TVG Daily Brief 3 JAN 2025

3 JAN 2025

Stay informed and ahead of the curve with today’s top headlines, breaking stories, and the latest updates shaping our world. Get the BLUF (bottom line up front!) on defense, national security, economy, business development, technology, American manufacturing, school safety, 2A issues - and more. Prep for the whiplash and stay engaged. Know better - do better. Be the somebody!

DEFENSE

-US begins new year on high alert following New Orleans attack and Vegas explosion: Law-enforcement officials in U.S. cities were beefing up security on Thursday after a deadly attack in New Orleans and an explosion outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas raised fears of more threats in a month packed with large-scale public events. (Reuters)

· Police in Washington, the site of the Jan. 9 state funeral for former President Jimmy Carter and President-elect Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, said in a statement they had raised security across the city “in light of recent events,” and that the community will notice an increased police presence.

· Republican Trump is also due to hold a “victory rally” at Washington’s Capital One Arena on Jan. 19. By Wednesday night, as fans arrived for a Washington Wizards basketball game at the arena, vehicle barriers closed off an adjacent street, a security measure not usually seen before the NBA team’s home games.

· Trump’s Nov. 5 presidential election victory is due to be certified by the U.S. Congress on Jan. 6 - the fourth anniversary of an attack on the U.S. Capitol building by Trump supporters at the same ceremony in 2021.

· For the first time, the ceremony has been designated a National Special Security Event, a decision made before the New Orleans attack. That designation means the U.S. Secret Service will take the lead security role, the agency told Reuters in a statement. “We will continue to work with our federal, state, and local law enforcement partners in assessing the ever-changing threat landscape and will adjust our security plans as needed,” Matthew Young, a U.S. Secret Service spokesperson said.

-Revival of ISIS in Syria Stirs Fears: Islamic State militants were already resurgent last year in parts of Syria and Iraq. Then in December, the Assad regime collapsed, furnishing them with fresh supplies of weapons from stocks abandoned by the Syrian army. The group that once terrorized the Middle East and inspired attacks elsewhere in the world is looking to exploit Syria's uncertain future to rebuild its influence -- half a decade after U.S.-led forces broke its hold on swaths of territory and millions of people. (WSJ)

· In a sign of its persistent appeal, a U.S. Army veteran in a pickup flying an Islamic State flag drove through a crowd on New Year’s Day in New Orleans, killing 14 and injuring dozens in what authorities called a terrorist attack. It wasn’t clear what connections, if any, the assailant might have had to the group, but analysts warn of lone-wolf incidents and copycat attacks.

· The fight against the remnants of Islamic State until recently happened in the shadows, with hundreds of U.S. Special Forces based in Syria’s hinterlands working with Kurdish militias to carry out airstrikes and raids. The U.S. has since ramped up its attacks, including in areas where the airspace was previously controlled by the government of Bashar al-Assad and its Russian allies, military analysts say.

· On Dec. 8, hours after the Assad regime fell, the U.S. said it hit 75 Islamic State targets with dozens of strikes. About a week later, the U.S. said it killed at least a dozen militants with another airstrike. Three days later, it said it killed two more Islamic State operatives, including one of its top leaders.

· There are concerns about the effectiveness of periodic bombings amid the rapidly changing regional landscape. The Kurdish groups that have been crucial in fighting and containing Islamic State and keeping its fighters contained are under new pressure from groups backed by Turkey. The Turkish government sees the Kurdish groups as terrorists and is pressing its interests in the country now under the control of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist group that once had ties to Islamic State and al Qaeda, which it later renounced.

· It also is uncertain how long the U.S. military will be able to maintain its presence of more than 2,000 troops in Syria and about 2,500 in Iraq. Days after Assad fled Syria, Iraqi officials visiting Washington expressed concern about the potential resurgence of Islamic State and asked the U.S. to reassess a recently concluded withdrawal agreement that called for nearly all U.S. forces to leave within two years. Any changes to the U.S. presence in Iraq—which provides critical support to the presence in Syria—will be up to President-elect Donald Trump, who cut back troop numbers during his first administration.

· The concerns are driven by a significant uptick in Islamic State activity. U.S. and Kurdish officers told The Wall Street Journal over the summer that the group is training new recruits and mustering forces in the Syrian desert, aiming to resurrect its dream of ruling a new Islamist empire. Fighters increased their attacks in Syria and Iraq last year, targeting checkpoints, detonating car bombs and maneuvering to free their jailed comrades.

-ISIS no longer rules a territory. But its recruits still pose a global threat: It's many years since ISIS, also known as Islamic State, held sway over much of Syria and northern Iraq a time when it spawned affiliates throughout Africa and Asia and organized a series of deadly terror attacks in European cities. But as a terror group it remains active in more than a dozen countries – and has inspired and supported individuals and cells in Europe and Russia in recent years. ISIS is far from moribund, even if it is now a loosely linked network rather than a self-declared caliphate controlling sizeable cities. (CNN)

· It thrust ISIS back into the spotlight, as have events in Syria. US officials are concerned that instability following the collapse of the Assad regime may allow ISIS to expand from its remote desert strongholds, nearly six years after the “caliphate” fell, and also regain a foothold in Iraq.

· There is also the perennial concern among Western security services that individuals inspired by ISIS will launch low-tech attacks – such as stabbings, shootings and driving vehicles into crowds. Such plans are notoriously difficult to detect. Vehicle attacks in the name of ISIS in the last few years – including in Nice, Barcelona, Berlin and New York – have killed more than 100 people.

· Events in the Middle East have pushed already radicalized individuals to violence, according to Rita Katz, executive director of SITE Intelligence, a non-governmental organization that monitors terror groups. She notes that since Israel's assault on Gaza began in October 2023, there has been a resurgence of "lone wolf" plots in the name of ISIS: a mass stabbing at a festival in Solingen, Germany; an alleged plot against Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna; and the stabbing of an Orthodox Jewish man in Zurich. In that instance, a 15-year-old boy, a Swiss national of Tunisian descent, declared his allegiance to ISIS in a video, saying he was "responding to the call of the Islamic State to its soldiers to target the Jews and Christians and their criminal allies."

-New Year’s attacks fuel fears of extremism in military: The primary suspects in two deadly attacks on New Year’s Day shared a history of service in the U.S. military, underscoring persistent fears over extremism within the armed services that officials have struggled to uproot. The suspect behind a truck rampage in New Orleans that killed 14 people, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, was an Army veteran, while the man allegedly behind the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck outside of the international Trump hotel in Las Vegas, Matthew Livelsberger, was an active-duty service member in the Army. (The Hill)

· While not the first acts of military extremism, the two deadly attacks amplify questions about the number of radical and unstable veterans and active-duty troops and whether the Pentagon’s efforts to identify and root out extremist beliefs is working.

· Heidi Beirich, a co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism who has studied military extremist activity for decades, said the unresolved problem was particularly dangerous because veterans and active-duty service members can kill more efficiently. “The military has not adequately addressed the problem, whether it’s white supremacists or Islamic extremists,” she said. “These cases are a reminder of how important it is that people with potential to become extreme aren’t trained in military tactics.”

· Todd Helmus, senior behavioral scientist at RAND Corporation and a violent extremist expert, said he was surprised to learn about Livelsberger, as violent extremism is more prominent among veterans who often struggle with a range of factors once leaving service, like mental health issues, finding work and leaving behind comrades. “All these issues can be complicating challenges for veterans,” he said. “These life challenges that can happen when people leave military services in the close-knit communities, they might be more at risk of radicalization or recruitment.” Helmus added that it was “harder to be a terrorist” in active-duty service. “You’re hanging out with fellows in your unit on a day-to-day basis,” he said. “And there is a discipline structure that’s in place, so I think it’s probably more likely to get picked up if you were on the verge of conducting these types of attacks.”

· While more could be done, a sweeping crackdown on military extremism might not be the best approach, Helmus, from RAND Corporation, argued, comparing it to the overreaction of the U.S. national security sphere following the 9/11 attacks. “The best thing the Pentagon can do is to do assessments, to track numbers,” he said. “That’s the biggest problem so far, is just open transparency on numbers of individuals, of people discharged. What are they discharged for? To what extent are people being discharged for having radical ideologies?”

· But Beirich, from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, pointed to multiple problems: the Pentagon has deprioritized its extremism efforts, the Department of Veterans Affairs has no programs to help veterans prone to extremist recruitment, and there are no universal standards for tackling the problem among the military branches. “We’ve a whole range of problems when it comes to this issue. And this goes back to the fact that it just wasn’t taken seriously for decades under both Republicans and Democrats,” she said. “The Biden administration was really beginning this process, and then it got stalemated in a political divide.”

-U.S. Military Service Is the Strongest Predictor of Carrying Out Extremist Violence: The two men who carried out apparent terror attacks on New Year’s Day — killing 15 people by plowing a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers in New Orleans, and detonating a Tesla Cybertruck outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas — both had U.S. military backgrounds, according to the Pentagon. (The Intercept)

· From 1990 to 2010, about seven persons per year with U.S. military backgrounds committed extremist crimes. Since 2011, that number has jumped to almost 45 per year, according to data from a new, unreleased report shared with The Intercept by Michael Jensen, the research director at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START, at the University of Maryland.

· Military service is also the single strongest individual predictor of becoming a “mass casualty offender,” far outpacing mental health issues, according to a separate study of extremist mass casualty violence by the researchers.

· From 1990 through 2023, 730 individuals with U.S. military backgrounds committed criminal acts that were motivated by their political, economic, social, or religious goals, according to data from the new START report. From 1990 to 2022, successful violent plots that included perpetrators with a connection to the U.S. military resulted in 314 deaths and 1,978 injuries — a significant number of which came from the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

· In the years 1990 to 2022, 170 individuals with U.S. military backgrounds plotted 144 individual mass casualty terrorist attacks in the United States, according to START research using the Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States, or PIRUS, database, which includes information on more than 3,000 subjects who committed extremist crimes in America. These troops and veterans represent approximately one-quarter of all individuals who plotted mass casualty extremist attacks during this span, outstripping their representation in the U.S. population.

· Jensen and his colleagues found that while military personnel and veterans are not more likely to radicalize to the point of violence than members of the general public, when service members and veterans do become radicalized, “they may be more likely to plan for, or commit, mass casualty crimes, thus having an outsized impact on public safety.”

· The researchers also determined that subjects “in PIRUS with U.S. military backgrounds are 2.41 times more likely to be classified as mass casualty offenders than individuals who did not serve in the armed forces.” This means that U.S. military service is a more reliable predictor for becoming a mass casualty offender than mental health issues, being a lone offender, or having a pre-radicalization criminal history.

· Most mass casualty offenders with U.S. military backgrounds in PIRUS (73.5 percent) were associated with far-right domestic extremist groups and movements. Approximately 15 percent (24 offenders) were inspired by or connected to foreign Islamist extremist groups, such as Al Qaeda and its affiliates (9 subjects) or the Islamic State or ISIS (13 subjects).

-Texas man who backed Islamic State acted alone in New Orleans attack, FBI says: A U.S. Army veteran who killed 14 people by ramming a truck into a crowd of New Year's Day revelers in New Orleans had pledged allegiance to Islamic State and appeared to have made recordings in which he condemned music, drugs and alcohol. Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old Texas native who once served in Afghanistan, acted alone in the attack, the FBI said on Thursday, reversing an earlier assessment that he may have had accomplices. He was killed in a shootout with police after the rampage, which also injured dozens of people and has been labeled by the FBI as an act of terrorism. (Reuters)

· "It was premeditated and an evil act," FBI Deputy Assistant Director Christopher Raia told a press conference on Thursday, reaffirming the bureau's conclusion that Jabbar was inspired by Islamic State, the militant group with fighters in Iraq and Syria. Raia said investigators were looking into Jabbar's "path to radicalization," still uncertain how he transformed from military veteran, real-estate agent and one-time employee of the major tax and consulting firm Deloitte into someone who was "100 percent inspired by ISIS," or Islamic state.

· According to the FBI, Jabbar drove from Houston to New Orleans on Dec. 31. On the morning of the attack, between 1:29 a.m. and 3:02 a.m., he posted five videos on Facebook in which he said he supported Islamic State, the FBI said. In the first video, Jabbar said he previously planned to harm his family and friends, but was concerned that the media coverage would not focus on the "war between the believers and the disbelievers," Raia said. Jabbar also said in the videos that he had joined Islamic State before last summer and provided his last will and testament, Raia said.

· The massacre on New Orleans' famed Bourbon Street in the French Quarter during a holiday celebration and an explosion outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas have made for an unnerving start to the new year in the U.S. The FBI said it had so far found no definitive link between the New Orleans attack and the Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas later on the same day, which killed the driver and left seven people with minor injuries. Law enforcement officials across the country are promising heightened security for upcoming public events.

-Investigators seek clues to New Orleans attacker's path to radicalization: As investigators learn more about the man who pledged allegiance to Islamic State and killed 14 people with a truck on New Year's Day in New Orleans, a key question remains: How did a veteran and one-time employee of a major corporation become radicalized? (Reuters)

· FBI Deputy Assistant Director Christopher Raia said on Thursday that videos made by Shamsud-Din Jabbar just before the attack showed the 42-year-old Texas native supported Islamic State, claimed to have joined the militant group before last summer and believed in a "war between the believers and nonbelievers." While the FBI was looking into his “path to radicalization,” evidence collected since the attack showed that Jabbar was “100 percent inspired by ISIS,” said Raia, using an acronym for Islamic State.

· It is still unclear what contact Jabbar might have had with overseas extremist groups. U.S. officials and other experts say Islamic State conducts most of its recruiting in online chatrooms and over encrypted communications apps since losing the “caliphate” it overran in 2014 in Iraq and Syria to a U.S.-led military coalition. Even as the coalition continues hitting the group's remaining holdouts, Islamic State has stepped up operations in Syria while its Afghanistan- and Africa-based affiliates have kept recruiting, expanding their networks and inspiring attacks.

· Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent who investigated terrorism cases and is on an advisory council to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, said Jabbar did not fit the typical profile of those radicalized by Islamic State. Jabbar served for 10 years in the U.S. Army and was in his 40s, Soufan noted, explaining that people who fall prey to Islamic State recruitment are typically much younger. “This is a guy who … went from being a patriot to being an ISIS terrorist,” said Soufan.

