AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EST

Takeaways from Trump’s 1st rally speech as president-elect

PHOENIX (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump came to Arizona on Sunday for his first rally speech since winning the November election.

He was greeted by thousands of adoring supporters who confirmed his popularity across the conservative base. Trump attempted in his 75-minutes on stage to go beyond his core supporters. But he also employed his usual aggressiveness, including ratcheting up threats against Panama and sending a message to billionaire Elon Musk. Here are some takeaways from the speech:

Trump spoke for about 75 minutes, much of it a typical Donald Trump speech – plenty of quips about the U.S. being “ripped off” and more false assertions that he, not Democrat Joe Biden, won the 2020 presidential election. But Trump was nonetheless relaxed, relishing his victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in November, especially prevailing in the popular vote after not getting the most votes in 2016 or 2020. He went so far as to offer talk of national unity — though with a sideways compliment to vanquished Democrats.

“We had no riots. We had no anything. It was a beautiful thing to watch,” Trump said. “They just said, ‘We lost.’ And we want to try bringing everybody together. We’re going to try. We’re going to really give it a shot.”

Trump, who likes to say that his clear but close victory was a landslide, argued: “There’s a spirit that we have now that we didn’t have just a short while ago.”

___

Former Israeli spies describe attack using exploding electronic devices against Hezbollah

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two recently retired senior Israeli intelligence agents shared new details about a deadly clandestine operation years in the making that targeted Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and Syria using exploding pagers and walkie talkies three months ago.

Hezbollah began striking Israel almost immediately after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack that sparked the Israel-Hamas war.

The agents spoke with CBS “60 Minutes” in a segment aired Sunday night. They wore masks and spoke with altered voices to hide their identities.

One agent said the operation started 10 years ago using walkie-talkies laden with hidden explosives, which Hezbollah didn’t realize it was buying from Israel, its enemy. The walkie-talkies were not detonated until September, a day after booby-trapped pagers were set off.

“We created a pretend world,” said the officer, who went by the name “Michael.”

___

Israeli strikes in Gaza kill at least 22 as Vatican envoy visits Christians for pre-Christmas Mass

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip overnight and into Sunday killed at least 22 people, including five children, Palestinian medical officials said, while Gaza’s small Christian community celebrated a pre-Christmas Mass.

Israeli authorities allowed a rare Gaza visit by the leader of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, for the Mass while the ever-present buzz of Israeli drones was heard outside.

One of the latest Israeli strikes hit a school housing displaced people in Gaza City and killed at least eight, including three children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Israel’s military said it struck Hamas militants sheltering there.

A strike on a home in the central city of Deir al-Balah late Saturday killed at least eight, including three women and two children, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. Israel’s military said it struck an Islamic Jihad militant. Another six people were killed in separate strikes on Sunday, according to local hospitals.

“The children are still inside the house. We are looking for them. They were sleeping in the living room, five of them together,” said a relative, Noman Abu Samra, as people searched rubble in Deir al-Balah. A window full of children watched.

___

Trauma lingers on for survivors of the deadly tsunami that hit Thailand 20 years ago

BAN NAM KHEM, Thailand (AP) — The 20-year-old freshman student was still asleep that Sunday morning at the family’s house on the Andaman Sea coast of southern Thailand when her mom, sensing something wasn’t right, woke her up saying they needed to leave right away.

The day is forever seared in Neungduangjai Sritrakarn’s memory: Dec. 26, 2004, the day the deadly Indian Ocean tsunami struck across South and Southeast Asia, after a 9.1 magnitude earthquake off the west coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra island.

It was one of modern history’s worst natural disasters.

Neungduangjai’s mom had noticed a strange pattern of whitecaps on the sea, just as a relative who returned from a fishing trip came by to warn them. They grabbed all the family members’ essential documents and hopped on motorbikes.

Within minutes, Neungduangjai, her mother, father, brother and sister were speeding away, trying to get as far as they could from their village of Ban Nam Khem. Looking back, Neungduangjai saw a surging wall of water, taller than her home, moving toward shore from far away.

___

What we know about the deadly Christmas market attack in Germany

MAGDEBURG, Germany (AP) — Four women and a 9-year-old boy were killed and 200 people were injured when a man drove into a Christmas market teeming with holiday shoppers in the German city of Magdeburg — an attack that has left Germans mourning the victims and with a shaken sense of security.

At first, Thi Linh Chi Nguyen thought the loud bangs were fireworks. The 34-year-old manicurist from Vietnam, whose salon is near the Christmas market, was on the phone during a break when she heard the noise just after 7 p.m. on Friday. Then she saw a car drive through the market at high speed. People screamed and a child was thrown into the air by the car.

The woman recalled seeing the car bursting out of the market and turning right onto Ernst-Reuter-Allee street and then coming to a standstill at a tram stop where the suspect was arrested.

The Christmas market was surrounded by concrete barriers designed to prevent attacks, but there was a gap left for emergency access, wide enough for a car to speed through.

The market area reopened Sunday, and residents walked slowly amid the shuttered food, drink and craft stands. Nearby, people stopped to light candles or leave flowers at a growing makeshift memorial.

