Residents celebrating new year recall scrambling for cover as scenes unimaginable unfolded in the French Quarter
The silence on Bourbon Street told much of the story.
At the intersection that marks the centre of New Orleans’s noisy tourist hub, lined with tall palm trees and towering hotels, the quiet on the morning of New Year’s Day was broken only by yellow police tape fluttering in the light breeze and the occasional blare of sirens echoing on the road.
Continue reading...Small vessel tilted after taking in water, according to seven survivors who reached Italian island of Lampedusa
Twenty people are missing after falling into the sea from a tilting boat after it started to take in water in rough seas about 20 miles off the coast of Libya, according to survivors.
Carrying 27 passengers, the six-metre boat had left Zuwara in Libya at 10pm on Monday. Despite the waves, seven people managed to continue the journey on the rickety vessel before being found by an Italian police patrol boat on Tuesday night close to the southern island of Lampedusa.
Continue reading...Ukraine president hails ‘one of Moscow’s biggest defeats’ as deal’s end brings power cuts in breakaway Moldovan region
Russian gas has stopped flowing to Europe via Ukraine, ending a major energy route that goes back to Soviet times and had even survived three years of full-scale war between the two states.
Ukraine cut off the transit route after an agreement signed in 2019 expired in the early hours of New Year’s Day, marking a new milestone in Europe weaning itself off Russian gas supplies over the past few years, and prompting immediate power cuts for hundreds of thousand of people in a breakaway region of Moldova.
Continue reading...Accident that also critically injured more than 20 others occurred just before midnight outside a Honolulu home
A New Year’s Eve fireworks explosion in a Honolulu-area neighborhood killed at least three people and critically injured more than 20 others, authorities say.
The accident occurred just before midnight outside a home, the Honolulu fire department said in a statement.
Continue reading...Experts say evidence from abroad shows AVR is effective – and it’s one of several proposals to try to boost voting
A healthy democracy depends on people participating in it. In the UK, the proportion of people doing so is falling. Voter turnout in general elections stayed above 70% from 1945 through to 1997, hitting more than 80% in 1950 and 1951. But it collapsed to 59.4% when Tony Blair won his second term in 2001, and though it rose again between 2010 and 2019, it has not reached the 70% mark since 1997. In the 2024 election, turnout fell to 59.7%.
The decline has been acute enough to trigger concern among Labour officials. Before July, the Guardian revealed they were drawing up plans to introduce automatic voter registration (AVR). In the election, when it came around, just 52% of adults living in the UK exercised their right to vote – the lowest proportion since universal suffrage was introduced. Crucially, this statistic counts all adults eligible to vote in the UK, not just those registered on the electoral roll.
Continue reading...IPPR says elections could lose legitimacy because of falling turnout among groups such as renters and non-graduates
UK elections are “close to a tipping point” where they lose legitimacy because of plummeting voter turnout among renters and non-graduates, an influential thinktank has said.
Analysis by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) found that the gap in turnout between those with and without university degrees grew to 11 percentage points in the 2024 general election – double that of 2019.
Lowering the voting age to 16.
Implementing automatic voter registration.
Introducing a £100,000 annual cap on donations to political parties.
Creating an “election day service”.
Continue reading...Biden briefed by FBI as Trump appears to refer to suspect as foreign national even though identity has not been confirmed
Political reaction to the New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans that is being investigated as a terrorist incident, came swiftly on Wednesday, with the White House saying that Joe Biden had been briefed by senior leadership at the FBI and by the leadership of the Department of Homeland Security.
The president also spoke by phone this morning with the New Orleans mayor, LaToya Cantrell, “to offer full federal support” according to the White House.
Continue reading...Ukraine ends agreement to allow gas to flow through its pipelines, with European supplies set to be tested as cold weather forecast later this week
Ukraine has halted Russian gas supplies to European customers through its pipeline network, almost three years into Moscow’s all-out invasion.
The move comes after a prewar transit deal expired during the final hours of 2024 and as the continent braces itself for a plunge in temperatures that could hasten the drain on gas reserves.
Ukraine’s energy minister, Herman Halushchenko, confirmed on Wednesday morning that Kyiv had stopped the transit “in the interest of national security” after Russia refused to alter its stance on the war.
“This is a historic event,” he said in an update on the Telegram messaging app. “Russia is losing markets and will incur financial losses. Europe has already decided to phase out Russian gas, and [this] aligns with what Ukraine has done today.”