World

LOS ANGELES, United States — At least one person was killed and seven wounded when a Tesla Cybertruck exploded outside a hotel belonging to US President-elect Donald Trump in Las Vegas, police said on Wednesday.

US President Joe Biden said authorities were investigating any links between the Las Vegas explosion and an attack earlier Wednesday in New Orleans, where a truck plowed into a crowd of New Year's revelers, killing at least 15.

However, Biden cautioned that no such links had yet been found. The FBI and local law enforcement said they believed the Tesla blast was an isolated incident.

The electric vehicle pulled up to the Trump International Hotel's glass entrance before a "large explosion," Las Vegas Sheriff Kevin McMahill told reporters.

Video footage shows the stainless steel truck parked at the hotel entrance before bursting into flames, followed by smaller explosions that appeared similar to fireworks.

McMahill said there was "one deceased individual inside the Cybertruck," while seven people received "minor" injuries. He said the hotel had been evacuated.

He told a later news conference that the back of the truck contained gasoline and camping fuel canisters, as well as "large firework mortars".

McMahill also said the fact that it was a Cybertruck "really limited the damage... because it had most of the blast go up through the truck and out," noting that the glass doors of the hotel, just a few feet away, "were not even broken by that blast".

Biden said authorities were probing "any possible connection with the attack in New Orleans".

"Thus far, there's nothing to report on that score," he said.

FBI agent Jeremy Schwartz described the Las Vegas blast as "an isolated incident".

"We do not believe that there's a bunch of folks out there supporting this or helping this," Schwartz said.

Tesla chief Elon Musk said the explosion was "caused by very large fireworks and/or a bomb carried in the bed of the rented Cybertruck," adding in a post on his social media platform X that it was "unrelated to the vehicle itself".

Musk said earlier the "whole Tesla senior team" was investigating the blast, adding: "We've never seen anything like this."

Police said they were still working to establish the cause of the explosion. US media, including NBC and CBS, reported that authorities were investigating it as a potential terror attack, citing unidentified sources.

Musk-Trump 'concerns' 

The truck had been rented in Colorado through the carsharing company Turo, police said.

There had been indications that the suspect in the New Orleans attack had been inspired by the Daesh group, Biden said.

McMahill said they had "no indication" so far that the blast in Las Vegas had any similar links to the terrorist group.

However, he added: "It's a Tesla truck, and we know Elon Musk is working with President-elect Trump, and it's the Trump tower."

"So there's obviously things to be concerned about there and that's something we continue to look at," McMahill said.

Musk, who backed Trump in the November election and was named by the Republican to head up a commission to trim government spending, said he would post more information "as soon as we learn anything".

SYDNEY — Crowds will marvel at fireworks and toast champagne to greet 2025 on Tuesday, waving goodbye to a year that brought Olympic glory, a dramatic Donald Trump return and turmoil in the Middle East and Ukraine.

It is all but certain that 2024 will go down as the hottest year on record, with climate-fuelled disasters wreaking havoc from the plains of Europe to the Kathmandu Valley.

Sydney welcomed in 2025 as the self-proclaimed "New Year's capital of the world", spraying nine tonnes of fireworks from its famed Opera House and Harbour Bridge at midnight.

"Just to see all the beautiful colours and enjoy being in this situation with so many people in wonderful Australia," said 71-year-old retired nurse Ruth Rowse ahead of the display.

As New Year's Eve parties kicked into gear along picturesque Sydney Harbour, many revellers were relieved to see the past 12 months in the rearview mirror.

"It would be nice for the world if it all sort of fixed itself, sorted itself out," insurance worker Stuart Edwards, 32, told AFP before the fireworks.

Taylor Swift brought the curtain down on her Eras tour this year, pygmy hippo Moo Deng went viral and football teen prodigy Lamine Yamal helped Spain conquer the Euros.

The Paris Olympics united the world for a brief few weeks in July and August.

Athletes swam in the Seine, raced in the shadows of the Eiffel Tower and rode horses across the manicured lawns outside the Palace of Versailles.

Election upheaval 

It was a global year of elections, with countless millions going to the polls across more than 60 countries.

Vladimir Putin prevailed in a Russian ballot widely dismissed as a sham, while a student uprising in Bangladesh toppled the reigning prime minister.

However, no vote was as closely watched as the November 5 contest that will soon see Trump back in the White House.

From Mexico to the Middle East, his looming return as commander-in-chief is already making waves.

The president-elect has threatened to pile economic pain on China and boasted of his ability to halt the Ukraine war within "24 hours".