· Nate Snyder, a former U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) counterterrorism official, said both international and U.S.-based extremist groups follow a similar playbook to draw in new recruits. The groups use social media to push their message and then move discussions to encrypted app such as Telegram, which could evolve into one-on-one conversations, Snyder said.

· Individuals susceptible to recruitment “might have lost their jobs, might have had a mental health crisis, might have just concluded that however hard they’ve tried, they never belong," said Edmund Fitton-Brown, a former British diplomat who led a U.N. team that monitors Islamic State and al Qaeda. The main appeal of Islamic State is its determination to establish a Sunni Muslim “caliphate” ruled by Islamic law, unlike the Taliban, which “has sold out to Afghan nationalism,” or al Qaeda, members of which have cooperated with Iran’s Shiite Muslim-run government, he said.

· “People that are carrying out those attacks may never in their lives have actually met somebody who is a member of ISIS,” said Fitton-Brown, a senior adviser to the Counter-Extremism Project, a policy and research organization. “But that doesn’t mean they can’t carry out an ISIS-inspired attack." Crashing cars into crowds or staging stabbing rampages “are unsophisticated, very low-budget attacks (that) are almost impossible to defend against,” he continued. “If you are determined enough to kill unsuspecting public, you are going to be able to do it."

-Police positively identify driver of exploded Tesla Cybertruck as US Army soldier: Officials on Thursday positively identified the person found dead inside the Cybertruck that exploded outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas as a U.S. Army soldier from Colorado, while the FBI said it was not yet clear if the blast was an act of terrorism. The FBI said it had so far found no definitive link between the New Year's Day New Orleans truck attack that killed 15 people and the Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas later on the same day, which left seven people with minor injuries. (Reuters, WSJ)

· The Cybertruck driver was identified as Matthew Livelsberger, 37, an active-duty Army soldier from Colorado Springs, and police said he acted alone. Livelsberger killed himself with a gunshot to the mouth, police said, citing a report from the Clark County Coroner/Medical Examiner, according to a post on X by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Livelsberger was inside the vehicle when gasoline canisters and large firework mortars in the truck bed exploded, police said.

· Livelsberger shot himself just before explosives in the vehicle were detonated, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Sheriff Kevin McMahill told reporters. A handgun was found at his feet. It was one of two semi-automatic handguns found in the Cybertruck, both of which were lawfully purchased by Livelsberger on Dec. 30. Law enforcement also found military identification, a passport, an iPhone and credit cards in the truck.

· Livelsberger was assigned to the Army Special Operations Command and was on approved leave at the time of his death, an Army official said. The Army Special Operations Command would not comment on an ongoing investigation, a spokesperson said. A U.S. official told Reuters that Livelsberger had been awarded a Bronze Star for valor and an Army commendation for valor, along with a Combat Infantryman Badge. He completed five combat deployments to Afghanistan, the official said.

· On Thursday, Army officials were exploring whether Livelsberger was having any personal problems as they scoured his unit, trying to untangle the mystery of how or why a model soldier with a stellar record could potentially be tied to a terrorist event. So far, they remain baffled. He was a decorated master sergeant in the U.S. Special Forces—an Army Green Beret—and a top student who betrayed no signs of distress when talking to members of his unit just a few days ago, according to defense officials.

· A close relative of Livelsberger, who asked that his name not be used because he did not want to be publicly linked to the suspect, told Reuters that Livelsberger had always wanted to be an “Army soldier, in Special Forces, even as a little kid. And when he achieved that, he was a soldier’s soldier.” Livelsberger was a supporter of President-elect Donald Trump throughout the Republican’s political career, seeing him as someone who loves the military, the relative told Reuters. “He thought Trump was the greatest thing in the world.”

-Man who formerly served in US Army indicted over attempts to support Hezbollah: A Pennsylvania man who previously served in the U.S. Army was indicted by a grand jury on charges of attempting to support Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and of making false statements to the FBI, the U.S. Justice Department said on Thursday. Jack Danaher Molloy, 24, was a dual citizen of the U.S. and Ireland and traveled to Lebanon and Syria in 2024 to attempt to join Hezbollah, which is designated by the U.S. as a "foreign terrorist organization," the Justice Department said in a statement. (Reuters)

· The department said Molloy returned to the U.S. in late 2024 and continued making attempts to join Hezbollah. He had also promoted hatred and violence against Jews, the Justice Department said, adding he was formerly enlisted as an active-duty soldier in the U.S. Army from mid-March to late April in 2019. The Justice Department said Molloy lied to the FBI about his intentions to join Hezbollah when questioned upon his return to the United States in late 2024. It said he was arrested on Dec. 6 in Chicago.

-U.S. Reportedly Setting Up New Base In Northern Syria: A half dozen years after abandoning Kobani, U.S. forces are reportedly building a base in this northern Syrian city on the Turkish border that has been riven by strife between Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Turkish-backed forces. This all comes as a new Syrian government is trying to establish control over the country after ousting Bashar al-Assad. (The War Zone)

· Several videos and images have emerged on social media claiming to show U.S. troops and equipment heading toward Kobani, reportedly to build a new international coalition base. The U.S. has a presence of about 2,000 troops in Syria, ostensibly deployed to continue the ongoing fight against ISIS. That fight apparently came to the U.S. on Wednesday, when a man claiming ISIS affiliation carried out a deadly attack in New Orleans.

· U.S. forces “brought in a convoy of 50 trucks carrying cement blocks to SDF-controlled areas in north-eastern Syria,” the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) wrote Thursday morning. “SOHR activists have reported seeing the convoy on Al-Hasakah-Al-Raqqah highway, while it was heading to Ain Al-Arab area (Kobani) in the eastern countryside of Aleppo. The convoy was accompanied by a military vehicle of SDF. According to SOHR sources, this comes as a part of US forces’ efforts to boost their bases and establish a new military base in Ain Al-Arab in light of the growing security and military tension in that region.”

-DOD’s Office of Strategic Capital accepting loan applications as it looks to lend up to $984M: Companies can now start applying for direct loans from the Defense Department’s Office of Strategic Capital, which is looking to disperse up to nearly $1 billion to finance equipment via its new credit program. The opening of the application window on Thursday coincided with the unveiling of the organization’s fiscal 2025 investment strategy. (DefenseScoop)

· “The OSC Credit Program assesses capital market needs and develops financial instruments to encourage private investment in industries that are both commercially viable and necessary for the geopolitical challenges of the 21st century. The Credit Program employs loans and loan guarantees as an enticement for private capital to invest in potentially overlooked segments of the market that support the development of critical technologies and ensure the availability of vital components. Where private capital alone may require higher interest rates or comparably rapid repayment, the Credit Program can offer competitive rates with substantially longer repayment timelines, thereby providing companies the time and space they need to move new products to market,” officials wrote in the strategy.

-Air Force Sent More A-10s to the Boneyard in 2024, But It Continues to Use the Aircraft Overseas: The Air Force sent at least 39 retired A-10 Thunderbolt IIs to the boneyard in 2024, a significant increase as the service moves toward removing the aircraft from its inventory even as it recently used the planes in training exercises and in combat overseas. (Military.com)

· Data from the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona showed that 39 A-10C aircraft were brought to the boneyard -- the final resting place for retired planes and jets -- between January and September 2024. It's not clear how many were sent in the final three months of the year.

· By comparison, there were 17 A-10s sent during the entire year prior, according to the inventory data -- about half as many as the 2024 number. It's a notable increase after Congress allowed the first A-10 retirements in decades in 2022.

-How Stealthy F-22 Raptors Learned to Take on Elusive Iranian Threats in the Middle East: When Lt. Col. Dustin Johnson was ordered to deploy to the Middle East last year, he and his fellow F-22 Raptor pilots prepared for an unusual challenge. (Air & Space Forces Magazine)

· As America’s premier air superiority fighter, the F-22 was designed to take on advanced enemy aircraft, capable of maneuvering stealthily and cruising at supersonic speeds. But the dangers that most concerned Johnson and his Airmen included Iranian-designed drones and cruise missiles that Tehran and its proxies have employed during the most recent stretch of unrest in the Middle East.

· “We were not necessarily worried about shooting down anybody else’s airplanes,” Johnson said in an interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine. “We were primarily there to defend our ground forces against the threats that were being posed by the UAVs in the AOR, as well as the cruise missiles that we’ve seen become more prevalent, both from the Houthis as well as militia groups in the region.”

· Given the changing character of war, the episode shows that even a high-end fighter needs to be prepared for low-end threats.

-My year as Miss America proves joining the military doesn't mean losing yourself: When I became the first active-duty member of the military to win Miss America, I thought it was just a flashy headline. Sure, it sounded exclusive, but I didn’t view it as groundbreaking. I was not the first woman to join the military or graduate from the U.S. Air Force Academy. I was simply doing what I loved. I thought it would be “fun.” I entered the pageant, first for Miss Colorado, while attending the academy, so part of my motivation was to practice my public speaking in a real-world environment, and another part of my motivation was to give myself temporary breaks from my rigid military lifestyle. Then … I won. (USA Today op-ed by U.S. Air Force 2nd Lt. Madison Marsh, who was crowned Miss America in 2024. She is pursuing her Master’s degree in public policy at Harvard University)

· When I think back on the year, which ends Sunday when a new Miss America is crowned, one moment in particular sticks with me: I was back at the Air Force Academy, visiting for Parents’ Weekend to support my sister-in-law, who is now a cadet. As I walked through the library, a freshman approached me with her mother. She asked if I was Miss America, and I said yes.

· The cadet shared that, earlier this year, she had been on the fence about accepting her appointment to the academy. She was not sure if she could bring her whole self into the military, unsure if she would have to sacrifice parts of her identity to succeed. Then she saw me win Miss America. That moment convinced her she could do it too – that she could serve without losing herself.

· For her, seeing someone thrive in the military and in the world of pageants showed her that she would not have to give up her personal identity. She could be herself and still find success by focusing on hard work over mere assimilation into the military culture.

VETERANS

-Biden will award the Medal of Honor and Medal of Valor to military heroes and first responders: On Feb. 15, 1951, Army Pvt. Bruno R. Orig was returning from a mission when he found his fellow soldiers under attack in what's now known as the Battle of Chipyong-ni. The infantryman provided first aid to his comrades wounded in the Korean War attack and began helping move those men to safety. He then took over a machine gun post and allowed a friendly platoon to pull back without a casualty. When the ground was recaptured later that day, Orig was found dead beside the machine gun, surrounded by enemy combatants he had killed. (AP)

· Orig is among the Medal of Honor recipients being recognized Friday by President Joe Biden in one of his last opportunities to officially acknowledge acts of selflessness and personal bravery in times of war. Biden will bestow the medal posthumously to six men and one living recipient at a White House ceremony. In a separate Oval Office ceremony closed to the news media, he will award the Medal of Valor to eight first responders who put their own lives at risk to save others.

· During the Korean War, Pfc. Wataru Nakamura destroyed an enemy machine gun nest and recaptured several bunkers. He exhausted his ammunition but resumed his attack after being rearmed, and he was ultimately killed by an enemy grenade and buried in Los Angeles.

· Army Cpl. Fred B. McGee is being recognized for his gallantry and intrepidity near Tang-Wan-Ni, Korea, on June 16, 1952, when he assumed command of his squad, neutralized an enemy machine gun and then sent his squad back while he helped rescue the wounded. The Ohio native died in 2020, according to news reports.

· Army Pfc. Charles R. Johnson, from Millbrook, New York, was killed on June 12, 1953, after holding off Chinese forces during the Korean War. His actions saved the lives of as many as 10 soldiers.

· After multiple raids on an entrenched enemy in the area of Sagimak during the Korean War, Army 1st Lt. Richard E. Cavazos stayed behind alone to evacuate five battle casualties to safety. Cavazos served more than three decades in the service, eventually attaining the rank of four-star general. The Texan died in 2018 at age 88. Fort Hood was renamed in honor of him on May 9, 2023.

· After an armed helicopter crashed during the Vietnam War on June 5, 1966, Army Capt. Hugh R. Nelson Jr. from Rocky Mount, North Carolina, pulled two specialists from the aircraft, shielding one of them from enemy gunfire at the loss of his own life.

· While fighting in Vietnam on May 7, 1970, then-Army Pfc. Kenneth J. David drew enemy fire away from injured comrades and onto himself, becoming wounded by a satchel charge. But David kept fighting and pulled fire away from landing Medevac helicopters, getting evacuated himself after the last helicopter landed. The Ohioan is still living.

-On Friday, Biden is also awarding eight people the Medal of Valor, which goes to those who have shown exceptional courage in attempting to save human lives. The recipients include the law enforcement officials who responded to a shooter who killed six people on March 27, 2023, at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee. The Nashville Police Department's Sgt. Jeffrey Mathes, Officer Rex Engelbert and Detectives Michael Collazo, Ryan Cagle and Zachary Plese rushed to the scene and faced gunfire from the shooter. They cleared out classrooms and ultimately took down the shooter. (AP)

· Biden will also recognize Sgt. Tu Tran of the Lincoln, Nebraska, Police Department. On Feb. 22, 2023, Tran swam 30 feet (9 meters) into a frigid pond to rescue a woman from a submerging vehicle. Lt. John Vanderstar, a New York City firefighter, is receiving the Medal of Valor for rescuing a mother and child from a burning apartment on Oct. 23, 2022. Separately, New York City firefighter Brendan Gaffney is being honored for braving an apartment building fire to save an unconscious child and a pregnant woman.

-Breaking down the number of veterans in the 119th Congress: When lawmakers convene the 119th Congress on Friday, the group will boast 100 military veterans among their members, the largest such caucus in eight years. Sixteen new veterans will join 84 incumbent members of Congress with military experience, but that total will drop by two within days of the start of the new legislative term. That’s because two veteran members are headed to the executive branch in the next few weeks. Ohio Republican Sen. JD Vance is set to leave his Senate seat to be sworn in as vice president on Jan. 20, and Florida Republican Rep. Mike Waltz has been tapped to be President-elect Donald Trump’s national security adviser. (Military Times)

· Still, even a one-person jump in the number of veterans in Congress is significant, because an increase in members with military backgrounds has only happened four times in the last 50 years. Because of their backgrounds, veterans serving in the House and Senate are often seen as critical to discussions of military operations and veterans benefits. But the number of veterans in Congress has declined almost steadily since the mid-1970s, as the military shifted from an end strength of largely drafted individuals to an all-volunteer force.

