• RedNote, or Xiaohongshu, has taken the West by storm.
• TikTok users have flocked to RedNote ahead of the looming ban on their app.
• The sudden influx of users has created a mass cultural exchange, but experts say it may not last.

For over a decade, China's social media has been living in its own world.

Without access to YouTube, Facebook, Google, or Instagram, the country instead relies on local apps such as BiliBili, Weibo, Baidu, and, more recently — Xiaohongshu.

Xiaohongshu, now known in English as RedNote, transformed overnight into a bridge between the realms of China's internet and America's, as a sudden wave of US users downloaded the app this week in anticipation of a national ban on TikTok.

RedNote's rise was relatively recent in the Chinese space, with the app only gaining significant mainstream traction from 2018 onward.

It's most often compared to Instagram, with a heavy focus on photos presented through a grid-like feed. In China, it's been largely defined as a popular app for beauty and lifestyle content, especially among young women.

Then came the looming TikTok ban and the Americans. By Monday, RedNote became the most downloaded iPhone app in the US. As of Thursday evening, it still holds the top spot.

The sudden surge in interest in RedNote comes as TikTok inches closer to its divest-or-ban deadline on January 19. The Senate passed a law in April that would require TikTok to stop operating in the US if it didn't divest itself from its Chinese-based owner, ByteDance.

Last week, TikTok appealed to the Supreme Court for an emergency injunction to pause the divestment deadline. The court is expected to rule on TikTok's fate this week.

New US users, calling themselves "TikTok Refugees," flooded RedNote with memes and introduction videos. In turn, their Chinese counterparts uploaded welcome posts and guides on how to use Chinese online slang. Some even asked for help with their English homework.

Cultural exchange on a mass scale

It's a mass cultural exchange on an unprecedented scale.

International users typically have little incentive or opportunity to dive into Chinese social media apps, which cater to local audiences and are often locked behind strict user requirements that align with Beijing's government standards.

Weibo, for example, requires all users to register with their full names, and the app displays their location and gender to other users.

Even TikTok, founded by Chinese company Bytedance, is separate from China's version of the app, Douyin.

Cross-border interactions on RedNote have been mostly friendly, at a time when US-China tensions have dominated global politics.

"It's so amazing to have you here," said one Chinese user in a viral post. "For so long, we haven't been able to connect or talk to each other like this. But now we finally can, and it feels so special."

His video, titled "American friends please stay here," received over 174,000 likes.

Some users began hosting "cultural exchange" livestream audio chats, inviting young American and Chinese people to discuss their lives and befriend each other. One such livestream, seen by Business Insider, was watched by 70,000 users, with hundreds tuning in at a time.

Too early to tell how RedNote will impact US-China relations

Researchers and academics who study US-China relations told BI they're watching the space with interest, but that it's still too early to say how the RedNote migration might play out.

"I think it's likely true that many Chinese are interacting with Americans for the first time," said Stanley Rosen, a professor of political science at the University of Southern California's US-China Institute.

Rosen said China's government might initially be pleased by the influx of American users to RedNote, given how Beijing has criticized the impending ban on TikTok. Congressional leaders who voted to pass the divest-or-ban law against ByteDance had cited concerns about Chinese ownership.

But Rosen added that letting Chinese and American users mingle en masse could eventually disrupt Beijing's careful governance of its online platforms. For instance, a Chinese person's complaints about low pay could be met with well-intentioned — yet potentially contentious — replies from Americans, who might suggest forming a union or going on strike, Rosen said.

American users are still subject to Chinese rules on RedNote. For example, two writers from the entertainment news site The Wrap reported on Wednesday that they uploaded a post about the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests — a heavily censored topic on the Chinese internet — and found that it was taken down within five minutes.

Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, told BI that it's unlikely that any friendly interactions on RedNote would impact US-China relations.

"The tensions between these countries are based on very long-term problems," Wu said.

"I think this sort of passion will die very soon," he added.

RedNote's popularity may not last

In fact, RedNote's newfound popularity in the West could just end up being a temporary phenomenon.

