Політика

За даними метеорологів, у 2024 році в Києві було зафіксовано 52 температурних рекорди, причому найбільше їх було у квітні – 13 і липні – 14
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TOKYO — Asian shares mostly slipped Thursday, as the region’s main stock market in Tokyo stayed closed for the New Year’s holidays. 

Investors remained cautious amid worries about what incoming U.S. President Donald Trump might mean for policy changes, while the political uncertainty in South Korea added to a wait-and-see mood. 

Australia’s S&P/ASx 200 rose 0.4% in early trading to 8,193.90. South Korea’s Kospi declined nearly 0.1% to 2,397.54. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng shed 1.3% to 19,807.19, while the Shanghai Composite lost 0.8% to 3,325.56. 

Wall Street trading was closed on Wednesday for the New Year’s Day holiday. 

On Thursday, investors will get an updated snapshot of U.S. construction spending for November, while U.S. manufacturing numbers for December will be released Friday. 

Markets pause to mourn Carter

The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq will close their equity and options markets on January 9 in observance of a National Day of Mourning for former President Jimmy Carter, continuing a longtime Wall Street tradition of mourning the nation’s leaders. The 39th U.S. president and global humanitarian died on Sunday at his home in Plains, Georgia. He was 100 years old. 

U.S. stock indexes closed mostly lower Tuesday as the market delivered a downbeat finish on the final day of another milestone-shattering year on Wall Street. 

The S&P 500 gave up an early gain to finish down 0.4%. The benchmark index, which set 57 record highs in 2024, racked up a 23.3% gain for the year. This was its second straight year with a gain of more than 20%. The last time the index had as big a back-to-back annual gain was 1998. 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.1%, and the Nasdaq composite lost 0.9%. 

Big Tech stocks led this year’s rally, pushing the Nasdaq to a yearly gain of 28.6%. The Dow, which is far less heavily weighted with tech, rose 12.9% for the year. 

All told, the S&P 500 fell 25.31 points to 5,881.63 on Tuesday. The Dow lost 29.51 points to close at 42,544.22, and the Nasdaq slid 175.99 points to finish at 19,310.79. 

Growth helps drive US market

U.S. markets’ stellar run was driven by a growing economy, solid consumer spending and a strong jobs market. 

Skyrocketing prices for companies in the artificial-intelligence business, such as Nvidia and Super Micro Computer, helped lift the market to new heights. 

After three interest rate cuts in 2024, the Fed has signaled a more cautious approach heading into 2025 with inflation remaining sticky as the country prepares for Trump to transition into the White House. Trump’s threats to hike tariffs on imported goods have raised anxiety that inflation could be reignited as companies pass along the cost of tariffs. 

In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude rose 36 cents to $72.08 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, added 34 cents to $74.98 a barrel. 

In currency trading, the U.S. dollar inched down to 157.28 Japanese yen from 157.24 yen. The euro cost $1.0373, up from $1.0361. 
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The FBI said late Wednesday authorities were conducting search warrants in New Orleans, Louisiana, and states outside Louisiana as they investigate the attack in which a driver crashed a pickup truck into a crowd and opened fire, killing at least 15 people and injuring at least 30.

Investigators were still working late Wednesday to gather evidence at the scene of the early morning New Year’s Day attack on New Orleans’ popular Bourbon Street.

So far, the FBI has identified the suspect as 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar. The agency said it was investigating the attack as an act of terrorism, and that authorities do not believe the driver acted alone.

“The killer was an American citizen born in Texas,” U.S. President Joe Biden said Wednesday night. “He served in the United States Army in active duty for many years. He also served in the Army Reserve until a few years ago.”

Hours earlier, the suspect indicated in videos posted on social media that the attack was inspired by the Islamic State terror group. The FBI said an Islamic State flag was found in the vehicle after the attack.

Biden said law enforcement and the intelligence community were searching for any potential “connections, associations or co-conspirators.”

“So many people around the world love New Orleans because of its history, its culture, and above all, its people,” Biden said. “So, I know while this person committed a terrible assault on the city, the spirit of our New Orleans will never, never, never be defeated. It always will shine forth.”

