LAS VEGAS (AP) — The highly decorated Army soldier inside a Tesla Cybertruck packed with fireworks that exploded outside Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas shot himself in the head just before detonation, authorities said Thursday. The explosion caused minor injuries to seven people but virtually no damage to the hotel. Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill said Matthew Livelsberger, a 37-year-old Green Beret, likely planned a more damaging attack but the steel-sided vehicle absorbed much of the force from the crudely built explosive. Damage from the blast was mostly limited to the interior of the truck because the explosion “vented out and up” and didn’t hit the Trump hotel doors just a few feet away, the sheriff said.

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BERLIN (Reuters) - Airports across Germany have been hit by an IT outage affecting federal police systems used to check incoming passengers, Bild newspaper reported on Friday, citing the police. “Our colleagues have to do a lot of things manually that the system used to do. We’re still managing to get it done at the moment,” said a police spokesperson responsible for Frankfurt airport, Germany’s busiest. Federal police were not immediately available for comment.

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WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland launched its presidency of the Council of the European Union on Friday mired in a diplomatic row with Hungary that underscored a deepening sense of political disunity across Europe just as it confronts a raft of major global challenges. Saddled with a sluggish economy, the EU is bracing for the return of Donald Trump to the White House this month on an “America First” platform and the possible imposition of U.S. tariffs on European exports. It also faces deteriorating trade relations with China and Russia’s grinding war in Ukraine, all at a time when the EU’s two leading powers, France and Germany, are distracted by domestic political upheaval.

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COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – Greenland’s Prime Minister Mute Egede emphasized his desire to pursue independence from Denmark, its former colonial ruler, during his New Year speech, marking a significant change in the rhetoric surrounding the Arctic island’s future. Egede’s speech, which comes on the heels of comments by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump expressing his wish for “ownership and control” of Greenland, also expressed a desire to strengthen Greenland’s cooperation with other countries. “It is about time that we ourselves take a step and shape our future, also with regard to who we will cooperate closely with, and who our trading partners will be,” he said.

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KYIV (Reuters) - Moldova faces a security crisis after tens of thousands of residents in the breakaway enclave of Transdniestria were cut off from Russian gas supply, Prime Minister Dorin Recean said on Friday. Flows of Russian gas via Ukraine which supplied central and eastern Europe were halted at the end of 2024 as Kyiv rejected doing further business with Moscow. Recean said Moldova would cover its energy needs with domestic production and imports but noted the separatist Transdniestria region had suffered a painful hit despite its ties with Moscow. “By jeopardizing the future of the protectorate it has backed for three decades in an effort to destabilize Moldova, Russia is revealing the inevitable outcome for all its allies – betrayal and isolation,” Recean said in a statement. “We treat this as a security crisis aimed at enabling the return of pro-Russian forces to power in Moldova and weaponizing our territory against Ukraine, with whom we share a 1,200 km border.”