Natalie Pang, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore's department of communications and new media, told BI that such massive user migrations from one platform to another haven't always been sustainable.

"Many years ago, when WhatsApp announced certain features on their platform, people also left WhatsApp and migrated to Signal, but those migrations were not sustained," Pang said.

Platforms are only able to retain these new users if their network moves along with them, she added.

"We have to understand that these 'TikTok Refugees' are moving to Xiaohongshu as part of a protest against the TikTok ban. So if we understand this move as part of a protest, then I think we'll see more sustained migration toward the platform if interest in the protest continues," Pang said.

That said, TikTok may not be out of the game just yet.

The social media platform may get some reprieve from President-elect Donald Trump, who is set to take office on January 20, a day after the divestment deadline passes.

TikTok CEO Shou Chew met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago last month and plans to attend Trump's inauguration.

Trump had pushed for a ban on TikTok during his first term, but has since reversed his position on the platform. The president-elect filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court on December 27, asking the court to pause the deadline so that he could come up with a political resolution.

"You know, I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok," Trump told reporters at a press conference last month.

On Wednesday, Trump's pick for national security advisor, Mike Waltz, said in an interview with Fox News that Trump would "find a way to preserve" TikTok.

"He is a dealmaker. I don't want to get ahead of our executive orders, but we're going to create the space to put that deal in place," Waltz said.

• Stefan Vorontsov is a Ukrainian volunteer who secretly coaches those who want to leave occupied Ukraine.
• He told Business Insider what it's like to evacuate and prepare for scrutiny from border authorities.
• He said Ukrainians can get interrogated for six hours at the border checkpoint.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Stefan Vorontsov, a Ukrainian who fled Russian-occupied Nova Kakhovka in early 2022. His organization, Humanity, has helped more than 6,000 Ukrainians leave southern and eastern Ukraine.

Vorontsov is trying to raise awareness of the situation at the border, and he limited his interview to information that he said wouldn't compromise evacuees' safety. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Ukrainians who want to leave Russian occupation have only one path: Russia itself.

It's too dangerous to cross the front line, so we must go through either Crimea or Rostov-on-Don. Each one has a border checkpoint that gives Ukrainians access to Russia, but they are incredibly difficult to pass through.

The Russian border authorities are constantly screening people to catch pro-Ukraine partisans or punish those with family in the Ukrainian forces. One slip-up may mean you go to prison or never leave.

When a Ukrainian evacuee makes contact with us, we give them a "legend." It's the fake story we must create about why they want to enter Russia, about their families and national identity, and about their past.

For example, sick people can say they want to visit a Russian hospital, and families can say they want to go to the Black Sea and chill at the beach.

It's a lot harder for young Ukrainian men, especially those who are flagged by Russia for making pro-Ukraine posts online. For these people, we have to make sure their legend is strong.

In most cases, I use Telegram's "secret chat" function to message an evacuee carefully. I have to be delicate with what I tell them because I know that Russia may be able to read every word I write.

The Russians search everything about you

There are many reasons Ukrainians did not flee before the Russian army arrived. Many are sick. Many have children. Even though the war is on your doorstep, on your streets, it's so difficult to make the decision to permanently leave your home.

Over the years, I've learned that 95% of an evacuation's success depends on preparation before the person steps out the door.

The most important thing Ukrainians must do is clean up their phones.

The Russians check everything at the border checkpoint, and they're always looking for people with pro-Ukrainian views.

Evacuees must prepare that they could be interviewed for six hours at the border checkpoint, where the guards will meticulously vet everything about them: their phones, their social-media posts, and their search history.

Anything related to Ukraine can implicate you. Ukrainian words, text messages from family members, photos of the Ukrainian flag, and even the colors of blue and yellow might land you in trouble. The guards can see if you liked or subscribed to a pro-Ukraine social media channel.

Maps are especially important to delete. The Russians do not like maps, and they think you will use them for sending coordinates.

Photos of buildings or city locations can also be a trap because they might be labeled as evidence of Russian positions.