 Hope and trepidation 

Turmoil rippled across the Middle East as Bashar al-Assad fled Syria, Israel marched into southern Lebanon, and doctored electronics exploded in a wave of Israeli assassinations targeting Hizbollah.

Civilians grew weary of the grinding war in Gaza, where dwindling stocks of food, shelter and medicine made a humanitarian crisis even bleaker.

"I lost many loved ones, including my father and close friends, starting from the beginning of the year," Wafaa Hajjaj told AFP from Deir el-Balah, where masses of displaced residents now cram into crowded tents.

"May security and safety return, and may the war finally come to an end."

There was hope and trepidation as the new year approached in Syria, which is still reeling after Islamist rebels toppled longtime ruler Assad.

"We were hesitant to go out this year because of the security situation, but we decided to overcome our fears," lawyer Maram Ayoub, 34, told AFP from the capital Damascus.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine inches towards its three-year anniversary in February.

Outgunned on its eastern flank, Ukraine must now contend with a Trump administration seemingly intent on winding back crucial military aid.

On the streets of Kyiv, teacher Kateryna Chemeryz wanted "peace to finally be obtained for Ukraine".

 Comebacks, football, festivals 

With AI advances on the horizon and rampant inflation tipped to slow, there is plenty to look forward to in 2025.

Britpop bad boys Oasis will make a long-awaited reunion, while K-pop megastars BTS return to the stage after military service in South Korea.

Football aficionados will be treated to a revamped 32-team Club World Cup hosted by the United States.

And about 400 million pilgrims are expected at the spectacular Kumbh Mela festival on India's sacred riverbanks,  billed as the largest gathering of humanity on the planet.

The UK weather service has already forecast sweltering global temperatures for 2025, suggesting it is likely to rank among the hottest years recorded.

Meanwhile, in wintry northern Japan, heavy snowfall meant some passengers at Hokkaido's main airport may see in 2025 in the departure lounge.

"It was great to see snow, but I didn't think I would be trapped here," one man told local broadcaster HTB as flights were scrapped.

"I might have to stay at the airport tonight."

With electric vehicle sales growing and renewable energy on the rise, there is a shred of hope that glacial progress on climate change may finally gain momentum in 2025.

PARIS — Russian forces advanced by 3,985 square kilometres in Ukraine in 2024, seven times more than in 2023, according to an AFP analysis of data from the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

Much of the Russian gains came in the autumn, as they took 610 square kilometres in October and 725 square kilometres in November. Those two months saw the Russians conquer the most territory since March 2022, in the early weeks of the conflict.

The Russian advance slowed in December, coming to 465 square kilometres in the first 30 days of the month.

However it is already nearly four times bigger than in the same month of the previous year and two and a half times more than in December 2022.

Nearly three quarters of the territory taken by the Russians in Ukraine in 2024 was in the eastern region of Donetsk, which includes Pokrovsk, an Ukrainian logistical hub.

Russia now controls or is operating in 70 per cent of the region, against 59 per cent at the end of 2023.

The Russian advance accelerated in August 2024, with nearly 400 square kilometres taken over the month, reaching a gain of 629 square kilometres in November.

2024 was also marked by a major Ukrainian offensive in the Russian region of Kursk which started in July.

Ukrainian advances peaked on August 20-21, extending over some 1,320 square kilometres. The area of operations had been reduced to 482 square kilometres by December 30.

BAKU — Azerbaijan said Monday that Moscow had promised to punish those responsible for the downing of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane that Baku says was shot at by Russian air defences.

The AZAL Embraer 190 jet crash-landed in Kazakhstan on December 25, killing 38 of the 67 people on board.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has demanded that Moscow accept responsibility for mistakenly shooting the plane as it tried to make a scheduled landing at Grozny airport in south Russia.

Russia has not confirmed that one of its air-defence missiles hit the plane, though President Vladimir Putin told Aliyev in a phone call over the weekend that the systems were active at the time and that he was sorry the incident took place in Russian airspace.

Azerbaijan's General Prosecutor said in a statement Monday that the head of Russia's Investigative Committee had told Baku: "Intensive measures are being carried out to identify the guilty people and bring them to criminal responsibility."

Russia has opened a criminal inquiry into the incident but has not said whether it agrees that the plane was hit by one of its air-defence missiles, and has not said anything about finding or bringing any perpetrators to justice.

Aliyev had issued a rare forthright condemnation of Moscow, a close partner of Baku, on Sunday.

He said the plane was "hit by accident" but was angry that Russia had apparently tried to hide the cause of the crash.

