media workers injured in a Ukrainian drone strike in the Donetsk region, Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency reported Saturday.
The drone struck a car carrying Russian journalists on the Donetsk-Gorlovka highway, killing Alexander Martemyanov, a stringer for the Russian newspaper Izvestia, the report said.
“After filming the aftermath of the shelling in Gorlovka, we were returning to Donetsk. On the highway, a kamikaze drone struck our car,” said RIA Novosti correspondent Maxim Romanenko, who was among the injured.
Denis Pushilin, head of the Donetsk region, said on Telegram that all injured journalists are receiving medical treatment.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said those attacks against Russian journalists will face “deserved and inevitable punishment.”
SYDNEY — Two people have died in a light plane crash off Australia’s east coast north of Sydney.
Police in the state of New South Wales (NSW) said in a statement on Saturday night that emergency services were called to reports of a light plane crash in the ocean near the town of Nambucca Heads, approximately 400 km north of Sydney, at 4 p.m. local time.
“The pilot and passenger of the aircraft died at the scene and are yet to be formally identified,” NSW Police said.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported that the wreckage was found about 1.5 km off the coast.
Water police, ambulance crews and a rescue helicopter were deployed to the scene.
Fire and Rescue NSW Superintendent Grant Rice told the ABC that debris had washed up along the shoreline.
NSW Police said it has commenced an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the incident, with the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) assisting.
GAZA STRIP – Rescuers in Gaza said on Saturday that at least 19 people, including eight children, were killed in Israeli strikes across the Palestinian territory.
According to the civil defense agency, an air strike at dawn on the house of the Al-Ghoul family in Gaza City killed 11 people, seven of them children.
“The home, which housed several displaced people, was completely destroyed,” said civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal.
“It was a two-story building and several people are still under the rubble,” he added, saying Israeli drones had “also fired on ambulance staff.”
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli army did not immediately comment on the strike.
AFP images from the neighborhood of Shujaiya, in the east of Gaza City, showed residents combing through smoking rubble and bodies lined up on the ground, covered in white sheets.
“A huge explosion woke us up. Everything was shaking,” said witness Ahmed Mussa.
“I was surprised to see (the strike) was on the house of our neighbors, the Al-Ghoul family. It was home to children, women. There wasn’t anyone wanted or who posed a threat.”
Elsewhere, the civil defense agency said five security officers, tasked with accompanying aid convoys, were killed by an Israeli strike as they were driving in a car in the southern city of Khan Yunis.
Bassal accused Israel of having “deliberately targeted” them in order to “affect the humanitarian supply chain and increase the suffering” of the population.
The army has not yet responded to the accusations.
Local rescuers also said three members of the same family, including a child, were killed when their house was bombed in Khan Yunis.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 45,717 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.
ST. PETERSBURG — Four drones were shot down in Russia’s Leningrad Oblast, regional Governor Alexander Drozdenko said Saturday.
“The night and morning of Jan. 4 saw a record number of UAVs destroyed. Four aircraft were downed over the Leningrad Oblast with the use of electronic warfare and small arms,” Drozdenko wrote in a post on social media Telegram.
He said there were no casualties or damages and the drone threat warning has been cancelled.
Pulkovo Airport in St. Petersburg imposed temporary flight restrictions twice overnight and in the morning for safety concerns.
NEW DELHI — Many people, including a senior police official, were injured after a protest rally turned violent and attacked the superintendent of police’s office in the northeastern state of Manipur, officials said Saturday.
The violence broke out in Kangpokpi district, about 44 km north of Imphal, the capital city of Manipur.
Authorities have deployed additional police force in the district to contain the situation.
Many protesters, who sustained injuries during the clashes, were also admitted to hospital.
Manipur has been on edge since May 3, 2023 when large-scale violence broke out in the state during a tribal protest over the inclusion of the non-tribal Meitei community for a scheduled tribe status — designated for disadvantaged socio-economic groups which gives them reservations in education and government jobs.