Early morning attack

The attack occurred at 3:15 a.m. on Wednesday 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 car and opened fire on responding officers, police said. Officers returned fire, killing the suspect, according to police. Two officers were wounded but are in stable condition, police said.

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

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

“My heart goes out to the victims and their families who were simply trying to celebrate the holiday. There is no justification for violence of any kind, and we will not tolerate any attack on any of our nation’s communities,” Biden said in a statement on the social media platform X.

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,” Trump said. “The Trump Administration will fully support the City of New Orleans as they investigate and recover from this act of pure evil!”

In a statement on X, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry urged people to stay away from the site of the attack, calling the incident “a horrific act of violence.”

Crowds were also out partying in New Orleans because the city was set to host college football’s Sugar Bowl game Wednesday night. Officials confirmed that the game would be postponed until Thursday night.

Additionally, New Orleans is set to host the NFL’s Super Bowl on February 9.

VOA national security correspondent Jeff Seldin contributed to this report. Some information in this report came from Reuters and The Associated Press.
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Правоохоронці вживають заходів для встановлення особи правопорушника
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Quantum computing is emerging as a revolutionary technology capable of solving complex problems that traditional computers cannot address. The U.S. leads in quantum innovation, driven by companies like Google and IBM, robust government funding and top-tier research institutions. China, however, has rapidly advanced through massive state-led investments, dominating global quantum patents and establishing specialized research centers. 

Click here for the full story in Mandarin.
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The Tournament of Roses Parade is an annual New Year’s Day tradition with lavishly decorated floats brightening the streets of Los Angeles. Genia Dulot shows us a float highlighting efforts to give military veterans second careers in computer coding and cybersecurity.
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«На Покровському напрямку впродовж дня ворог здійснив 35 штурмових і наступальних дій»
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las vegas — One person died and seven others were injured Wednesday when a Tesla Cybertruck that appeared to be carrying fireworks 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 told a news conference that a person died inside the futuristic-looking pickup truck, and they were working to get the body out. Seven people nearby had minor injuries, and several were taken to a hospital.

The fire in the valet area of the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas was reported at 8:40 a.m., a county spokeswoman said in a statement.

According to a law enforcement official, the truck was rented via the Turo app and appeared to have a load of fireworks. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Law enforcement officials have not ruled out terrorism as a possible motive, a person familiar with the matter said. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss details of the investigation.

“I know you have a lot of questions,” Jeremy Schwartz, acting special agent in charge of the FBI’s Las Vegas office, told reporters. “We don’t have a lot of answers.”

President Joe Biden was briefed on the explosion. The truck explosion came hours after a driver rammed a truck into a crowd in New Orleans’ famed French Quarter early on New Year’s Day, killing at least 10 people before he was shot to death by police.

“The whole Tesla senior team is investigating this matter right now,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk wrote in a statement on X, adding: “We’ve never seen anything like this.”

In Las Vegas, witness Ana Bruce, visiting from Brazil, said she heard three explosions.

“The first one where we saw the fire, the second one, I guess, was the battery or something like that, and the third was the big one that smoked the entire area and was the moment when everyone was told to evacuate and stay away,” Bruce said.

The 64-story hotel is just off the Las Vegas Strip and across the street from the Fashion Show Las Vegas shopping mall.

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.”
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BAYAMON, PUERTO RICO — Power was restored to nearly all electrical customers across Puerto Rico on Wednesday after a sweeping blackout plunged the U.S. territory into darkness on New Year’s Eve. 

By Wednesday afternoon, power was back up for 98% of Puerto Rico’s 1.47 million utility customers, said Luma Energy, the private company supplying power to the archipelago. Lights returned to households as well as Puerto Rico’s hospitals and water and sewage facilities after the massive outage that exposed the persistent electricity problems plaguing the island. 

Still, the company warned that customers could still see temporary outages in the coming days. It said full restoration across the island could take up to two days. 

“Given the fragile nature of the grid, we will need to manage available generation to customer demand, which will likely require rotating temporary outages,” Juan Saca, president of Luma Energy, said in a statement. 

The lights went off in Puerto Rico at 5:30 a.m. Tuesday, darkening almost the entire archipelago as people prepared to ring in the New Year. Authorities are still investigating the cause of the outage, but Luma Energy said a preliminary review pointed to a failure in an underground electric line in the south of the territory. 

