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WASHINGTON — The highly decorated Special Forces soldier who died by suicide in a Cybertruck explosion on New Year’s Day confided to a former girlfriend who had served as an Army nurse that he faced significant pain and exhaustion that she says were key symptoms of traumatic brain injury.

Green Beret Matthew Livelsberger, 37, was a five-time recipient of the Bronze Star, including one with a V device for valor under fire. He had an exemplary military record that spanned the globe and a baby born last year. But he struggled with the mental and physical toll of his service, which required him to kill and caused him to witness the deaths of fellow soldiers.

Livelsberger mostly bore that burden in private but recently sought treatment for depression from the Army, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details that have not been made public.

He also found a confidant in the former nurse, who he began dating in 2018.

Alicia Arritt, 39, and Livelsberger met through a dating app while both were in Colorado Springs. Arritt had served at Landstul Regional Medical Center in Germany, the largest U.S. military medical facility in Europe, where many of the worst combat injuries from Iraq and Afghanistan were initially treated before being flown to the United States.

There she saw and treated traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs, which troops suffered from incoming fire and roadside bombs. Serious but hard to diagnose, such injuries can have lingering effects that might take years to surface.

“I saw a lot of bad injuries. But the personality changes can happen later,” Arritt said.

In texts and images he shared with Arritt, Livelsberger raised the curtain a bit on what he was facing.

“Just some concussions,” he said in a text about a deployment to Helmand Province in Afghanistan. He sent her a photo of a graphic tattoo he got on his arm of two skulls pierced by bullets to mark lives he took in Afghanistan. He talked about exhaustion and pain, not being able to sleep and reliving the violence of his deployment.

“My life has been a personal hell for the last year,” he told Arritt during the early days of their dating, according to text messages she provided to The Associated Press. “It’s refreshing to have such a nice person come along.”

On Friday, Las Vegas law enforcement officers released excerpts of messages Livelsberger left behind showing the way Livelsberger killed himself was intentional, meant both as a “wakeup call” but also to “cleanse the demons” he was facing from losing fellow soldiers and taking lives.

Livelsberger’s death in front of the Trump Hotel using a truck produced by Elon Musk’s Tesla company has raised questions as to whether this was an act of political violence.

Officials said Friday that Livelsberger apparently harbored no ill will toward President-elect Donald Trump, and Arritt said she and Livelsberger were Tesla fans.

“I had a Tesla, too, that I rescued from a junkyard in 2019, and we used to work on it together, bond over it,” Arritt said.

The pair stopped talking regularly after they broke up in 2021, and she had not heard from him in more than two years when he texted out of the blue on Dec. 28, and again on Dec. 31. The upbeat messages included a video of him driving the Cybertruck and another one of its dancing headlights; the vehicle can sync up its lighting and music.

But she also said Livelsberger felt things “very deeply, and I could see him using symbolism” of both the truck and the hotel.

“He wasn’t impulsive,” Arritt said. “I don’t see him doing this impulsively, so my suspicion would be that he was probably thinking it out.”

Arritt served on active duty from 2003 to 2007 and then was in the Army Reserve until 2011. With Livelsberger, she saw symptoms of TBI as early as 2018.

“He would go through periods of withdrawal, and he struggled with depression and memory loss,” Arritt said. “I don’t know what drove him to do this, but I think the military didn’t get him help when he needed it.”

But Livelsberger was also sweet and kind, she recalled: “He had a really deep well of inner strength and character, and he just had a lot of integrity.”

Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters Friday that it has turned over all Livelsberger’s medical records to local law enforcement and encouraged troops facing mental health challenges to seek care through one of the military’s support networks.

“If you need help, if you feel that you need to seek any type of mental health treatment, or just to talk to someone — to seek the services that are available, either on base or off,” Singh said.

When Livelsberger struggled during the time they were dating, Arritt prodded him to get help. But he would not, saying it could cost him his ability to deploy if he was found medically unfit.

“There was a lot of stigma in his unit; they were, you know, big, strong, Special Forces guys there. There was no weakness allowed, and mental health is weakness is what they saw,” she said.

Livelsberger seeking treatment for depression was first reported by CNN.
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NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE — Just days after Tennessee announced it had a new manual for executing death row inmates, the state’s top prison officials said they aren’t going to release the document to the public.