The Russians will look through your phone contacts and call history and try to find numbers from their database of pro-Ukraine people or Ukrainian soldiers. Even if it is an unknown number to you, you can still be caught if it's related to someone the Russians don't like.

We also consider the type of phone our evacuees use. If they use an Android phone, it's very easy for the Russians to recover a lot of their deleted data, like messages and photos from the last two or three years.

To help their case, we sometimes tell evacuees to add a bit of Russian flavor to their digital history by following certain Telegram channels or subscribing to pro-Russia YouTubers.

Surviving the checkpoint

Our organization gives free evacuation to those who want to escape, and we try to plan every step for them. We arrange for licensed bus drivers to take them to Crimea or Rostov-on-Don, and if they can't make it themselves to the gathering point, we pay for taxis, food, or hostel stays.

But we have to compete with Russian drivers, who come from the east and offer desperate Ukrainians travel into Russia for $400 a trip. We pay our drivers less than $50 per person.

At the border, the interviewers will try to provoke the evacuees. They will ask questions to make Ukrainians angry and catch them slipping if they support Ukraine.

This is where an evacuee's legend is so important.

If, for example, their brother is in the Ukrainian military, they should never tell the Russians that. They should try to talk about how they hate war and pretend to be as neutral as possible. Sometimes, it's useful to say that they are tired of the Ukrainian government.

The consequences of failing the checkpoint clearance can be great. You can be stuck in occupied Ukraine. Or you can go to prison. Or they can send you to a deep part of Russia without telling anyone.

Dozens of my friends, colleagues, and evacuees have disappeared while making this journey, and I don't know where they are.

Old people, children, and the sick often have an easier time, but it's becoming a lot harder to leave occupied Ukraine. When I left Ukraine in early 2022, it was 40 days after the Russians took Nova Kakhovka.

Back then, the Russians thought they would take our country quickly. They found photos and information on my phone that revealed I was pro-Ukraine, but somehow I managed to lie my way through to Georgia. Now, they try to break all Ukrainians, even old grannies and mothers.

Since January 2024, Russia has also required all Ukrainians to get a Russian passport for permission to cross the border. That's made our work a lot more difficult, and it introduced new complications. Boys and men, even those as young as 15, get pressured to join the Russian army when they apply for a passport.

If a Ukrainian can overcome all of these obstacles and pass the border checkpoint, they can travel to Moscow. From there, they can take a train to Belarus or Europe and eventually return to unoccupied Ukraine.

The entire process takes about four days. As for myself, I had to pass a second checkpoint and go through another four-hour interview on my way to Georgia, where I stayed for six months. Now, I'm in Western Europe, helping to coordinate evacuations.

We don't get paid for what we do. In 2024, my organization helped to evacuate 360 Ukrainians, including 106 children, for a total of $23,500. We also evacuated a horse and dozens of dogs and cats.

We fundraise for train tickets, bus rides, and other evacuee expenses. We have a mission — to save the Ukrainian people, to save the Ukrainian nation. This mission is our driving force, our fuel.

• All of North Korea's troops in Kursk could get wiped out by April, given current losses, a think tank said.
• Analysts cited casualty reports from Ukraine and South Korea, estimating 92 losses per day for Pyongyang.
• Still, the estimated 12,000 troops sent by North Korea are a small fraction of its total military strength.

If North Korea's current casualty rate holds, it would take three more months for Pyongyang to lose all of its estimated 12,000 troops deployed to fight Ukraine, per an estimate by researchers from the Institute for the Study of War.

Analysts at the Washington-based think tank cited casualty reports from Ukraine and South Korea, as well as Russian military bloggers who said that North Korean troops were actively participating in significant combat in December.

"North Korean have therefore likely suffered roughly 92 casualties per day since starting to participate in significant fighting in early December 2024," they wrote in an assessment published on Thursday.

The think tank said that "the entirety of this North Korean contingent in Kursk Oblast may be killed or wounded in roughly 12 weeks (about mid-April 2025) should North Korean forces continue to suffer similarly high casualty rates in the future."

The analysts wrote that Pyongyang's losses will likely involve more wounded troops than those killed in action, which they said is "typical or armed conflict."