· In 1973, only one in every four members of Congress had never served in the military. In 2025, about one in every six members will be veterans. Here’s a look at the incoming class, by the numbers: Nine women veterans will serve in Congress in 2025, the largest total in history. The group includes 28 Democrats and 72 Republicans. Congress will have 46 Army veterans, 25 Navy veterans, 16 Air Force veterans and 13 Marine Corps veterans. About one-third (31) began their military careers after January 2000. Twenty-one started before 1980. Twenty veterans will serve in the Senate, and 80 will serve in the House. Texas has the largest caucus of members with military experience (11), followed by Florida (9) and California (7).

-Biden signs veterans bill co-sponsored by Sen. Maggie Hassan into law: Veterans will receive better health care and other benefits under a bill President Joe Biden signed into law Thursday night. The law expands in-home care to veterans by covering services at the same rates as nursing home care. It also creates a program for the Department of Veterans Affairs to hire home health workers and allows surviving spouses of some service members who died on duty to retain education benefits if they remarry. Sen. Maggie Hasson co-sponsored the bill. (WMUR)

-Newly passed federal law will help homeless veterans: The Senate and House have passed a bipartisan bill that will expand healthcare benefits and services for veterans and their families. The Senator Elizabeth Dole 21st Century Veterans Healthcare and Benefits Improvement Act includes several proposals to enhance services provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs. (WSHU)

· U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) is the incoming ranking member of the Veterans Affairs Committee. On Thursday, Blumenthal joined veteran advocates at the Harkness House in New Haven to spotlight the law. He said it would increase the VA reimbursement rates for transitional housing for homeless veterans. “There are a lot of homeless veterans. There shouldn’t be any homeless veterans in the United States of America. For one veteran to be homeless is a shame and disgrace for this country,” Blumenthal said.

· The maximum VA reimbursement rate for transitional housing facilities that house homeless veterans will increase from 115% to 133% of the standard rate. The secretary would also have the option to issue waivers for the maximum to be “up to 200% for no more than half of the facilities.”

· Vince Santilli is with Homes for the Brave, an organization that provides housing and services to individuals experiencing homelessness, including veterans. Santilli said programs in Connecticut are immensely more expensive than in other states. He said the new federally set rate will help to set a standard across the country. “It could be the difference between sustaining and teetering for programs such as ours,” Santilli said. “This is just wonderful news for us and the veterans that we serve. They need the services that we provide.”

-Bass, McDonough announce new initiative to house LA veterans: Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough announced a new program Thursday to reduce homelessness among veterans that McDonough said could serve as a national model. Under the new initiative, Los Angeles will work to increase the number of landlords who accept veterans’ housing vouchers, ease eligibility requirements for them to accept vouchers and speed up processing times within the city and county’s housing authorities. “When we end homelessness for veterans in Los Angeles, we will have shown America how to do it,” McDonough said. (Politico)

· The move comes on the heels of an August change to VA benefits that allows veterans to more easily receive both disability benefits and housing assistance, a move officials said would help ensure that thousands of unused housing vouchers allotted to veterans can be used. Previously, some veterans on disability benefits did not qualify for housing assistance because their benefits put them over the income limit for eligibility. In LA, Bass said, more than 2,000 vouchers went unused as a result of the regulation.

· The move also comes as statistics from the Department of Housing and Urban Development last week showed veterans as a bright spot in worsening national homelessness numbers. While homelessness increased 18 percent overall nationally from 2023-24, to 770,000 people, the share of veterans experiencing homelessness nationwide dropped by 8 percent. That figure dropped even further in California, by 12.1 percent, and in LA by 23 percent.

· Bass nodded to those statistics in her speech Thursday, stressing that Los Angeles has “bucked the trend” nationally and stands ready to serve as a model for other cities hoping to effectively tackle the issue. “No one who has served their country, who has put their life on the line, should be left to live on our streets,” she said. Bass led a group of 50 mayors on a trip to Washington, D.C., last year to advocate for federal help in combating homelessness among veterans, and for this federal regulatory change in particular. “This is what is possible when you bring all levels of government and the community and business organizations together,” she said.

-LA officials call on landlords to accept housing vouchers from veterans under new streamlined process: Los Angeles officials are making a new push to get unhoused veterans off the streets and into housing faster under a new initiative. The two-pronged approach announced Thursday in South L.A. aims to get more housing vouchers into veterans' hands while boosting the number of units available by partnering with property owners and landlords. But veterans and advocates are skeptical. (LAist)

· There will be additional staff focused on veterans under a new partnership with the L.A. Mayor Karen Bass' office, the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, and city and county housing authorities with the intent of cutting back on processing times. Officials will also expand the partnership with U.S. VETS, a national nonprofit dedicated to preventing and ending veteran homelessness, to help connect people to housing. “ We have an opportunity to show the whole United States how Los Angeles doesn't manage veteran homelessness — we end it,” Darryl Vincent, CEO of the organization, said at the news conference Thursday.

· The program also aims to make it easier for landlords and property owners to accept housing vouchers and get veterans into their open units. This includes collaboration with property owners and groups, such as the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles and the Greater Los Angeles REALTORS, to boost the number of units available to veterans. The process will be streamlined, and there are enough inspectors and staff to support those who may be interested, according to the mayor’s office.

· U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Denis McDonough noted that veteran homelessness in L.A. is at its lowest level in nearly a decade, with the latest point in time count showing a nearly 23% drop compared to the year before. “ For the third year in a row, we've housed more homeless veterans in L.A. than we had in any other city in the country,” he said after the news conference.

· Rob Reynolds, Iraq war veteran and veteran advocate, told LAist that getting more vouchers out is great, but VA is appealing a decision that would’ve gotten hundreds of people into new temporary housing on the West L.A. campus. “ We need something drastic, and we need temporary shelter to get veterans off the street immediately, so that then we can get them into permanent housing,” he said.

· Reynolds has seen veterans getting turned away from emergency shelter at the West L.A. campus, which he said can sever trust and makes it more difficult to reach them in the future. A real solution for getting people off the street is having immediate access to shelter when they do ask for help, he said.

· When asked about the decision to appeal after the news conference Thursday, McDonough said an ongoing program that's led to permanent housing placements for veterans across the country would be at risk if they had to make the “kind of wholesale changes that are envisioned by the litigation.” He added that they’re continuing to work that out in court, but they’re not compromising on the commitment to end veteran homelessness.

-VA Sets Sights on 2026 for Relaunch of Oracle Cerner Electronic Health Record Rollout: The Department of Veterans Affairs plans to restart deployment of a new electronic health records system in 2026, roughly four years after its adoption was paused amid concerns for patient safety and practicality. The VA announced Dec. 20 that four VA medical centers in Michigan -- in Ann Arbor, Battle Creek, Detroit and Saginaw -- will receive the new Federal Electronic Health Record System in mid-2026. (Military.com)

· Leaders expressed confidence that the system, developed by Oracle Health, has been upgraded to a point that it will "better serve veterans and clinicians." They added that improvements will continue in preparation for the relaunch. "VA is ready to begin planning for the next Federal EHR deployments in 2026, while at the same time remaining committed to the continuous improvement efforts that have been our focus for the past 18 months," Dr. Neil Evans, acting program executive director of the VA's EHRM Integration Office, said in a news release.

-Veteran suicides often follow complaints of chronic pain, insomnia and physical problems, report finds: Chronic pain, sleep disorders and increasing health challenges were identified as risk factors that veterans most frequently reported to doctors at the Department of Veterans Affairs prior to their deaths by suicide from 2020-2022, according to a new VA report. The analysis conducted by the VA’s Behavioral Health Autopsy Program identified leading suicide risk factors in the health records of 2,654 veterans who had taken their own lives in those two years. (Stars and Stripes)

· The veterans were enrolled in VA care. Four of the five most frequently documented problems were about physical well-being, according to the 2024 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report. Information was gathered on clinical diagnoses, health conditions, personal life circumstances and psychosocial factors. Findings showed nearly 55% of 2,654 veterans who took their own lives had reported pain problems in the year before they died.

· “The pain I have is constant — there is pain in my hand, my neck [and] my head,” said Esteban Blis, a 55-year-old retired Army staff sergeant who served from 1993 to 2011 with deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. He said he sustained a traumatic brain injury and other physical injuries when the military aircraft that he was flying in made a hard landing in Afghanistan in 2010. “The chronic pain causes a lot of complications for me today like insomnia and high blood pressure,” said Blis, who was hospitalized with a traumatic brain injury and honorably discharged a year later. But Blis, who now lives in Panama, said he thinks the VA does not adequately address chronic pain in veterans because it is so common. “They just hand you painkillers,” he said.

· The prevalence of pain was the most frequently documented complaint among the veterans who committed suicide between 2020-2022. More than half reported persistent sleep problems that affected their well-being. More than 40% had an increase in physical health problems in the year prior to their deaths. One-third experienced a recent decline in physical activity, according to the report. About 1/3 of the veterans also disclosed they were having relationship problems, which was the fifth most frequently documented risk factor by veterans, according to the report.

-Terror suspects' military connections highlight mental health among veterans: After the truck attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, followed by the cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas, it is not believed that the two incidents are related. But the fact that both suspects served in the military has local veterans groups concerned. The group said it shines a light on what's becoming a growing mental health crisis. "It's so frustrating every time I hear of a veteran taking their own lives, a veteran taking other people's lives, it's just devastating to me," said Deb Elek. (WTVD)

· After a career in the Marines, Elek founded 22 Saves Hockey in Rolesville, named for a sobering statistic - the fact that an estimated 22 veterans are lost to suicide every day. The group works to prevent that by getting them involved in sports like hockey. It hits close to home, Elek lost a sister to suicide. Her son, also a veteran, suffered from PTSD. She even noticed changes within herself. “I definitely felt that isolation or feeling like you no longer belong, you know, because it’s hard to if you’re not in the military, it’s a hard thing to explain to people,” Elek said.

· We don’t know what role mental health may have played, but experts do say trauma can impact veterans regardless of how long ago they served. “They feel like they’ve held it in for so long and now they’re finally able to talk to somebody about it. So, the fact that they may be years post service does not surprise me,” said NAMI North Carolina executive director Holly Doggett.

· Doggett said that oftentimes it’s loved ones who will be the first to notice signs like people withdrawing or changing their behavior. And too often, veterans may be silent. “There’s still a huge amount of stigma around mental health in both the military and the veteran community for so long. You know, mental health concerns were something that you didn’t talk about. In the military community. It could lead to changes in your rank. It could lead potentially to being ousted from the military,” Doggett said. But they hope out of the two tragedies, there can be awareness.

-Veterans' counselor says New Orleans attacker could have become radicalized in military: Counselor and 20-year army veteran Rory Carothers says a variety of factors could have led Jabbar to turn to ISIS. "I was a recruiter for years in the military, and I've seen every reason possible for someone to join the service," Carothers said. Carothers says when veterans like Jabbar enlist in the military, they are prepared to give a big piece of themselves for a higher cause. “Some people go into the military to belong,” said Carothers. “They go into the military to find a group of people that understand them, that get them after they felt marginalized.” (KBMT)

· Carothers says this process can end up repeating itself for veterans transferring to civilian life. “When somebody gets out of the military, they go from being important, to being by themselves,” Carothers told 12News. “When I talk to a lot of my clients that are veterans, the number one thing we talk about is purpose.... no one’s looking for them, no one’s checking on them. So they start feeling powerless, and they feel like they don’t have any value.”

· According to KHOU 11, our sister station in Houston, Jabbar got out of the military in 2020. He was dealing with massive financial problems from failing to balance businesses, child support payments and excessive spending habits. We also know he was divorced three times. A judge granted a temporary restraining order at his ex-wife’s request.

· Carothers says Jabbar’s possible isolation and loss of identity were the perfect recipe for radicalization. “Someone who comes along and says, hey, you know what? You are worthy. You are valid. Let me show you how you’re valid. And they’re easy to fall victim to these idolizations or ideologies that these groups have, and they don’t even realize it,” he said.

-Potter County receives grant to support Veterans Treatment Court: Potter County has received a $240,000 grant from the Texas Veterans Commission to help veterans regain their independence. The grant is designed to help veterans struggling with legal troubles, substance abuse and more. The project at Amarillo’s Panhandle Regional Veterans Treatment Court (PRVTC) is designed to provide veterans with a path to help them become productive in society. The PRVTC program has an 83% graduation rate, higher than states with a similar population. (KFDA)

· “Services to help them with their PTSD, their substance abuse,” said Justin Mays, director of Panhandle Regional Specialty Courts. “So that at the end of their time in our court, which could be 18 months, we’re turning them back out onto the streets ready to go. Employed, homed and stable again for probably the first time for some of them for 40 years.”

· Officials say it costs about $80 a day to place an inmate in the Potter County Jail. The program aims to help keep veterans out of jail, saving Potter County almost $20,000 a year and lowering the risk of veterans reoffending, returning to substance abuse and more.

· “We’re not taking Potter County taxpayers' money. We’re taking veterans who’ve had a justice-involved incident and we are connecting them to a treatment, based upon whether they have PTSD or a traumatic brain injury, to help them rejoin society and become a meaningful contributor,” said Mays.

-State agency recommends North Carolina Veterans Home be renovated, not permanently closed: Nearly a year after the state shut down the North Carolina Veterans Home in Fayetteville, the head of the agency that ordered its closure has recommended the facility be renovated and eventually reopened to local veterans needing round-the-clock care. (CityView)

· The North Carolina Department of Military and Veterans Affairs (DMVA) announced the decision in a press release Tuesday. The department described DMVA Secretary Grier Martin’s recommendation as the most cost-effective and quickest way to bring a state veteran home back to Fayetteville. The DMVA arrived at the conclusion after meeting with various stakeholders, including state legislators, veterans and their families, community partners and the State Construction Office.