The Tennessee Department of Correction had told The Associated Press to file a public records request to obtain a copy of the latest execution manual, known as a protocol. However, the agency this week denied the AP’s request, saying it needs to keep the entire document secret to protect the identities of the executioner and other people involved.

The decision to maintain secrecy differs from how the state has handled similar requests in the past, but mirrors efforts across the U.S. to suppress public access surrounding executions, especially after anti-death penalty activists used records to expose problems.

Here’s what to know:

What is an execution protocol?

The protocol is typically a detailed set of procedures describing how the state executes death row inmates. Tennessee had been operating under a 2018 protocol that included directions on selecting execution team staff and the training they should undergo. It explained how lethal injection drugs should be procured, stored and administered. It gave instructions on the inmate’s housing, diet and visitation in the days leading up to execution. It provided directions on how to choose media witnesses.

For lethal injection, the 2018 protocol required a series of three drugs administered in sequence.

The new version unveiled last week requires only a single dose of pentobarbital. But that is all that is known about the revised protocol.

What reason does Tennessee give for not releasing the new protocol?

In an email sent Monday, Tennessee correction spokesperson Kayla Hackney told the AP the “protocol is not a public record” and cited a Tennessee statute that makes the identities of the people carrying out executions confidential.

However, that same statute says the existence of confidential information in a record is not a reason to deny access to it, noting that the confidential information should be redacted.

What has Tennessee done in the past?

In 2018, Tennessee’s correction agency provided a redacted copy of the protocol to an AP reporter over email.

In 2007, a previous version of the protocol was treated as a public record and provided to the AP after former Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, announced a surprise halt to executions. A reporter’s review of that 100-page “Manual of Execution” found a jumble of conflicting instructions that mixed new lethal-injection instructions with those for electrocution.

Why did Tennessee update its protocol?

Executions have been on hold in Tennessee since 2022, when the state admitted it had not been following the 2018 protocol. Among other things, the Correction Department was not consistently testing the execution drugs for potency and purity.

An independent review of the state’s lethal injection practice later found that none of the drugs prepared for the seven inmates executed since 2018 had been fully tested. Later, the state Attorney General’s Office conceded in court that two of the people most responsible for overseeing Tennessee’s lethal injection drugs “incorrectly testified” under oath that officials were testing the chemicals as required.

So what’s with all the secrecy?

Executions in the U.S. have remained at historic lows for years, but the small group of states still carrying out the death penalty have only increased the secrecy surrounding the procedures, particularly over how and where the state secures the drugs used for lethal injections.

Many states argue that secrecy is critical to protect the safety of those involved in the execution process. Yet in a 2018 report, the Washington-D.C.-based nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center found that this argument often led to these states refusing to provide information about the qualifications of their execution teams and some courts have criticized such arguments for lack of evidence that more public disclosure would result in threats against prison officials.

Kelley Henry, chief of the federal public defender’s habeas unit that represents many of Tennessee’s death row inmates, described the state’s refusal to release the new protocol, given that background, as “mystifying.”

“The secrecy, which cloaked the former execution protocol, created a culture of incompetence and lack of accountability,” she said in an email.
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honolulu — In recent years, occasions large and small — parties, Super Bowls, mixed martial arts fights, even Thanksgiving — have provided a reason for residents across Hawaii to set off illegal fireworks. 

The increasingly sophisticated displays, loved by some and loathed by others, are so prevalent that some people consider them part of the state’s culture. They have rattled neighborhoods of tightly packed houses, started fires, terrorized pets and knocked a light fixture off the ceiling of an Associated Press reporter’s home, where it narrowly missed a child and shattered on the floor. 

Each New Year’s Day, Honolulu officials publish a list of fireworks casualties from the night before, typically a litany of burns, shrapnel wounds or amputations. Sometimes there are deaths. 

But none of the damage has matched Tuesday night’s tragedy, when a lit bundle of mortar-style aerials tipped over and shot into crates of unlit fireworks, causing a rapid-fire series of blasts that killed three women and injured more than 20 people, including children. 

