Your World Tonight - New Orleans truck attack, Las Vegas explosion, Jurassic discovery, and more

Episode Date: January 2, 2025

The FBI says it now believes the suspect in the New Orleans truck attack acted alone.A 42-year-old army vet ploughed his truck into a crowd, killing 14 people. The attacker was apparently inspired by ISIS. The group was at one point considered defeated in the Middle East, but has been actively recruiting people online. Even in Canada, where RCMP arrested an 18-year-old for planning to travel and join the group outside the country.Police say so far there is no evidence of a connection between the New Orleans attack and an explosion outside a Trump tower in Las Vegas. Police say a man inside a Tesla Cybertruck likely shot himself just before the vehicle exploded. The blast injured seven people nearby.And: A B.C. teen is out of intensive care after contracting avian flu. She went into the hospital in November, and was on supplemental oxygen for over a month. There is still no information on how she contracted it, but there is no evidence that anyone else was infected.Also: Jurassic footmark: About 200 dinosaur footprints have been discovered in a quarry north of London, England. The prints belong to cetiosaurs and megalosaurs, which lived 160 million years ago. The footprints are big enough for the archaeologists to sit in, and should give them information about how dinosaurs walked, and maybe even where they were going.Plus: The popularity of Nordic spas, and should you try that new year’s detox diet?

My name is Graham Isidor. I have a progressive eye disease called keratoconus. Unmaying I'm losing my vision has been hard, but explaining it to other people has been harder. Lately, I've been trying to talk about it. Short Sighted is an attempt to explain what vision loss feels like by exploring how it sounds. By sharing my story, we get into all the things you don't see

about hidden disabilities. Short Sighted, from CBC's Personally, available now. This is a CBC Podcast. To see immediately dead bodies laying in the street, both directions, is something that nobody should have to see in the beginning of the new year. Witnesses in New Orleans described the horror watching as a man drove his pickup truck into a crowd of New Year's revelers, killing 14 people, injuring many more before opening fire on police who shot him dead. The FBI says it was an act of terrorism by a former U.S. soldier acting alone, inspired by ISIS. Welcome to Your World Tonight. It's Thursday, January 2nd, just before 6 p.m. Eastern. I'm Susan Bonner, also on the podcast.

I'm also confident to tell the Las Vegas community and this great nation that we don't believe there's any further threat from this subject or anybody associated to him here in Las Vegas. It's been a violent start to 2025 in the United States, with authorities in Las Vegas trying to determine why an active soldier blew up a Tesla truck in front of the city's Trump Hotel. An incident with strange similarities to the attack in New Orleans, but officials say no link they can find. There is other news, including an incredible find at the bottom of a quarry in England, and advice for Canadians who need a post-holiday reset.

The victims include a nursing student, a former football player, a father of two. They came to New Orleans to celebrate, but were targeted by a man who authorities say was there to kill. We are getting a clearer picture tonight of how it happened. As families of the victims mourn and a city vows to move on. The CBC's Katie Nicholson is in New Orleans with our top story. A tuba player slowly steps down Bourbon Street past a spray of yellow roses wrapped in red which line the sidewalk in remembrance of the 14 victims killed here early New Year's morning. As bars which had been closed along the famed Party Street swung their doors open for the first time since the tragedy,

many in the French Quarter still shell-shocked. Until you have something like this happen to your town, a city that you love, it's different here. It's hard to understand. Rick Duncan lives near Bourbon Street. He said it was important it reopened today. We've got to get back out. We've got to have the music. We've got to have the people back out. That's all we've got. That's what we got. As the city tries to regain its sense of normalcy, police reversed an earlier hypothesis that the suspect behind the attack had accomplices. The FBI's Deputy Assistant Director

of Counterterrorism, Christopher Rea. We do not assess at this point that anyone else involved in this attack is involved in this attack except for Shamsuddin Jabbar, the subject you've already been briefed on. This after investigators conducted more than 100 interviews and have three phones and two laptops connected to Jabbar, all of which helped them determine he was likely acting as a lone wolf. Yesterday, rumors swirled there may have been multiple explosive devices in the area. Today, the FBI confirmed there were just two homemade bombs, concealed in coolers, both safely deactivated.