· “North Carolina is committed to making sure its veterans have the support they need and access to high-quality facilities to live lives of purpose after they have sacrificed for our country,” Martin said in the announcement. “This recommendation to renovate the Fayetteville State Veterans Home is the best option for both North Carolina’s veterans and taxpayers and will make sure our veterans continue receiving the care they deserve.”

-Nonprofit gives back to veterans affected by Hurricane Helene in East Tennessee: After devastating losses in the historic flooding caused by Hurricane Helene, many East Tennessee families are beginning to rebuild their lives. For several veterans, this recovery process is gaining momentum with the help of Operation Therapy, a nonprofit focused on supporting veterans through animal therapy. (WBIR)

· Dallas Short, the organization’s executive director, recognized a pressing need in the community after the storm. He wanted to do more than just provide support for veterans — he wanted to make a lasting impact on their recovery. “I said, ‘You know, I want to find one family, one veteran, someone we can help from start to finish, directly impacting them,’” Short said.

· With the support of Operation Therapy and other veteran organizations, both families have received help in acquiring items they need to get back on their feet. People donated everything from generators to new doors, furniture and clothing. “It pulls at the heartstrings a little bit,” Short said. “At the end of the day, I just want to see these veterans taken care of from start to finish.”

GLOBAL

-Netanyahu authorises Israel negotiators to continue Doha hostage talks: office: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu authorised Israeli negotiators to continue talks in Doha on a hostage release, his office said Thursday, after Israel and Hamas traded blame for their slow progress. Indirect negotiations mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States have taken place in Doha in recent weeks, rekindling hope for a ceasefire and hostage release agreement that has so far proven elusive. But late last month the two sides accused each other of throwing up roadblocks, again delaying a deal. (AFP)

· "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has approved the professional-level delegation of the Mossad (spy agency), the IDF (military) and the ISA (internal security agency) to continue the negotiations in Doha," a statement from his office said. A team from Hamas had also reached Cairo to prepare for negotiations in Doha "in the coming days," an official from the group told AFP on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to speak publicly on the issue.

-IDF suicide rate rises amid ongoing war and mass reservist call-ups: The Israel Defense Forces said Thursday it has seen a rise in the number of suspected suicides in the military amid the war, as it released statistics on its fatalities from the past two years. According to data published by the IDF, 28 soldiers are believed to have died by suicide since the Hamas terror group attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, starting the ongoing multi-front war. Another 10 suspected suicides took place in 2023 before the October onslaught. The IDF also said thousands of reservist soldiers had apparently stopped serving in combat roles due to mental stress. The military did not provide any further data or details on the phenomenon. (Times of Israel)

· The suicide numbers represent a sharp uptick from previous years. In 2022, the IDF recorded 14 suspected suicides, and in 2021 the number was 11. Overall, the number of deaths in the IDF in 2023-2024 were the highest in decades due to war.

· According to the IDF, 558 soldiers were killed in 2023, including 512 during operational activity and three in terror attacks. Sixteen soldiers died in accidents — two in training, four in civilian car crashes, five in military car crashes, one as a result of an accidental weapon discharge, and four in other incidents — and 10 died of illness in 2023.

· The IDF said 17 soldiers were believed to have died by suicide in 2023. They include seven conscripts, four career soldiers, and seven reservists. Seven of the suspected suicides in 2023 came after the October 7, 2023, onslaught.

· In 2024 the total number of fatalities in the IDF decreased compared to the previous year, but the number of suicides rose, according to the IDF’s data. The army recorded a total of 363 deaths, including 295 in operational activity and 11 in terror attacks. Twenty-three soldiers died in accidents — 17 in civilian car crashes, three in military car crashes, and three in other incidents — and 13 died of illness. At least 21 soldiers died by suspected suicide — seven conscripts, two career soldiers and 12 reservists.

-Israeli airstrikes kill Gaza head of police, 67 others, Gaza authorities say: Israeli airstrikes killed at least 68 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, including at a tent camp where the head of the enclave's Hamas-controlled police force, his deputy and nine displaced people died, Gaza authorities said. Israel said the deputy was the head of Palestinian militant group Hamas' security forces in southern Gaza. The attack occurred in the Al-Mawasi district, which was designated as a humanitarian zone for civilians earlier in the 14-month-old war between Israel and Hamas, which rules Gaza. Thursday’s death toll was among the highest of recent weeks. (Reuters)

· The director general of Gaza's police department, Mahmoud Salah, and his aide, Hussam Shahwan, who were checking on residents of the camp, were killed in the strike, according to the Hamas-run Gaza interior ministry. “By committing the crime of assassinating the director general of police in the Gaza Strip, the occupation is insisting on spreading chaos in the (enclave) and deepening the human suffering of citizens,” it added in a statement.

· The Israeli military said it had conducted an intelligence-based strike in Al-Mawasi, just west of the city of Khan Younis, and eliminated Shahwan, saying he led Hamas forces in south Gaza. It made no mention of Salah’s death.

· “As the year begins, we got... another reminder that there is no humanitarian zone let alone a safe zone” in Gaza, Philippe Lazzarini, head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA, said in a post on X. “Everyday without a ceasefire will bring more tragedy.”

· Other Israeli airstrikes killed at least 57 Palestinians, including six in the interior ministry headquarters in Khan Younis and others in north Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, the Shati (Beach) camp, central Gaza’s Maghazi camp and Gaza City.

· Israel’s military said it had targeted Hamas militants who intelligence indicated were operating in a command and control centre “embedded inside the Khan Younis municipality building in the Humanitarian Area”. Asked about Thursday’s reported death toll, a spokesperson for the Israeli military said it followed international law in waging the war in Gaza and that it took “feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm".

-UN experts slam Israel's 'blatant assault' on health rights in Gaza: UN experts on Thursday denounced Israel's raid on an embattled hospital in northern Gaza, demanding an end to the "blatant assault" on health rights in the besieged Palestinian territory. Reiterating charges that Israel is committing "genocide" in Gaza -- something the Israeli government strongly denies -- two independent United Nations rights experts said they were "horrified" by the raid last Friday on Kamal Adwan, northern Gaza's last functioning major hospital. (AFP)

· “For well over a year into the genocide, Israel’s blatant assault on the right to health in Gaza and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory is plumbing new depths of impunity,” the experts said. The joint statement was from Francesca Albanese, the independent UN special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories, and Tlaleng Mofokeng, special rapporteur on the right to health.

· Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva dismissed the statement as “far removed from the truth”, saying it “completely ignores critical facts and the broader context of Hamas’s exploitation of civilian infrastructure for military purposes”. The military “undertook every effort to protect civilians”, the Israeli mission said, insisting its “actions highlight Israel’s commitment to international law and the protection of civilian infrastructure, even under the most challenging circumstances".

· In a statement to AFP, Israel's military insisted: "It has been well documented that Hamas uses hospitals and medical centers for its terror activities by building military networks within and beneath hospitals, launching attacks and storing weapons within the confines of hospitals, and using hospital infrastructure and staff for terror activities." It added: "We continue to call on the international community to unequivocally demand Hamas to immediately stop using hospitals throughout the Gaza Strip as a shield for its terror activities."

-Israeli military destroys Hezbollah rocket launchers in southern Lebanon: The Israeli military said on Thursday that it had attacked and destroyed medium-range rocket launchers at a Hezbollah military site in southern Lebanon. The military said in a statement that before the strike it had sent a request to Lebanon's army to destroy the launchers and that the launchers were only attacked after the Lebanese side failed to act. (Reuters)

-Israel army says intercepted missile, drone launched from Yemen: Israel's military reported that it shot down a missile and a drone launched from Yemen on Friday, the latest in a series of attacks from the country targeting Israel in recent weeks. "A missile that was launched from Yemen and crossed into Israeli territory was intercepted," the military said in a statement posted to its Telegram channel. "A report was received regarding shrapnel from the interception that fell in the area of Modi'in in central Israel. The details are under review." (AFP)

-Israeli military says commandos raided missile plant in Syria in September: Israel's military said on Thursday its special forces had raided an underground missile production site in Syria in September that it said was primed to produce hundreds of precision missiles for use against Israel by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah. The complex near Masyaf, close to the Mediterranean coast, was "the flagship of Iranian manufacturing efforts in our region", Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani told a briefing with reporters. "This facility was designed to manufacture hundreds of strategic missiles per year from start to finish, for Hezbollah to use in their aerial attacks on Israel." (AFP, Reuters)

· He said the plant, dug into a mountainside, had been under observation by Israel since construction began in 2017 and was on the point of being able to manufacture precision-guided missiles, some with a range of up to 300 km (190 miles). “This ability was becoming active, so we’re talking about an immediate threat,” he said.

· Details of the Sept. 8 raid have been reported in Israeli media but Shoshani said this was the first confirmation by the military, which rarely comments on special forces operations and it was hailed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "This is one of the most important counteractions we have taken against the Iranian axis's attempts to arm itself in order to harm us, and it demonstrates our determination and audacity to act anywhere to protect ourselves," Netanyahu said in a statement.

-Israel strikes Syrian army positions near Aleppo: monitor: Israel bombed Syrian army positions south of Aleppo on Thursday, the latest such strikes since the overthrow of longtime strongman Bashar al-Assad, a war monitor and local residents said. Residents reported hearing huge explosions in the area, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strikes targeted defence and research facilities. The observatory said that "at least seven massive explosions were heard, resulting from an Israeli airstrike on defence factories... south of Aleppo." (AFP)

-24 killed as pro-Ankara factions clash with Syria's Kurdish-led SDF: At least 24 fighters, mostly from Turkish-backed groups, were killed in clashes with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the northern Manbij district, a war monitor said on Thursday. The violence killed 23 Turkish-backed fighters and one member of the SDF-affiliated Manbij Military Council, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The Britain-based war monitor said the latest bout of fighting was sparked by attacks by the Ankara-backed fighters on two towns south of Manbij. (AFP)

· According to the Observatory, "clashes continued south and east of Manbij, while Turkish forces bombarded the area with drones and heavy artillery". The SDF said it repelled attacks by Turkey-backed groups south and east of Manbij. "This morning, with the support of five Turkish drones, tanks and modern armoured vehicles, the mercenary groups launched violent attacks" on several villages in the Manbij area, the SDF said in a statement. "Our fighters succeeded in repelling all the attacks, killing dozens of mercenaries and destroying six armoured vehicles, including a tank."

-Saudi Arabia and U.A.E. Tread Cautiously With Syria’s New Leaders: For decades, Syria was Iran’s closest Arab ally in the Middle East while the wealthy Persian Gulf monarchies were locked in a competition with Tehran for power and influence across the region. With the sudden overthrow of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, his close ally Iran has been sidelined. That presents an opportunity for Gulf states to fill the void and develop ties with the new government in Damascus. (NYT)

· The two leading Gulf powers, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are taking a cautious approach, because Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the main rebel faction that has seized control of much of Syria, leans toward Islamism and was once affiliated with the extremist group Al Qaeda.

· The two Gulf nations have spent the better part of the past two decades trying to prevent the rise of groups that embrace political Islam across the Middle East, opposing the likes of Al Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Muslim Brotherhood.

· The Gulf powers have said publicly that the new leaders in Syria must demonstrate that they will be inclusive and tolerant of the country’s diverse array of sects before they can win political and financial support.

-German and French foreign ministers to meet Syria's new rulers in Damascus: The foreign ministers of Germany and France will meet Syria's de facto new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa during a trip to the country on Friday on behalf of the European Union, the German and French foreign ministries said. The ministers, who arrived separately in Damascus on Friday morning, will also meet representatives of Syrian civil society and visit Syria's most notorious prison, the vast Sednaya complex, according to the foreign ministries. (Reuters)

· “My trip today - together with my French counterpart and on behalf of the EU - is a clear signal to the Syrians: A new political beginning between Europe and Syria, between Germany and Syria, is possible,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said, according to a ministry statement issued before she left for Damascus.

· Baerbock and French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot are the first ministers from the EU to visit Syria since rebels seized control of Damascus on Dec. 8 and forced President Bashar al-Assad to flee after more than 13 years of civil war and ending his family’s decades-long rule.

· Barrot expressed his hope “for a sovereign, stable and peaceful Syria” after arriving in Damascus, where he also visited the French embassy, which has been closed since 2012. According to French diplomatic sources, Barrot met with the Syrian staff who looked after the facilities and reaffirmed the need to work towards re-establishing diplomatic representation in line with political and security conditions.

· Western governments have begun to gradually open channels with Sharaa and HTS, a Sunni Muslim group previously affiliated with Al Qaeda and Islamic State, and are starting to debate whether to remove the group's terrorist designation. A host of questions remain about the future of a multi-ethnic country where foreign states including Turkey and Russia have strong and potentially competing interests.

· Baerbock said she was travelling to Syria with an "outstretched hand" as well as "clear expectations" of the new rulers, who she said would be judged by their actions. "We know where the HTS comes from ideologically, what it has done in the past," said Baerbock. "But we also hear and see the desire for moderation and for understanding with other important actors," she added, citing talks with U.S.-allied Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

· Baerbock added that Germany and its international partners were committed to ensuring Syrian internal matters were not disrupted by outside influences, and called on Russia to leave its military bases in Syria.

-Zelenskiy says Ukraine preparing to resume diplomatic ties with Syria: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Thursday he was preparing to re-establish diplomatic ties with Syria, less than a month after the overthrow of the Russia-backed government in Damascus. Zelenskiy spoke after a visit to Syria by his Foreign Minister, Andrii Sybiha, and by Agriculture Minister Vitaliy Koval who said earlier Ukraine had already sent a shipment of food aid. "We are preparing to resume diplomatic relations with Syria and cooperation in international organisations," Zelenskiy said. (Reuters)

-Rome, Tehran summon envoys over jailed reporter: Italy and Iran summoned each other's ambassadors on Thursday, clashing over the detention of an Italian journalist in Tehran two weeks ago, with Rome demanding she be immediately released. Cecilia Sala, 29, was arrested on December 19, soon after the United States and Italy arrested two Iranian nationals over export violations linked to a deadly attack on American servicemen. The journalist, who writes for the Italian daily Il Foglio and is the host of a news podcast produced by Chora media, has been kept in isolation since then. (AFP)

· Iran's ambassador in Rome, Mohammad Reza Sabouri, was hauled into the foreign ministry to discuss the case, Italy's foreign ministry said. Italy "requested the immediate release" of Sala, "who arrived in Iran with a regular journalist visa", it added. "The government, as it has from the first day of Cecilia Sala's arrest, is working tirelessly to bring her home, and we demand that all her rights be respected," Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani wrote. "We will not leave Cecilia and her parents' side until her release." Later on Thursday, Tajani said that Rome's Iran envoy was summoned in Tehran.