"And it is unclear if or when injured North Korean soldiers return to combat," the think tank's assessment said.

A South Korean lawmaker, Lee Sung-kwon, said on Monday that Seoul's intelligence service estimated that about 300 North Korean soldiers had been killed in action in Kursk, with another 2,700 wounded.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in early January that North Korean losses in Kursk had reached up to 3,800 wounded or killed.

"12,000 has arrived. Today, 3,800 killed or wounded," he told podcaster Lex Fridman.

The US also gave its estimate for North Korean casualties in December, saying that Pyongyang likely suffered 1,000 killed or wounded in its first week of engaging in significant combat.

"We now assess that North Korean forces are conducting massed — massed, dismounted assaults against Ukrainian positions in Kursk," White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said on December 27.

Russia's defense ministry press team did not respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

Western and South Korean intelligence officials have said that the roughly 12,000 North Korean troops deployed in Kursk are likely from the Storm Corps.

The elite branch of soldiers is considered North Korea's version of special forces, and estimates have varied as to how many are fielded by Pyongyang. One of the highest counts, by South Korea's Defense Ministry in 2022, put the Storm Corps at up to 200,000 strong.

Questions remain as to whether Kim Jong Un may send more troops to Russia's aid if manpower on the frontline runs dry. Quantity has been vital for both Ukraine and Russia — from troops to artillery to ammo — as the war looks to drag into its fourth year.

North Korea has an estimated 1.2 million soldiers in its armed forces, though they have barely any combat experience. Pyongyang is known to instead often rely on its troops for building infrastructure projects.

Still, Zelenskyy warned in early January of the possibility that North Korea could send up to half a million troops to aid Russia. But Pyongyang isn't giving its troops away for free — Kim is receiving food, technological expertise, and economic assistance from Russia in exchange.

Ukraine and South Korea reported in November that Russia was also paying Kim a stipend for each North Korean soldier deployed in Kursk. Seoul's intelligence said at the time that the cost was about $2,000 per man.

• A new Pentagon report said its troops earn more than most of their full-time civilian counterparts.
• It said that after one year of service, the top 70th percentile of enlisted earners get about $1,000 a week.
• But that figure includes far more than base pay, which Congress recently voted to raise significantly.

A Pentagon report said its troops often earn more than their civilian counterparts and would stand to lose out if they were to leave the service.

"Our military compensation package is strongly competitive with the civilian labor market," it wrote in its review for military compensation, which is released every four years.

The report comes just a month after Congress voted to raise basic pay for US troops by 4.5% across the board, citing concerns about recruitment difficulties and food insecurity among soldiers. Junior enlisted troops, who hold rank equivalents of E-1 to E-4, received an even bigger raise of 14.5%.

Many of these troops were earning less than $30,000 a year in basic pay, and the bill passed in December aimed to raise their salaries to that level.

However, the Pentagon uses a different metric that extends beyond basic pay, which it calls regular military compensation. This includes benefits such as tax advantages and housing and food allowances.

By that measure, the Defense Department's new report found that "military pay among Junior Enlisted Personnel is higher than 90th percentile of earnings for civilians with similar education and experience."

"Basic pay is a blunt and costly instrument," the report said. "And should be used only when there are system-wide problems, such as widespread retention and recruiting shortfalls, which cannot be solved more efficiently with other policy instruments."

Its findings relied largely on a benchmark that compared two things: the 70th percentile of compensation for enlisted soldiers and the 70th percentile earnings for full-time civilian workers with the same education.

The report said that for enlisted soldiers with one year of service, the top 70th percentile received about $1,000 a week in regular military compensation.

Meanwhile, the report listed the 70th percentile of civilian earners as needing 10 years of work experience to get $1,000 a week.

The Pentagon said that for enlisted soldiers with 10 years of service, the top 70th percentile of earners gets $1,500 a week.

On the other hand, the 70th percentile of officer earnings stands at $1,500 a week for those with one year of service, going up to nearly $2,500 a week for those with 10 years of service.

