Daily News Brief

January 2, 2025

Top of the Agenda

The FBI is looking into the motive and potential accomplices of a truck ramming attack in New Orleans in the early hours of New Year’s Day that killed at least fifteen people and injured at least thirty-five. U.S. President Joe Biden condemned the “despicable” attack and said the suspect had posted social media videos suggesting he was inspired by the self-declared Islamic State; a flag from the group was found in the rented Ford vehicle that appeared to be used in the attack. Authorities are also probing whether a Tesla Cybertruck explosion in front of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas yesterday morning is connected.

Road barriers usually protect open-air New Year’s Eve celebrations in New Orleans from vehicle traffic, but they were being replaced ahead of hosting February’s Super Bowl. Louisiana authorities said they were investigating why backup security measures were insufficient. The FBI said the truck’s driver Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who was killed in a shootout, was a U.S. citizen and army veteran. (WaPo, NBC, Reuters) 

Analysis

“It’s very clear [the New Orleans attacker] was trying to situate this act of violence in a political context, indeed in a terrorist context,” CFR Senior Fellow Bruce Hoffman tells PBS.

“Analysts who have been tracking terrorism for years see reasons to fret these days—and the New Orleans attack only confirms them. Since the end of the [Barack] Obama administration the government’s focus on counterterrorism has been eclipsed by great-power strategy and competition involving China and Russia, as well as persistent conflict with Iran,” the Economist writes. 

Europe

Ukraine refused to renew a gas transit deal that expired at the turn of 2025 yesterday, ending one of the last remaining gas links between Russia and the European Union. Europe has sourced over 40 percent of its natural gas from Russia before its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. By 2023, that number fell to around 15 percent, with Norway and the United States leading in gas supply to the bloc. (WSJ)

Energy expert Edward Fishman writes for CFR on how tighter sanctions can help end the Ukraine conflict.

Bulgaria/Romania: Europe’s passport-free Schengen area lifted land border checks for Bulgarians and Romanians as the Balkan countries completed the rollout of full membership in the area. Air and sea travelers had been free of such border checks since last March. (Bloomberg)

Pacific Rim

South Korea’s anticorruption agency vowed to carry out an arrest warrant against President Yoon Suk Yeol before it expires Monday; he is being probed for a short-lived declaration of martial law in December. Police broke up pro-Yoon protests in front of his residence today as Yoon told demonstrators he would “fight to the end to protect this country.” (Yonhap)

Jinwan Park covers the costs of Yoon’s defiance for Seoul.

U.S./China: New U.S. government penalties take effect today for U.S. investments in China’s semiconductor, quantum computing, or artificial intelligence industries that could be used by China’s military. Many firms have paused or cut back investments in China in response. (FT)

South and Central Asia

Multiple rounds of cross-border fighting have broken out following Pakistan’s December 24 air strikes into Afghanistan. Unnamed Pakistani officials told the New York Times that their attacks targeted members of the Pakistani Taliban; Islamabad has said the group is sheltering in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. (Al Jazeera, NYT) 

India: Hundreds of tons of hazardous waste were finally removed from a chemical factory in Bhopal, forty years after an industrial disaster killed more than five thousand people. The waste will be burned and buried at a disposal site. (PTI)

Middle East and North Africa

Riyadh had begun reengaging with Syria’s former leader Bashar al-Assad shortly before his ouster last month, but it has quickly embraced the victorious rebel government. Saudi Arabia sent three planes of humanitarian aid to Syria and called for the lifting of international sanctions on the country. (FT)

In this YouTube Short, Secretary of State Antony Blinken tells CFR what he sees for the post-Assad future of Syria. 

Palestinian territories: Security forces from the Palestinian Authority (PA) have clashed with militants from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the West Bank in recent days. The PA suspended Al Jazeera’s operations in the West Bank yesterday over its coverage of the clashes. PA news agency Wafa said Al Jazeera’s reporting included “misinformation, incitement, sedition, and interference in Palestinian internal affairs.” (WSJ, Times of Israel)

Sub-Saharan Africa

The troop withdrawal from the country, a former French colony, will occur this month, Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara said. France confirmed the pullout, leaving its troop presence in Africa to soon be limited to Djibouti and Gabon. Ouattara has long been a close French ally in Africa but said that Ivory Coast’s military had completed its modernization. (NYT)

Nigeria: The government will launch a state company to expand access to credit for households and critical sectors of the economy by June, President Bola Tinubu said. It would be the second credit agency for individuals established under Tinubu. (Bloomberg)

Americas

The country had 114 homicides last year, the attorney general’s office said. That puts it at a lower homicide rate than any Latin American country that published its data for 2023. One of President Nayib Bukele’s flagship policies has been sweeping detentions of those suspected of involvement in organized crime. (AP)

Canada: The patient who had the first known human case of H5N1 avian flu acquired in Canada is no longer infectious, senior health officials said in a letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The source of her exposure has not been determined. (CBC)

For Think Global Health, Samuel V. Scarpino and CFR’s Allison Krugman connect the dots on the avian flu timeline. 

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