· Guariglia told Iran's envoy that Italian embassy staff in Tehran should be allowed to visit the journalist "and provide her with the comfort items that have been denied to date", the foreign ministry said. They also discussed Iranian citizen Mohammad Abedini, who is "detained in the prison of Milan on false charges", the statement added. Abedini, 38, was arrested in Italy last month at the request of American authorities, who have accused him of supplying sophisticated drone navigation technology to Iran's military in violation of US sanctions laws. A second man, naturalized American-Iranian Mahdi Mohammad Sadeghi, 42, was also arrested in the United States and charged with conspiring with Abedini.

· The Iranian embassy statement said Sala had been provided with "all the necessary requirements". "It is expected from the Italian government that reciprocally, in addition to accelerating the release of the detained Iranian citizen, the necessary welfare facilities are provided to Mr. Abedini," it said.

-Iran marks fifth anniversary of general's killing: Iran held rallies in its major cities Thursday to mark the fifth anniversary of the assassination of Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike in neighbouring Iraq. Demonstrators in Tehran chanted "Down with America" and "Down with Israel" as they held up photographs of the slain general. Attending the rally at the capital's Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla mosque, President Masoud Pezeshkian vowed to "neutralise the enemy's sinister schemes to create discord among Muslims." "We will stand on the side of the truth. We will continue on the path of martyr Soleimani with strength and defeat these cowards," he told the crowd. (AFP)

-Iraqi Kurdish city bans groups accused of PKK links: Authorities in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah have banned four organisations accused of affiliation with the Turkish-blacklisted Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), activists said Thursday, denouncing the move as "political". The four organisations include two feminist groups and a media production house, according to the METRO centre for press freedoms which organised a news conference in Sulaimaniyah to criticise the decision. (AFP)

· PKK fighters have several positions in Iraq’s northern autonomous Kurdistan region, which also hosts Turkish military bases used to strike Kurdish insurgents. Ankara and Washington both deem the PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency in Turkey, a terrorist organisation. Authorities in Sulaimaniyah, the Iraqi Kurdistan region’s second city, have been accused of leniency towards PKK activities. But the Iraqi federal authorities in Baghdad have recently sharpened their tone against the Turkish Kurdish insurgents.

· Colonel Salam Abdel Khaleq, the spokesman for the Kurdish Asayesh security forces in Sulaimaniyah, told AFP that the bans came “after a decision from the Iraqi judiciary and as a result of the expiration of the licenses” of these groups. The move to ban the groups has nonetheless sparked anger, with METRO centre director Diyar Mohamed denouncing it as being “the fruit of external pressures”. “This decision is political and not judicial, we strongly condemn it,” he told AFP. He described the decision as "unjustifiable", adding that none of the groups had been involved in any "partisan activity", according to a statement by METRO.

-A Long Fight to Keep a Closer Eye on Madrasas Unravels in Pakistan: They draw millions of poor Pakistani children with the simple promise of free education, meals and housing. For devout families, they offer Islamic learning rooted in ancient tradition. But to the Pakistani government and Western counterterrorism officials, the religious seminaries known as madrasas also represent a potential threat. The institutions have long been accused of contributing to violence and radicalization, supplying recruits for the Taliban, Al Qaeda and other militant groups. Now, Pakistan’s Islamic schools are at the center of an intense political clash — one that jeopardizes years of hard-won progress toward bringing the seminaries under the government’s regulatory umbrella. (NYT)

-Zelensky says 'unpredictable' Trump could help end war: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview aired Thursday that US President-elect Donald Trump's "unpredictability" could help end the war with Russia. Trump, who takes office on January 20, has said he will end the nearly three-year conflict in "24 hours" once in power, a claim that has drawn scepticism from Kyiv which fears it will be forced to give up land for peace. (AFP)

· “He’s very strong and unpredictable, and I would really like to see President Trump’s unpredictability apply to Russia. I believe he really wants to end the war,” Zelensky said in an interview with Ukrainian TV. The Ukrainian leader has sought to build bridges with Trump and his team since November’s election amid fears the Republican could slow vital US military aid or halt it entirely.

· Zelensky said he supported the idea of France deploying peacekeepers in Ukraine to guarantee a future peace deal with Russia if one arises, but stressed this would need to be a step towards joining the NATO military alliance. “We support this initiative, but France alone is not enough. We would not want it to be one or two countries if it comes to this initiative. It should definitely be on the way to NATO,” Zelensky said.

· Separately, Zelensky acknowledged Ukraine’s army was suffering fatigue amid Russia’s relentless assault on the front line. “They are pressing and the guys are tired,” Zelensky said. Russia advanced by almost 4,000 square kilometres (1,500 square miles) in Ukraine last year, according to an AFP analysis of data from the Institute for the Study of War, as Kyiv’s army struggled with chronic manpower shortages and exhaustion.

-Ukraine probes reports hundreds went AWOL from France-trained army unit: Ukraine has opened a criminal probe into desertion and "abuse of power" after hundreds of soldiers were reported to have fled an army unit partly trained by France, investigators said Thursday. The 155th Mechanised Brigade, dubbed "Anne of Kyiv", was one of several military groupings formed last year as Ukraine sought to boost preparations for possible new Russian offensives. The unit was to be made up of 4,500 soldiers, with France training roughly half of them and providing equipment. But its development has been beset with problems including what one lawmaker described as poor management. (AFP)

· Prominent journalist Yuriy Butusov wrote in December that 1,700 soldiers had fled the brigade without going into combat, and that 50 had escaped while training in France. Ukraine's State Bureau of Investigation said it had opened a criminal probe into abuse of power by a military official and desertion, without elaborating. "The investigation is ongoing. It is too early to talk about any preliminary results," spokesperson Tetiana Sapian told AFP.

· Lawmaker Mariana Bezugla said last month that the brigade had been effectively dismantled and redistributed across other units. She blamed what she called a lack of "coordination of command structures". "Even the French efforts to make the brigade specialised couldn't save it from the poor military decisions of our generals, which ultimately dismantled the unit," she said.

-Rebuilding the battle-torn faces - and lives - of Ukrainian troops: Russian weapons are destroying the faces of Ukraine's front-line troops. Supersonic bullets and hails of shrapnel from artillery, glide bombs, drones and mines shatter soldiers' skulls and jawbones, tear out their eyes, and slash through their cheeks and mouths. The scale of facial wounds is so severe that experts say it is reminiscent of last century's world wars, but the technology to treat them has advanced dramatically. Ukrainian doctors and foreign volunteers are building on surgical techniques developed more than 100 years ago. (WP)

· It is not clear how many facial reconstruction surgeries have been carried out across Ukraine because the government does not disclose the toll of wounded soldiers. But Ukrainian surgeons say their schedules are packed with a constant flood of new patients, whose injuries often evoke shame in themselves and horror to those around them. Procedures to repair their faces help them rejoin the world.

-Ukraine jails man for 15 years for helping Russian army: A Ukrainian court sentenced a man to 15 years in prison for passing information to Moscow that could have helped it target missile strikes, officials said Thursday. Kyiv has opened thousands of probes against Ukrainians suspected of collaborating with Russian forces since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The SBU security service said the man, a 36-year-old living in the southwestern Chernivtsi region, "tried to pass to the aggressor the coordinates of local warehouses with fuel and lubricants" so they could be targeted in aerial attacks. (AFP)

· It said he had been "hiding at home" for two years, avoiding being called up from the army. After being contacted by Russian handlers online, he offered to work with them. He was also accused of having "glorified" and "justified" Russia's invasion during an online live stream in which he set fire to the Ukrainian flag. The SBU said his arrest prevented a "series" of aerial attacks on "critical infrastructure". He was sentenced to 15 years on charges of attempting to commit high treason and justifying Russia's aggression against Ukraine.

-Ukrainian soldiers and shopkeepers hold on as Russia's siege of Pokrovsk tightens: In the final hours of 2024, the embattled Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk suddenly went dark. Its electric grid, long battered by Russian drones and artillery, failed on Monday for what the city's military administration said would be the last time. "The past year has been extremely difficult," local officials said in a post on the Telegram messaging app. "We started 2024 with hope but the community has faced large-scale destruction." (NPR)

· Already thousands of civilian residents, believed by officials to still be hanging on in Pokrovsk, were enduring the winter and the war without running water. Gas pipelines used to heat homes and businesses have also been shut down.

· In public statements, Ukraine's general military staff says Russia's most intense ground assaults along the entire eastern front are currently taking place in the Pokrovsk region, with between 30 and 60 attacks each day, some within a mile of the city. Despite the brutal conditions, during a recent visit to Pokrovsk, NPR found Svitlana Storozhko still operating a small grocery store and café. "Grandma, take this, it's extra," she said to an elderly woman making a purchase as the thunder of artillery echoed in the empty streets outside.

-Ukraine's military says it struck command post in Russia's Kursk region: The Ukrainian military said it had carried out a high-precision strike on Thursday on a Russian command post in Maryino, in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces hold chunks of territory after a major incursion. The Russian military said air defence units had downed four Ukrainian missiles in the region, and the regional governor said the strikes had damaged a high-rise apartment building and other buildings in an adjacent village. (Reuters)

-Russia launches new barrage of drones at Ukraine, kills one, Kyiv says: Russia launched a barrage of drones in an overnight attack on Ukraine on Friday, killing one civilian and injuring four others in the Kyiv region, the military and regional officials said. Ukrainian air defences shot down 60 out of 93 Russian drones, the air force said. It also said that 26 drones were "lost", in reference to Ukraine's use of electronic warfare to redirect Russian drones. The air force said that the Russian drones targeted nine Ukrainian regions across the country. Residential houses and commercial buildings were damaged in the Donetsk region in the east and the Chernihiv region in the north, the military said. (Reuters)

-Slovakia will discuss retaliation after Ukraine's gas transit 'sabotage', says Fico: Slovakia's coalition government will discuss retaliatory measures to take against Ukraine after it halted the flow of Russian gas through its territory to Slovakia, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said on Thursday. Fico said in a video message posted on Facebook that his Smer party would consider cutting electricity supplies to Ukraine, lowering aid to Ukrainian refugees, and demanding the renewal of gas transits or compensation for losses he said Slovakia had suffered due to the ending of Russian gas flows. (Reuters)

· Russian gas exports via Soviet-era pipelines running through Ukraine came to a halt on New Year’s Day, marking the end of decades of Moscow’s dominance over Europe’s energy markets, as a transit contract between Russia and Ukraine expired.

· Slovakia has alternative gas supplies but Fico, who has ended military aid to Ukraine and sought warmer relations with Moscow, says Slovakia will lose its own transit revenues and pay additional transit fees to bring in non-Russian gas. He has also said European gas and power prices would rise as a result of Ukraine's actions. Fico said a Slovak delegation would discuss the situation in Brussels next Tuesday and then his ruling coalition would discuss retaliation for what he called "sabotage" by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

· "I declare (my Smer-SSD party) are ready to debate and agree in the coalition on halting supplies of electricity and on significant lowering of support for Ukrainian citizens in Slovakia," Fico said. "The only alternative for a sovereign Slovakia is renewal of transit or demanding compensation mechanisms that will replace the loss in public finances of nearly 500 million euros."

-Finnish authorities to search tanker over suspected Baltic cable cut: Finland's transport agency on Thursday said it was inspecting a tanker suspected of being part of Russia's so-called "shadow fleet", which is believed to have been involved in the breakdown of an undersea cable. The cable's operator, the national energy agency Fingrid, said it had requested that authorities seize the tanker. (AFP)

· “Fingrid has today (Thursday) filed a request with the Helsinki District Court to seize the vessel Eagle S in order to secure its claim for compensation for damages to the EstLink 2 connection,” it wrote in a statement. Earlier in the day, the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency Traficom announced that it was launching a controlled inspection of the tanker, while a separate police investigation continued.

· The Eagle S, flying the Cook Islands flag, is suspected of damaging the EstLink 2 submarine electricity cable between Finland and Estonia in the Baltic Sea on December 25, Christmas Day, putting it out of action.

-Bosnia peace envoy declares Serb parliament's orders illegal: Bosnia's international peace envoy on Thursday sought to keep the country's European Union integration on track by rejecting the Serb Republic parliament's orders last week that would have blocked progress. The lawmakers in Bosnia's Serb-dominated regional parliament last week ordered Serb delegates in the central government to block legal reforms needed for Bosnia's integration into the EU. (Reuters)

-Secret lab developing UK's first quantum clock: defence ministry: A top-secret lab in the UK is developing the country's first quantum clock to help the British military boost intelligence and reconnaissance operations, the defence ministry said Thursday. The clock is so precise that it will lose less than one second over billions of years, "allowing scientists to measure time at an unprecedented scale," the ministry said in a statement. "The trialling of this emerging, groundbreaking technology could not only strengthen our operational capability, but also drive progress in industry, bolster our science sector and support high-skilled jobs," Minister for Defence Procurement Maria Eagle said. (AFP)

-Beijing slams US over potential Chinese drone ban: China said on Friday it would take "all necessary measures" in response to the United States announcing it was considering restrictions on commercial Chinese drones for national security reasons. On Thursday, the United States Commerce Department said it was considering new rules to address risks posed by drones made with technology from foreign adversaries such as China and Russia. The efforts could lead to regulations or bans on Chinese drones, which dominate the global market. (AFP)

· Responding to a question about the potential restrictions on Friday, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning accused the US of "generalising the concept of national security, interfering and restricting normal economic and trade exchanges, and undermining the security and stability of global production and supply chains". "We will take all necessary measures to firmly safeguard our legitimate rights and interests," she added.