Demanding that Putin admit responsibility, Aliyev also accused Russia of putting forward alternative theories that "clearly showed the Russian side wanted to cover up the issue". 

Russia said Grozny, in the southern Russian region of Chechnya, was being attacked by Ukrainian drones when the plane approached to make its landing through thick fog.

Survivors have described hearing explosions outside the plane, which then diverted more than 400 kilometres across the Caspian Sea towards the Kazakh city of Aktau, where it crash-landed.

PARIS — The deadly Boeing plane crash in South Korea which killed 179 people on board was initially blamed on a bird collision, a stark reminder of how such incidents are often the cause of aviation accidents around the world. 

Officials had initially cited a bird strike as a likely cause of Sunday's crash of the Jeju Air plane, though Seoul said Monday it was conducting a special inspection of all 101 Boeing 737-800s operating in South Korea.

Whatever the cause of Sunday's crash, aviation authorities around the world appear to be recording more bird collision incidents as air traffic grows. 

In the United States alone, 17,190 bird strikes were recorded in 2022, according to a database set up by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

That was up 10 percent on 2021's figure, in line with increased air traffic following the Covid-19 pandemic.

Collisions in the United States between wild animals and civil aircraft totalled 291,600 between 1990 and 2023, according to the same records. 

In mainland France, the Civil Aviation Authority records 600 each year during commercial flights, though serious incidents represent less than 8 percent of cases on average -- a downward trend in recent years.

Not including Sunday's crash, bird strikes have destroyed 250 aircraft worldwide since 1988, leaving 262 people dead, according to the Australian Aviation Wildlife Hazard Group. 

These collisions cause more than $1.2 billion in damage to aircraft each year, the Australian group says. 

They usually mostly occur during takeoffs and landings at fairly low altitudes, about15 metres. 

Higher altitude air collisions are much rarer but not impossible. 

In France, a tourist plane crashed in 2021 in the Seine-et-Marne department after hitting a cormorant in flight. 

One of the most famous cases occurred in January 2009, when the pilot of a US Airways Airbus A320 with 155 occupants kept his cool to land on the Hudson River in New York after a collision with a flock of wild geese. 

Serious cases 'extremely rare' 

"In most cases, hitting a bird does not lead to major accidents," said an expert who used to work at France's Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA), the country's authority in charge of investigations after civil aircraft accidents. 

Mostly, the damage is only material and is limited to bumps or a few impacts on the fuselage. 

But when one or more birds "enter an engine, the damage can be much more serious", especially if the compressor is damaged "which can cause a malfunction or the engine to stop", explained the ex-BEA expert, speaking on condition of anonymity. 

There could be "engine shutdown, precautionary landing, interrupted takeoff" or a return to the ground with delays, said the French Civil Aviation Authority, which could have "impacts on air safety or on the continuation of the flight". 

Such risks increase depending on the size of the birds and their number, particularly during the migratory period. 

Bird debris or aircraft parts damaged by the collision can also cause flames or a fire on the engine. 

"But normally it does not go as far as breaking the entire hydraulic and electrical system of the aircraft," said the expert -- naming the systems required to manoeuvre and to lower the landing gear, which failed to extend in the Jeju Air crash.

They added that if one engine fails, the second is supposed to take over. 

For both to stop, the collision would have to have occurred on both engines simultaneously, but "this is exceedingly rare", the expert said. 

To protect themselves against the risks linked to birds, aircraft manufacturers and airports have implemented a series of measures. 

These range from stress tests on engines by throwing dead chickens into them to cautionary measures around airports like broadcasting bird distress calls or preemptive shots in the air to scare them away. 

MOSCOW — Russia said Monday it had swapped 150 Ukrainian soldiers held captive for an equal number of Russian troops, in an exchange deal brokered by the United Arab Emirates.

"On 30 December, as a result of the negotiation process, 150 Russian servicemen were returned from territory controlled by the Kyiv regime. In return, 150 Ukrainian army prisoners of war were handed over," the Russian defence ministry said.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said that Russia is against the deployment of Western peacekeeping troops to Ukraine as part of any settlement to end the nearly three-year conflict, 

Talk of the possible stationing of foreign troops in Ukraine to enforce any peace deal is circulating in Western capitals, with French President Emmanuel Macron and Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk discussing the issue in a meeting in Warsaw this month.

In an interview published Monday by the Russian foreign ministry, Lavrov told the state-run TASS news agency that Moscow opposed that idea as well as others being proposed by US President-elect Donald Trump.

"Of course, we are not satisfied with the proposals being voiced by representatives of the president-elect to postpone Ukrainian NATO membership for 20 years and to send to Ukraine a peacekeeping contingent of 'British and European forces,'" Lavrov said.