As for his alleged motive, the FBI says Jabbar was 100% inspired by ISIS, and the military veteran posted videos online claiming he'd joined the Islamic State. An ISIS flag was also found on his rented truck. Families and friends of the victims try as best they can to support one another. A prayer service held today in this Lafayette church for 27-year-old Tyler Besch,

a former college football player. Perhaps another sign New Orleans is standing strong. Crowds, tens of thousands strong throng to the Sugar Bowl college football game, postponed by the attack. Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry today resolute this city will come back and be the safer for it. You can't go out there and say, oh, I'm going to put this in place and that in place and hope that evil doesn't show up on your doorstep, because it will. You have to crush it. Katie Nicholson, CBC News, New Orleans.

As Katie mentioned, investigators believe the attacker in New Orleans was inspired by ISIS. The group is listed as a terrorist organization in the U.S., Canada, and several other countries. The CBC's Thomas Daigle now on the group's dangerous resurgence years after it lost its foothold in the Middle East. Using gruesome propaganda videos that often looked professionally produced, ISIS once built an army from around the world.

Now, a decade later, the truck attack in New Orleans is again raising concern about the group that experts say never stopped spreading its radical ideology. It shows that despite the fact that ISIS as an organization is very different than its heyday in Iraq and Syria, the message still resonates. While the self-styled Islamic State isn't able to produce videos and magazines the way it once did, the group's supporters have sought to appeal to younger audiences, sharing propaganda on apps like TikTok and X, formerly known as Twitter. CBC News has viewed a public pro-ISIS messaging channel now calling on others to carry out more attacks in the U.S.

Javed Ali is a former U.S. government counterterrorism official. They're still able to get the message out there, and this is one of the reasons why Jabbar got seduced by it over time. In New Orleans, Shamsuddin Jabbar's rampage may be the deadliest attack the group has inspired in North America in recent years. But in Moscow last March, an ISIS affiliate killed more than 130 concertgoers. Then last month, a series of Taylor Swift shows in Vienna were called off over a similar plot. And international terrorism expert Sajan Gohel points to Canadian involvement too. In the last 12 months, there has been a lot of terrorist plotting,

planning and recruiting in Canada that the RCMP, along with their provincial and municipal partners, have been disrupting. Today, CBC obtained Ontario court records showing the RCMP recently arrested a teen accused of planning to travel abroad to join ISIS. Last summer, the Mounties said they disrupted a father and son's ISIS-inspired mass murder plot in Toronto, then months later arrested another man in the suburbs, allegedly on his way to shoot Jews in New York, again in support of ISIS. Far too often there have been politicians that have written the obituary of these transnational terrorist groups. And we've seen with all the major geopolitical upheavals in the Middle East that that actually acts as fuel. Some experts wonder what the fall of the Assad regime in Syria

and the rise of the Islamist organization known as HTS will mean for groups like ISIS. Already, the October 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel incited multiple threats, according to what FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress last year. We've seen a rogues gallery of foreign terrorist organizations call for attacks against Americans and our allies. At its peak nearly a decade ago, ISIS would claim responsibility for violence and bask in the publicity. Now the New Orleans truck attack has authorities reconsidering the risk the group poses. Thomas Daigle, CBC News, Toronto.

Investigators in Las Vegas say so far they don't see an ISIS connection to a bombing there. A Tesla Cybertruck exploded at a Trump Hotel in Las Vegas yesterday, the same day as the attack in New Orleans. There are other similarities between the attacks and the suspects, but there's still no evidence they are linked. Katie Simpson has more from Washington. In the hours since the fiery explosion outside the Las Vegas Trump Hotel, investigators say they believe they've identified the driver of the Tesla Cybertruck at the center of this case. Authorities finding the military ID, passport and credit cards of 37-year-old Matthew Leibelsberger inside the burnt-out wreckage. A Green Beret