-South Korea’s Joint Chiefs deny sending drones to provoke North for Yoon: South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff denied allegations that the military scattered anti-communist propaganda leaflets in North Korea to prompt a reaction from Pyongyang, according to a spokesman Thursday. It was “not true” that the South Korean military carried out activities “to induce provocations from the enemy” that were intended to warrant a counter response from Seoul, South Korean army Col. Lee Sung-jun, a Joint Chiefs spokesman, said Thursday at a press conference in Seoul. South Korean lawmakers from the opposition Democratic Party have accused former President Yoon Suk Yeol of attempting to justify his abrupt martial law declaration last month by directing the military and intelligence agencies to provoke North Korea. (Stars and Stripes)

-South Korean presidential guards prevent arrest of impeached Yoon after tense stand-off: South Korea's presidential guards and military troops prevented authorities from arresting impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol on Friday in a tense six hour stand-off inside Yoon's compound in the heart of Seoul. Yoon is under criminal investigation for insurrection over his Dec. 3 martial law bid that stunned South Korea and lead to the first arrest warrant to be issued for a sitting president. "It was judged that it was virtually impossible to execute the arrest warrant due to the ongoing standoff," the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO) said in a statement. (Reuters)

· Once inside the compound, the CIO and police were outnumbered by cordons of Presidential Security Service (PSS) personnel, as well as military troops seconded to presidential security, a CIO official told reporters. More than 200 PSS agents and soldiers formed several layers of human chains to block the CIO and police, the official added. While there were altercations and PSS agents appeared to be carrying firearms, no weapons were drawn in the standoff, the official said.

-Two S.Korea military officials including martial law commander indicted, Yonhap reports: Two South Korean military officials including army chief Park An-su who was named martial law commander during the short-lived declaration last month have been indicted after being detained by prosecutors who are investigating insurrection charges, Yonhap news agency reported on Friday. (Reuters)

-The countries of Southeast Asia work together to quash dissent: The 10 countries of Southeast Asia, which together form a union known as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), hold fast to a few principles — noninterference in one another's internal affairs key among them. But cases such as Toeun's showcase a new kind of cooperation in the region, where governments are helping one another intimidate, arrest and extradite government critics in support of their allies' domestic agendas, according to a Post analysis of more than two dozen cases throughout the region. (WP)

· In Thailand, once a safe haven for asylum seekers, Cambodian opposition leaders are routinely surveilled, jailed and deported home, where they face detention. Thai courts are also preparing to extradite a Vietnamese indigenous human rights activist who fled there to escape persecution. Malaysia, apart from Toeun’s case, has deported thousands of Myanmar migrants, including defectors from the military who face certain persecution upon return.

· Volker Türk, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in June that a “pattern is emerging” of transnational repression in the Southeast Asia region, "whereby human rights defenders seeking refuge in neighboring countries have been subject to rendition and refoulement or disappeared and even killed."

-Thai PM declares millions in watches and bags among $400 mn assets: Thailand's Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra declared more than $400 million in assets on Friday, her party said, including more than 200 designer handbags worth over $2 million and at least 75 luxury watches valued at almost $5 million. Paetongtarn, the youngest daughter of telecom billionaire and ex-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, took office in September as the fourth member of the clan to lead a Thai government in 20 years. Paetongtarn was obliged to declare her assets and liabilities to the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC). (AFP)

· Her father and predecessor Thaksin—who once owned Manchester City football club—has a net worth of $2.1 billion, according to Forbes, making him the 10th-richest person in Thailand. Thaksin used the wealth generated by his Shin Corp telecommunications empire to propel him into politics, and his family has remained influential even during his years in exile following his ousting in a coup.

· Analysts say there is a longstanding connection between wealth and power in the kingdom. “In a nation without a fully functioning democracy, money plays a crucial role in political activities,” Yuttaporn Issarachai of Sukhothai Thammathirat University told AFP. “This has often been the justification for military interventions, with claims of a lack of transparency.”

-Cuba's Santeria priests urge followers to hunker down amid crisis: In their New Year predictions, high priests from Cuba's Afro-Cuban Santeria religion told followers on Thursday to watch their health and spending, care for their families, guard against crime and drink less alcohol amid a punishing economic crisis entering its sixth year. "Measures must be taken against increasing delinquency," said the Letter of the Year by high priests, known as Babalawos, from the government-recognized Yoruba Association of Cuba and publicly presented on Thursday in Havana. (Reuters)

-Venezuela offers $100,000 reward for exiled opposition candidate: Venezuelan authorities announced Thursday they are offering $100,000 for information leading to the capture of opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who has left exile in Spain and is on his way to Argentina. Gonzalez Urrutia, who insists he beat Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro at the polls in July, was expected in Buenos Aires in the coming hours, a presidential source there told AFP. (AFP)

-Burkina jails two for life over 2017 restaurant attack: A court in Burkina Faso has sentenced two people to life in prison over a 2017 attack on a Turkish restaurant in the capital that killed 19 people, officials said. Two gunmen opened fire on people at the Aziz Istanbul restaurant on Ouagadougou's main avenue in August 2017. No claim of responsibility was made for the attack, which followed several others targeting spots popular with expatriates. (AFP)

BORDER

-Trump slams border over New Orleans attack, despite US citizen suspect: Donald Trump doubled down Thursday on linking the deadly New Orleans truck-ramming attack to President Joe Biden's border policies, even though the attacker was identified as a US citizen and military veteran. The Republican, hours after the attack early Wednesday morning, claimed to have been vindicated in saying on the campaign trail that "criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in the country." (AFP)

· Illegal immigration was a key issue for voters in the election, with Trump campaigning on a promise carry out the largest deportation program in American history, often citing the unsubstantiated claim that migrants commit more crimes than US citizens. Early Thursday, Trump posted again on his Truth Social platform, lamenting that weak leadership and the country’s “open borders” had made it a “laughing stock.”

· “The DOJ, FBI, and Democrat state and local prosecutors have not done their job,” thundered the Republican, whose victory over Kamala Harris in November brought to a halt his prosecution for a variety of alleged election-related felonies. “They are incompetent and corrupt, having spent all of their waking hours unlawfully attacking their political opponent, ME, rather than focusing on protecting Americans from the outside and inside violent SCUM that has infiltrated all aspects of our government, and our Nation itself."

· Trump, who has blamed the CIA for John F. Kennedy’s assassination, said the agency “must get involved, NOW, before it is too late,” without explaining in what capacity. He did not explicitly mention the attack but he added: “The USA is breaking down - A violent erosion of Safety, National Security, and Democracy is taking place all across our Nation. Only strength and powerful leadership will stop it.”

· He posted again Thursday morning to warn that “Radical Islamic Terrorism, and other forms of violent crime, will become so bad in America that it will become hard to even imagine or believe.” “That time has come, only worse than ever imagined,” he said.

-Trump border czar: New Orleans, Las Vegas attackers ‘both on a suicide mission’: President-elect Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said the New Year’s Day attackers in both New Orleans and Las Vegas were on “a suicide mission.” “I think both these incidents, Las Vegas and New Orleans … they’re both going to be U.S. citizens, they’re both going to have recent foreign travel, they both were on a suicide mission, neither one of them thought they were going home,” Homan said Wednesday on Fox News. (The Hill)

· Though not much is known about the Las Vegas suspect, Homan argued he, too, will have ISIS ties. Homan criticized the Biden administration for its southern border and immigration policy, though both men identified so far were known to be U.S. citizens. He argued that attackers have been “emboldened” by the Biden administration. “You can’t have national security if you don’t have border security,” he said. “I don’t understand why they don’t get that.’

-Trump Has Promised to Build More Ships. He May Deport the Workers Who Help Make Them: Early last year, President-elect Donald Trump promised that when he got back into the Oval Office, he’d authorize the U.S. Navy to build more ships. “It’s very important,” he said, “because it’s jobs, great jobs.” However, the companies that build ships for the government are already having trouble finding enough workers to fill those jobs. And Trump may make it even harder if he follows through on another pledge he’s made: to clamp down on immigration. (ProPublica)

· The president-elect has told his supporters he would impose new limits on the numbers of immigrants allowed into the country and stage the largest mass deportation campaign in history. Meanwhile the shipbuilding industry, which he also says he supports and which has given significant financial support to Republican causes, is struggling to overcome an acute worker shortage. Immigrants have been critical to helping fill the gaps.

-Chinese Muslims, After Finding Refuge in Queens, Fear Trump: They survived re-education camps in China's western Xinjiang region. They were released from detention centers and psychiatric hospitals. They watched their loved ones disappear one by one and feared when it would be their turn. Then they managed to get out of China and reached the soil of the United States, many by trekking through the brutal jungle in Panama known as the Darién Gap on their way to the U.S. southern border. (NYT)

· They are Hui Muslims, a state-recognized ethnic minority group in China, where the government is determined to crack down on Islam. As President-elect Donald J. Trump promises to build detention camps and enlist the military to carry out mass deportations, the future of this group of immigrants is precarious. Deportation could mean years in jail or labor camps.

-A small caravan of migrants sets out from southern Mexico but is unlikely to reach the US: A new caravan of migrants began walking from southern Mexico on Thursday toward the U.S. border, starting out from the city of Tapachula near the border with Guatemala. The majority of the migrants are from Venezuela, but they also include people from Guatemala, El Salvador, Peru and Ecuador. They've said they are tired of being blocked from crossing Mexico by the government. Though previous caravans have said they intend to reach the border — something that was almost never achieved — the migrants in the new caravan appear to be less clear about where they were headed. President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to prevent migrants from entering the United States and stage mass deportations of those already in the country. (AP)

-Over 300,000 migrants crossed Latin America's Darien Gap in 2024, down 42%: Over 300,000 migrants crossed the Darien Gap into Panama in 2024, 42% fewer than the record number who made the perilous jungle crossing from South America a year earlier, Panama's migration authorities told Reuters on Thursday. The dangerous Darien Gap connects Colombia with the Central American nation of Panama and increasing numbers of migrants were making the journey north to reach the United States. (Reuters)

GUN

-U.S. Gun Demand Highest in About 20 Months: Background Checks: U.S. unadjusted criminal background checks rose 6.3% to 2.76 million in December, the highest in about 20 months, according to data from the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). Compared to a year earlier, background checks increased 1% from 2.73 million. NICS data is a key demand indicator for gun manufacturers and sellers such as Sturm Ruger & Co. Inc. and Smith & Wesson Brands Inc. While gun sales aren’t tracked in the U.S., NICS data is considered a proxy for sales by the firearms industry. A background check doesn’t mean a gun sale occurred. (Bloomberg)

-TikTok, Gun, Clean Air Act Cases Top Supreme Court’s 2025 Docket: Guns, free speech, and environmental policy are at the center of consequential cases awaiting the US Supreme Court this year. And while the justices’ docket lacks the cultural blockbusters of recent terms, the cases slated for argument in 2025 will have major impacts. (Bloomberg)

· On March 4, the justices will hear Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, an attempt by Mexico to hold firearms manufacturers liable for gun violence in the country. The First Circuit said Mexico’s suit against the manufacturers could continue, noting the significant cost to the government of the country’s gun-violence epidemic.

· In doing so, the First Circuit acknowledged that the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act generally prohibits lawsuits against firearms companies for misuse of their products. But it agreed with Mexico that the nation had alleged something different, namely that the companies “deliberately chose to engage in unlawful affirmative conduct to profit off the criminal market for their products.”

· Second Amendment cases at the high court are already high-profile and closely watched. But the companies told the justices that in addition to seeking billions of dollars in damages, the Mexican government is asking for “far-reaching injunctive relief that would reshape the landscape of American firearms regulation—from a ban on what it calls ‘assault weapons’ to a court-enforced system of universal background checks.”

AMERICAN MANUFACTURING

-Europe, Asia and U.S. factories end 2024 on weak footing as Trump 2.0 risks mount: Factory activity in Asia, Europe and the U.S. ended 2024 on a soft note as expectations for the new year soured amid growing trade risks from a second Donald Trump presidency and China's fragile economic recovery. A manufacturing slowdown in the euro zone intensified last month, with scant signs of a rebound anytime soon as the bloc's three largest economies - Germany, France and Italy - remained stuck in an industrial recession. (Reuters)

· Manufacturing purchasing managers’ indexes for December from across Asia published on Thursday showed factory activity slowing in China and South Korea although there were some signs of a pickup in Taiwan and Southeast Asia. In the U.S., activity contracted for a sixth straight month to wind up another year of below-par production across the factory sector.

· Meanwhile, the S&P Global U.S. Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index fell to 49.4 in December from 49.7 in November, but it was up from the ‘flash’ reading of 48.3. A separate reading on the U.S. factory sector from the Institute for Supply Management will be released on Friday and is also expected to show sluggishness.

· “U.S. factories reported a tough end to 2024, and have scaled back their optimism for growth in the year ahead,” Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, said in a statement. “Factories are reporting an environment of subdued sales and inquiries, notably in terms of exports."

-Community colleges gear up to train workers for America’s proposed manufacturing future: In the next decade, millions of manufacturing jobs will open up in the U.S. as workers retire. Meanwhile, the sector is also supposed to add more jobs with help from federal subsidies. But by some current estimates, only half of those jobs will be filled. So where will the needed workers come from? Economics correspondent Paul Solman visited a two-year college in search of answers. (PBS)

· In the next decade, millions of manufacturers in the next decade, millions of manufacturing jobs will open up in the U.S. as workers retire. Meanwhile, the sector is also supposed to add more jobs with help from federal subsidies. But, by some current estimates, only half of those jobs will be filled. So where will the workers needed come from? Well, how about some two-year colleges like Cincinnati State? Our economics correspondent, Paul Solman, paid a visit in search of hope for the future.

· Schools like Cincinnati State are key training grounds to prepare students for manufacturing jobs for which there just aren't enough workers these days, like at GE Aviation, a partner to this program. The job gap is especially important here in Ohio. America's third most manufacturing-heavy state.