On Friday, the Honolulu medical examiner’s department identified two of the women as Nelie Ibarra, 58, and Jennifer Van, 23. The cause and manner of death for both were listed as pending. The identity of the third was not yet confirmed, the department said in a news release. 

Another person was killed in an unrelated fireworks explosion on Oahu. 

Authorities and residents alike are now wondering whether the toll will dissuade people from putting on such shows in the future, or whether it will prompt more effective efforts by police to crack down. 

“This incident is a painful reminder of the danger posed by illegal fireworks,” Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi told a news conference. “They put lives at risk, they drain our first responders and they disrupt our neighborhoods.” 

Efforts to crack down on contraband fireworks have had limited effect. In 2023, lawmakers created an illegal fireworks task force. Based on the ease with which it seized fireworks, including three shipping containers in its first few months in operation, the state Department of Law Enforcement concluded illegal fireworks are likely smuggled into Hawaii on a daily basis. 

The task force has seized 227,000 pounds (about 103,000 kilograms) of fireworks in all, according to Governor Josh Green. 

And yet, the Honolulu Fire Department reported Thursday that there were 30 fireworks-related blazes between Tuesday and Wednesday, a 30% increase from last New Year’s celebrations. 

Representative Gregg Takayama, who sponsored legislation passed last year to tighten fireworks controls, said he remembers setting them off when he was younger and agrees it’s a tradition for many. But the ones he played with, including Roman candles, pale in comparison to those on the black market today. 

“The kind of aerial fireworks that are being used now are really explosive bombs,” he said. “And so the danger is magnified.” 

Charmaine Doran, the vice chair of the neighborhood board in Pearl City, northwest of Honolulu, called the notion that fireworks are part of Hawaii culture a misconception: “They have been outlawed for all of my life … and I’m pretty old.” 

In her neighborhood, the fireworks ramp up after Halloween, exploding in the middle of the night until New Year’s. Doran said she can tell if there is a big mixed martial arts fight on TV because the booms begin earlier in the day. 

Enforcement is complicated because people are reluctant to report their neighbors on a small island where “we’re related to everybody, everybody knows everybody,” Doran said. 

People fear retribution, she added: “If I dial 911, they’re going to egg my house.” 

That was the theme of some testimony to the Legislature last January. Beverly Takushi, a Pearl City resident, described once being threatened by a neighbor when she told his brother to stop launching illegal fireworks in a show that lasted from 5:30 p.m. on New Year’s Eve until after midnight. 

“It was the first time I was threatened not only by the danger of the aerial fireworks to my family and property, but also for my safety from this neighbor who accused me of not respecting his culture,” Takushi said. “He has since apologized, but this is the reason why no one wants to get involved and report their neighbors setting off bombs and aerials.” 

Many historians believe fireworks were invented in China more than 2,000 years ago and their use came to signify joy and prosperity, as well as warding off evil. In Hawaii they are celebrated not just by residents of Chinese descent but all across the state’s diverse communities. 

Takushi echoed Takayama’s point about the big difference between today’s large, professional-grade fireworks and the smaller ones of yesteryear. 

“A string of firecrackers at midnight to ward off bad spirits is cultural, not loud explosives that sound like you are in the middle of a war,” Takushi said. 

Richard Oshiro, secretary of the neighborhood board for Waipahu, known as one of Oahu’s hot spots for aerial displays, said he hopes this week’s deaths will spur a change of mentality about playing with explosives. 

He said he tries to report them whenever he can, even though he knows there is not much police can do if “they can’t catch people in the act.” 

Possession of over 50 pounds (about 23 kilograms) of aerial or other illegal fireworks in Hawaii is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Takayama noted the law now allows photographs and videos of fireworks to be submitted as evidence in court, but said prosecutions still face hurdles. 

“We already have laws on the books. We need to find better ways to enforce them,” he said. “I mean, we constantly hear about people who report on their neighbors using illegal aerials, but nothing is done about it.” 

The best way to control fireworks is to stop them at Hawaii’s ports, Takayama said. Law enforcement has intelligence about which shipments contain illegal fireworks, and U.S. authorities have the power to open suspicious cargo. The task force has made seizures but needs to do more, he said. 