Governor-elect Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon, who is set to take office Thursday, warned that customers might experience interruptions in the coming days, with power plants not yet operating at maximum capacity. 

“These days, I urge you to be moderate with your energy consumption to help reduce load shifting, so that more people can have access to electricity and the system can start up without any major setbacks,” Gonzalez-Colon said on the X social media platform.  

On the campaign trail, Gonzalez-Colon promised to appoint an “energy czar” to oversee the operation of the power grid, which has long been fragile and faulty due to years of neglect. 

The island’s power lines were ravaged in September 2017 by Hurricane Maria, a Category 4 storm. 

Unreliable electricity remains frustratingly common, hindering daily life for Puerto Ricans. In June, over 340,000 customers were left without electricity as people reeled from soaring temperatures. In August, at the peak of Hurricane Ernesto, over half of all utility customers lost power. Tens of thousands of people remained without electricity a week after the storm. 

The New Year’s Eve outage came as clients brace for a hike in electricity rates. Last month, Puerto Rico’s Energy Bureau approved an increase of 2.2 cents per kilowatt hour for residential customers from January through March, causing electric bills for the average household to jump by nearly $20, the Energy Bureau said.
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За даними відомства, серед шістьох поранених внаслідок російської атаки – двоє вагітних жінок
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«На Курщині українські захисники відбили 31 атаку загарбників, два боєзіткнення тривають дотепер»
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PALM BEACH, FLORIDA — U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday that he’s planning to attend the funeral of former President Jimmy Carter.

Asked about it as he walked into a New Year’s Eve party at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, Trump responded, “I’ll be there.” Pressed on whether he’d spoken to members of Carter’s family, Trump said he’d rather not say.

Funeral services honoring Carter, who died Sunday at 100, will be held in Georgia and Washington, beginning Jan. 4 and concluding Jan. 9.

Trump was a frequent and fierce critic of Carter on the campaign trail ahead of November’s election, using the rising inflation rates of the 1970s to unfavorably compare President Joe Biden to Carter and his administration.

The president-elect was gracious about the former president, though, in posts on his social media site after Carter’s death Sunday, writing that the nation “owed him a debt of gratitude.”

“While I strongly disagreed with him philosophically and politically, I also realized that he truly loved and respected our Country, and all it stands for,” Trump wrote of Carter. “He worked hard to make America a better place, and for that I give him my highest respect.”

Wearing a tuxedo as he entered the festivities, Trump took a few minutes of questions from reporters on various topics. He was asked about the possibility of a ceasefire in Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza but said only, “We’re going to see what happens.”

Of hostages seized more than a year ago by Hamas, the president-elect said, “I’ll put it this way: They better let the hostages come back soon.”

Trump also said he thought 2025 would be a “great year” and “we’re going to do fantastically well as a country.”

“There’s a whole light over the whole world, not just our country. They’re a lot of happy people,” Trump said of recent weeks.

Asked about his resolutions for the new year, Trump said, “I just want everybody to be happy, healthy and well.”

Trump later took the stage to briefly address the crowd ringing in the new year at Mar-a-Lago and promised “to do a great job as your president.”

Biden, for his part, spent New Year’s Eve celebrating the wedding of his niece Missy Owens in Greenville, Delaware, followed by the reception in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. Biden and first lady Jill Biden cut short their traditional holiday trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands to attend the ceremony.
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HONOLULU — Harry Chandler, a Navy medic who helped pull injured sailors from the oily waters of Pearl Harbor after the 1941 Japanese attack on the naval base, has died. He was 103. 

Chandler died Monday at a senior living center in Tequesta, Florida, according to Ron Mahaffee, the husband of his granddaughter Kelli Fahey. Chandler had congestive heart failure, but Mahaffee said doctors and nurses noted his advanced age when giving a cause of death. 

The third Pearl Harbor survivor to die in the past few weeks, Chandler was a hospital corpsman 3rd class on Dec. 7, 1941, when waves of Japanese fighter planes dropped bombs and fired machine guns on battleships in the harbor and plunged the U.S. into World War II. 

He told The Associated Press in 2023 that he saw the planes approach as he was raising the flag that morning at a mobile hospital in Aiea Heights, which is in the hills overlooking the base. 

