Two people died and 18 were injured Thursday when a small plane crashed through the roof of a sprawling furniture manufacturing building in Southern California where at least 200 people were working, police said. The identities of the people who died, and whether they were in the plane or on the ground, was not yet known, said Kristy Wells, a Fullerton police spokesperson. The plane crashed less than two minutes after taking off from the Fullerton Municipal Airport in Orange County, located just six miles (10 kilometers) from Disneyland, according to the flight-tracking website FlightAware. Security camera footage from Rucci Forged, a wheel manufacturer across the street, shows the plane was tilted on its side as it dove into the building, causing a fiery explosion and black plume of smoke. Firefighters and police arrived on scene and battled the blaze and evacuated surrounding businesses, Wells said. Chris Villalobos, an airport operations worker, came to the warehouse to see what had happened after receiving a phone call about a plane going down nearby. He said the owner of the aircraft was a regular at the airport and has frequently taken off from there. Read: SKorea to inspect Boeing as it struggles to find cause of plane crash “He has a hangar here and everything,” Villalobos said. Villalobos said that after taking off, the pilot told air traffic control he was going to turn around to make an emergency landing, but it was unclear what the issue with the plane was. The building was occupied by Michael Nicholas Designs, a furniture upholstery manufacturer, according to a sign on a door, and there appeared to be sewing machines and textile stock inside. Ten people were taken to the hospital, while eight were treated and released at the scene, police said. There were two confirmed deaths, according to Wells. The Federal Aviation Administration said the plane was a single-engine Van's RV-10, a four-seat aircraft. The airport in Fullerton has one runway and a heliport. Metrolink, a regional train line, is nearby and flanks a residential neighborhood and commercial warehouse buildings. Read more: Kazakhstan Reports 42 Feared Dead in Azerbaijan Airlines Plane Crash Another four-seat plane crashed into a tree a half-mile from the airport last November while making an emergency landing right after takeoff, the Orange County Register reported. Both people on board suffered moderate injuries. Fullerton is a city of about 140,000 people some 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles.

At least 15 people were killed and dozens injured in New Orleans, United States, after a man drove a pick-up truck into New Year’s Eve crowds in an attack authorities have linked to ISIL (ISIS). The incident occurred amid ongoing New Year’s celebrations on Bourbon Street, known for its bars and music venues, which were packed with partygoers at the time. US President Joe Biden stated on Wednesday that the FBI informed him the suspect had shared videos on social media, showing he was inspired by the Middle East-based militant group. What we know about a vehicle attack on pedestrians in New Orleans ? “To everyone in New Orleans who is mourning, I mourn with you,” President Biden said from Camp David. “Our nation stands with you in grief.” Biden also mentioned ongoing investigations into any connections between this incident and the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck near a hotel owned by President-elect Donald Trump in Las Vegas on Wednesday. However, he said no link had been confirmed yet. The FBI identified the suspect as 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar and revealed that an ISIL flag was found attached to his truck. Authorities are exploring Jabbar’s affiliations with terrorist organizations, as stated by Alethea Duncan, assistant special agent at the New Orleans FBI. “We do not believe Jabbar acted alone,” Duncan said, adding that authorities were investigating his associates and connections. Explosive devices were also discovered in the French Quarter but have been neutralized. SKorea air crash investigators extract black box data as grieving families mourn the victims The attack occurred around 3:15 am (09:15 GMT) at Canal and Bourbon streets in New Orleans’s historic French Quarter, a lively area crowded with pedestrians. According to the New Orleans Police Department, Jabbar struck multiple people with his vehicle before crashing. He then opened fire at responding officers and was fatally shot by police. New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said Jabbar, a US citizen and army veteran, was focused on causing as much harm as possible. Two officers were injured in the shootout but are in stable condition. Videos posted online captured scenes of panic as people fled the area after the attack. Source: Al Jazeera