NEW DELHI — Six people died and a few others were injured when a fire broke out inside a firecrackers manufacturing unit in India’s southern state of Tamil Nadu on Saturday, confirmed a local cop over phone.
The incident occurred in the state’s Virudhunagar district. The blast was suspected to have occurred during the mixing of chemicals.
As an impact of the blast and subsequent fire, the building of the firecrackers manufacturing unit collapsed, thus trapping a few persons underneath. As per the latest reports, rescue work was ongoing to bring out those trapped under the debris.
Those injured were admitted to a local hospital. All the victims were workers of the firecrackers manufacturing unit.
SHIJIAZHUANG — Eight people were killed and 15 others injured in a fire that broke out at a marketplace in Qiaoxi District of Zhangjiakou City, north China’s Hebei Province, on Saturday, local authorities said.
The fire broke out at around 8:40 a.m. at a marketplace that sells vegetables and other essential goods. Firefighters, along with emergency response and medical teams, promptly arrived at the scene for rescue operations. By 10:10 a.m., the fire was extinguished.
Search and rescue work was completed at midday. The injured have received hospital treatments, and their conditions are reported as non-life-threatening.
The cause of the fire is under further investigation.
SEOUL — Three people were confirmed dead on Saturday after a fishing boat ran aground in waters off southwest South Korea, according to multiple media outlets.
It was reported at about 10:30 a.m. local time (0130 GMT) that the 9.7-ton vessel with 22 people on board collided with submerged rocks in waters off Gageo island, Sinan county, some 410 km south of the capital Seoul. The island is around 140 km southwest of the county.
Three people were taken to hospitals in cardiac arrest and announced dead later.
The remaining 19 were rescued by the coast guard and other vessels sailing in nearby waters.
NAYPYIDAW, Myanmar — Myanmar’s embattled junta government on Saturday said it would release almost 6,000 prisoners as part of an annual amnesty to mark the country’s independence day.
The military has arrested thousands of protesters and activists since its February 2021 coup that ended Myanmar’s brief democratic experiment and plunged the nation into turmoil.
More than 5,800 prisoners — including 180 foreigners — will be freed, the junta said in a statement on Saturday, when the country marks 77 years of independence from British colonial rule.
It did not give details of what the prisoners had been convicted of or the nationalities of the foreign detainees who were set to be deported on release.
The military said it ordered the pardons “on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.”
The junta also announced that 144 people who had been sentenced to life in prison would have their sentences commuted to 15 years.
Myanmar frequently grants amnesty to thousands of prisoners to commemorate holidays or Buddhist festivals.
Last year, the junta announced the release of more than 9,000 prisoners to mark independence day.
The annual independence day ceremony held in the heavily guarded capital Naypyidaw on Saturday morning saw around 500 government and military attendees.
A speech by junta chief Min Aung Hlaing — who was not present at the event — was delivered by deputy army chief Soe Win.
Soe Win reiterated the junta’s call to dozens of ethnic minority armed groups that have been fighting it for the last four years to put down arms and “resolve the political issue through peaceful means.”
He repeated a military pledge to hold delayed democratic elections and called for national unity.
LIMA — At least six people were killed, 25 injured and 17 remained missing after a bus plunged into a river in northwest Peru, local authorities said Friday.
According to the authorities, the bus left Lima Thursday evening for Pomabamba in northern Peru. It fell into the Pacosbamba River Friday morning with some passengers being ejected and swept away by strong currents.
Local media cited poor road conditions as a possible cause. Rescue efforts were ongoing, with police and a Civil Defense team deployed to the site.
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration has informally notified the US Congress of a proposed $8 billion arms sale to Israel that includes munitions for fighter jets and attack helicopters, Axios reported on Friday, citing two sources.