It compared those earnings to the 70th percentile of civilians with college degrees, whom the report said consistently earn about $200 to $300 less a week.

Overall, the report said that enlisted personnel earn more than 83 out of 100 civilian workers with the same education and experience, and officers earn more than 76 out of 100 civilian workers with the same background.

The Pentagon mostly recommended "quality-of-life" improvements instead of a pay bump. It asked the military to look more into expanding its retirement savings programs, providing better childcare access for serving parents, and asking its personnel to move less often to avoid hurting the careers of soldiers' spouses.

In its budget overview for the 2025 financial year ending September 30, the Defense Department said troop pay and benefits make up about 30% of its total budget request for $850 billion.

In the new report, the Pentagon said its current pay structure is mostly working.

"Recent retention is strong, recruiting has significantly improved, and favorable comparisons between military and civilian pay suggests that levels of basic pay are more than adequate," it said.

• As Malaysia enters a period of political stability, its new dream is to become a regional tech hub.
• Investments and startups are flowing into the country, but it's still early days.
• Despite its last tech mega-project failing, insiders told BI they see a winning plan this time.

Kean Wei Wong's hands snapped from the wheel as we hit the highway in the midday rain.

His sedan, a Malaysian-made Proton S70, kept cruising on its own, flowing with the traffic snaking into Kuala Lumpur.

The bespectacled 28-year-old, a former insurance salesman, was taking me for a spin of what he and two college friends were selling: a plug-and-play dashcam that uses AI to drive your family car.

Their company is Kommu, one of the 4,000 Malaysian startups the federal government hopes will form a key pillar of a new Asian tech boom. As the nation exits an era of political turmoil, founders like Kean say they're hopeful.

"The younger generations are stepping up," he said as he crossed his arms, letting the car do the work. "We're no longer thinking of survival. It's more like we're in an innovation phase."

Born from years of tweaking open-source code, Kean's software controls limited steering and acceleration. It's nothing that EV makers like Tesla aren't already selling, but he and his buddies custom-engineered their product, made with Chinese phone parts, for Malaysia's national auto brands.

Their pitch is that for $800, the owner of a $10,000 hatchback can plug in Kean's dashcam via two cables and get partial self-driving.

Kean is unsure if their product is legal, though he said they haven't seen trouble from authorities and secured prize money from a government-affiliated competition.

"It's like a gray area. Malaysia isn't a very regulated country yet," he said. "That's why there are opportunities for startups like us."

Off to a good start

A political reckoning saw Malaysia cycle through five prime ministers in six years, until Anwar Ibrahim, the current prime minister, squeezed through the November 2022 national polls through a coalition.

As the dust settles, more than a dozen local tech insiders told Business Insider that Malaysia feels like it's on the cusp of a new chapter. Anwar champions the idea of the next era in the nation's economy, rallying his government for an all-out push to develop Southeast Asia's version of Silicon Valley.

The prime minister described Malaysia's new effort as "a clear break from the past," saying in May that the country had missed opportunities for tech investments in previous years.

Malaysia is banking on more than just stability. It commands vast reserves of land and water, useful for facilities like data centers run by Intel, Nvidia, and ByteDance. US-China tensions and the Ukraine war brought a wave of investors looking to park funds in new havens. And Malaysia's popular but spatially constrained neighbor, Singapore, is contending with surging living and business costs.

Anwar's government is touting Malaysia as an appealing alternative, announcing a plan in April to extend financial support, visa access, and job benefits to foreign startups moving in. State money, including the sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional Berhad, is offering $27.6 billion for all local ventures over the next five years.

"It's different. Because this time, the government isn't doing too much," said Tan Eng Tong, a startup advisor who runs an education center for tech workers in Malaysia. He spent the 1990s building his career in Silicon Valley with Seagate and Hewlett-Packard.

Tan believes Malaysia's last tech mega-project in the 1990s was the result of a government trying to force a revolution. Then-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad cleared land for global companies to settle down, dreaming of transforming greater Kuala Lumpur into an IT powerhouse.