“We need to find ways to restrict the amount of fireworks that are coming in, because once they arrive and once they’re in the community, it’s very difficult to track them down,” Takayama said.
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PLAINS, GEORGIA — Mourners are to begin paying their respects to Jimmy Carter on Saturday, kicking off a carefully choreographed six-day farewell for America’s longest-lived president.

Flags have been flying at half-staff across the country since Carter died on Dec. 29 at the age of 100 in his hometown of Plains, Georgia.

Carter’s state funeral officially begins on Saturday with Secret Service agents from his current and former protective detail carrying his casket to a hearse for a tour through Plains.

The motorcade bearing his remains is to pause at Carter’s boyhood family peanut farm while a farm bell rings 39 times in honor of America’s 39th president.

His body will then be taken to Atlanta for a brief stop at the Georgia Capitol, where Carter served as a state senator before becoming governor, and a moment of silence.

From there, Carter will be escorted to the Carter Presidential Center where he will lie in repose from 7 p.m. on Saturday (0000 GMT Sunday) to 6 a.m. (1100 GMT) on Tuesday to allow the public to pay their respects.

Carter’s remains will be flown on Tuesday morning from a military base in Georgia to Joint Base Andrews outside Washington on a U.S. Air Force plane dubbed Special Air Mission 39.

A motorcade will then transport the body of the former commander-in-chief to the U.S. Navy Memorial.

Carter, who attended the U.S. Naval Academy, graduating in 1946, and served on submarines, will be transferred from a hearse to a horse-drawn caisson for a funeral procession to the U.S. Capitol.

Military pall bearers will carry his flag-draped casket to the rotunda of the Capitol where his body will lie in state until 7 a.m. (1200 GMT) on Thursday, surrounded by a guard of honor of service members.

Carter will be the 13th former U.S. president to lie in state in the Capitol. Abraham Lincoln, assassinated in 1865, was the first.

A national funeral service is to be held on Thursday at the National Cathedral, an Episcopal church in the nation’s capital that also hosted state funerals for former presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush.

All four living former presidents — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump — are expected to attend.

President Joe Biden is to deliver the eulogy for his fellow Democrat, who served in the White House from 1977-81.

Biden has declared Thursday to be a national day of mourning, and federal government offices are to be closed for the day.

He has also ordered flags to be flown at half-staff for 30 days as is customary, which means that will be the case during Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.

That drew the ire of the president-elect, who took to Truth Social to say “no American can be happy” about having flags at half-staff when he takes office.

Following the cathedral service, Carter’s remains will be flown aboard Special Air Mission 39 back to Georgia for a private funeral service at the Baptist church in Plains where Carter taught Sunday school.

A final motorcade through his hometown will ferry Carter’s body to a burial plot at his residence.

U.S. Navy jets will conduct a flyover in his honor before he is laid to rest alongside his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn, who died in 2023 at the age of 96. 
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Російські війська також активні на Курахівському напрямку – командування зафіксувало 11 разів атак на українські позиції
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«У ході робіт зняли та розібрали 5 бетонних монолітних плит, вивезли понад 850 тонн будівельного сміття», повідомила ДСНС
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NEW YORK — In an extraordinary turn, a judge Friday set President-elect Donald Trump’s sentencing in his hush money case for Jan. 10 — just 10 days before he’s due to return to the White House — but indicated he wouldn’t be jailed. 

The development nevertheless leaves Trump on course to be the first president to take office convicted of felony crimes. 

Judge Juan M. Merchan, who presided over Trump’s trial, signaled in a written decision that he’d sentence the former and future president to what’s known as a conditional discharge, in which a case is closed without jail time, a fine or probation. 

Merchan rejected Trump’s push to dismiss the verdict and throw out the case on presidential immunity grounds and because of his impending return to the White House. The judge said he found “no legal impediment to sentencing” Trump and that it was “incumbent” on him to sentence Trump prior to his swearing in on Jan. 20. 

“Only by bringing finality to this matter” will the interests of justice be served, Merchan wrote. 

Trump was convicted in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records. They involved an alleged scheme to hide a hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels in the last weeks of Trump’s first campaign in 2016. The payout was made to keep her from publicizing claims she’d had sex with the married Trump years earlier. He says that her story is false and that he did nothing wrong. 