The deal would need approval from House and Senate committees and includes artillery shells and air-to-air missiles for fighter jets to defend against threats such as drones, the report said.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“The President has made clear Israel has a right to defend its citizens, consistent with international law and international humanitarian law, and to deter aggression from Iran and its proxy organizations,” a US official was quoted by Axios as saying.
The package also includes small-diameter bombs and warheads, according to Axios.
Diplomatic efforts have so far failed to end the 15-month-old Israeli war in Gaza. President Joe Biden is due to leave office on Jan. 20, when Donald Trump will succeed him.
This photo shows a damaged US government identification of Matthew Livelsberger, who the police identified as the driver of the Tesla Cybertruck that exploded outside the Trump International Hotel on January 2, 2025. (REUTERS)
An Army soldier who died in an explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck at the Trump hotel in Las Vegas left a note saying it was stunt to serve as “wakeup call” for the country’s ills, investigators said Friday.
Matthew Livelsberger, a 37-year-old Green Beret from Colorado Springs, Colorado, also wrote in the note that he needed to “cleanse my mind” of the lives lost of people he knew and “the burden of the lives I took.”
Livelsberger apparently harbored no ill will toward President-elect Donald Trump, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department officials said.
“Although this incident is more public and more sensational than usual, it ultimately appears to be a tragic case of suicide involving a heavily decorated combat veteran who was struggling with PTSD and other issues,” FBI Special Agent In Charge Spencer Evans said at a news conference.
The explosion caused minor injuries to seven people but virtually no damage to the hotel. Authorities said Friday that Livelsberger acted alone.
“This was not a terrorist attack, it was a wakeup call. Americans only pay attention to spectacles and violence. What better way to get my point across than a stunt with fireworks and explosives,” Livelsberger wrote in a letter found by authorities who released only excerpts of it.
Investigators identified the Tesla driver — who was burned beyond recognition — as Livelsberger by a tattoo and by comparing DNA from relatives. The cause of death was a self-inflicted gunshot to the head, according to coroners officials.
Pentagon officials have declined to say whether Livelsberger may have been suffering from mental health issues but say they have turned over his medical records to police.
Authorities excerpted the messages from two letters Livelsberger wrote using a cellphone note application, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Assistant Sheriff Dori Koren said.
The letters covered a range of topics including political grievances, domestic issues and societal issues, Koren said.
Tesla engineers, meanwhile, helped extract data from the Cybertruck for investigators, including Livelsberger’s path between charging stations from Colorado through New Mexico and Arizona and on to Las Vegas, Koren said.
“We still have a large volume of data to go through,” Koren said. “There’s thousands if not millions of videos and photos and documents and web history and all of those things that need to be analyzed.”
The new details came as investigators sought to determine Livelsberger’s motive, including whether he sought to make a political point with the Tesla and the hotel bearing the president-elect’s name.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has recently become a member of Trump’s inner circle. Neither Trump nor Musk was in Las Vegas early Wednesday, the day of the explosion. Both had attended Trump’s New Year’s Eve party at his South Florida estate.
Musk spent an estimated $250 million during the presidential campaign to support Trump, who has named Musk, the world’s richest man, to co-lead a new effort to find ways to cut the government’s size and spending.
Investigators suspect Livelsberger may have been planning a more damaging attack but the steel-sided vehicle absorbed much of the force from the crudely built explosive.
Investigators said previously that Livelsberger shot himself inside the Tesla Cybertruck packed with fireworks just before it exploded outside Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on New Year’s Day.
“It’s not lost on us that it’s in front of the Trump building, that it’s a Tesla vehicle, but we don’t have information at this point that definitively tells us or suggests it was because of this particular ideology,” Spencer Evans, the Las Vegas FBI’s special agent in charge, said Thursday.
Asked Friday about whether Livelsberger had been struggling with any mental health issues that may have prompted his suicide, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters that “the department has turned over all medical records to local law enforcement.”
