AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EST
By AP
The world welcomes 2025 with light shows, embraces and ice plunges
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — From Sydney to Mumbai to Nairobi, communities around the world welcomed 2025 with spectacular light shows, embraces and ice plunges.
Auckland became the first major city to celebrate, as thousands thronged downtown or climbed the city’s ring of volcanic peaks for a fireworks vantage point.
Countries in the South Pacific Ocean were the first to ring in the New Year, with midnight in New Zealand striking 18 hours before the ball drop in New York’s Times Square, where revelers donning silver top hats emblazoned with “2025” gathered hours early.
Conflict muted acknowledgements of the start of 2025 in places like the Middle East, Sudan and Ukraine.
Fireworks blasted off the Sydney Harbor Bridge and across the bay. More than a million Australians and others gathered at iconic Sydney Harbor for the celebration. British pop star Robbie Williams led a singalong with the crowd.
A new year dawns on a Middle East torn by conflict and change
DAMASCUS (AP) — In Damascus, the streets were buzzing with excitement Tuesday as Syrians welcomed in a new year that seemed to many to bring a promise of a brighter future after the unexpected fall of Bashar Assad’s government weeks earlier.
While Syrians in the capital looked forward to a new beginning after the ousting of Assad, the mood was more somber along Beirut’s Mediterranean promenade, where residents shared cautious hopes for the new year, reflecting on a country still reeling from war and ongoing crises.
War-weary Palestinians in Gaza who lost their homes and loved ones in 2024 saw little hope that 2025 would bring an end to their suffering.
The last year was a dramatic one in the Middle East, bringing calamity to some and hope to others. Across the region, it felt foolish to many to attempt to predict what the next year might bring.
In Damascus, Abir Homsi said she is optimistic about a future for her country that would include peace, security and freedom of expression and would bring Syrian communities previously divided by battle lines back together.
US imposes sanctions on Russian and Iranian groups over disinformation targeting American voters
WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States has imposed sanctions on two groups linked to Iranian and Russian efforts to target American voters with disinformation ahead of this year’s election.
Treasury officials announced the sanctions Tuesday, alleging that the two organizations sought to stoke divisions among Americans before November’s vote. U.S. intelligence has accused both governments of spreading disinformation, including fake videos, news stories and social media posts, designed to manipulate voters and undermine trust in U.S. elections.
“The governments of Iran and Russia have targeted our election processes and institutions and sought to divide the American people through targeted disinformation campaigns,” Bradley T. Smith, Treasury’s acting undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement.
Authorities said the Russian group, the Moscow-based Center for Geopolitical Expertise, oversaw the creation, financing and dissemination of disinformation about American candidates, including deepfake videos created using artificial intelligence.
In addition to the group itself, the new sanctions apply to its director, who authorities say worked closely with Russian military intelligence agents also overseeing cyberattacks and sabotage against the West.
Trump calls it the ‘center of the universe.’ Mar-a-Lago is a magnet for those seeking influence
PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — The cars begin lining up early in the morning to be screened by Secret Service agents under white tents near the fence that surrounds President-elect Donald Trump’s vast south Florida estate.
Famous figures such as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Tesla and X owner Elon Musk pop up at breakfasts, luncheons and other social gatherings held daily at the opulent Mar-a-Lago club.
Over the weekend, Mike Love, one of the original members of the Beach Boys, performed the band’s greatest hits under an outdoor tent there as Trump, trailed by Secret Service agents, wandered through the crowd, swinging his fists to the music, according to videos posted online. At other parts of the evening, he stood next to his wife, Melania, near the pool, bobbing his head to the music.
The resort is the “Center of the Universe,” Trump declared on social media Friday, adding, “Bill Gates asked to come, tonight.” Representatives for Trump and Gates didn’t clarify if the Microsoft co-founder did indeed join the parade of figures making the trip to Mar-a-Lago.
But the president-elect’s post reflects the way his resort, where he’s largely been holed up since the election, has become a salon and celebration for his movement. For the people he’s selected for his administration — and those who seek to get jobs or curry favor with the incoming president — it’s the place to be.
US and Boeing investigators examine the site of a deadly South Korean plane crash
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A team of U.S. investigators including representatives from Boeing on Tuesday examined the site of a plane crash that killed 179 people in South Korea while authorities were conducting safety inspections on all Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by the country’s airlines.
All but two of the 181 people aboard the Boeing 737-800 operated by South Korean budget airline Jeju Air died in Sunday’s crash. Video showed the aircraft, without its landing gear deployed, crash-landed on its belly and overshoot a runaway at South Korea’s southern Muan International Airport before it slammed into concrete fence and burst into a flame.
The plane was seen having an engine trouble, and preliminary examinations also say the pilots received a bird strike warning from the ground control center and issued a distress signal as well. But many experts say the landing gear issue was likely the main cause of the crash.
The South Korean government has launched safety inspections on all the 101 Boeing 737-800s in the country. The Transport Ministry said authorities are looking at maintenance and operation records during five days of safety checks that are to run until Friday.
The ministry said that a delegation of eight U.S. investigators — one from the Federal Aviation Administration, three from National Transportation Safety Board and four from Boeing — made an on-site visit to the crash site on Tuesday. The results of their examination weren’t immediately available.