But many of the prized multinationals eventually used their new Malaysian bases for low-cost labor in manufacturing and outsourcing. When a BI reporter visited Cyberjaya — a development near the capital meant to house the world's hottest startups — in 2022, the largely residential area was filled with abandoned business hubs and quiet malls.

5,000 startups by 2025

Now, the country is trying a new approach. Its semiconductor industry, largely based in the state of Penang, already houses Intel and Texas Instruments. Officials have announced a plan to bring in $100 billion in additional investment for the sector, without specifying a deadline.

Anwar is continuing the prior administration's goal of producing 5,000 local startups and five unicorns by 2025.

Norman Matthieu Vanhaecke, the Belgian-Malay CEO of Cradle Fund, the government's agency supporting early-stage firms, said the country now has about 4,000 startups. The overwhelming majority are located in the capital and the state that surrounds it, Selangor.

But Vanhaecke says Malaysia's true near-term goal is to get on the map and have Kuala Lumpur join Tokyo, Seoul, and Singapore on global lists like Startup Genome's ecosystem ranking.

Singapore and Indonesia have enjoyed the lion's share of venture capital activity in Southeast Asia. In 2023, they secured 651 and 165 deals, respectively, according to data from the investment database PitchBook.

Malaysia recorded 71 deals that year, and the total annual value of its deals has never reached $1 billion, per PitchBook. The total value of deals in Singapore has eclipsed $9 billion annually in the last three years.

The Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation, a government agency tasked with attracting tech investment, is trying to give foreign startups a "soft-landing zone" in Malaysia through coworking spaces.

The agency told BI that since 2016, it has partnered with 23 locations that have serviced about 600 startups. These firms are promised low business costs and potential access to government and private sector financing.

Malaysia opens its state funds to startups

Noor Amy Ismail, an analyst asked by the Malaysian government to assess the local VC scene in 2023, said she studied South Korea's 2014 tech drive for her recommendations. There, government funds set the stage, then petered off as private investors poured in.

Amy advised Malaysian officials to do the same.

"That is what our venture capital road map is trying to address, to get more corporate investors on board to support," she said.

State and national funds, which have long dominated investing in Malaysia, have been opening their coffers to startups.

One founder, Jimmy How, said state executives were far more risk-averse 10 years ago when he started his affiliate marketing company.

"Back then, guys like Khazanah wouldn't even look at startups like us," How said. Khazanah, Malaysia's main sovereign wealth fund, earmarked $1.3 billion in 2023 for startups and venture capital over the next five years.

How's company received an investment from Penjana Kapital, a national venture program, during a Series C funding round in 2023.

Gokula Krishnan, the founder of Vircle, a financial literacy app for kids, said his firm received a seed investment from Khazanah in 2023. It helped convince him to stay in Malaysia instead of leaving for Singapore.

"Talent is relatively cheap. Available office space is cheap. Cost of living is supercheap, even compared to Vietnam or Indonesia," he said about Malaysia. "I don't see any other country in Southeast Asia that has this mix."

No more 'shit-hole state of mind'

Khailee Ng, an energetic Malaysian with a mane of black hair flowing down to his shoulders, is perhaps the biggest name in Kuala Lumpur's venture capital scene. He's a managing partner with the US venture firm 500 Global, which has seeded at least six unicorns in Southeast Asia since 2014.

Malaysia, burdened by a history of infighting and policy reversals, has for too long wallowed in a self-defeating attitude — a "shit-hole state of mind," he said.

But Ng said he's seen far less of that among entrepreneurs in the last two years. "They're getting funding, they're kinda seeing that things are working. I think a lot of tech startups are starting to be open to the idea that something good will happen," he said.

His team analyzed 198 local startups from January 2023 to June 2024 and found that 33 were profitable, with at least 20% annual growth and $5 million in revenue.

Of that group, 11 had over 60% growth and $10 million in annual revenue.

"I was shocked," Ng said, adding that 500 Global has since invested in five of those 11 firms.

Stronger currency boosts purchasing power

In Puchong, a town about 10 miles south of Kuala Lumpur, entrepreneurs Amirul Merican and Chor Chee Hoe were preparing just after dawn to meet their startup's new landlord. They're looking to move into a factory to expand production at their firm, Qarbotech, by 50 times.