Special Operations sergeant awarded two bronze stars. Police say he shot himself in the head moments before the truck blew up. Looking into exactly what the motivation is remains our number one priority. Spencer Evans, the FBI special agent in charge, says the Joint Terrorism Task Force is working on this case, even though at this time the motive remains unknown. It's not lost on us that it's in front of, you know, of the Trump building, that it's a Tesla vehicle, but we don't have information at this point that definitively tells us or suggests it was because of this particular ideology. Authorities say Livelsberger rented the Cybertruck in Denver, Colorado, not far from his hometown of Colorado Springs, on December 28th,

tracking his multi-day drive to Las Vegas by the stops he made to charge the electric vehicle. The truck was first spotted in Las Vegas at 7.29 a.m. yesterday. Kevin McMayhill with Las Vegas Metro Police says the cyber truck was seen passing through the Trump Hotel valet drop-off area about an hour before the vehicle returned, parked and exploded, injuring seven horrifying nearby witnesses. I just heard a boom. Oh my god. Authorities say fireworks, fuel and other explosion enhancers were found inside the vehicle's wreckage, along with two semi-automatic handguns. While there's no known connection to the suspect in the New Orleans attack,

police acknowledged multiple similarities. Both men used the Turo app to rent a personal vehicle directly from the owner, and both have similarities in their military records. Both spent time stationed at Fort Bragg, and both were deployed overseas. They both served in Afghanistan in 2009. We don't have any evidence that they were in the same province in Afghanistan, the same location, or the same unit. Again, something else that remains under investigation. Outside other Trump properties, security is being noticeably ramped up. There are additional police

stationed at Trump Tower in New York City and the Trump Hotel in Chicago. Before the violence in Las Vegas and New Orleans, security enhancements were already well underway around the U.S. Capitol, as the city prepares for days of high-profile events around Donald Trump's inauguration later this month. Katie Simpson, CBC News, Washington. There's been a mass shooting in a small town in Montenegro. A man shot dead 12 people before turning the gun on himself. Two of the dead are children. It's one of the Balkan nation's worst mass killings and the second mass shooting in less than three years in the same town. In 2022, a gunman killed 10 people before

being shot dead. Israel's prime minister has approved a delegation to resume negotiations in Doha, Qatar. Mediators from the U.S., Qatar, and Egypt have spent nearly a year trying to get Israel and Hamas to agree to a deal for a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages. But efforts have repeatedly stalled. In Gaza today, Israeli airstrikes, including one in a designated humanitarian zone, killed at least 26 Palestinians. Coming up on the podcast, a teenager in BC who contracted bird flu is out of intensive care, a giant Jurassic discovery in the UK, and a new year brings a renewed push for a health reboot. We look at what's popular and what works. We are learning more about Canada's first known human case of H5N1 avian flu. A BC teenager became critically sick in November and is now recovering. Health experts unveiled details about her infection this week in the New England

Journal of Medicine. Yvette Brand has been following the story. Yvette, what can you tell us about this rare case? Well, we've been asking for answers about this patient for weeks, but the BC Centre for Disease Control and other health officials declined any comments citing privacy. And then on New Year's Eve, a letter signed by several doctors and medical experts was published in the New England Journal of Medicine and it confirmed some facts about the 13 year old who contracted avian flu she was Canada's first known case the the Fraser Valley teen had a fever and conjunctivitis in both of her eyes and she ended up at an emergency department we're not clear where but she was discharged and then returned with worsening symptoms

and ended up at BC Children's Hospital. And it was there that a lab confirmed that she had influenza A H5N1. And she had no obvious contact with poultry or animals, so it's still unclear how she contracted this virus. Dr. Isaac Bogosh, an infectious disease specialist in Toronto, talked about this. But a lot of this was driven by the lab, not necessarily the clinical team,

right? This person had no obvious exposures. They had no close contact with sick animals. They had no close contact with farms or an individual who is known to be positive for this. And that's the worrying part for me. One is there was no obvious exposures. And number two, when you read a report like this, there is evidence of very, very severe illness. So Yvette, we hear him say he's worried. How concerning is it that experts still don't know the source of the exposure? Well, it's very concerning because you want to know the contact, how it happened, because the more times the virus jumps between mammals, the more chance it has to mutate into a form that can pass from human to human easier. And we've all been through a pandemic, right? We know what that can mean. So now it is important to remember that this teen