Jimmy Carter sought to expand democracy worldwide long after he left the White House
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Amid everything else on his desk — the Iran hostage crisis, domestic economic turmoil, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and a grueling 1980 reelection fight — President Jimmy Carter elevated the independence of a country in southern Africa as a top agenda item.
Carter hosted then-Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe at the White House soon after his country achieved independence and later described Zimbabwe’s adoption of democracy as “our greatest single success.”
Three decades later, Carter, who was long out of office, found the door slammed shut when he and other dignitaries sought to visit Zimbabwe on a humanitarian mission to observe reported human rights abuses after a violent disputed election in 2008. He had become a critic of Mugabe’s regime and was denied a visa.
Carter didn’t give up. From neighboring South Africa, he relied on emissaries from Zimbabwe for testimony on violence and allegations of electoral fraud. The effort reflected the former president’s long commitment to promoting democracy worldwide.
This “more than anything else cemented Carter’s legacy” as an advocate for free and fair elections across Africa, said Eldred Masunungure, a former political science lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe.
Woman burned to death in New York subway is identified as 57-year-old from New Jersey
NEW YORK (AP) — The woman who died after being set on fire in a New York subway train this month was a 57-year-old from New Jersey, police announced Tuesday.
The woman, Debrina Kawam, had worked at the pharmaceutical giant Merck in from 2000 until 2002, but her life at some point took a rocky turn. She had briefly been in a New York homeless shelter after moving to the city recently, the Department of Social Services said. It did not say when.
Police had an address for Kawam in Toms River, a community on the Jersey Shore, and authorities said they notified her family about her Dec. 22 death. The Associated Press left messages Tuesday for possible relatives.
“Hearts go out to the family — a horrific incident to have to live through,” Mayor Eric Adams said at an unrelated news briefing.
It came hours before another harrowing act of violence on the nation’s busiest subway system.
The Pentagon chief loses bid to reject 9/11 plea deals
WASHINGTON (AP) — A military appeals court has ruled against Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s effort to throw out the plea deals reached for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other defendants in the 9/11 attacks, a U.S. official said.
The decision puts back on track the agreements that would have the three men plead guilty to one of the deadliest attacks on the United States in exchange for being spared the possibility of the death penalty. The attacks by al-Qaida killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001, and helped spur U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in what the George W. Bush administration called its war on terror.
The military appeals court released its ruling Monday night, according to the U.S. official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Military prosecutors and defense attorneys for Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the attacks, and two co-defendants reached the plea agreements after two years of government-approved negotiations. The deals were announced late last summer.
Supporters of the plea agreements see them as a way of resolving the legally troubled case against the men at the U.S. military commission at Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba. Pretrial hearings for Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi have been underway for more than a decade.
The killing of an 18-year-old Ohio woman was solved with DNA technology after 43 years
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A man who was shot dead last month as authorities attempted to serve him an indictment on federal gun charges has been identified as the killer of an 18-year-old Ohio woman in a case that had gone unsolved for 43 years, police announced Monday.
Mansfield Police Chief Jason Bammann said the cold case of Debra Lee Miller, a local waitress beaten to death with an oven grate in her apartment on April 29, 1981, was reopened in 2021 to account for advances in DNA technology and forensic investigative techniques.
“They examined the case as if it had happened yesterday, through an entirely new lens,” Bammann said at a news conference. “Their findings were staggering.”
The chief said a “firm DNA profile” of James Vanest, at the time Miller’s 26-year-old upstairs neighbor, emerged from evidence left from the room. Vanest had been questioned but never identified as a suspect during the initial investigation, which became mired in allegations of potential police misconduct.
Miller was one of several people from the Mansfield area whose suspicious deaths in the 1980s were examined for possible links to Mansfield police officers.
The dill of a lifetime? In a nation that’s enduring its own sour patch, the pickle dominated 2024
SHARPSBURG, Pa. (AP) — When did we know for sure?
Was it April, when Nature Made introduced its pickle-flavored gummy vitamins? Was it November, when Petco’s “Pickle Mania” promotion offered 26 different pickle-themed toys for dogs and cats? Maybe it was the December day that a food scholar was heard to utter, “Everyone can kind of see their needs met by pickles.”
Or perhaps it was just a couple weeks ago, when Instagram chef itsmejuliette (no stranger to online pickle activities) posted a cheeky challenge on her “cooking with no rules” feed: “this is your sign to surprise your neighbor with a pickle wreath.” More than 70,000 people liked her style, or at least her post.
At the intersection of health and edginess, traditionalism and hipsterism, global culture and the American stomach, the pickle in 2024 found itself caught in a mealstrom of words like “viral” and “trending” just as its food-as-fetish-object cousins — bacon and ranch dressing, notably — experienced in years past. Prepared Foods, an industry newsletter, said it outright in September: “The pickle obsession is at an all-time high.”
Tangy Pickle Doritos. Grill Mates Dill Pickle Seasoning for your steak. Portable pouches of pickles. Pickle mayonnaise, pickle hummus, pickle cookies, pickle gummies. Spicy pickle challenges. Pickleback shots at the bar. Pickle juice and Dr. Pepper, heaven help us. Corn puffs colored and flavored like pickles and called, naturally, Pickle Balls. In Pittsburgh, the cradle of the modern American pickle (talkin’ to you, H.J. Heinz), a summer festival called Picklesburgh that draws aficionados of the sour and the puckery from several states away for copious amounts of pickle beer washed down by brine, or vice versa.