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. Read: EU imposes sanctions on Putin’s daughters Authorities say the center used AI to quickly manufacture fake videos about American candidates created scores of fake news websites designed to look legitimate and even paid U.S. web companies to create pro-Russian content. The Iranian group, the Cognitive Design Production Center, is a subsidiary of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, U.S. officials said, which the United States has designated a foreign terrorist organization. Officials say the center worked since at least 2023 to incite political tensions in the United States. U.S. intelligence agencies have blamed the Iranian government for seeking to encourage protests in the U.S. over Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. Iran also has been accused of hacking into the accounts of several top current and former U.S. officials, including senior members of Donald Trump’s campaign. In the months ahead of the election, U.S. intelligence officials said Russia, Iran and China all sought to undermine confidence in U.S. democracy. They also concluded that Russia sought to prop up the ultimate victor Trump, who has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, suggested cutting funds to Ukraine and repeatedly criticized the NATO military alliance. Read more: US imposes sanctions on RAB, 7 individuals Iran, meanwhile, sought to oppose Trump's candidacy, officials said. The president-elect's first administration ended a nuclear deal with Iran, reimposed sanctions and ordered the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, an act prompting Iran’s leaders to vow revenge. Russian and Iranian officials have rejected claims that they sought to influence the outcome of the 2024 election. “Russia has not and does not interfere with the internal affairs of other countries,” a spokesperson for Russia's embassy in Washington wrote in an email Tuesday. A message left with officials from Iran was not immediately returned Tuesday.

A lead organization monitoring for food crises around the world withdrew a new report this week warning of imminent famine in north Gaza under what it called Israel's “near-total blockade,” after the U.S. asked for its retraction, U.S. officials told The Associated Press. The move follows public criticism of the report from the U.S. ambassador to Israel. The rare public challenge from the Biden administration of the work of the U.S.-funded Famine Early Warning System, which is meant to reflect the data-driven analysis of unbiased experts, drew accusations from aid and human-rights figures of possible U.S. political interference. A finding of famine would be a rebuke of close U.S. ally Israel, which has insisted that its 15-month war in Gaza is aimed against the Hamas militant group and not against its civilian population. U.S. ambassador to Israel Jacob Lew earlier this week called the warning by the internationally recognized group inaccurate and “irresponsible." Lew and the U.S. Agency for International Development, which funds the monitoring group, both said the findings failed to properly account for rapidly changing circumstances in north Gaza. The U.S. Embassy in Israel and the State Department declined comment. FEWS confirmed Thursday it had retracted its famine warning, and said it expected to re-release the report in January with updated data and analysis. The group declined further comment. “We work day and night with the U.N. and our Israeli partners to meet humanitarian needs — which are great — and relying on inaccurate data is irresponsible,” Lew said Tuesday. USAID confirmed to the AP that it had asked the famine-monitoring organization to withdraw its stepped-up warning of imminent famine, issued in a report dated Monday. The dispute points in part to the difficulty of assessing the extent of starvation in largely isolated northern Gaza, where thousands in recent weeks have fled an intensified Israeli military crackdown that aid groups say has allowed delivery of only a dozen trucks of food and water since roughly October. FEWS Net said in its withdrawn report that unless Israel changes its policy, it expects the number of people dying of starvation and related ailments in north Gaza to reach between two and 15 per day sometime between January and March. The internationally recognized mortality threshold for famine is two or more deaths a day per 10,000 people. Read: Syria struggles; Gaza nears famine, WFP warns FEWS was created by the U.S. development agency in the 1980s and is still funded by it. But it is intended to provide independent, neutral and data-driven assessments of hunger crises, including in war zones. Its findings help guide decisions on aid by the U.S. and other governments and agencies around the world. A spokesman for Israel's foreign ministry, Oren Marmorstein, welcomed the U.S. ambassador's public challenge of the famine warning. “FEWS NET - Stop spreading these lies!” Marmorstein said on X. In challenging the findings publicly, the U.S. ambassador "leveraged his political power to undermine the work of this expert agency,” said Scott Paul, a senior manager at the Oxfam America humanitarian nonprofit. Paul stressed that he was not weighing in on the accuracy of the data or methodology of the report. “The whole point of creating FEWS is to have a group of experts make assessments about imminent famine that are untainted by political considerations,” said Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch and now a visiting professor in international affairs at Princeton University. “It sure looks like USAID is allowing political considerations -- the Biden administration’s worry about funding Israel’s starvation strategy -- to interfere." Israel says it has been operating in recent months against Hamas militants still active in northern Gaza. It says the vast majority of the area’s residents have fled and relocated to Gaza City, where most aid destined for the north is delivered. But some critics, including a former defense minister, have accused Israel of carrying out ethnic cleansing in Gaza’s far north, near the Israeli border. North Gaza has been one of the areas hardest-hit by fighting and Israel’s restrictions on aid throughout its war with Hamas militants. Global famine monitors and U.N. and U.S. officials have warned repeatedly of the imminent risk of malnutrition and deaths from starvation hitting famine levels. International officials say Israel last summer increased the amount of aid it was admitting there, under U.S. pressure. The U.S. and U.N. have said Gaza’s people as a whole need between 350 and 500 trucks a day of food and other vital needs. But the U.N. and aid groups say Israel recently has again blocked almost all aid to that part of Gaza. Cindy McCain, the American head of the U.N. World Food Program, called earlier this month for political pressure to get food flowing to Palestinians there. Read more: Famine conditions in Sudan's North Darfur likely to continue through October, IPC warns Israel says it places no restrictions on aid entering Gaza and that hundreds of truckloads of goods are piled up at Gaza’s crossings and accused international aid agencies of failing to deliver the supplies. The U.N. and other aid groups say Israeli restrictions, ongoing combat, looting and insufficient security by Israeli troops make it impossible to deliver aid effectively. Lew, the U.S. ambassador, said the famine warning was based on “outdated and inaccurate” data. He pointed to uncertainty over how many of the 65,000-75,000 people remaining in northern Gaza had fled in recent weeks, saying that skewed the findings. FEWS said in its report that its famine assessment holds even if as few as 10,000 people remain. USAID in its statement to AP said it had reviewed the report before it became public, and noted “discrepancies” in population estimates and some other data. The U.S. agency had asked the famine warning group to address those uncertainties and be clear in its final report to reflect how those uncertainties affected its predictions of famine, it said. “This was relayed before Ambassador Lew’s statement,” USAID said in a statement. “FEWS NET did not resolve any of these concerns and published in spite of these technical comments and a request for substantive engagement before publication. As such, USAID asked to retract the report.” Roth criticized the U.S. challenge of the report in light of the gravity of the crisis there. “This quibbling over the number of people desperate for food seems a politicized diversion from the fact that the Israeli government is blocking virtually all food from getting in,” he said, adding that “the Biden administration seems to be closing its eyes to that reality, but putting its head in the sand won’t feed anyone.” The U.S., Israel’s main backer, provided a record amount of military support in the first year of the war. At the same time, the Biden administration repeatedly urged Israel to allow more access to aid deliveries in Gaza overall, and warned that failing to do so could trigger U.S. restrictions on military support. The administration recently said Israel was making improvements and declined to carry out its threat of restrictions. Military support for Israel’s war in Gaza is politically charged in the U.S., with Republicans and some Democrats staunchly opposed any effort to limit U.S. support over the suffering of Palestinian civilians trapped in the conflict. The Biden administration’s reluctance to do more to press Israel for improved treatment of civilians undercut support for Democrats in last month’s elections.