The Kremlin had previously said it was "too early to talk about peacekeepers".

Trump, who comes to power in three weeks, has claimed he can strike a peace deal in 24 hours and said he will use Washington's multibillion-dollar financial and military support to Kyiv as leverage.

He has yet to propose a concrete plan but members of his team have floated various ideas, including the deployment of European troops to monitor any ceasefire along the 1,000-kilometre front line and a lengthy delay on Kyiv's ambitions to join the NATO military alliance.

Both the Russian and Ukrainian presidents have ruled out direct talks with each other, and positions in Kyiv and Moscow appear far apart on what would be acceptable terms for a peace deal.

Russian President Vladimir Putin previously demanded that Ukraine withdraw its troops from four eastern and southern regions -- Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporizhzhia -- that Russia claims to have annexed, while Kyiv has repeatedly ruled out ceding territory to Moscow in exchange for peace.

MUAN (SOUTH KOREA) — A Jeju Air plane carrying 181 people from Thailand to South Korea crashed on arrival Sunday, smashing into a barrier and bursting into flames, killing everyone aboard except for two flight attendants plucked from the wreckage.

A bird strike was cited by authorities as the likely cause of the crash, the worst ever aviation disaster on South Korean soil, which flung passengers out of the plane and left it "almost completely destroyed", according to fire officials.

Video showed the Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 landing on its belly at Muan International Airport, skidding off the runway as smoke streamed out from the engines, before crashing into a wall and exploding in flames.

"Of the 179 dead, 65 have been identified," the country's fire agency said, adding that DNA retrieval had begun.

Inside the airport terminal, tearful family members gathered to wait for news.

An official began calling out the names of the 65 victims who had been identified, with each name triggering fresh cries of grief from waiting relatives.

Only two people, both flight attendants, were rescued from the crash, the fire department said.

"Passengers were ejected from the aircraft after it collided with the wall, leaving little chance of survival," a local fire official told families at a briefing, according to a statement released by the fire brigade.

Both black boxes, the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder, have been found, deputy transport minister Joo Jong-wan said at a briefing.

Under floodlights, rescue workers used a giant yellow crane to lift the burned-out fuselage of the orange-and-white aircraft on the runway at Muan , some 288 kilometres southwest of Seoul.

Bits of plane seats and luggage were strewn across the field next to the runway, not far from the charred tail, offering a glimpse into the catastrophic impact of the crash.

 'Sister went to heaven' 

All of the passengers were Korean apart from two Thais, with the youngest a three-year-old boy and the oldest a 78-year-old, authorities said.

"I had a son on board that plane," an elderly man waiting in the airport lounge, who asked not to be named, told AFP.

"My younger sister went to heaven today," a 65-year-old woman, who gave only her surname Jo, told AFP.

The two survivors were transferred to separate hospitals in Seoul, the Yonhap news agency reported.

"When I woke up, I had already been rescued," a 33-year-old flight attendant told doctors, according to Ju Woong who heads the Ewha Womans University Seoul Hospital.

He suffered multiple fractures, while the other crew member, a 25-year-old woman -, injured her ankle and head, Yonhap reported.

The accident took place in a matter of minutes as Jeju Air Flight 2216 tried to land, with the control tower issuing a warning of a bird strike, and the pilot soon after calling "mayday".

Video shows the plane coming off the tarmac and hitting a wall, but officials dismissed speculation that the length of the runway was a factor in the crash.

Lee Jeong-hyun, chief of Muan fire station, said the cause was "presumed to be a bird strike" but that the exact details would be announced after a full investigation.

National mourning 

Low-cost carrier Jeju Air said it "sincerely" apologised, with top officials shown bowing deeply at a press conference in Seoul, and vowed to do all it could to help.

Boeing said in a statement that it was in touch with Jeju Air and stood "ready to support them".

South Korea's acting President Choi Sang-mok, who only took office Friday, convened an emergency cabinet meeting and then visited the crash site at Muan.

The country declared a seven day national mourning period effective from Sunday, with memorial altars to be set up nationwide.

It is the first fatal accident in the history of Jeju Air, one of South Korea's largest low-cost carriers, which were set up in 2005.

On August 12, 2007, a Bombardier Q400 operated by Jeju Air carrying 74 passengers came off the runway due to strong winds at the southern Busan-Gimhae airport, resulting in a dozen injuries.

South Korea's aviation industry has a solid track record for safety, experts say.

A number of fatal aviation accidents have occurred globally due to bird strikes, which can cause a loss of power if the animals are sucked into the air intakes.