After Trump’s Nov. 5 election, Merchan halted proceedings and indefinitely postponed the sentencing so the defense and prosecution could weigh in on the future of the case. 

Trump’s lawyers urged Merchan to toss it. They said it would otherwise pose unconstitutional “disruptions” to the incoming president’s ability to run the country. 

Prosecutors acknowledged there should be some accommodation for his upcoming presidency, but they insisted the conviction should stand. 

They suggested various options, such as freezing the case during his term or guaranteeing him a no-jail sentence. They also proposed closing the case while formally noting both his conviction and his undecided appeal — a novel idea drawn from what some state courts do when criminal defendants die while appealing their cases. 

Merchan ruled that Trump’s current status as president-elect does not afford him the same kind of immunity granted to a sitting president and does not require that the verdict be set aside, and the case dismissed — a notion the judge described as “drastic” and “rare.” 

Doing that “would undermine the Rule of Law in immeasurable ways,” Merchan wrote. He opined that it wouldn’t address the Supreme Court’s concerns about presidential immunity, either. 

Trump takes office Jan. 20 as the first former president to be convicted of a crime and the first convicted criminal to be elected to the office. 

His conviction left the 78-year-old facing the possibility of punishment ranging from a fine or probation to up to four years in prison. 

The case centered on how Trump accounted for reimbursing his personal attorney for the Daniels’ payment. 

The lawyer, Michael Cohen, fronted the money. He later recouped it through a series of payments that Trump’s company logged as legal expenses. Trump, by then in the White House, signed most of the checks himself. 

Prosecutors said the designation was meant to cloak the true purpose of the payments and help cover up a broader effort to keep voters from hearing unflattering claims about the Republican during his first campaign. 

Trump said that Cohen was legitimately paid for legal services, and that Daniels’ story was suppressed to avoid embarrassing Trump’s family, not to influence the electorate. 

Trump was a private citizen — campaigning for president, but neither elected nor sworn in — when Cohen paid Daniels in October 2016. He was president when Cohen was reimbursed, and Cohen testified that they discussed the repayment arrangement in the Oval Office. 

Trump, a Republican, has decried the verdict as the “rigged, disgraceful” result of a “witch hunt” pursued by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat. 

Before Trump’s November election, his lawyers sought to reverse his conviction for a different reason: a U.S. Supreme Court decision in July that gave presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution. That request was still pending when the election raised new issues. 

While urging Merchan to nix the conviction, Trump also sought to move the case to federal court, where he could also assert immunity. A federal judge repeatedly said no, but Trump appealed. 

The hush money case was the only one of Trump’s four criminal indictments to go to trial.

Since the election, special counsel Jack Smith has ended his two federal cases. One pertained to Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss; the other alleged he hoarded classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. 

A separate, state-level election interference case in Georgia is largely on hold.
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washington — Law enforcement and security agencies in and around Washington are bringing in reinforcements as they prepare to secure three high-profile events in the nation’s capital, following the New Year’s Day terror attack in New Orleans and the Cybertruck bombing in front of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas.

The first event will occur Monday, when Congress meets to certify results of the presidential election four years to the day since the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

The second will be the state funeral for the late President Jimmy Carter, starting with a ceremony and procession on Tuesday before wrapping up on Thursday.

The last high-profile event will come Jan. 20, when President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated.

“That has never happened before. We have three [National Special Security Events] over a 15-day period,” Matt McCool, U.S. Secret Service Washington Field Office special agent in charge, told reporters Friday.

“But what I will tell you is we’re flexible. We’re adaptable. We’ve been working on these events for, in some cases, years,” he said. “So, we’re going to be prepared.”

Despite concerns stemming from the New Orleans attack and the Las Vegas bombing, security officials are confident so far that the Washington events will proceed safely.

“We are not tracking any credible or specific threats associated with these events,” said David Sundberg, assistant director in charge at the FBI’s Washington Field Office.

The law enforcement and security agencies, however, are not taking any chances, acknowledging that the city and the region are operating in a heightened threat environment.

The Secret Service said Friday that it was bringing in agents from across the country to boost staffing levels, which were already the highest they have been in three years.

Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department said it has added to its ranks almost 4,000 officers from departments across the country.