The United States and the United Kingdom have expressed deep concern over the recent handing down of convictions by Pakistani military courts to 25 civilian supporters of former Prime Minister Imran Khan over their alleged involvement in riots last year. The convictions had previously also been criticized by the European Union and domestic human rights activists. “The United States is deeply concerned that Pakistani civilians have been sentenced by a military tribunal for their involvement in protests on May 9, 2023. These military courts lack judicial independence, transparency, and due process guarantees,” according to a statement released by State Department on Monday. South Korea's opposition party vows to impeach acting president It asked Pakistan to respect the right to a fair trial and due process. In London, the Foreign Office said that “while the UK respects Pakistan’s sovereignty over its own legal proceedings, trying civilians in military courts lacks transparency, independent scrutiny and undermines the right to a fair trial. We call on the Government of Pakistan to uphold its obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.” The statements were referring to the violence that erupted after Khan’s arrest in Islamabad in May 2023. The former premier was ousted through a no-confidence vote in the parliament in 2022, and he was convicted of corruption and sentenced in August 2023. Since then, Khan has been behind bars. Khan’s popular opposition party is in talks with the government to secure his release. The 25 supporters on Monday received prison terms ranging from two years to 10 years, which the army in a statement warned acted as a “stark reminder” for people to never take the law into their own hands. Khan's opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, or PTI, has rejected the convictions of civilians, demanding they should be tried in the normal courts if they were involved in the riots. Pakistani health workers' boycotting halts polio vaccination drive in southwest There was no response from Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's government to the criticism from the US and the UK, but state-run Pakistan Television on Tuesday showed people welcoming the convictions, saying the punishments were given to people who attacked military installations. Earlier this month, Khan and dozens of others were indicted by a civilian court on charges of inciting people on May 9, 2023, when demonstrators attacked the military’s headquarters in Rawalpindi, stormed an air base in Mianwali in the eastern Punjab province and torched a building housing state-run Radio Pakistan in the northwest.