“I thought they were planes coming in from the states until I saw the bombs dropping,” Chandler said. His first instinct was to take cover and ”get the hell out of here.” 

“I was afraid that they’d start strafing,” he said. 

His unit rode trucks down to attend to the injured. He said in a Pacific Historic Parks oral history interview that he boarded a boat to help pluck wounded sailors from the water. 

The harbor was covered in oil from exploding ships, so Chandler washed the sailors off after lifting them out. He said he was too focused on his work to be afraid. 

“It got so busy you weren’t scared. Weren’t scared at all. We were busy. It was after you got scared,” Chandler said. 

He realized later that he could have been killed, “But you didn’t think about that while you were busy taking care of people.” 

The attack killed more than 2,300 U.S. servicemen. Nearly half, or 1,177, were sailors and Marines on board the USS Arizona, which sank nine minutes after it was bombed. 

Chandler’s memories came flowing back when he visited Pearl Harbor for a 2023 ceremony commemorating the 82nd anniversary of the bombing. 

“I look out there, and I can still see what’s going on. I can still see what was happening,” Chandler told The Associated Press. 

Asked what he wanted Americans to know about Pearl Harbor, he said: “Be prepared.” 

“We should have known that was going to happen. The intelligence has to be better,” he said. 

After the war Chandler worked as a painter and wallpaper hanger and bought an upholstery business with his brother. He also joined the Navy reserves, retiring as a senior chief in 1981. 

Chandler was born in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and lived for most of his adult life in nearby South Hadley, Mahaffee said. In recent decades he split his time between Massachusetts and Florida. 

An avid golfer, he shot five hole-in-ones during his lifetime, his grandson-in-law added. 

Chandler had one biological daughter and adopted two daughters from his second marriage, to Anna Chandler, who died in 2004. He is survived by two daughters, nine grandchildren, 17 great-grandchildren and five great-great-grandchildren. 

Military historian J. Michael Wenger has estimated that there were some 87,000 military personnel on the island of Oahu on the day of the attack. With Chandler’s death, only 15 are still living, according to a tally maintained by Kathleen Farley, the California state chair of the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors. 

Bob Fernandez, who served on the USS Curtiss, also died this month, at age 100, and Warren Upton, 105, who served on the USS Utah, died last week.
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NEW ORLEANS — New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell is calling the New Year’s Day mass casualty incident that killed 10 people and injured 30 a “terrorist attack.” 

The FBI is investigating what occurred early Wednesday, when a vehicle drove into a crowd on New Orleans’ famed Canal and Bourbon Street in the first hours of New Year’s Day. 

Alethea Duncan, an assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s New Orleans field office, said officials were investigating the discovery of at least one suspected improvised explosive device at the scene. 

Earlier, the New Orleans Police Department said it was responding to a mass casualty incident Wednesday that included fatalities. NOLA Ready advised people to stay away from the area. 

It said the injured had been taken to five local hospitals. 

The incident came at 3:15 a.m. toward the end of New Year’s celebrations in New Orleans and hours before the kickoff of the Sugar Bowl, a college football quarterfinal held in the city’s Superdome, with thousands expected to be in attendance. 

Earlier this week, the police department said security would be beefed up ahead of New Year’s Day celebrations. The department said it would be staffed at 100% capacity with 300 officers from partner agencies and a strong presence of marked and unmarked vehicles. 
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U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday warned about a rising number of threats to the judiciary’s independence, including calls for violence against judges and suggestions by elected officials to disregard court rulings they disagree with.

Roberts in an annual year-end report on the judiciary released just weeks before Republican President-elect Donald Trump takes office did not directly address what polling suggests has been a decline in public confidence in the judicial system broadly.

But Roberts said he felt compelled to highlight several areas of “illegitimate activity” that went far beyond informed criticism and debate concerning judicial rulings, which he said, “threaten the independence of judges on which the rule of law depends.”

Those areas of threats, he said, include a significant uptick in violent threats and online intimidation directed at judges, disinformation about court cases magnified by social media, and cyberthreats posed by foreign state actors.

In the past five years, the U.S. Marshals Service has investigated more than 1,000 serious threats against federal judges, Roberts wrote. In some extreme cases, judicial officers have been issued bulletproof vests, he said.

