A U.S. Army veteran driving a pickup truck that bore the flag of the Islamic State group wrought carnage on New Orleans’ raucous New Year’s celebration, killing 15 people as he steered around a police blockade and slammed into revelers before being shot dead by police. The FBI said it was investigating the attack early Wednesday as a terrorist act and did not believe the driver acted alone. Investigators found guns and what appeared to be an improvised explosive device in the vehicle, along with other devices elsewhere in the city’s famed French Quarter. President Joe Biden said Wednesday evening that the FBI found videos that the driver had posted to social media hours before the attack in which he said he was inspired by the Islamic State group and expressed a desire to kill. The rampage turned festive Bourbon Street into a macabre mayhem of maimed victims, bloodied bodies and pedestrians fleeing for safety inside nightclubs and restaurants. In addition to the dead, dozens of people were hurt. There were also deadly explosions in Honolulu and outside a Las Vegas hotel owned by President-elect Donald Trump. Biden said the FBI was looking into whether the Las Vegas explosion was connected to the New Orleans attack but had “nothing to report” as of Wednesday evening. - AP
At least 10 people, including two children, were killed by a gunman who launched a shooting in southern Montenegro, police said. Authorities launched a manhunt for the suspect, and when he was surrounded, he “shot himself in the head”, police chief Lazar Scepanovic told reporters. “An attempt was made to transport him to a clinical centre but he succumbed to his injuries in the meantime,” Scepanovic said. The shooter had killed at least 10 people, two of whom were minors, Interior Minister Danilo Saranovic said earlier, adding that he had also “killed members of his own family”. According to police, the children were aged 10 and 13 - France 24
The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) estimates that Gaza’s population has fallen by about 6% since the start of Israel’s war on the enclave. Israel’s air and ground offensive has killed over 45,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The PCBS states that more than 55,000 are presumed dead, as 11,000 people remain missing. About 100,00 Palestinians that left Gaza since 7 October, 2023, it adds.As such, the PCBS says Gaza’s population has declined by around 160,000 to 2.1 million. While Israel’s foreign ministry says this number is fabricated, it matches the estimate made by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). As of July 2024, OCHA estimates that about 2.1 million people remain in the Gaza Strip. “There are catastrophic human and material losses,” the PCBS wrote, “yet this aggressive, brutal Israeli aggression against all of Gaza Strip continues.” - Euronews
Drug cartels are now Mexico’s 5th-largest employer. Some 175,000 people now actively work for Mexico’s smuggling cartels, according to a shocking estimate that would make cartels the country’s fifth-largest private employer. Rafael Prieto-Curiel, who led the research, said the cartels’ secret is their viciously efficient recruitment ability. He said the cartels hire more than 350 people weekly. That helps them counter massive losses through arrests, killings and dropouts. “Cartels, they need to have roughly 175,000 members. They cannot be much smaller because they would have collapsed. They cannot be much bigger because they would have grown so fast,” Mr. Prieto-Curiel said. “So they have to be roughly 175,000 members, which means roughly, just to put it into context, the fifth-largest employer in the country.” The cartels have their hand in drug manufacturing and smuggling, money laundering, sex trafficking, human smuggling and other assorted mayhem. During the Biden border surge, their income from moving people into the U.S. topped their income from drugs, experts said. U.S. officials also blame the cartels for the epidemic of fentanyl deaths. They say the cartels have taken over the production and smuggling business after Chinese syndicates were pushed out of business in the past decade - Washington Times
South Korean police said on Thursday they had raided Jeju Air and the operator of Muan International Airport as part of their investigation into Sunday’s crash that killed 179 people in the worst aviation disaster on the country’s soil. Jeju Air 7C2216, which departed the Thai capital of Bangkok for Muan in southwestern South Korea, belly-landed and overshot the regional airport’s runway, exploding into flames after hitting an embankment. Two crew members, who were sitting in the tail end of the Boeing 737-800, were pulled alive by rescuers but injured. Police investigators are searching the offices of the airport operator and the transportation ministry aviation authority in the southwestern city of Muan, as the well as office of Jeju Air in Seoul, the South Jeolla provincial police said in a media statement. Investigators plan to seize documents and materials related to the operation and maintenance of the aircraft as well as the operation of airport facilities, a police official said - Reuters
Just two of at least eight main social media and messaging platforms have obtained licences under Malaysia’s controversial new regulatory framework, which is aimed at curbing harmful content and kicked in on Jan 1. And they do not include the biggest tech giants like Meta and Google, whose online tools are among the most widely used in the country. Strict new rules under the new licensing regime– which allow for the arrests without warrants of representatives from these licensed platforms to compel them to divulge private data and facilitate surveillance on their networks – had been met with resistance from civil society and lawmakers, as well as these operators, sources said - Straits Times
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