In a garage space on the outskirts of the capital, their workers hauled tubs of grounded carbon to be heated into a patented liquid via a dozen or so kitchen microwaves.

That liquid is their product, a spray that Amirul and Chor say boosts crop yields for rice paddies and vegetables through improved photosynthesis.

Amirul said the last two years of political stability were a boon for their expansion plans.

Malaysia's stronger currency has made purchasing American equipment cheaper — like a giant industrial-level microwave they bought to replace their kitchen appliances.

The ringgit has strengthened by over 3% against the dollar over the past year, peaking with a 13% gain against the dollar in September.

"That's crazy," Amirul said of the gains in September, when they bought the microwave. "We have a stronger currency, more international companies looking at Malaysia."

Quelling the brain drain

One of Malaysia's long-term challenges is quelling a brain drain to Singapore, Australia, and the West.

More than 1.1 million Malaysians lived in Singapore in 2022, about three-quarters of whom were skilled or semi-skilled workers.

Jayant Menon, a senior fellow who studies Asian trade and investment at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, said if Malaysia does not fix issues like its talent exodus, the tech push could become a collection of short-term investments spilling over from the US-China trade war.

Amy, the analyst asked to assess Malaysia's tech scene, said the government should work on bringing middle-class female talent back into the workforce.

About 53% of Malaysian STEM graduates in 2021 were women, far higher than the global average of 29%.

"But the moment they enter the workforce, that number drops to about 43 to 44%," Amy said of how many working STEM professionals are women. Middle-income Malaysians are often under pressure to care for both their children and retiring parents, and many women choose to take on that role since they earn 33% less than men in the country, she added.

"Naturally, the women will stay at home," she said. "But we have all those women who we put on scholarships stuck at home."

Malaysia could also struggle with educational gaps for its future workforce.

Nearly a quarter of Malaysia's 17-year-old students failed math in the 2023 national exams, while another 28.9% scored a D or E grade, according to the Education Ministry.

The country has been grappling with inconsistent education policies, debating whether to offer science and math classes in English, Malay, or other mother tongues for the past two decades. Singapore's education and government are primarily in English, a decision that helped make the city-state a business hub.

On the global front, Malaysia must also overcome a hit to its reputation from a major 2015 corruption scandal, in which officials funneled $4.5 billion from its sovereign wealth fund 1MDB into their own pockets.

Kean, the founder who's building self-driving software, is aware of those potential pitfalls. But he said that for entrepreneurs like him, the only option for now is to keep going.

Since April 2022, Kommu says it has sold 400 dashcams, mostly to car enthusiasts. The company's next phase of development is creating software that can navigate to destinations and know when to exit highways.

His team is unsure where Kommu can take its dashcam or where their exits lie. But he hopes that a way up could come from local automakers noticing their work and reaching out.

"I think any entrepreneur will tell you that the best time to start is now," he said.

Correction, January 16, 12:45 p.m. SGT: An earlier version of this story misspelled a source's name. He is Kean Wei Wong, not Kean Wei Kong.

• Israel's government moved closer Friday to approving a cease-fire deal struck with Hamas.
• Officials in Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet approved a deal, which still requires wider approval from the government.
• Netanyahu's office said the deal was on track to be finalized by Sunday.

Israel on Friday moved closer to ratifying a cease-fire and hostage release deal it struck with Hamas that would end 15 months of fighting in Gaza.

The security cabinet of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave its approval on Friday afternoon local time.

The next step is for the wider Israeli government to give approval to the deal.

Netanyahu's office said Friday that it expected it would be possible for the deal to be enacted on Sunday, with the release of some hostages and an end to fighting in Gaza. A White House official said Thursday that they are confident the deal will move forward as planned.

Hopes for a deal to end the fighting and free the hostages

The agreement, expected to be a major breakthrough in the Middle East conflict, is meant to halt the bloodshed and facilitate the release of some of the remaining hostages.