___

Pickup truck driver killed by police after driving through busy mall store is identified

KILLEEN, Texas (AP) — A pickup truck driver fleeing police careened through the doors of a JCPenney store at a busy Texas mall, injuring five people before he was fatally shot by officers, authorities said.

A 53-year-old man identified as John Darrel Schultz of Kempner drove a truck and crashed into the department store in Killeen, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) north of the state capital Austin, on Saturday afternoon and continued into the building, striking people as he went, according to Sgt. Bryan Washko of the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Emergency medical services transported four victims from the mall to area hospitals and another traveled to a hospital separately. They ranged in age from 6 to 75 years old and their conditions were not immediately known, he said.

The chase began around 5 p.m. on Interstate 14 in Belton, about 20 miles (30 kilometers) from Killeen, after authorities received calls about an erratic driver in a black pickup, Ofelia Miramontez of the Killeen Police Department said.

Schultz then pulled off the road and drove into the parking lot of the mall.

___

New York City police apprehend suspect in the death of a woman found on fire in a subway car

New York City police announced Sunday they have in custody a “person of interest” in the early morning death of a woman who they believe may have fallen asleep on a stationary subway train before being intentionally lit on fire by a man she didn’t know.

Transit police apprehended the suspect after receiving a report from three high school students who had recognized the man. They had seen images of the suspect taken from surveillance and police body cam video and widely distributed by police.

“New Yorkers came through again,” said New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who described the case as “one of the most depraved crimes one person could possibly commit against another human being.”

Tisch said the suspect and the woman, both of whom have not been identified, were riding a subway train without any interaction between them to the end of the line in Brooklyn at around 7:30 a.m.

After the train came to a stop, surveillance video from the subway car showed the man “calmly” walk up to the victim, who was seated motionless, possibly sleeping, and set her clothing on fire with what appeared to be a lighter. The woman’s clothing then “became fully engulfed in a matter of seconds,” Tisch said.

___

A Holy Year is about to start in Rome. Here’s what you need to know

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis on Tuesday formally inaugurates the 2025 Holy Year, reviving an ancient church tradition encouraging the faithful to make pilgrimages to Rome, amid new security fears following a Christmas market attack in Germany.

At the start of Christmas Eve Mass, Francis will push open the Holy Door on St. Peter’s Basilica, which will stay open throughout the year to allow the estimated 32 million pilgrims projected to visit Rome to pass through.

The first Holy Year was called in 1300 and in recent times they are generally celebrated every 25 to 50 years. Pilgrims who participate can obtain “indulgences” — the centuries-old feature of the Catholic Church related to the forgiveness of sins that roughly amounts to a “get out of Purgatory free” card.

The last regular Jubilee was in 2000, when St. John Paul II ushered in the church’s third millennium. Francis declared a special Jubilee in 2015-2016 dedicated to mercy and the next one planned is in 2033, to commemorate the anniversary of the crucifixion of Christ.

According to church teaching, Catholics who confess their sins are forgiven and therefore released from the eternal or spiritual punishment of damnation. An indulgence is designed to remove the “temporal” punishment of sin that may remain — the consequence of the wrongdoing that might disrupt the sinner’s relationships with others.

___

2 US Navy pilots shot down over Red Sea in apparent ‘friendly fire’ incident, US military says

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Two U.S. Navy pilots were shot down Sunday over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the U.S military said, marking the most serious incident to threaten troops in over a year of America targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

Both aviators were recovered alive after ejecting from their stricken two-seat F/A-18 aircraft, with one suffering minor injuries. But the shootdown underlines just how dangerous the Red Sea corridor has become, with ongoing attacks on shipping by the Iranian-backed Houthis 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 of the friendly fire incident, though the U.S. military’s Central Command did not elaborate on what the pilots’ mission was and did not respond to questions from The Associated Press.

The F/A-18 shot down had just flown off the deck of the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier, Central Command said. On Dec. 15, Central Command acknowledged the Truman had entered the Mideast, but hadn’t specified that the carrier and its battle group was in the Red Sea.

“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,” Central Command said in a statement. “This incident was not the result of hostile fire, and a full investigation is underway.”

___

Destructive Cyclone Chido unearths a rift between locals and migrants in France’s Mayotte

MAMOUDZOU, Mayotte (AP) — When Cyclone Chido ravaged Mayotte’s fragile infrastructure, it also exposed deep-seated tensions between the island’s residents and its large migrant population.

Thousands of people who have entered the island illegally bore the brunt of the storm that tore through the Indian Ocean archipelago — France’s poorest territory. Authorities in Mayotte said many migrants avoided emergency shelters out of fear of deportation, leaving themselves and the precarious shantytowns they inhabit even more vulnerable to the devastation.

Meanwhile, anger simmered among residents who accused the government of diverting the island’s already scarce resources to migrants at their expense.

“We are the legitimate population of this island,” said Amada Salime. Standing in the rubble of his home on Saturday, he added, “If there is help from the government — water or something to eat or money to make houses — Mahorais people will not have it. Immigrants are more numerous than us, and we will be left behind.”

Mayotte, a French department located between Madagascar and mainland Africa, has a population of 320,000. French authorities have estimated another 100,000 migrants also live there, most of whom have arrived from the nearby Comoros Islands, just 70 kilometers (43 miles) away.

The Associated Press