A law enforcement official said investigators learned through interviews that he may have gotten into a fight with his wife about relationship issues shortly before he rented the Tesla in Colorado on Saturday and bought the guns. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation.
Among the charred items found inside the truck were a handgun at Livelsberger’s feet, another firearm, fireworks, a passport, a military ID, credit cards, an iPhone and a smartwatch, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Sheriff Kevin McMahill said. Authorities said both guns were purchased legally.
Livelsberger served in the Green Berets, highly trained special forces who work to counter terrorism abroad and train partners. He had served in the Army since 2006, rising through the ranks with a long career of overseas assignments, deploying twice to Afghanistan and serving in Ukraine, Tajikistan, Georgia and Congo, the Army said. He had recently returned from an overseas assignment in Germany and was on approved leave when he died, according to a US official.
He was awarded a total of five Bronze Stars, including one with a valor device for courage under fire, a combat infantry badge and an Army Commendation Medal with valor.
Authorities searched a townhouse in Livelsberger’s hometown of Colorado Springs Thursday as part of the investigation.
Neighbors said the man who lived there had a wife and a baby.
Cindy Helwig, who lives diagonally across a narrow street separating the homes, said she last saw the man she knew as Matthew about two weeks ago when he asked her if he could borrow a tool he needed to fix an SUV he was working on.
“He was a normal guy,” said Helwig, who said she last saw the wife and baby earlier this week.
The explosion of the truck, packed with firework mortars and camp fuel canisters, came hours after 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar rammed a truck into a crowd in New Orleans’ famed French Quarter early on New Year’s Day, killing at least 14 people before being shot to death by police. The FBI says they believe Jabbar acted alone and that it is being investigated as a terrorist attack.
Country Fire Authority personnel work near a bushfire in the Grampians National park, in Victoria, Australia, December 20, 2024. AAP/Supplied by State Control Centre via REUTERS
SYDNEY — Australia’s southeast on Saturday sweltered in a heat wave that raised the risk of bushfires and led authorities to issue fire bans for large parts of Victoria state.
Australia faces a high-risk bushfire season that has already seen Victorian authorities battle a large fire that last week ripped through the state’s vast Grampians National Park, razing homes and farmland.
The nation’s weather forecaster said temperatures would be up to 14 degrees Celsius (25.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above average in some areas on Saturday, with Melbourne, the capital of Australia’s second most populous state Victoria, set to hit 37 C (98.6 F).
At Melbourne Airport, the temperature was already 32.8 C (91 F) at 10:20 a.m. local time, more than six degrees above the January mean maximum temperature, according to forecaster data.
Total fire bans were in place for two districts in Victoria’s west, including Wimmera, an area stretching more than 180 km (111 miles), where authorities labelled the fire danger as “extreme”, the highest danger rating.
“The more significant wind change that is driving the heat across the southeast is not due until Sunday night,” Bureau of Meteorology official Miriam Bradbury told Australian Broadcasting Corp television.
The country’s last few fire seasons have been quiet compared with the catastrophic 2019-2020 “Black Summer” of wildfires that destroyed an area the size of Turkey and killed 33 people.
LONDON — Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (CPJ) has executed Yemeni journalist Mohamed Al-Maqri after holding him captive for nine years, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported on Thursday.
Al-Maqri, a correspondent for the television channel Yemen Today, was abducted in 2015 while covering an anti-AQAP protest in Al-Mukalla, the capital of the southern governorate of Hadhramaut.
He was executed along with 10 other individuals after years of enforced disappearance.
“The killing of Mohamed Al-Maqri highlights the extreme dangers Yemeni journalists face while reporting from one of the world’s perilous conflict zones,” said Yeganeh Rezaian, CPJ’s interim MENA (Middle East and North Africa) program coordinator.
“Enforced disappearances continue to endanger their lives.”
Rezaian condemned the act and called for accountability, urging all factions in Yemen to abandon such “abhorrent practices.”
