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Teen Suspects Accused of Plotting to Blow Up Small Truck at German Christmas Market

A person walks along Berlin Wall Memorial Bernauer Strasse during snowfall in Berlin, Germany, November 29, 2023. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner
A person walks along Berlin Wall Memorial Bernauer Strasse during snowfall in Berlin, Germany, November 29, 2023. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner
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Teen Suspects Accused of Plotting to Blow Up Small Truck at German Christmas Market

A person walks along Berlin Wall Memorial Bernauer Strasse during snowfall in Berlin, Germany, November 29, 2023. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner
A person walks along Berlin Wall Memorial Bernauer Strasse during snowfall in Berlin, Germany, November 29, 2023. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner

A 15-year-old boy and an alleged accomplice are accused of plotting to blow up a small truck at a Christmas market in western Germany in an attack modeled on the methods of ISIS, prosecutors said Thursday.
The teenager was detained Tuesday in Burscheid, a town near Cologne, and a court in Leverkusen on Wednesday ordered him kept in custody pending a possible indictment. Another teenager was arrested in the eastern German state of Brandenburg, The Associated Press reported.
Officials say the 15-year-old wrote in a chat group about attack plans. Prosecutors in Duesseldorf said Thursday that he and the other suspect are accused of agreeing to attack a Christmas market in Leverkusen, a city in the western Germany's North Rhine-Westphalia state, at the beginning of December by using fuel to blow up a small truck.
The teenager claimed he had acquired gasoline for the plan, according to a statement from prosecutors. The two suspects allegedly planned to leave Germany together after the attack and join the ISIS-Khorasan Province extremist group, an ISIS offshoot active in and around Afghanistan.
Investigators are evaluating evidence found at the 15-year-old's home but did not find any stocks of fuel, prosecutors said. He is being investigated on suspicion of conspiring to commit murder and preparing a serious act of violence.
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency said before news of the arrests emerged Wednesday that the threat situation in the country has escalated since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel.
The agency pointed to the risk of a radicalization of lone assailants who use simple means to attack “soft targets,” adding that “the danger is real and higher than it has been for a long time.”

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World

Trump to Remove Vietnam from Restricted Tech List

(FILES) US President Donald Trump holds a chart as he delivers remarks on reciprocal tariffs during an event in the Rose Garden entitled "Make America Wealthy Again" at the White House in Washington, DC, on April 2, 2025. (Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP)
(FILES) US President Donald Trump holds a chart as he delivers remarks on reciprocal tariffs during an event in the Rose Garden entitled "Make America Wealthy Again" at the White House in Washington, DC, on April 2, 2025. (Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP)
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Trump to Remove Vietnam from Restricted Tech List

(FILES) US President Donald Trump holds a chart as he delivers remarks on reciprocal tariffs during an event in the Rose Garden entitled "Make America Wealthy Again" at the White House in Washington, DC, on April 2, 2025. (Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP)
(FILES) US President Donald Trump holds a chart as he delivers remarks on reciprocal tariffs during an event in the Rose Garden entitled "Make America Wealthy Again" at the White House in Washington, DC, on April 2, 2025. (Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP)

US President Donald Trump told Vietnam's top leader To Lam he would "instruct the relevant agencies" to remove the country from a list restricted from accessing advanced US technologies, Vietnam's government announced Saturday.

The two leaders met in person for the first time at the White House on Friday, after Lam attended the inaugural meeting of Trump's "Board of Peace" in Washington, said AFP.

"Donald Trump said he would instruct the relevant agencies to soon remove Vietnam from the strategic export control list," Hanoi's Government News website said.

The two countries were locked in protracted trade negotiations when the US Supreme Court ruled many of Trump's sweeping tariffs were illegal.

Three Vietnamese airlines announced nearly $37 billion in purchases this week, in a series of contracts signed with US aerospace companies.

Fledgling airline Sun PhuQuoc Airways placed an order for 40 of Boeing's 787 Dreamliners, a long-haul aircraft, with an estimated total value of $22.5 billion, while national carrier Vietnam Airlines placed an $8.1 billion order for around 50 Boeing 737-8 aircraft.

When Trump announced his "Liberation Day" tariffs in April, Vietnam had the third-largest trade surplus with the US of any country after China and Mexico, and was targeted with one of the highest rates in Trump's tariff blitz.

But in July, Hanoi secured a minimum 20 percent tariff with Washington, down from more than 40 percent, in return for opening its market to US products including cars.

Trump signed off on a global 10-percent tariff on Friday on all countries hours after the Supreme Court ruled many of his levies on imports were illegal.