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan spoke with Chief Adviser Prof Muhammad Yunus, and both leaders expressed their "commitment to respecting and protecting the human rights" of all people, regardless of religion.  Sullivan reiterated the United States’ support for a "prosperous, stable and democratic" Bangladesh, according to a readout shared by the White House on December 23 (US time). WB pledges support for Bangladesh's key reform initiatives He offered the United States’ continued support in meeting the challenges Bangladesh faces. Sullivan thanked Chief Adviser Dr Yunus for his leadership of Bangladesh during a challenging period. Bangladesh had to accept huge Rohingyas under certain circumstances: Touhid Hossain

The Chinese government protested Sunday the latest American announcements of military sales and assistance to Taiwan, warning the United States that it is “playing with fire.” U.S. President Joe Biden authorized Saturday the provision of up to $571 million in Defense Department material and services and in military education and training for Taiwan. Separately, the Defense Department said Friday that $295 million in military sales had been approved. A Chinese Foreign Ministry statement urged the U.S. to stop arming Taiwan and stop what it called “dangerous moves that undermine peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.” Taiwan is a democratic island of 23 million people that the Chinese government claims as its territory and says must come under its control. U.S. military sales and assistance aim to help Taiwan defend itself and deter China from launching an attack. China releases report on global engineering frontiers The $571 million in military assistance comes on top of Biden's authorization of $567 million for the same purposes in late September. The military sales include $265 million for about 300 tactical radio systems and $30 million for 16 gun mounts. Taiwan's Foreign Ministry welcomed the approval of the two sales, saying in a social media post on X that it reaffirmed the U.S. government's “commitment to our defense.”

Two US Navy pilots were shot down Sunday over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the U.S military said. Both pilots were recovered alive, with one suffering minor injuries, but the incident underlines just how dangerous the Red Sea corridor has become after a year of ongoing attacks on shipping by Yemen's Houthi rebels despite U.S. and European military coalitions patrolling the area. The U.S. military had conducted airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels at the time, though the U.S. military’s Central Command did not elaborate on what their mission was. “The guided missile cruiser USS Gettysburg, which is part of the USS Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group, mistakenly fired on and hit the F/A-18, which was flying off the USS Harry S. Truman,” Central Command said in a statement. The Houthis have targeted about 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones since the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip started in October 2023 after Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw 250 others taken hostage. Rocket from Yemen Hits Tel Aviv, Injuring 16 People Israel’s grinding offensive in Gaza has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians, local health officials say. The tally doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians. The Houthis have seized one vessel and sunk two in a campaign that has also killed four sailors. Other missiles and drones have either been intercepted by separate U.S.- and European-led coalitions in the Red Sea or failed to reach their targets, which have also included Western military vessels. The rebels maintain that they target ships linked to Israel, the U.S. or the United Kingdom to force an end to Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza. However, many of the ships attacked have little or no connection to the conflict, including some bound for Iran.

Welcoming the interim government's announcement regarding the next national election, the United States has said they would advocate for "free and fair" elections conducted in a "peaceful" manner. "So we welcome steps that have been taken by this interim government of Bangladesh to prepare for elections that ultimately will allow the Bangladeshi people to choose their own government representatives," said Principal Deputy Spokesperson of the US State Department, Vedant Patel. He made the remarks while responding to a question during a regular briefing at the State Department on December 18. Bangladesh invites UN Secretary General Guterres for 2025 visit Patel said that the US is going to continue to monitor regarding the timing. "And of course we’re going to encourage the respect of the rule of law over the course of this whole process, as well as the respect for democratic principles should a transition come to fruition," he said. "And as we would throughout the world, our – we would advocate for free and fair elections conducted in a peaceful manner," Patel added. US reaffirms support for Rohingya amid concern over Myanmar Responding to a separate question, he said they have been deeply troubled by reports that hundreds of Bangladeshis were forcibly disappeared over the past two decades. "Enforced disappearance is an egregious human rights violation that inflicts the trauma of indeterminate detention or disappearance on its victims," he said. It also inflicts the trauma of uncertainty on the families, Patel said. "We welcome efforts by the interim government to investigate these crimes and encourage fair and transparent processes to provide justice for the victims and their family members," he said. On December 17, during a briefing, a journalist mentioned that there are over 30 journalists who are jailed for over 60 days without hearing, any bail, and Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, and several human rights organizations have signed a petition. UN reappoints Dr Debapriya to Committee for Development Policy The journalist wanted to know whether the US will provide any statement to get them at least bail. In reply, US State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said they have been consistent in dealing with this matter with the government of Bangladesh. "We believe media freedoms ought to be upheld, the freedom of the press ought to be respected, and that such cases ought to be dealt with consistent with the rule of law and respect for the press," Miller said.