had a history of mild asthma and an elevated body mass index. So those are some underlying conditions. And there's been an outbreak of this virus on Canadian and U.S. farms since spring with more than 60 U.S. cases in humans. But most of them have been mild, except for one patient in Louisiana who was also in their 60s and had underlying health conditions, and that person ended up in critical condition this December. Yvette, thank you. Thank you. The CBC's Yvette Brend in Vancouver. A new report says before lunch today, the first workday of 2025, Canada's 100 highest paid CEOs had already earned more than average workers will make all year. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says executives pocketed an average of about $62,600

by 10.54am. In 2023, that group of CEOs were paid on average 210 times more than the average worker. The gap is actually down from a high of 240 times more in 2022. Researchers in the UK have unearthed an extensive series of dinosaur footprints in a quarry northwest of London. It includes about 200 huge footprints dating from the Jurassic period from two different types of dinosaurs. Chris Brown walks us through this incredible discovery. Wearing hard hats and using delicate brushes, teams of researchers from Oxford and Birmingham universities have been scraping off 160 million years of dirt to reveal stunning trails of dinosaur footprints that traversed Jurassic Britain. A drone shot from above the limestone quarry in Oxfordshire reveals several long trails of giant three-toed prints and elephant-like feet etched into the grey rock.

Paleobiologist Richard Butler says the excavation this past summer, but only revealed publicly today, indicates more than 200 prints were squished out by dinosaurs walking over what was then soft earth. It's actually one of the largest dinosaur track sites anywhere in the world and it has these incredibly long dinosaur tracks trackways so some of these are stretching well over 150 meters. Among the prints are those of plant-eating 18-meter giants called Cetiasaurus, as well as the smaller two-legged meat-eating Megalosaurus.

How groups of carnivores and herbivores both ended up using this same area, possibly at the same time, is one of the many mysteries of this tantalizing find, says Emma Nichols of Oxford University's Museum of Natural History. The footprints would originally have been made on a mud flat, so very close to a shallow inland sea, warm tropical environment. And the way that footprints like that get preserved is if they are rapidly buried by something else. Gary Johnson, a quarry worker driving a digger, was the first to spot the tracks,

although at the time, he says all he could tell was that his machine kept hitting odd-looking ridges in the ground. And when I got out and examined it, it looked like footprints. When you sit there, it was like I'm the first person to see them. Yeah, a bit of a tingly moment, really. Some of the footprints are almost big enough for the archaeologists to sit in, and they've made plaster casts and taken more than 20,000 photos of their discoveries, says Nichols of Oxford University.

I was overwhelmed by the size of the footprints themselves. You can just imagine these animals walking along. One theory is that some kind of storm blew through and dumped immense amounts of sediment on the footprints, preserving them. Scientists hope to be able to calculate how fast the dinosaurs were walking and crucially, maybe even figure out where they were walking to. Chris Brown, CBC News, London. Many Canadians come through the holidays exhausted. Lots of parties with maybe too much food and too many drinks. Many turn to detox regimens, hoping to reset and clean up.

But doctors have a warning. These quick fixes come with very little scientific evidence that they work. Jennifer Yoon reports. At his small shop kitchen in Toronto, Steve Sanna is making a smoothie. But not just any smoothie. He says this will detoxify your body. Inside the concoction, pineapples, aloe vera and herbs. Part of Sanna's three-day detox program of personalized juices and smoothies.

Promising to cleanse your organs and boost your health. All for $275. What the detox, our detox does, it'll clean and strengthen your liver. Santa says every January, his business gets a boost. But physicians like Toronto toxicologist Dr. David Urlink say so-called detox diets just aren't effective. These things don't do anything to healthy people. We have a liver and we have kidneys and those organs get rid of things for us. Part of the problem, he says, commonly marketed detox programs usually don't say what toxins exactly they're trying to get rid of.

Toxins generally refer to poisons that are produced by a living organism, and things that don't necessarily fall under that definition can still be very bad for you. Most things, if you consume them in too much excess, they can be harmful. Toronto liver specialist Dr. Jordan Felt says these diets might help insofar as it gets people to stop unhealthy behavior like overeating or binge drinking. Juices and smoothies might taste good and make you feel good, but the benefits stop there. And some regimens can even harm your health. We usually see a couple of people every year that have taken something, often for the purpose of detoxing or improving liver health or something, that actually causes liver injury. Dr. Feld says in some cases, it's hard to even figure out exactly what the person took,

because natural health products are not as tightly regulated as prescription drugs. His suggestion to reset after an indulgent holiday? Take it easy, slow down, don't drink so much, don't eat so much, maybe rest. That's probably the best type of detox. So the bad news, there's no silver bullet after a gluttonous holiday season. The good news, there are things you can do, like exercising more, drinking more water, getting a good night's sleep, and making better food choices to start off 2025 in better health. Jennifer Yoon, CBC News, Toronto. It's been a part of winter life in Scandinavia for generations. A good sweat in a sauna, often followed by a rush of cold water.