World

NORAD Intercepts 5 Russian Aircraft near Alaska, Though Military Says There Was No Threat

An F-16 fighter jet takes off (file photo - Reuters)
An F-16 fighter jet takes off (file photo - Reuters)
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NORAD Intercepts 5 Russian Aircraft near Alaska, Though Military Says There Was No Threat

An F-16 fighter jet takes off (file photo - Reuters)
An F-16 fighter jet takes off (file photo - Reuters)

Military jets were launched to intercept five Russian aircraft that were flying in international airspace off Alaska’s western coast, but military officials said Friday the Russian aircraft were not seen as provocative.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command said it detected and tracked two Russian Tu-95s, two Su-35s and one A-50 operating near the Bering Strait on Thursday, The Associated Press said.

In response, NORAD launched two F-16s, two F-35s, one E-3 and four KC-135 refueling tankers to intercept, identify and escort the Russian aircraft until they departed the area, according to a release from the command.

“The Russian military aircraft remained in international airspace and did not enter American or Canadian sovereign airspace,” according to the NORAD statement. It also noted this kind of activity “occurs regularly and is not seen as a threat.”

The Russian aircraft were operating in an area near the Bering Strait, a narrow body of water about 50 miles (80 kilometers) wide separating the Pacific and Arctic oceans, called the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone.

Such zones begin where sovereign airspace ends. While it’s international airspace, all aircraft are required to identify themselves when entering zones in the interest of national security, NORAD said.

The command used satellites, ground and airborne radars and aircraft to detect and track aircraft

NORAD is headquartered at Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado, but has its Alaska operations based at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage.

World

Trump Unleashes Personal Assault on 'Disloyal' Supreme Court Justices

US President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on February 20, 2026. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP)
US President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on February 20, 2026. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP)
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Trump Unleashes Personal Assault on 'Disloyal' Supreme Court Justices

US President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on February 20, 2026. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP)
US President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on February 20, 2026. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP)

US President Donald Trump launched an extraordinary personal attack Friday on the Supreme Court justices who struck down his global tariffs, including two of his own appointees, and claimed they were being "swayed by foreign interests."

"I'm ashamed of certain members of the court, absolutely ashamed, for not having the courage to do what's right for our country," Trump told reporters at a White House press conference.

"They're very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution," he said, deriding them at one point as "fools and lap dogs."

The Supreme Court has overwhelmingly sided with Trump since he took office in January of last year, and the tariffs ruling was the first major setback for the Republican president before the conservative-dominated court.

Asked if he regretted nominating justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch -- who both voted against him -- to the top court, Trump said he did not "want to say whether or not I regret."

"I think their decision was terrible," he said. "I think it's an embarrassment to their families if you want to know the truth, the two of them."

Chief Justice John Roberts, Coney Barrett and Gorsuch, all conservatives, joined with the court's three liberals in the 6-3 ruling that Trump's sweeping global tariffs were illegal.

Trump heaped praise on the conservative justices who voted to uphold his authority to levy tariffs -- Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee.

He thanked the three "for their strength and wisdom, and love of our country."

Trump in particular singled out Kavanaugh, who wrote a 63-page dissent to the tariffs ruling, calling him a "genius" and saying he was "so proud of him."

- 'You're going to find out' -

The president also alleged there was foreign influence behind the ruling.

"It's my opinion that the court has been swayed by foreign interests," he said. "I think that foreign interests are represented by people that I believe have undue influence.

"They have a lot of influence over the Supreme Court, whether it's through fear or respect or friendships, I don't know," he said.

Asked by a reporter if he had evidence of foreign influence on the court, Trump replied: "You're going to find out."

Vice President JD Vance added his voice to the condemnation of the tariffs ruling, calling it "lawlessness from the court, plain and simple."

Tensions between the White House and the Supreme Court are not new -- a frustrated president Franklin D Roosevelt once proposed expanding the court to pack it with Democratic loyalists.

But Steven Schwinn, a constitutional law professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, said Trump's "gratuitous and ad homineum attacks" on individual justices reveal "his fundamental misunderstanding of the separation of powers."

"He seems to believe that any good-faith disagreement with his own interpretation of the law is, by definition, illegitimate," Schwinn told AFP.

"At the same time, he lacks any serious interpretation of the law of his own, except to say that the law is what he wants it to be. This is not how a democracy works."

Trump was also asked whether the six justices who voted against him would be welcome at next week's State of the Union speech before Congress.

"Three are happily invited," the president said.

The others are "invited, barely," he said, before adding "I couldn't care less if they come."