A US intelligence assessment has concluded that Russia may use its lethal new intermediate-range ballistic missile against Ukraine again soon, two US officials said Wednesday. The Oreshnik missile, which was used for the first time last month, is seen more as an attempt at intimidation than as a game-changer on the battlefield in Ukraine, according to one of the officials. The threat comes as both sides work to gain a battlefield advantage in the nearly 3-year war, which President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to end, and just days after the US promised close to $1 billion in new security aid to Ukraine. Other Western allies have suggested negotiations to end the war could begin this winter. One of the officials said the US is seeing potential preparations for another launch by the end of the month or sooner. The other said in the “coming days.” The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive information. The Russian Defense Ministry also suggested that Moscow is prepared to retaliate because Ukraine used six US-made ATACMS missiles to strike a military air base in Taganrog in the southern Rostov region on Wednesday, injuring soldiers. It said two of the missiles were shot down by an air defense system and four others deflected by electronic warfare assets. “This attack with Western long-range weapons will not be left unanswered and relevant measures will be taken,” the ministry said in a statement. This isn't the first time that US officials have warned of potential Russian action or strategic moves, in part as a diplomatic effort to message Moscow and possibly sway decisions. In the run-up to Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the US openly discussed intelligence that Russia was readying troops to move on Kyiv. And later publicly said Moscow was positioning operatives in eastern Ukraine to conduct a “false-flag operation” that would create a pretext for its troops to invade. EU may suspend asylum for migrants 'weaponized' by Russia, Belarus According to the US officials, Russia has only a handful of the Oreshnik missiles and they carry a smaller warhead than other missiles that Russia has regularly launched at Ukraine. Russia first fired the missile in a November 21 attack against the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Surveillance camera video of the strike showed huge fireballs piercing the darkness and slamming into the ground at astonishing speed. It was the first time the weapon was used in combat. Within hours of the attack on the military facility, Russian President Vladimir Putin took the rare step of speaking on national TV to boast about the new, hypersonic missile. He warned the West that its next use could be against Ukraine’s NATO allies who allowed Kyiv to use their longer-range missiles to strike inside Russia. The attack came two days after Putin signed a revised version of Russia’s nuclear doctrine that lowered the threshold for using nuclear weapons. The doctrine allows for a potential nuclear response by Moscow even to a conventional attack on Russia by any nation that is supported by a nuclear power. That strike also came soon after President Joe Biden agreed to loosen restrictions on Ukraine’s use of American-made longer-range weapons to strike deeper into Russian territory, and just one day after the US said it was giving Ukraine antipersonnel mines to help it slow Russia’s battlefield advances. “We believe that we have the right to use our weapons against military facilities of the countries that allow to use their weapons against our facilities,” Putin said at the time. He also warned that the new missile could be used against other Ukrainian sites, including the government district in Kyiv, and last month said the General Staff of the Russian military was selecting possible future targets, such as military facilities, defense plants or decision-making centers in Kyiv. The Russian president declared that, “while selecting targets for strikes with such systems as Oreshnik on the territory of Ukraine, we will ask civilians and nationals of friendly countries there to leave dangerous zones in advance.” Biden approves National Security Memo to assist Trump on key global issues Putin has hailed Oreshnik’s capability, saying its multiple warheads that plunge to a target at Mach 10 are immune from interception and are so powerful that the use of several of them in one conventional strike could be as devastating as a nuclear attack. Speaking Tuesday, Putin charged that “a sufficient number of these advanced weapon systems simply makes the use of nuclear weapons almost unnecessary.” The Pentagon said the Oreshnik was an experimental type of intermediate-range ballistic missile, or IRBM, based on Russia’s RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM. They have said it is not technically a hypersonic missile as it does not have a hypersonic glide vehicle that propels the missile for most of the launch and re-entry. Intermediate-range missiles can fly between 500 to 5,500 kilometers (310 to 3,400 miles). Such weapons were banned under a Soviet-era treaty that Washington and Moscow abandoned in 2019. Fighting has escalated in the grinding war as both Russia and Ukraine scramble to get an upper hand in any coming negotiations. Trump's inauguration next month has also raised questions about how much support the US will continue to provide to Kyiv. Trump has insisted in recent days that Russia and Ukraine immediately reach a ceasefire and said Ukraine should likely prepare to receive less U.S. military aid. Writing on social media last weekend, Trump said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “would like to make a deal and stop the madness.” The Biden administration, meanwhile, announced a $988 million long-term aid package last weekend. That funding is on top of an additional $725 million in US military assistance, including counter-drone systems and HIMARS munitions, announced early last week that would be drawn from the Pentagon’s stockpiles to get them to the front lines more quickly. The US has provided Ukraine with more than $62 billion in military aid since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.