The Yemeni Journalists Syndicate also condemned the execution, saying it was working with “the relevant authorities to investigate the crime, prosecute the perpetrators, recover the journalist’s body, and deliver it to his family.”
Al-Maqri had been held incommunicado by AQAP since Oct. 12, 2015, following his abduction during the protest.
The group accused the individuals of “spying against the mujahedeen,” a label the group uses for its fighters.
His death underscores the increasing dangers for journalists operating in Yemen, where armed groups have targeted media professionals as part of broader efforts to suppress dissent and control narratives.
At least two other Yemeni journalists remain subjected to enforced disappearances, a practice characterized by abduction and the refusal to disclose a person’s fate or whereabouts.
Waheed Al-Sufi, the editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Al-Arabiya, has been missing since April 2015 and is thought to be being held by the Houthi movement.
Naseh Shaker, who was last heard from on Nov. 19, 2024, is believed to be being held by the Southern Transitional Council, a secessionist organization in southern Yemen.
Yemen continues to rank among the deadliest countries for journalists, with armed conflict and factional violence leaving media workers vulnerable to abductions, disappearances, and killings.
RAMALLAH — A Palestinian man and his son were killed in Jenin, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, local medical officials said on Friday, as a month-long standoff between Palestinian security forces and armed militant groups in the town continued.
Separately, a security forces officer died in what Palestinian Authority (PA) officials said was an accident, bringing to six the total number of the security forces to have died in the operation in Jenin which began on Dec. 5. There were no further details.
The PA denied that its forces killed the 44-year-old man and his son, who were shot as they stood on the roof of their house in the Jenin refugee camp, a crowded quarter that houses descendants of Palestinians who fled or were driven out in the 1948 Middle East war. The man’s daughter was also wounded in the incident.
At least eight Palestinians have been killed in Jenin over the past month, one of them a member of the armed Jenin Brigades, which includes members of the armed wings of the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah factions.
Palestinian security forces moved into Jenin last month in an operation officials say is aimed at suppressing armed groups of “outlaws” who have built up a power base in the city and its adjacent refugee camp.
The operation has deepened splits among Palestinians in the West Bank, where the PA enjoys little popular support but where many fear being dragged into a Gaza-style conflict with Israel if the militant groups strengthen their hold.
Jenin, in the northern West Bank, has been a center of Palestinian militant groups for decades and armed factions have resisted repeated attempts to dislodge them by the Israeli military over the years.
The PA set up three decades ago under the Oslo interim peace accords, exercises limited sovereignty in parts of the West Bank and has claimed a role in administering Gaza once fighting in the enclave is concluded.
The PA is dominated by the Fatah faction of President Mahmoud Abbas and has long had a tense relationship with Hamas, with which it fought a brief civil war in Gaza in 2006 before Hamas drove it out of the enclave.
LOS ANGELES — Two people were killed and 18 others were injured after a small plane crashed into the rooftop of a commercial building on Thursday near Los Angeles, according to local authorities.
The accident, which occurred at about 2:09 p.m. local time (2209 GMT) in the city of Fullerton, 40 km southeast of downtown Los Angeles, ignited a huge fire and forced the surrounding businesses to be evacuated, said Kristy Wells, a Fullerton police spokesperson.
Video footage from the local KABC news channel showed white smoke coming from the top of a large building. The building is located by the Metrolink, a regional train line, and is flanked by a residential neighborhood and commercial warehouse buildings.
It was not immediately known what type of plane it was or whether those injured were in the aircraft or on the ground, Wells said.
BERLIN — Two police officers were injured, one of them seriously, in an explosion on Thursday evening outside a police building in Berlin.
According to a statement released by the Berlin Police, the incident occurred at approximately 20:20 (1920 GMT) when the officers were conducting a routine security patrol. An unidentified object detonated near the building.
Both injured officers are currently receiving medical treatment.
Police have launched an investigation into the incident.