The capital’s National Guard Bureau confirmed it also has approved requests for additional support, including the provision of 500 guardsmen for the Jan. 6 election certification and liaison officers for the state funeral.

An additional request for 7,800 National Guard soldiers and airmen to assist with security for the Trump inauguration is pending.

Increased security measures, including barriers and fencing, are already up in parts of Washington and around the Capitol, but more are coming.

“A multitude of seen and unseen security measures will operate in tandem to ensure a comprehensive and seamless security plan comes to fruition,” McCool said, adding that the measures will include the use of aerial drones.

“The Secret Service will use drones as part of our comprehensive security plan,” McCool said. “Do not be alarmed if you see these assets during the upcoming events or training in the days ahead.”

The Metropolitan Police Department said its increased security measures would go into effect starting Sunday, with the deployment of specialized officers around the city to respond to any emergencies.

The U.S. Capitol Police, whose 2,400 officers and civilian employees are responsible for protecting the Capitol and members of Congress, also said they were more prepared to handle contingencies than they were four years ago, when rioters upset with the outcome of the 2020 presidential election stormed the Capitol, forcing lawmakers to flee and injuring police officers.

About 1,560 people have been charged with federal crimes in the riot. So far, about 979 have pleaded guilty, while another 210 have been convicted.

“Our nation’s capital is prepared to ensure that the legislative process will proceed without disruption, and our government will have a peaceful transfer of power,” said Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger, noting that the force has implemented more than 100 recommendations made following the 2021 riot.

Officials in Washington are also bracing for potential protests, saying several planned demonstrations have already gotten required permits.

“We are committed to upholding the right to peacefully assemble and protest here in our city,” said Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith.

“We welcome visitors to come and experience what this incredible city has to offer, but those who are intentional on unlawful activity should know that there will be consequences,” Smith said. “However, as I’ve stated before, when we have special events, and I want to be very clear, that we will not tolerate any violence, rioting, destruction of property, or any behavior that threatens the safety and security of our city.”
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The U.S. Homeland Security Department and the FBI are warning federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to be vigilant for potential copycat incidents inspired by the New Year’s Eve truck-ramming attack in New Orleans that killed at least 14 people.

In a joint intelligence bulletin released Friday and obtained by VOA and other news organizations, federal authorities warned the nation’s 18,000 law-enforcement agencies to be on the lookout for “potential copycat or retaliatory attacks inspired by this attack and other recent, lethal vehicle-ramming incidents across the globe.”

The bulletin said such attacks “are likely to remain attractive for aspiring attackers given vehicles’ ease of acquisition and the low skill threshold necessary to conduct an attack.”

The federal bulletin noted that since 2014, the Islamic State terror group has been promoting the use of vehicles in terror attacks, followed by attacks with secondary weapons, as a method to cause mass casualty incidents.

The joint bulletin advised law enforcement agencies to look for danger signs, such as fraudulent documents or credit cards used to rent vehicles, or signs of “pre-operational surveillance,” such as automobiles parked in odd locations or suspicious activity near an event location.

The FBI released three photos Friday of the now deceased suspect in the attack, 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar, taken from surveillance video about an hour before the deadly Bourbon Street attack. They also released a photograph of a blue ice chest that was found near the scene containing an improvised explosive device.

The photos were released along with a statement soliciting information from any member of the public who might have passed Jabbar on the street or saw the cooler like the one in the photo.

The White House announced Friday that President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will travel to New Orleans on Monday to visit with families and community members affected by the attack, as well as meet with officials on the ground.

In a briefing Thursday with reporters, FBI officials said they believe Jabbar, who was killed at the scene in a shootout with police, acted alone in the New Year’s attack and was inspired by the Islamic State terror group.

FBI Deputy Assistant Director Christopher Raia, with the agency’s counterterrorism division, said they concluded Jabbar had no accomplices following hundreds of interviews and reviews of the attacker’s calls, social media accounts and electronic devices.

Officials reopened Bourbon Street on Thursday afternoon. The attack occurred on Wednesday at 3:15 a.m.

On Tuesday evening, just hours before the attack, Jabbar posted five videos to his Facebook account, apparently addressed to his family and recorded while he was driving, in which he aligned himself with the Islamic State terror group. The FBI said an Islamic State flag also was found in the vehicle after the attack.