-Biden to block U.S. Steel sale to Japanese buyer, source says: U.S. President Joe Biden has decided to officially block Nippon Steel's proposed $14.9-billion purchase of U.S. Steel, a person familiar with the decision said on Friday, dealing a probably fatal blow to the contentious merger plan. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) had previously referred the decision to approve or block the deal to Biden, who will leave office on Jan. 20. (Reuters)

· Biden's call to block the deal came despite contrary efforts by some senior advisers concerned it could hurt U.S.-Japan relations, according to the Washington Post, which first reported the news. The newspaper cited two administration officials who were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter. The source who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity did not elaborate on the reason for the decision but had previously highlighted the political implications of a deal.

· The United Steelworkers union expressed concerns about Nippon Steel's latest proposal that gives the U.S. government veto power over any potential reductions in U.S. Steel's production capacity, if they get the approval to merge. The union, which has opposed U.S. Steel's merger with the Japanese steel giant, said Nippon's offer fails to commit to sustaining production over the long term or enhancing domestic capacity in integrated facilities.

-Cobalt miner Jervois in rescue deal to better compete with China: Cobalt miner Jervois Global said on Thursday that one of its lenders will take the company private as part of a pre-packaged bankruptcy, the latest Western miner scrambling to survive as competition from China intensifies. U.S. fund manager Millstreet Capital Management will take control of Jervois as part of the pre-packaged Chapter 11 filing, inject $145 million into the company and convert more than $100 million of loans into equity. Western miners and policymakers are in a precarious position as Chinese-linked companies boost production using safety and environmental practices that are often looser than those expected by many governments and manufacturers. (Reuters)

· Jervois, which has received financial support from the U.S. Department of Defense, began to struggle after China's CMOC Group opened a mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2023, pushing global production of the metal to an all-time high even as electric vehicle sales have failed to meet bullish forecasts. A $15 million grant from the Pentagon will be unaffected by the bankruptcy and continue to fund a study on whether Jervois should build a cobalt refinery in the U.S., Crocker said.

-Tesla Cybertruck Joins List of EVs Eligible for US Subsidy: Tesla’s Cybertruck will qualify for up to $7,500 in US tax credits for the first time, as part of a reshuffling under tougher rules for federal EV subsidies that took effect Jan. 1. The Numbers: 18 EVs and plug-in hybrids now qualify for a credit, down from 22 last year, according to the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency. The credit reclassification, part of the Inflation Reduction Act, tightens domestic sourcing requirements for battery parts and the raw materials used to build them. (Bloomberg)

· The Cybertruck is one of four Tesla models that qualify, along with EVs from nine other brands. Also eligible for the first time are Hyundai’s Ioniq 5 and Ioniq 9 as well as Kia’s EV6 and EV9. Some vehicles from Ford, Nissan, and Volkswagen are no longer eligible. Limits on buyer income and vehicle price can also affect eligibility.

-Car Sales Get Boost: President-elect Donald Trump’s threat to eliminate tax credits for electric vehicles likely gave plug-in cars a much-needed boost after a disappointing year, part of a broader surge in auto sales at the end of the year. EV sales grew 12% in the fourth quarter of 2024, pushing the full-year total to a record 1.3 million, according to forecasts from researcher Cox Automotive. That’s up from an 8% growth rate in the previous quarter. (Bloomberg)

· The EV surge isn’t expected to last into 2025. The results of the presidential election encouraged buyers holding out for deals to make purchases before policy changes championed by Trump make electric options even more expensive next year.

-Ford recalls nearly 400,000 trucks, SUVs, other vehicles: Ford Motor Company has issued multiple recalls involving nearly 400,000 vehicles, including more than 295,000 heavy-duty pickup trucks. (USA Today)

· The automaker is recalling 295,449 of its 2020-2022 F-Super Duty F250, F350, F450, F550, and F600 trucks, and its 2021-2022 F-650 and F750 trucks because biodiesel deposits may form on the pump drivetrain roller components, which could lead to failure of the high-pressure fuel pump, Ford said in a recall report filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

· Failure of the pump may result in loss of drive power, which can increase the risk of a crash, an NHTSA report said.

ECONOMY

-US Stocks Set to Rise After Five-Day Losing Streak: US equity futures posted modest gains, suggesting Wall Street stocks may finally halt a five-day losing streak that’s the longest since April. S&P 500 contracts climbed 0.3%, with those for the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 up 0.4%. United States Steel Corp. fell more than 9% in premarket after reports that President Joe Biden has decided to block Nippon Steel Corp.’s purchase of the company. (Bloomberg)

· It’s been a volatile week for stocks, with the S&P 500 index notching intraday gains in the previous two sessions, only to close lower. US manufacturing data due later will give investors clues on the health of the economy while they look ahead to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration 17 days away to reduce uncertainty over future policy.

· “We really need to see more of that clarity on January 20th for markets to have greater conviction,” Laura Cooper, global investment strategist at Nuveen, said on Bloomberg Television. “But I think US exceptionalism will continue to be the dominant theme at least in the first half of the year, regardless of what some of those policies that come through are.”

-US Mortgage Rates Approach 7% in Ominous Sign for Housing Market: US mortgage rates climbed closer to 7%, threatening to squeeze buyers trying to crack into the housing market. The average on a 30-year mortgage rose to 6.91% as of Jan. 2, up from 6.85% a week earlier, according to Freddie Mac data released Thursday. A measure from the Mortgage Bankers Association advanced 8 basis points to 6.97% in the period ended Dec. 27, a nearly six-month high. (Bloomberg)

· High borrowing costs are weighing on affordability. They’ve also pressured demand recently, with the MBA’s index of home-purchase applications sliding nearly 7% to the lowest level since mid-November. While the figures are adjusted for seasonal effects, they are still prone to wide swings around the year-end holidays.

· “It’s not exactly a good way to start the new year,” said Odeta Kushi, deputy chief economist at First American Financial Corp. “Industry experts are coming to the consensus that 2025 is another year of higher for longer for the housing market. It’s not great news.”

-Jobless claims drop to 8-month low to end 2024. Low U.S. unemployment fuels economy: The number of people who applied for unemployment benefits after Christmas fell to an eight-month low, capping off a year of remarkably low layoffs in a surprising resilient U.S. economy. New jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, dropped by 9,000 to 211,000 in the final week of 2024, the government said Thursday. (MarketWatch)

· By comparison, new jobless claims in the same in final week of 2023 were similarly low at 198,000. New jobless claims have hovered in the low 200,000s for the last three years. Most businesses have had strong-enough sales to retain all their employees and only use layoffs as a last resort in light of steady economic growth.

· One big caveat about jobless claims: The government’s seasonal adjustments during the holiday season that starts at Thanksgiving are less accurate than usual. Sometimes the adjustments exaggerate the shift in jobless claims.

-The American Worker Is Becoming More Productive: America is getting better at getting things done. Take Vic Viktorov, a gym owner who increased revenue at his Boston business in 2024 by 30% without adding a single salesperson to the two already on staff. Instead, he has been using an artificial-intelligence model loaded with company documents, sales materials and other information. Now, he can complete in just minutes work that used to take hours, such as writing marketing plans, email drafts and social-media posts. “It allows us to be lean, nimble and fast,” said Viktorov. (WSJ)

· Productivity in the U.S., as measured by how much the average worker gets done in an hour, has been on the rise. That matters because the faster that productivity grows, the faster the economy can grow as well. The success of the U.S. economy, and why it has grown so much compared with other countries over the past century and more, has hinged on its productivity.

· Productivity—the total output of the economy divided by hours worked—rose 2% in the third quarter compared with a year earlier, according to the Labor Department. That marked the fifth quarter in a row with an increase of 2% or better. In the five years before the pandemic, there were only two such quarters.

· The gains in part reflect massive changes in the U.S. economy since the onset of Covid-19. Companies learned new ways of doing things and adopted new technologies, while an upheaval in the labor market moved workers into more productive jobs.

· Another big change in the American labor force—a massive influx of immigration—might also have played a role. Immigrants are often slotted into manual-intensive jobs, which could allow other workers to move up to more highly skilled jobs.

-Economy in Counties Trump Won Points to Governing Challenges: Donald Trump’s November election victory has often been explained as a reflection of anger about post-pandemic price increases for everything from groceries to housing. But inflation was only part of the economic story. Trump won in the places that have seen the slowest growth since the pandemic, according to county-level GDP data released in December by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis. The figures, which capture output for 2023, also point to some of the challenges that the president-elect will face as his administration takes over management of the economy and sets about rewriting government regulations, tariffs and tax policy. (Bloomberg)

· Harris won the US’s biggest economic engines: Democrat Kamala Harris won by a landslide the counties that are the biggest components of the US economy — places that have on average roared back from the pandemic recession. She took 83 of the 100 largest counties by real GDP. Those 100 counties together account for more than half of US output.

· The communities most exposed to manufacturing voted for Trump, despite Biden’s push: The US overall draws 10% of its GDP from manufacturing. But many counties are more dependent on the sector than that. Trump won 1,308 of the 1,463 counties that have a greater reliance on manufacturing than the US as a whole. The average growth in those places between 2019 and 2023 was around 7%. That recovery was boosted in part by President Joe Biden’s industrial policy, but was still slower than in counties nationwide, which grew 8.4% over that time.

· Trump won big in places slow to recover from the pandemic: Across the US, almost 30 million people live in the 650 counties with local economies that had not recovered to their pre-pandemic real GDP at the end of 2023. Trump won 576 of them. On average, those slow-recovery counties that went for Trump had economies that were still 6.6% smaller at the end of 2023 than at the end of 2019, just before the Covid-19 pandemic. Those were often smaller counties by both GDP and population.

· The combined output of counties won by Harris is larger than in those won by Trump: If you were to combine the more than 2,600 counties won by Trump into one country, their inflation-adjusted economic output would total $8.1 trillion. That’s nothing to sniff at, but the comparable Harris economy would be far larger. The Harris economy had a real GDP of $13.6 trillion — bigger than those of Germany, Japan and India combined.

· Trump won the corners of the economy that depend on government most: Trump won almost eight in 10 of the counties in the US in which residents drew more than 40% of their collective income from government benefits in 2022, according to a Bloomberg analysis of election results and data compiled by the Economic Innovation Group, a Washington think tank.

-Trump’s ‘Made in USA’ Bitcoin Is Promise Impossible to Keep: As Donald Trump prepares to fulfill a lengthy list of campaign promises, the president-elect’s vow to ensure that all remaining Bitcoin is “made in the USA” may prove to be one of the most challenging to keep. Trump made the pledge in a post on his Truth Social account in June after meeting at Mar-a-Lago with a group of executives from crypto miners, the companies whose massive, high-tech data centers do the work that facilitates transactions on the blockchain in exchange for compensation paid in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. The gathering was a key juncture in Trump’s transformation from a crypto skeptic to one of the industry’s strongest allies. (Bloomberg)

· “It is a Trump-like comment but it is definitely not in reality,” said Ethan Vera, chief operating officer at Seattle-based Luxor Technology, which provides software and services to miners. While seen widely as a symbolic pledge of support, it’s near impossible in practice since blockchains are decentralized networks in which no one controls or can be banned from participating in the process. On a practical basis, the sector is becoming increasingly competitive as large-scale operations pop up across the world to get a slice of the tens of billions of dollars in revenue generated each year by the industry.

-As Musk gains influence, questions hover over US probes into his empire: Last month, in the waning days of the Biden administration, the SEC set a tight deadline of several days for demanding that Elon Musk pay a settlement or face civil charges relating to alleged securities violations during his $44 billion takeover of Twitter in 2022. Musk broke the news himself in a social-media post: “Oh Gary, how could you do this to me?” he wrote, referring to SEC Chair Gary Gensler. (Reuters)

-Meta taps Republican Joel Kaplan to lead global policy team, replacing Nick Clegg: U.S. tech giant Meta Platforms has elevated prominent Republican Joel Kaplan to be its chief global affairs officer, replacing Nick Clegg. The change atop Meta's policy and communications teams comes in the run-up to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration, as the company mends fences with a leader who has railed against its approach to political content and threatened to imprison its chief executive. (Reuters)

GOVERNMENT NEWS OF NOTE

-John Thune Takes Charge in the Senate, Ushering in a New Leadership Era: John Thune won election to the Senate in 2004 by conquering Senator Tom Daschle, the powerful Democratic majority leader, only to quickly face a mortal threat to his political future when a major Air Force base in his state was threatened with closure. He beat back the effort and saved Ellsworth Air Force Base, a financial engine in his largely rural state, keeping his job and learning valuable lessons that have helped power his rise in the Senate. Now the South Dakota Republican has ascended to the top and will become majority leader in the new Congress that convenes on Friday, but he is again facing an early challenge and a major threat to his political standing. (NYT)

· Mr. Thune’s task this time is to juggle President-elect Donald J. Trump’s demands, the competing desires of 53 G.O.P. senators and a formidable legislative agenda. It starts with shepherding multiple baggage-laden Trump nominees to confirmation in the closely divided Senate, where he can afford to lose no more than three Republican votes if Democrats hold together in opposition.

· At the same time, he intends to use a tricky maneuver to steer around a filibuster and pass a combination border security, military spending and energy production bill that will require serious legislative finesse. And he wants to do it in the first month or so, while also reordering how and how often the Senate works.

-Speaker Johnson Works to Unite Fractious Republicans Behind Him: Speaker Mike Johnson’s bid to be re-elected to his post remained precarious on Thursday, as he continued to try to tamp down resistance from the most conservative lawmakers in his ranks a day ahead of the vote on the House floor. Mr. Johnson received the endorsement of President-elect Donald J. Trump for another term on Monday, and no other Republican has thrown a hat into the ring to challenge him. But several G.O.P. lawmakers have vented dissatisfaction with his performance in the top job and suggested that they want a new leader. (NYT)

· The problem for Mr. Johnson is that in order to win re-election, he will need nearly unanimous support from his fractious House Republican Conference. Given the party’s exceedingly slim margin of control — Republicans hold 219 seats and Democrats 215 — Mr. Johnson will be able to lose only a single G.O.P. vote if every lawmaker is present and voting and Democrats support one of their own. One Republican, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, has already declared that he will oppose him. Other hard-right Republicans have stayed mum about how they plan to vote on Friday, saying publicly that they are undecided.