CETINJE, Montenegro — A man shot dead 12 people in a rampage in a small town in Montenegro before dying from self-inflicted wounds early on Thursday, authorities said, in one of the Balkan nation’s worst mass killings.
The attacker, named by police as 45-year-old Aleksandar Aco Martinovic, initially killed four people when he opened fire after a brawl at a restaurant in Cetinje on Wednesday afternoon.
He then shot dead eight people, including two children, at three other locations, prosecutor Andrijana Nastic said.
The victims had close links to the gunman, police said. “All the victims were his godfathers, friends … the motive is still unknown,” national police director Lazar Scepanovic said.
It was the second shooting in less than three years in the same town 38 km (24 miles) west of the capital Podgorica. In August, 2022 a gunman killed 10 people, including two children, before he was shot dead.
Martinovic was cornered by officers near his home in the town and tried to kill himself, then died of his wounds on the way to hospital in the early hours of Thursday, Interior Minister Danilo Saranovic said.
“When he saw that he was in a hopeless situation, he attempted suicide. He did not succumb to his injuries on the spot, but during the transport to hospital,” Saranovic told Montenegro’s state broadcaster, RTCG.
‘THE SECOND TRAGEDY’
There were few people on the streets in Cetinje on Thursday and all public venues were closed.
“It was dreadful. Such uncertainty, such fear among all the families in Cetinje. One did not dare to look through the window,” 43-year-old resident Slavica Vusurovic told Reuters.
“When I … saw it on TV, I started crying … This is the second such tragedy in Cetinje,” Slobo Matic, 64, said.
Police said Martinovic had been drinking heavily and had a history of illegal weapons possession.
After an altercation with patrons in the restaurant he went home, took a weapon, returned and started shooting, police said.
Four other people suffered life-threatening wounds during Wednesday’s rampage, and one remains in a critical condition, Aleksandar Radovic, the director of the Clinical Centre in Podgorica, said.
Montenegrin Prime Minister Milojko Spajic called the rampage a “terrible tragedy” and declared three days of national mourning.
President Jakov Milatovic said he was “horrified” by the attack.
Spajic scheduled a session of country’s National Security Council for Friday to discuss the aftermath of the shooting and measures aimed at detection and seizure of illegal weapons, the government said in a statement.
The proposed measures would include a new weapons law with tighter criteria for owning and carrying firearms, and recruitment of more police officers, it added.
Stricter gun controls would likely face opposition in Montenegro, which has a deeply rooted gun culture.
Despite strict gun laws, the Western Balkans composed of Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo and North Macedonia, remain awash with weapons. Most are from the wars in the 1990s, but some date back even to World War One.
HOUSTON — Death toll rose to 15 from the truck attack in New Orleans of the southern U.S. state of Louisiana early Wednesday, authorities said.
FBI officials said they do not believe the suspect who rammed the pickup truck into New Year’s Day revelers is acting alone.
“It will take several days to perform all autopsies,” New Orleans Coroner Dr. Dwight McKenna said in a statement. “Once we complete the autopsies and talk with the next of kin, we will release the identifications of the victims.”
SUSPECT MAY NOT ACT ALONE
The suspect has been identified as Shamsud Din Jabbar, 42, a U.S. citizen living in Houston, the biggest city of Texas, according to the FBI. He was shot dead in a shootout with police officers.
“After the vehicle came to a stop, the suspect reportedly opened fire on responding officers, who returned fire,” New Orleans Police Department said. Two police officers were shot and now are in stable condition.
Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said on social media that Jabbar rented the truck on Dec. 30 in the Houston area before heading to New Orleans, the largest city in Louisiana.
The suspect had previously served in the U.S. Army. He had also worked in real estate and IT, according to court documents.
He was struggling with financial troubles in recent years, court documents showed.
FBI officials said they are investigating the incident as an act of terrorism.
