Friday News Roundup
Sadly, the biggest news of the week is the fatal vehicle attack that killed 15 people celebrating New Year’s Day and the Sugar Bowl in the French Quarter of New Orleans. The perpetrator of the attack was identified as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old veteran of the U.S. Army who served from 2006 to 2015, including a 2009 deployment to Afghanistan. According to reports from the scene, Jabbar ran several people over with a rented Ford F-150 truck that had been decorated with the flag of ISIS. Investigators also found firearms and a remote detonator in the truck. The remote detonator may have been linked to two improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that were placed in coolers in the street near the site of the attack.
Also on New Year’s Day, fireworks and gas canisters exploded while stuffed in Tesla Cybertruck in an explosion outside Donald Trump’s Las Vegas hotel. The sole fatality was the Cybertruck’s driver, Matthew Livelsburger, who committed suicide by gunshot shortly before the explosion. So far, the Las Vegas Cybertruck explosion and the New Orleans vehicle attack appear to have no connection other than they occurred on the same day and the cars came from the same rental company, Turo.
Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, appointed Joel Kaplan, the Republican operative who supported Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court, as its new head of global policy. The move is interpreted as an attempt to curry favor with the incoming Trump administration.
US forces established a base in Syria to monitor developments in the civil war there, but current forces appear to limited to about 50 trucks. Meanwhile, Israeli airplanes bombed Syrian defense factories near Aleppo.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu approved a delegation to attend ceasefire talks in Qatar, while at the same time 40 Palestinians were killed due to air strikes in Gaza.
In a potential preemptive strike against Trump, Mexico’s government imposed new tariffs, including a 17% duty on goods from the United States and Canada.
The United States bombed several locations in Yemen to retaliate against attacks by the Islamist Houthis against American and British shipping in the Red Sea.
On New Year’s Eve, a South Korean court approved an arrest warrant against impeached president Yoon Suk Yeol.