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FBI identifies Texas man as Bourbon Street attacker

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Sugar Bowl playoff game delayed to Thursday due to ‘terrorist incident’

The FBI has identified the driver of a truck that plowed into a crowd of people celebrating New Year’s on Bourbon Street early Wednesday, killing at least 10 people and injuring 35.

Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, a U.S. citizen and U.S. Army veteran from Houston, rented the F-150 Lightning truck, the FBI said. Alethea Duncan, an assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s New Orleans field office, said the agency doesn’t believe he acted alone.

The law enforcement agency said in a news release that he had improvised explosive devices that were found in both the truck and two in different locations in the French Quarter, body armor and an ISIS flag hanging from the tailgate.

The FBI said it’s investigating whether Jabbar acted alone or had accomplices and has closed Bourbon Street, treating it as an active crime scene.

Wednesday night’s Sugar Bowl, a College Football Playoff semifinal pitting Georgia and Notre Dame, was postponed until Thursday, the bowl game said. A kickoff time, originally 8:45 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, did not accompany the announcement.

The Caesar’s Superdome is in the Central Business District, about 20 blocks from the crime scene. It was also the site of the first Super Bowl after 9/11.

Jabbar drove into a group of revelers at 3:17 a.m. and got out of the truck, exchanging gunfire with New Orleans Police Department officers, injuring two of them, before Jabbar succumbed from his wounds, lawmen say.

New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick, the city’s police chief, said on Wednesday at a news conference that three officers engaged Jabbar with gunfire.

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said at a news briefing in New Orleans despite their injuries, the officers shot by Jabbar were doing well.

She also said there were malfunctions with some of the retractable bollards, the devices which prevent vehicles from accessing streets like Bourbon Street when open to only pedestrians.

She also said the bollards were to be repaired for the upcoming Super Bowl, which will be played in New Orleans on Feb. 9.

The FBI is directing those with tips for law enforcement, especially those who had interactions with Jabbar in the past 72 hours, to an FBI tip line website or via phone at 1-800-CALL-FBI.

“It’s all hands on deck, if you saw something, say something,” U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, D-La., said at the news conference. He also said the delay of the game was justified for safety reasons.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry said at a Wednesday news briefing that the city and state had been working around the clock to secure the city after he got the call from Cantrell at 3:45 a.m.

“We have made public safety a priority from day one,” Landry said. “We intend to be transparent to assessing any defects that might have existed in the system and make sure any mistakes are corrected. This city will have the resources necessary to protect our citizens and our guests. We’ve got an active investigation and we’re also working on enhanced security.”

The first-term Republican governor also said he’s issued a more expansive emergency declaration and mobilized a military police company of 100 guardsmen from the Louisiana National Guard to assist the New Orleans Police Department, the FBI and other agencies with investigating the incident.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said “we will bring them to justice” and that she’d provide resources to both the city and the FBI to help with the investigation.

Kirkpatrick said the city has a plan and “we’re going to get these people. Very pleased that we will be back to having a wonderful game tomorrow night.”

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Trump says tariffs on China will remain until trade imbalance is corrected

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Quick Hit:

President Trump said Sunday he won’t make a tariff deal with China unless its $1 trillion trade surplus with the U.S. is balanced. Speaking aboard Air Force One, he called the deficit “not sustainable” and said tariffs are already driving a wave of investment back to America.

Key Details:

  • Trump told reporters the U.S. has “a $1 trillion trade deficit with China,” adding, “hundreds of billions of dollars a year we lose to China, and unless we solve that problem, I’m not going to make a deal.” He insisted any agreement must begin with fixing that imbalance.

  • The president said tariffs are generating “levels that we’ve never seen before” of private investment, claiming $7 trillion has already been committed in areas like auto manufacturing and chip production, with companies returning to places like North Carolina, Detroit, and Illinois.

  • On Truth Social Sunday night, Trump wrote: “The only way this problem can be cured is with TARIFFS… a beautiful thing to behold.” He accused President Biden of allowing trade surpluses to grow and pledged, “We are going to reverse it, and reverse it QUICKLY.”

Diving Deeper:

President Donald Trump reaffirmed his tough trade stance on Sunday, telling reporters that he won’t negotiate any new deal with China unless the massive trade deficit is addressed. “We have a $1 trillion trade deficit with China. Hundreds of billions of dollars a year we lose to China, and unless we solve that problem, I’m not going to make a deal,” Trump said while aboard Air Force One.

He emphasized that while some countries have deficits in the billions, China’s trade advantage over the U.S. exceeds a trillion dollars and remains the most severe. “We have a tremendous deficit problem with China… I want that solved,” he said. “A deficit is a loss. We’re going to have surpluses, or we’re, at worst, going to be breaking even.”

Trump touted the impact of tariffs already in place, pointing to an estimated $7 trillion in committed investments flowing into the U.S. economy. He highlighted growth in the automotive and semiconductor sectors in particular, and said companies are now bringing operations back to American soil—citing North Carolina, Detroit, and Illinois as examples.

