Nation and world news in brief for January 2

Sugar Bowl postponed after New Year’s attack in New Orleans

(NYT) — Officials in New Orleans postponed the Sugar Bowl as investigators said they were seeking possible connections between terrorist organizations and the 42-year-old Texas man who rammed a pickup into revelers on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. The attack in the early hours of New Year’s Day killed at least 10 people and injured about 35 others, officials said.

The suspect, a U.S. Army veteran who died in a shootout with police officers, was identified by the FBI as Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, a U.S. citizen. The truck carried an Islamic State flag, weapons and a “potential” improvised explosive, the agency said, adding that other potential bombs were also found in the French Quarter.

Israel’s former defense chief Gallant quits parliament

JERUSALEM (Reuters) — Former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who had often taken an independent line against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right government allies, said on Wednesday he was resigning from parliament.

Gallant was fired from the government in November by Netanyahu, after months of disagreements over the conduct of the war against Hamas in Gaza, but kept his seat as an elected member of the Knesset.

“Just as it is on the battlefield, so it is in public service. There are moments in which one must stop, assess and choose a direction in order to achieve the goals,” Gallant said in a televised statement.

Gallant had often broken ranks with Netanyahu and his coalition allies of far-right and religious parties, including over exemptions granted to ultra-Orthodox Jewish men from serving in the conscript military — a hot button issue.

In March 2023, Netanyahu fired Gallant after he urged a halt to a highly contested government plan to cut the Supreme Court’s powers. His dismissal triggered mass protests and Netanyahu backtracked.

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Gallant and Netanyahu, along with a Hamas leader, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict, which Israel has contested.

Shooting suspect in Montenegro dies after attempting suicide

PODGORICA, Montenegro (Reuters) — A gunman who killed at least 10 people in a rampage in a small town in Montenegro died from self-inflicted injuries on Thursday after attempting suicide, the country’s interior minister, Danilo Saranovic, said.

The gunman, identified by police as Aleksandar Martinovic, 45, attempted suicide near his home in the town of Cetinje after being cornered by police.

“When he saw that he was in a hopeless situation, he attempted suicide. He did not succumb to his injuries on the spot, but during the transport to hospital,” Saranovic told Montenegro’s state broadcaster, RTCG.

Saranovic provided no details on the attempted suicide.

Martinovic was on the run after opening fire on Wednesday afternoon at a restaurant in Cetinje, a small town located 38 km (23.6 miles) west of Podgorica, the Montenegrin capital, where he killed four people.

The shooter then moved on to three other locations, killing at least six more people, including two children, police said. Four other people suffered life-threatening injuries.

Police said Martinovic had a history of illegal weapons possession.

Late on Wednesday, police director Lazar Scepanovic said the suspect was thought to have been drinking heavily before the shooting. Montenegrin Prime Minister Milojko Spajic said there had been a brawl before shots were fired.

Romania, Bulgaria become full members of EU’s Schengen zone

(Reuters) — Romania and Bulgaria scrapped land border controls to become full members of the European Union’s Schengen free-travel area on Wednesday, joining an expanded bloc of countries whose residents can travel without passport checks.

Fireworks lit the sky at a crossing close to the Bulgarian border town of Ruse just after the stroke of midnight as the Bulgarian and Romanian interior ministers symbolically raised a barrier on the Friendship Bridge straddling the Danube River. The crossing is a major transit point for international trade, and bottlenecks are common.

“This is a historic moment,” said Bulgarian Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev. “From Greece in the south to Finland to the North and all the way to Portugal to the West – you can travel without borders.”

Checks on traveling by air and sea from Bulgaria and Romania were lifted in March 2024, but land checks continued until Austria last month dropped a veto it had maintained on the grounds that more was needed to stop irregular migration.

Border checks between France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg were first dropped in 1985. The Schengen area now covers 25 of the 27 EU member states, as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.

Ireland and Cyprus are not members of the Schengen zone.

Next nuclear talks between Iran, 3 European countries due on Jan. 13

DUBAI (Reuters) — The next round of nuclear talks between Iran and three European countries will take place on Jan. 13 in Geneva, Iran’s semi-official ISNA news agency cited the country’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi as saying on Wednesday.

Iran held talks about its disputed nuclear program in November, 2024 with Britain, France and Germany.

Those discussions, the first since the U.S. election, came after Tehran was angered by a European-backed resolution that accused Iran of poor cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

Tehran reacted to the resolution by informing the IAEA watchdog that it plans to install more uranium-enriching centrifuges at its enrichment plants.

U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi told Reuters in December that Iran is “dramatically” accelerating its enrichment of uranium to up to 60% purity, closer to the roughly 90% level that is weapons grade. Tehran denies pursuing nuclear weapons and says its program is peaceful.

LA County Sheriff’s Dept. computer dispatch system crashes on New Year’s Eve

LOS ANGELES (TNS) — A few hours before the ball dropped on New Year’s Eve, the computer dispatch system for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department crashed, rendering all patrol car computers nearly useless and forcing deputies to handle all calls by radio, according to officials and sources in the department.

Department leaders first learned of the problem around 8 p.m., when deputies at several sheriff’s stations began having trouble logging onto their patrol car computers, officials told The Times in a statement.

The department said it eventually determined its computer-aided dispatch program — known as CAD — was “not allowing personnel to log on with the new year, making the CAD inoperable.”

It’s not clear how long it will take to fix the problem, but in the meantime deputies and dispatchers are handling everything old-school — using their radios instead of patrol car computers.

“It’s our own little Y2K,” a deputy who was working Wednesday morning told the Los Angeles Times. The deputy, along with three other department sources who spoke to The Times about the problem, asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak on the record and feared retaliation.