“This was an act of terrorism. It was premeditated and an evil act,” Raia said.

Jabbar had originally planned to hurt his relatives and friends but worried about how that would be interpreted by the media, Raia said. “He was 100% inspired by ISIS.”

The attack occurred at the intersection of Canal and Bourbon streets in the city’s lively French Quarter. The historic tourist destination filled with bars and music is also known for its large New Year’s Eve celebrations.   

After the vehicle crashed, the driver got out of the truck and shot at responding officers, police said. Officers returned fire, killing the driver, according to police. Two officers were wounded but are in stable condition, the police said.   

“This is not just an act of terrorism. This is evil,” New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick told reporters at a news conference Wednesday. 

Investigators found weapons and an explosive device in the vehicle, the FBI said, along with other explosive devices found in the French Quarter. The vehicle appeared to have been rented, the FBI said. 

President-elect Donald Trump condemned the attack in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.  

“Our hearts are with all the innocent victims and their loved ones. The Trump Administration will fully support the City of New Orleans as they investigate and recover from this act of pure evil!” he said.

In the same post, Trump also falsely suggested that the suspect was an immigrant.

VOA National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin and VOA reporter Liam Scott contributed to this report. Some information for this story came from Reuters and The Associated Press.
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WASHINGTON/LONDON — Alcoholic drinks should carry a warning about cancer risks on their label, the U.S. surgeon general said Friday in a move that could signal a shift toward more aggressive tobacco-style regulation for the sector. 

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said alcohol consumption increases the risk of at least seven types of cancer, including breast, colon and liver cancer, but most U.S. consumers remain unaware of this. 

Murthy also called for the guidelines on alcohol consumption limits to be reassessed so that people can weigh the cancer risk when deciding whether or how much to drink. U.S. dietary guidelines currently recommend two or fewer drinks per day for men and one drink or less per day for women. 

“Alcohol consumption is the third leading preventable cause of cancer in the United States, after tobacco and obesity,” Murthy’s office said in a statement accompanying the new report, adding the type of alcohol consumed does not matter. 

His advisory sent shares in alcohol companies including Diageo, Pernod Ricard, Anheuser-Busch and Heineken down, in some cases over 3%. 

Alcohol producers and industry associations did not immediately share comments. 

It is unclear when or if the surgeon general’s suggestions will be adopted. U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration is entering its final two weeks. Murthy could be succeeded by Janette Nesheiwat, a director of a New York chain of urgent care clinics and President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for the role. 

Trump, whose brother died from alcoholism and who does not drink himself, has long warned about the risks of drinking. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, has been open about his past struggles with heroin and alcohol, and says that he attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. 

The decision to update the label will ultimately be made by Congress. 

Small print 

Murthy’s advisory harks back to early U.S. surgeon general action on tobacco, starting with a 1964 report that concluded smoking could cause cancer. The report kicked off decades of increasingly strict regulations, starting with U.S. laws on warning labels one year later and still ongoing today. 

Alcoholic drinks in the U.S. already carry warnings on their packaging, including that drinking alcohol while pregnant can cause birth defects and that it can impair judgment when operating machinery. These appear in small print on the back of the packaging. This label has not changed since its inception in 1988. 

Murthy’s recommendations call for an update to these existing labels, rather than new cigarette-style warnings that are today displayed prominently on the front of every packet. 

Analysts, however, pointed out that cigarette warning labels did little to curb smoking and ingrained habits are hard to change. 

“Warning labels won’t be an immediate deathblow to alcohol makers, but it will compound the long-term threats to the industry,” said Blake Droesch, analyst with eMarketer. 

In the U.S., among the largest markets for many western producers, companies face growing competition from alternatives like cannabis and the threat of lower volumes as some consumers, especially younger ones, drink less than previous generations. 

Beer makers especially have, however, enjoyed benefits from a shift toward healthier lifestyles, with low- or no-alcohol products enjoying rapid growth. Heineken’s 0.0 version, for example, grew double digits in 16 markets last year. 

The advisory said alcohol is responsible for 100,000 U.S. cancer cases and 20,000 cancer deaths each year, more than the 13,500 alcohol-associated traffic crash deaths. 