He also claimed world leaders in Europe and Asia are eager to strike deals with the U.S., but he’s holding firm. “They’re dying to make a deal,” he said, “but as long as there are deficits, I’m not going to do that.”

Trump projected that tariffs would add another $1 trillion to federal revenues by next year and help re-establish the U.S. as the world’s top economic power. “Our country has gotten a lot stronger,” Trump said. “Eventually it’ll be a country like no other… the most dominant country, economically, in the world, which is what it should be.”

Later Sunday night, Trump doubled down in a Truth Social post, writing, “We have massive Financial Deficits with China, the European Union, and many others. The only way this problem can be cured is with TARIFFS, which are now bringing Tens of Billions of Dollars into the U.S.A.” He added that trade surpluses have grown under Joe Biden and vowed to reverse them “QUICKLY.”

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Jury verdict against oil industry worries critics, could drive up energy costs

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Offshore drilling rig Development Driller III at the Deepwater Horizon site May, 2010. 

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“Did fossil fuels actually cause this impact?” Kochan said. “Then how much of these particular defendants’ fossil fuels caused this impact? These are the things that should be in a typical trial, because due process means you can’t be responsible for someone else’s actions. Then you have to decide, and can you trace the particular pollution that affected this community to the defendant’s actions?”

A $744 million jury verdict in Louisiana is at the center of a coordinated legal effort to force oil companies to pay billions of dollars to ameliorate the erosion of land in Louisiana, offset climate change and more.

Proponents say the payments are overdue, but critics say the lawsuits will hike energy costs for all Americans and are wrongly supplanting the state and federal regulatory framework already in place.

In the Louisiana case in question, Plaquemines Parish sued Chevron alleging that oil exploration off the coast decades ago led to the erosion of Louisiana’s coastline.

A jury ruled Friday that Chevron must pay $744 million in damages.

The Louisiana case is just one of dozens of environmental cases around the country that could have a dramatic – and costly – impact on American energy consumers.

While each environmental case has its own legal nuances and differing arguments, the lawsuits are usually backed by one of a handful of the same law firms that have partnered with local and state governments. In Louisiana, attorney John Carmouche has led the charge.

“If somebody causes harm, fix it,” Carmouche said to open his arguments.

Environmental arguments of this nature have struggled to succeed in federal courts, but they hope for better luck in state courts, as the Louisiana case was.

Those damages for exploration come as President Donald Trump is urging greater domestic oil production in the U.S. to help lower energy costs for Americans.

Daniel Erspamer, CEO of the Pelican Institute, told The Center Square that the Louisiana case could go to the U.S. Supreme Court, as Chevron is expected to appeal.

“So the issue at play here is a question about coastal erosion, about legal liability and about the proper role of the courts versus state government or federal government in enforcing regulation and statute,” Erspamer said.

Another question in the case is whether companies can be held accountable for actions they carried out before regulations were passed restricting them.

“There are now well more than 40 different lawsuits targeting over 200 different companies,” Erspamer said.

The funds would purportedly be used for coastal restoration and a kind of environmental credit system, though critics say safeguards are not in place to make sure the money would actually be used as stated.

While coastal erosion cases appear restricted to Louisiana, similar cases have popped up around the U.S. in the last 10 to 15 years.

Following a similar pattern, local and state governments have partnered with law firms to sue oil producers for large sums to help offset what they say are the effects of climate change, as The Center Square previously reported.

For instance, in Pennsylvania, Bucks County sued a handful of energy companies, calling for large abatement payments to offset the effects of climate change.

“There are all kinds of problems with traceability, causation and allocability,” George Mason University Professor Donald Kochan told The Center Square, pointing out the difficulty of proving specific companies are to blame when emissions occur all over the globe, with China emitting far more than the U.S.

“Did fossil fuels actually cause this impact?” Kochan said. “Then how much of these particular defendants’ fossil fuels caused this impact? These are the things that should be in a typical trial, because due process means you can’t be responsible for someone else’s actions. Then you have to decide, and can you trace the particular pollution that affected this community to the defendant’s actions?”

Those cases are in earlier stages and face more significant legal hurdles because of questions about whether plaintiffs can justify the cases on federal common law because it is difficult to prove than any one individual has been substantively and directly harmed by climate change.

On top of that, plaintiffs must also prove that emissions released by the particular oil companies are responsible for the damage done, which is complicated by the fact that emissions all over the world affect the environment, the majority of which originate outside the U.S.

“It’s not that far afield from the same kinds of lawsuits we’ve seen in California and New York and other places that more are on the emissions and global warming side rather than the sort of dredging and exploration side,” Erspamer said.

But environmental companies argue that oil companies must fork out huge settlements to pay for environmental repairs.

For now, the Louisiana ruling is a shot across the bow in the legal war against energy companies in the U.S.

Whether the appeal is successful or other lawsuits have the same impact remains to be seen.

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