“We do not believe that Jabbar was solely responsible,” Alethea Duncan, an agent with the FBI’s New Orleans field office, told a news conference. “We don’t want to rule anything out.”
Guns, improvised explosive devices and an Islamic State (IS) group flag were found from the vehicle, according to local media reports.
The devices were wired for remote detonation, said an AP report, adding that other potential explosive devices were also located in the French Quarter near where the incident occurred.
The AP, citing an intelligence bulletin it obtained, said surveillance footage captured three men and a woman placing one of multiple improvised explosive device in the French Quarter. But a CNN report said federal investigators now believe the four seen in video were not involved in placing these devices, citing a law enforcement official.
The truck, reportedly a Ford F-150 Lightning, was with a Texas plate and rented by the suspect through car sharing app Turo, the truck’s owner Rodrigo Diaz told ABC News.
CARNAGE AND DAMAGE
The incident happened around 3:15 a.m. (0915 GMT) at the intersection of Bourbon Street and Iberville, the French Quarter, which is one of the most crowded areas of New Orleans and the heart of the city’s tourism industry.
“Last night we had over 300 officers out here. And because of the intentional mindset of this perpetrator who went around our barricades in order to conduct this, he was hellbent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did,” New Orleans Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick told a press conference.
“It was very intentional behavior,” she said. “This man was trying to run over as many people as he could.”
The attack has injured more than 30 people. A student from the University of Georgia was critically injured, according to the university’s president.
Two Israeli citizens were also injured, said a CNN report, citing Israel’s foreign ministry.
U.S. President Joe Biden said he is “grateful for the brave and swift response of local law enforcement in preventing even greater death and injury.”
Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry on Wednesday announced an emergency declaration to bring together federal, state and local resources.
“The mission now is to facilitate support and coordinate safety procedures to keep our residents and our visitors safe,” New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell told a news conference Wednesday afternoon, urging the public not to get close to the scene “if there is no essential need to do so.”
Sugar Bowl CEO Jeff Hundley announced that the American college football game scheduled for Wednesday in nearby venue in New Orleans will be postponed to Thursday.
“The Superdome is going to be safe tomorrow night,” former New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu told media.
The FBI Houston and the Harris County Sheriff’s Office “are currently conducting law enforcement activity” in north Houston “related to this morning’s New Orleans attack,” the FBI said in a statement Wednesday afternoon.
The attack is the latest one of high-profile vehicle attacks on crowds around the world in years. The deadliest one occurred in July 2016, when a man drove a heavy truck to strike hundreds of people who were gathering to watch Bastille Day fireworks in Nice, France, leaving 84 people dead and more than 200 others injured. The IS claimed it was responsible for the attack.
BANGKOK — Five people were killed and 33 others injured after a tour bus lost control and crashed into trees in southern Thailand on late Wednesday.
The bus with 38 people on board was traveling back from the southern province of Yala when the accident occurred near an intersection in the Chaiya district of Surat Thani province, according to a local public relations office.
The five deceased were killed at the scene of the accident. The injured, including three in serious condition, were rushed to nearby hospitals for treatment.
A view shows a building damaged during a Russian drone strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in central Kyiv, Ukraine January 1, 2025. Press service of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine in Kyiv/Handout via REUTERS
KYIV — Russia launched a New Year’s Day drone strike on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv early on Wednesday, killing two people, wounding at least six others and damaging buildings in two districts, authorities said.
Explosions boomed across the morning sky as Ukraine’s air force warned of incoming drones and Mayor Vitali Klitschko said air defences were repelling an enemy attack.
Two floors of a residential building in central Kyiv were partially destroyed in the strike, according to the State Emergency Service. Two people were killed, it said.
Photos posted by the agency showed firefighters dousing a gutted corner of a building and rescuers helping elderly victims.
The National Bank of Ukraine said in a statement that one of its buildings nearby had been damaged by debris from a downed drone. Debris also damaged a non-residential building in a different neighbourhood, authorities said.