· “I think we get it done on the first round,” Mr. Johnson said on Thursday afternoon on Fox Business. “Certainly hopeful for that, because, as we noted, we’ve got to stick together. We’ll be operating with the smallest margin in U.S. history, for much of the first 100 days of the Congress, and perhaps longer into the year. So it necessitates that every single Republican, as diverse as our caucus is, can put aside their personal preferences every day and work together for the team”

· In a separate interview on “Fox and Friends,” Mr. Johnson said he had been calling “every single” House Republican over the holidays. “I think the reason they’re all going to vote yes is this: We’re shifting into a brand-new paradigm. We have unified government that begins tomorrow.”

-House Rules for the 119th Congress: The proposed House rules package for the 119th Congress would largely re-adopt the House rules from the 118th Congress, with some amendments. The package would provide for consideration under a closed rule of 12 draft measures at the beginning of the new Congress, many of which are similar to measures the House passed during the 118th Congress. (Bloomberg)

· Require participation in women’s athletic programs in schools under Title IX to be based solely on an individual’s sex assigned at birth.

· Require the Homeland Security Department to detain non-US citizens arrested for burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting.

· Make noncitizens who commit sex offenses, domestic violence, and related crimes inadmissible to, and deportable from, the US.

· Make the assault of a law enforcement officer a deportable offense.

· Block federal funding for “sanctuary cities” that don’t comply with the enforcement of immigration laws to provide benefits to noncitizens unlawfully present in the US.

· Impose new criminal penalties on drivers who intentionally flee from US Border Patrol agents or other law enforcement officers

· Require heath-care providers to provide necessary medical care to a child who survives an abortion attempt.

· Impose sanctions on individuals involved in International Criminal Court prosecutions against US nationals or citizens of US allies that haven’t consented to ICC jurisdictions.

· Amend the US tax code to reduce double taxation for individuals and businesses in both the US and Taiwan.

· Require voters to provide proof of US citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections.

· Permanently classify fentanyl-related substances as Schedule I drugs under the Controlled Substances Act.

· Prohibit a federal moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”

-GOP Plans Saturday Meeting on Budget, Tax Plans: House Republicans will start the 119th Congress with a working weekend, a sign of how busy they’ll be as leaders aim to enact border, tax, and debt-limit legislation this year. Leaders plan to hold an all-member meeting among House Republicans tomorrow to discuss plans for a reconciliation bill, a House GOP leadership aide said yesterday. Republicans have discussed using the reconciliation process — which bypasses the Senate filibuster’s 60-vote threshold — to pass border, energy, and defense measures, followed by another measure including tax provisions. Those plans have been in flux, though, and Saturday’s meeting could test leaders’ ability to rally a narrow majority. (Bloomberg)

-Top Lawmakers Briefed on New Orleans Attack, Cybertruck Blast: Federal officials haven’t established a connection between the suspects in Wednesday’s New Orleans vehicle ramming attack and the Las Vegas Cybertruck blast, lawmakers learned. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security on Thursday briefed congressional leaders and members of key committees, including homeland security and judiciary panels in each chamber, according to a congressional aide on the call who spoke anonymously to discuss the non-public briefing. The incidents are likely to increase pressure for lawmakers to usher in the new administration and swiftly confirm President-elect Donald Trump’s picks to lead the FBI, DHS, and Defense Department. (Bloomberg)

-US appeals court blocks Biden administration effort to restore net-neutrality rules: A U.S. appeals court ruled on Thursday the Federal Communications Commission did not have legal authority to reinstate landmark net neutrality rules. The decision is a blow to the outgoing Biden administration that had made restoring the open internet rules a priority. President Joe Biden signed a 2021 executive order encouraging the FCC to reinstate the rules. (Reuters)

-Constellation inks $1 billion deal to supply US government with nuclear power: Constellation Energy has been awarded a record $1 billion in contracts to supply nuclear power to the U.S. government over the next decade, the company said on Thursday. Constellation, the country's largest operator of nuclear power plants, will deliver electricity to more than 13 federal agencies as part of the agreements with the U.S. General Services Administration. The deal is the biggest energy purchase in the history of the GSA, which constructs and manages federal buildings, and is among the first major climate-focused energy agreement by the U.S. government to include electricity generated from existing nuclear reactors. (Reuters)

-FBI seeks new leads on Washington suspect in Jan. 6, 2021, pipe bombs: The FBI on Thursday released new surveillance video in a bid to reinvigorate its four-year-old hunt for a suspect who placed pipe bombs in Washington the night before the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. The previously unreleased footage from Jan. 5, 2021, showed an individual putting a bomb near a bench outside the Democratic National Committee building. The suspect placed another bomb at the Republican headquarters. Both sites are near the Capitol. (Reuters)

-US Supreme Court's Thomas will not be referred to Justice Department, judiciary says: A judicial policymaking body on Thursday rejected a request by Democratic lawmakers to refer conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to the Department of Justice to examine claims that he failed to disclose gifts and travel provided by a wealthy benefactor. The secretary to the U.S. Judicial Conference, the federal judiciary's top policymaking body, in a pair of letters, cited amendments Thomas had made to his annual financial disclosure reports that addressed several issues raised by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Representative Hank Johnson. (Reuters)

OTHER DOMESTIC NEWS OF NOTE

-Trump 2.0 to Spur State Privacy Action: Companies handling sensitive health data will face a shifting regulatory compliance landscape once the second Trump administration takes office. The most immediate concern could be potential changes to federal reproductive health protections, as President-elect Donald Trump is likely to roll back Biden-era safeguards. A federal pullback would place greater emphasis on state health data regulations. (Bloomberg)

· Reproductive Health: The Trump administration could roll back an expansion of the HIPAA Privacy Rule that prohibits disclosure of protected health information. Trump’s DOJ is unlikely to defend the rule change in court, and it’s possible that enforcement at HHS and the FTC could take a step back in this area.

· Web-Tracking: Incoming FTC Republican chair Andrew Ferguson has criticized the agency’s 2024 expansion of its health data breach notification rules. While states including Connecticut, Nevada, and Washington have enacted their own health privacy legislation, enforcement has been limited.

· AI and Cybersecurity: A key area to watch will be the fate of HHS’s mission to regulate AI privacy and cybersecurity challenges, developed under a Biden executive order, given Trump’s overarching interest in less regulation. Other states are expected to follow California’s lead in regulating AI disclosures for health-care. The Trump administration will have a chance to finalize updates to the HIPAA security rule, which is now under review at the Office of Management and Budget.

-Biden to Block More Offshore Oil Drilling Before Trump Arrives: President Joe Biden may complicate President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to boost US crude production by issuing a new decree before he exits the White House. (Bloomberg)

· Biden’s Ban: The outgoing president is set within days to issue a new executive order barring the sale of new drilling rights in portions of the country’s outer continental shelf, according to people familiar with the effort who asked not to be named because the decision isn’t public. The full scope of Biden’s anticipated action wasn’t clear, but the protected areas would include waters considered critical to coastal resilience, the people familiar with the decision said. Recent deliberations have focused on parts of the Pacific Ocean near California and eastern Gulf of Mexico by Florida.

· Difficult to Unravel: Trump is expected to order a reversal of the protections, but it will be a challenging undertaking. Unlike other executive actions that can be easily undone, Biden’s planned declaration is rooted in a 72-year-old law that gives the White House wide discretion to permanently protect US waters from oil and gas leasing without explicitly empowering presidents to revoke the designations.

-Environmental Enforcement to Evolve, But Not Vanish Under Trump: Environmental enforcement is almost certain to dip under President-elect Donald Trump, except in a few key areas. (Bloomberg)

· In the first Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Agency hit record lows in enforcement, including inspections and civil cases concluded or referred for prosecution, according to the Environmental Integrity Project. Enforcement might tail off even more this time around if Trump officials follow the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a strategy guide that calls on the EPA to work more closely with regulated entities, including small business, and “encourage compliance over enforcement.”

· Trump Priorities: Some traditional enforcement is expected to continue, including for violations linked to lead pipes, contaminated sites, and Superfund cost recovery, said Stan Meiburg, a longtime EPA staffer who once served as acting deputy administrator. Other potential priorities include imposing some of Trump’s promised tariffs on imported vehicles and engines that don’t meet US emission standards, and targeting groups that received climate or infrastructure funding for waste or fraud.

-China's Sway Over Global Ports Raises Concerns: On Dec. 25, President-elect Donald J. Trump went on his social media platform, Truth Social, to wish a ''Merry Christmas to all, including to the wonderful soldiers of China, who are lovingly, but illegally, operating the Panama Canal.'' Mr. Trump's claim is false. The Panama Canal is operated by an agency of the Panamanian government, not by Chinese soldiers. In a news conference, President José Raúl Mulino of Panama disputed Mr. Trump's statements, saying that there were ''no Chinese in the canal'' beyond those in transiting ships or at the visitor center. (NYT)

· While Mr. Trump’s claim was inaccurate, the growing influence of Chinese companies and the Chinese government over shipping and global ports, including the Panama Canal, has become a concern for U.S. officials. The Chinese government has invested heavily in building ports throughout the world. And given that China is the world’s biggest exporter, private Chinese companies now play a major role in shipping and port operations, giving them significant influence over the movement of global goods and strategic positions from which to monitor other countries’ activities.

· Brian Hughes, a spokesman for the Trump-Vance transition team, said in a statement that “Chinese control of the Panama Canal absolutely poses a national security threat to the U.S.” He pointed to congressional testimony last year by Gen. Laura J. Richardson, the head of U.S. Southern Command, that Chinese infrastructure investments serve as “points of future multi-domain access” for the Chinese military.

-Man yelled 'This is Trump's America' and choked reporter, court filings say: A White Colorado man was charged Thursday after allegedly following a Pacific Islander reporter for 40 miles, berating him about his nationality and choking him at his news station in what court records describe as a racially motivated attack. Patrick Thomas Egan, 39, faces one count each of second-degree assault, bias-motivated crime and harassment. Egan faces up to six years of prison time if convicted on the assault charge alone. (WP)

· Egan's attorney Ruth Swift did not immediately respond to The Washington Post's request for comment. However, during Egan's court appearance Thursday, Swift said he had struggled with his mental health for over two decades, KKCO reported.

· At a traffic light, Egan pulled up next to Alex's car, rolled down the windows and shouted xenophobic threats, according to the affidavit. "Are you even a U.S. citizen? This is Trump's America now! I'm a Marine and I took an oath to protect this country from people like you!" Alex — who is a Detroit native, according to KKCO/KJCT — recalled, according to the affidavit.

-States Target AI-Enabled Discrimination in 2025 Legislative Push: State lawmakers from coast to coast in 2025 aim to pass legislation that would restrict how private businesses use artificial intelligence to automate decision-making in activities such as employment and housing. Nearly a third of the US population would gain protections against the technology if legislatures in California, Connecticut, New York, and Texas approve pending bills in the new year. (Bloomberg)

· And in Colorado, lawmakers are considering changes to the state’s first-in-the-nation anti-AI-bias law they approved in 2024. AI developers have a legal responsibility under the law to prevent their systems from making discriminatory decisions.

· Congressional gridlock on regulating artificial intelligence has created an opening for states to pursue their own regulatory models. AI-enabled bias is not the only concern state lawmakers have about the technology, but legislators in key states want to target it while coordinating their efforts as much as possible.

· “You don’t want 50 different standards to do the same thing,” New York Assemblymember Alex Bores (D) said. Bores is a member of a working group of state lawmakers on the topic from more than two dozen states. “As long as we’re going towards the same goal, and we think they’re relatively similar in their effectiveness, I think we’ll all be quite flexible on exactly what the final model is.”

-State Legislation: Lobbying groups on both sides of the abortion political divide are working with state lawmakers to prepare legislation on abortion medication, contraception, and pregnancy centers, considering Trump’s position that states should regulate the issue. (Bloomberg)

· State lawmakers are also likely to address the health-care industry’s use of artificial intelligence tools, private equity consolidation, and workforce shortages. In addition, uncertainty over the second Trump administration’s approach to Medicare and Medicaid programs is putting pressure on state lawmakers to make their own moves regarding health-care costs.

-NC’s new governor signs five executive orders to expedite Helene recovery: In his first full day on the job Thursday, North Carolina Governor Josh Stein traveled to western North Carolina where he signed five executive orders to speed recovery for residents still coping with last year’s damage from Hurricane Helene. Noting that more than 12,000 western North Carolinians are without safe housing, Stein’s first order temporarily waives procurement regulations to increase the supply of temporary housing. (NC Newsline)

· “Winter is here in western North Carolina, and we must act quickly to get people in temporary housing and keep people safe,” said Stein in a written statement. “I will do everything in my power to make sure we are both thinking creatively and acting swiftly to help our neighbors recover.” The order allows the Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Public Safety to purchase up to 1,000 Transportable Temporary Housing Units to be placed in the counties identified in FEMA’s major disaster declaration.

· In his second executive order, Gov. Stein delegated his authority to establish emergency assistance funds for the repair of private roads and bridges. The Division of Emergency Management is directed to contract to repair private residential structures and roads using vendors with which the Division, the North Carolina Department of Transportation, or other state agencies already have existing statewide contracts. Click here to learn more about how this will be implemented.

· The additional executive orders will create the Governor’s Recovery Office for Western North Carolina (GROW NC), a dedicated recovery office for western North Carolina within the office of the Governor, and to establish a Division of Community Revitalization within the Department of Commerce to address housing needs and community resilience. The North Carolina Office of State Human Resources will also authorize an additional 16 hours of community service leave for state employees to volunteer for organized storm recovery efforts.

· Stein pledged that helping western North Carolina recover would be a priority for his administration. As NC Newsline has previously reported, Stein tapped Esther Manheimer, the mayor of Asheville, back in mid-November to help think about what was needed for the region’s long term recovery.

-2 dead and 19 injured in Southern California plane crash: Police in Southern California say two people are dead after a small plane crashed through the roof of a sprawling furniture manufacturing building. The accident on Thursday near the Fullerton Municipal Airport in Orange County caused a fire and prompted the evacuation of at least 200 workers. The Fullerton Police Department says 11 people were taken to hospitals for injuries while eight were treated at the scene. The people who died are believed to have been on the plane, while those injured were inside the building. The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating and says the aircraft is a single-engine, four-seat, Van’s RV-10. The National Transportation Safety Board also is investigating the crash. (AP)