The new report recommends health care providers should encourage alcohol screening and treatment referrals as needed, and efforts to increase general awareness should be expanded.
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Загалом станом на кінець грудня 2024 року в Україні через російську агресію постраждали 1255 пам’яток культурної спадщини
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«Утім, попри всі складні обставини, станом на грудень 51% українців виступали проти будь-яких територіальних поступок (на початку жовтня було 58%)»
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Washington — U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday followed through on his pledge to block Nippon Steel’s $14.9 billion bid for U.S. Steel, citing concerns the deal could hurt national security.

The move, long expected, cuts off a critical lifeline of capital for the beleaguered American icon, which has said it would have to idle key mills without the nearly $3 billion in promised investment from the Japanese firm.

It also represents the final chapter in a high-profile national security review, led by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, CFIUS, which vets investment for national security risks and had until December 23 to approve, extend the timeline or recommend Biden block the deal.

The proposed tie-up has faced high-level opposition within the United States since it was announced a year ago, with both Biden and his incoming successor Donald Trump taking aim at it as they sought to woo union voters in the swing state of Pennsylvania, where U.S. Steel is headquartered. Trump and Biden both asserted the company should remain American-owned.

The merger appeared to be on the fast-track to be blocked after the companies received an August 31 letter from CFIUS, seen by Reuters, arguing the deal could hurt the supply of steel needed for critical transportation, construction and agriculture projects.

But Nippon Steel countered that its investments, made by a company from an allied nation, would in fact shore up U.S. Steel’s output, and it won a 90-day review extension. That extension gave CFIUS until after the November election to make a decision, fueling hope among supporters that a calmer political climate could help the deal’s approval.

But hopes were shattered in December when CFIUS set the stage for Biden to block it in a 29-page letter by raising allegedly unresolved national security risks, Reuters exclusively reported.

 
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WASHINGTON — The 119th U.S. Congress will come into session Friday. After a contentious government funding battle last month, though, Republican Party control of both houses of Congress and presidency faces challenges.

The Senate enters the new session as Republicans take the majority from Democrats and Senator Mitch McConnell steps away from party leadership for the first time in 18 years. Republican Senator John Thune has already been selected to lead the Senate as majority leader.

Republicans will hold a 53-47 seat majority, well below the 60 votes needed to advance most legislation.

In the House, where Republicans hold a narrow 219-215 majority, the focus will be on votes for speaker. Current Speaker Mike Johnson’s position is in jeopardy after his deal last month with Democrats to keep the government funded and open.

It would take only as few as two Republicans to vote against Johnson to put his speakership in jeopardy.  Democrats are expected to nominate Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries for the speakership but are likely to fall short by a few votes.

President-elect Donald Trump posted his support for Johnson on social media Monday, saying the speaker was “a good, hard-working, religious man.”

But Republican representatives Chip Roy and Thomas Massie have already stated their doubts about his leadership and Trump ally and adviser Steve Bannon has called on Republicans to remove Johnson from leadership.

“Mr. Johnson caught a lot of fire from his GOP colleagues. And he has an extraordinarily limited margin for his majority, just a handful of people,” Kevin Kosar, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told VOA via Zoom.

Two years ago, at the start of another Congress, Republican Kevin McCarthy faced similar challenges to his bid for the speakership. He was finally elected on the 15th round of voting.

If Johnson, or another Republican, is unable to garner enough votes for the speakership the chamber could be without a leader in time for the official certification of Trump’s electoral victory on Jan. 6. Whoever does lead the House will, at least temporarily, hold an even tighter majority after Trump takes office on Jan. 20, as he has picked two House Republicans to join his administration.

Traditionally, the first 100 days of a new presidency and Congress are a time for an ambitious legislative agenda.

“He’s going to hit tariffs very hard. He’s going to focus on the border, and executive orders related to immigration and immigrants, particularly from Mexico and Muslim countries. And then he’s going to work on any compromises he can to get through the legislative agenda on things affecting the economy, groceries, as he likes to call it,” Casey Burgat, a professor at The George Washington University in Washington, told VOA via Zoom.

Some information for this story came from Reuters. 
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