Shintaro Ishihara, Brash Tokyo Governor, Quits, Launches National Party

On Dec. 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. All 259 passengers and crew were killed, plus another 11 died when the wreckage fell over their homes. Scottish police and FBI agents found that a bomb was concealed in a Toshiba radio cassette player, which had been placed in a Samsonite suitcase.

President Joe Biden is bestowing the second highest civilian medal on Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson — the lawmakers who led the congressional investigation into the violent Jan. 6, 2021, U. S. Capitol riot by Donald Trump’s supporters, and who Trump has said should be jailed. Biden will award the Presidential Citizens Medal to 20 people in a ceremony Thursday at the White House, including Americans who fought for marriage equality, a pioneer in treating wounded soldiers, and two of the president’s longtime friends, former Sens.

In 1989, the sociologist Ray Oldenburg cemented his status as required reading for hungover college freshmen when he coined the concept of “third places” in his book The Great Good Place. Third places, which are informal spots to gather outside of home and work for socializing, have been features of societies going back to antiquity, from Greek agora and Viennese cafés to barber shops and Burger King dining rooms.

BUDAPEST, Hungary — Ágnes Keleti, a Holocaust survivor and the oldest living Olympic medal winner, has died. She was 103. Keleti died Thursday morning in Budapest, the Hungarian state news agency reported. She was hospitalized in critical condition with pneumonia on Dec. 25. She won a total of 10 Olympic medals in gymnastics, including five golds, for Hungary at the 1952 Helsinki Games and the 1956 Melbourne Games.

NEW ORLEANS — A U. S. Army veteran who drove a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers in New Orleans, killing 15 people, had posted videos to social media hours before the carnage saying he was inspired by the Islamic State group and expressing a desire to kill, the president said. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The FBI said it was investigating early Wednesday’s attack in which the driver steered around a police blockade and slammed into revelers before being shot dead by police as a terrorist act and did not believe he acted alone. Investigators found guns and what appeared to be an improvised explosive device in the vehicle — which bore the flag of the Islamic State group — along with other explosive devices elsewhere in the city’s famed French Quarter. President Joe Biden said Wednesday evening that the FBI found the videos the driver posted to social media.

LAS VEGAS — Firework mortars and camp fuel canisters were found stuffed into the back of the Tesla Cybertruck that exploded outside President-elect Donald Trump’s Las Vegas hotel early Wednesday, killing a suspect inside the vehicle and sparking an intense investigation into possible terrorism. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police and Clark County Fire Department officials said that a person died inside the futuristic-looking pickup truck and seven people nearby suffered minor injuries. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] By late Wednesday afternoon, authorities were still working to get the body out of the vehicle and start processing the evidence inside.