“Even on New Year’s Eve, Russia was only concerned about how to hurt Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on social media in response to the strike.
Kyiv’s military said it had shot down 63 out of 111 drones launched by Russia overnight across various regions of Ukraine. Another 46 had been downed by electronic jamming, it added.
Russia has carried out regular air strikes on Ukrainian towns and cities far behind the front line of its nearly three-year-old invasion, in which its troops are claiming village after village in a grinding march across eastern Ukraine.
On Tuesday, Moscow’s forces fired 21 missiles at Kyiv and the northern Sumy region during an overnight strike, damaging buildings and infrastructure in the city of Shostka.
Separately on Wednesday, a 23-year-old volunteer worker was killed by Russian shelling in the southern front-line city of Kherson, city officials said.
The governor of Kherson region, Oleksandr Prokudin, later said that a resident of a town northeast of the city died in hospital of injuries suffered during a drone attack.
Police investigators work at the site of a shooting in Cetinje, Montenegro on Jan.1. (AP)
PODGORICA, Montenegro — Montenegro’s interior minister says at least 10 people, including two children, were killed in a shooting on Wednesday in the western city of Cetinje.
The shooter, who was on the run, also seriously wounded four people, said minister Danilo Saranovic at a news conference. He said that “at this moment, we are focused on arresting him.”
Police dispatched special troops to search for the attacker in Cetinje, some 30 kilometers (18 miles) northwest of the capital, Podgorica. A statement said the man opened fire in a bar and fled the scene armed. Police identified him only by his initials A.M. and said he was 45 years old.
Saranovic said earlier that the dead included the bar owner and his family members, as well as the shooter’s family members — but did not give a definitive death toll.
President Jakov Milatovic said he was “shocked and stunned” by the tragedy. “Instead of holiday joy … we have been gripped by sadness over the loss of innocent lives,” Milatovic said on the social media platform X.
Prime Minister Milojko Spajic went to the hospital where the wounded were being treated and announced three days of mourning, without specifying how many were killed.
“This is a terrible tragedy that has affected us all,” said Spajic. “All police teams are out.”
Small Montenegro, which has some 620,000 people, is known for gun culture and many people traditionally have weapons.
Wednesday’s shooting was the second shooting rampage over the past three years in Cetinje, Montenegro’s historic capital. An attacker killed 10 people, including two children, in August 2022 before he was shot and killed by a passer by in Cetinje.
The RTCG report identified the man as Aco Martinovic, saying he was known for erratic behavior and had been detained in the past for illegal possession of weapons. The TV published the reported suspect’s photo on its website.
The report said he went home to get his gun and came back to the bar where he opened fire and killed and wounded several people. He then went to another site where he killed the bar owner’s children and a woman, the report added.
Police appealed on the residents to remain calm and stay indoors, ruling out a clash between criminal gangs.
The Tesla Cybertruck exploded at the entrance of Donald Trump’s hotel in Las Vegas. (Reuters)
LAS VEGAS — One person died and seven more were injured Wednesday when a Tesla truck caught fire and exploded outside President-elect Donald Trump’s Las Vegas hotel, authorities said.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police and Clark County Fire Department officials said at a news conference that a person died inside the vehicle and that they were working to get the body out.
Another seven people nearby received minor injuries and were taken to a hospital for treatment.
A county spokeswoman said in a statement that the fire in the valet area of the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas was reported at 8:40 a.m. No cause was given and details were sketchy.
“I know you have a lot of questions,” Jeremy Schwartz, acting FBI Special Agent in Charge for the Las Vegas office, said at the news conference. “We don’t have a lot of answers.”
Eric Trump, a son of the president-elect and executive vice president of the Trump Organization, posted about the fire on the social media platform X. He praised the fire department and local law enforcement “for their swift response and professionalism.”
The 64-story hotel is just off the famed Las Vegas Strip and across the street from the Fashion Show Las Vegas shopping mall.