Nordic spas are gaining fans here in Canada and companies are cashing in. Paula Duhacik reports. 27-year-old Albert Banahini pulls a rope and empties a bucket of freezing cold water on his head. It's refreshing, especially when you're just coming out of the sauna. Banahini is at the soft launch of Calgary's newest Nordic spa, a type of facility that features a mix of saunas, hot tubs and cold pools. Whether you're a CEO or an athlete, it helps with recovery. Bryce Weeks owns the spa. He says the shock of going between hot and cold temperatures can reduce stress and boost circulation, a practice that appeals to health-conscious Canadians, many of them

millennials and Gen Zs. The wellness industry as a whole and the health and wellness industry is growing exponentially. The Nordic Spa trend isn't exactly new in Canada. Consultant Jennifer Finlay says the first ones opened in Quebec around 20 years ago. And then that has expanded both west and east. One of the most popular examples in western Canada is the Kananaskis Nordic Spa, a sprawling outdoor retreat about an hour outside Calgary. It opened in 2018. On a recent weekday morning, it was quickly filling up with customers like Sam Pedler.

Yeah, so this is the first time ever going to a spa. His friends coaxed him into taking the day off. We've been here for, what, 15 minutes I think so far, and I'm already convinced, so we'll be back again for sure. We didn't expect the demand that it had. CEO Ryan Pomeroy says his company has already expanded the spa once. He says another renovation is set to open next year. It's outstripped our initial expectations, that's for certain. Startup costs are high, and all those hot tubs and cold pools do take a lot of water and energy. But businesses can also command a high price from customers, with passes often starting at around $100 a day.

Consultant Peter Gaudet says companies can also save on another line item, labor. You don't necessarily need the employees to pamper people. You have a physical product that allows them to pamper themselves. But setting aside space to build that product can be met with pushback. One example is a planned spa on the former Ontario Place grounds along Toronto's waterfront. Critics like Norm DiPasquale say it's a bad use of the property. You know, is this a fad? I am extremely scept skeptical of the long-term viability of this business. The company behind the project disagrees and says there's plenty of research to support the business model.

Back in Alberta, executives like Pomeroy say they're also optimistic. And we're looking to expand our Nordic Swab business, both in Canada, you know Canada and in the United States. After all, life will always be stressful, meaning there's always a market for companies in the business of relaxation. Paula Duhacek, CBC News, Kananaskis, Alberta. Finally, in Spruce Grove, Alberta, the cat came back, but not the very next day. Instead, Sophie the calico cat was reunited with her family over the holidays after running away seven years ago. Glenn Stupar is Sophie's owner.

You've got to pinch yourself. Like, what do you mean? She's alive? Just because you kind of dismiss, unfortunately, you give up hope. Sophie had a whole life in her time away. She'd taken refuge in a car wash a few kilometres from her home and was known to locals as the car wash cat. Vanessa Freeman is with the community cats Edmonton.

Sophie really did touch a lot of people's hearts out there. And, you know, she had an older couple that was caring for her. They call themselves her grandparents. Sophie was looking a little ragged, so they brought her in for care and discovered her microchip. Stupar says Sophie was found on the one-year anniversary of his mother's death. And his family wonders if she did some kind of magic for them. The crazy thing in all this is that day we were actually talking about Sophie. It takes a lot for me to get put into a state of, like,

ingly, numb, shocky feel and that, and that did it. Sophie is back home and doing well. One other detail about this tale, Sophie was originally a Christmas present for Stupar's daughter. Stupar calls her return for the holidays the ultimate re-gift. Thank you for joining us.

This has been Your World Tonight for January 2 2, 2025. I'm Susan Bonner. Talk to you again. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.