He cited the risks of hackers stealing confidential information and of hostile foreign state actors spreading disinformation online, including by using bots to distort judicial decisions and “foment discord within our democracy.”

Roberts also highlighted what he said were instances in the past few years in which “elected officials from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings.”

“These dangerous suggestions, however sporadic, must be soundly rejected,” Roberts wrote.

Roberts, a member of the court’s 6-3 conservative majority, did not specify what cases he was referring to, nor did he reference recent Supreme Court rulings that have set off political firestorms.

Those include its 2022 decision rolling back abortion rights or its July ruling granting Trump substantial immunity for actions taken in office in the now-dismissed 2020 election subversion criminal case he faced.

The abortion ruling prompted protests outside of several justices’ homes, and an armed man was charged in 2022 with attempting to assassinate conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh after being arrested near his home.

Roberts’ report also did not discuss recent ethics controversies concerning gifts and travel received by members of the Supreme Court that have prompted investigations by Democratic lawmakers and calls for reforms.

Roberts acknowledged court rulings can “provoke strong and passionate reactions” and said criticism was not a threat, and that “public engagement with the work of the courts results in a better-informed polity and a more robust democracy.”

But he said public officials “regrettably have engaged in recent attempts to intimidate judges — for example, suggesting political bias in the judge’s adverse rulings without a credible basis for such allegations.”

“Public officials certainly have a right to criticize the work of the judiciary, but they should be mindful that intemperance in their statements when it comes to judges may prompt dangerous reactions by others,” he wrote. 
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OTTAWA, ONTARIO, CANADA — An American man who fled after being sentenced to prison for his role in the U.S. Capitol riot is now seeking political asylum in Canada, as he waits and hopes for a pardon when Donald Trump returns to the White House.

Antony Vo, 32, was sentenced to nine months behind bars and ordered to report to a federal prison on June 14, 2024, but instead he fled to Canada.

More than 1,500 people have been charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on Congress, which sought to disrupt certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory.

Vo, from Indiana, was convicted at a jury trial in Washington of four counts of entering a restricted building and disorderly conduct related to his actions.

“I knew Canada has a history of being welcoming to refugees, from Vietnam War draft dodgers to the people who hid Edward Snowden in Hong Kong,” he told AFP. “So I packed up my snowboarding gear and drove across the border.”

In refugee claim documents, Vo said the riot was “a peaceful protest” that was “subverted as part of a domestic regime-change operation to politically assassinate Trump and his supporters.”

He added that he was “persecuted, maltreated,” and subjected to an “unfair trial” over his political beliefs, and if sent back to the United States would be jailed “under inhumane conditions.”

The assault on the Capitol followed a fiery speech by then-president Trump to tens of thousands of his supporters near the White House, in which he repeated his false claims that he won the 2020 vote.

More than 140 police officers were injured during hours of clashes with rioters wielding flagpoles, baseball bats, hockey sticks and other makeshift weapons along with Tasers and canisters of bear spray.

Vo insisted that he saw no violence.

Images on social media showed Vo and his mother, Annie — who fled Vietnam in 1991 and was granted asylum in the United States — smiling inside the Capitol that day. She was arrested in March and is awaiting trial.

Vo said he hopes to stay in Canada “until the situation is safe for me to return” to the United States. “When Donald Trump takes office, I hope he pardons me and the rest of the January 6 protesters.”

Trump has called the rioters patriots and political prisoners and told a CNN town hall that he was “inclined to pardon many of them.”

Several Capitol riot defendants have seized upon Trump’s election victory over Vice President Kamala Harris to ask that their trials or sentencing be put on hold.

Trump himself, who takes office again in January, was charged with conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

But the case never made it to trial and is now being wound down under the Justice Department’s policy of not prosecuting a sitting president.

Vo said that he had also tried to seek asylum in Argentina, Mexico, El Salvador, Vietnam, Belarus, and Russia.

“I seriously explored getting paramotoring lessons and then paramotoring from Key West to Cuba to seek asylum there too,” he said in his claim.

Vo said that in Canada, “people have really taken good care of me.” 
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Через рух безпілотників повітряну тривогу оголосили в шести областях на півночі, сході та в центрі України
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