"At long last, I can announce a cease-fire and a hostage deal has been reached between Israel and Hamas," President Joe Biden said in a televised announcement Wednesday afternoon.

US officials helped broker the deal in Qatar.

In a written statement, he said the deal would stop the fighting in Gaza, surge much-needed humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians, and reunite hostages with their families. Hours later, Israeli strikes reportedly killed dozens of Palestinians in Gaza.

On October 7, 2023, as part of Hamas-led terror attacks against Israel, Hamas and other militants kidnapped 251 people from Israel and killed around 1,200 across the country.

Hamas and its allies still hold 98 hostages, an Israeli government spokesperson said Tuesday, though at least 34 of them are thought to have died in captivity.

How the cease-fire agreement could be implemented

The deal, if formally approved by Israel's government, is set to include multiple phases.

The first stage is expected to include 33 hostages — most of whom are alive — released on "humanitarian" grounds, an Israeli spokesperson told reporters at a briefing. This will consist of women, children, older people, as well as hostages who are sick.

When asked how many Palestinian prisoners Israel was willing to release in exchange, the spokesperson said that the country "is prepared to pay a heavy price, in the hundreds."

The Israeli military confirmed that it's preparing for the return of the hostages. On Wednesday, Qatar's prime minister said the deal would go into effect Sunday.

Biden, flanked by Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, had told reporters that the first phase of the deal included a full cease-fire. If ratified, it's expected to last six weeks and includes the withdrawal of Israeli forces from all the populated areas of Gaza.

A second phase, which is still being worked out, would see a "permanent end" to the war, Biden said.

The president added that this phase would include the release of the remainder of the living hostages, with the rest of the Israeli forces withdrawing from Gaza.

In the third phase, any remains of hostages who have been killed would be returned to their families, and a major reconstruction plan would be set in motion for Gaza.

To date, 117 hostages have been returned alive to Israel, including 105 freed as part of a prisoner exchange in November 2023.

The cease-fire deal intends to end the brutal conflict, which has seen large areas of Gaza destroyed and left the militant group severely battered. The Hamas-run health ministry says Israel's military offensive in the coastal enclave has killed more than 46,000 people. It does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Negotiations for a cease-fire deal have been ongoing for many months, but news that Israel and Hamas were close to reaching an agreement emerged earlier this week, hinting that, at last, there could be movement.

President-elect Donald Trump said his victory in November directly contributed to the deal coming to fruition. "We have achieved so much without even being in the White House," he wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform.

• Finland said a Russia-linked oil tanker was close to wreaking havoc on its undersea cables.
• Its president said that officials intervened about 12 minutes before the damage got "much worse."
• The tanker is accused of being part of a Russian "shadow fleet" sabotaging European infrastructure.

Finnish President Alexander Stubb said on Tuesday that his country had stopped the crew of a Russia-linked oil tanker just minutes before it caused catastrophic damage to undersea cables in the Baltic Sea.

"Had it continued for another 12 minutes, the carnage would have been much worse than the four basic cables that were there," Stubb told reporters at this week's Baltic-focused NATO summit in Helsinki.

The tanker, the Eagle S, was seized in late December as Finland probed recent damage to its Estlink-2 power line, one of two vital cables carrying electricity in the Baltic Sea.

Four data cables were also severed.

Finnish investigators have accused the Eagle S crew of trying to sabotage the cables by dragging the ship's anchor for miles along the seabed.

The Finnish head of the investigation, Risto Lohi, told Reuters on Tuesday that the Eagle S would likely also have attempted sabotage on the other power cable, the Estlink-1, had police not boarded the vessel.

"There would have been an almost immediate danger that other cables or pipes related to our critical underwater infrastructure could have been damaged," said Lohi, who is the chief of Finland's National Bureau of Investigation.

On Tuesday, Stubb said that Finland's security process for protecting the cables started with the private company overseeing them. If a cable is severed, the firm would alert the authorities, who then try to find possible ships around the location of the damage.

"Once that happens, you identify the ship and contact the ship. Number four, you stop the ship," Stubb said.

Stubb added that Finnish authorities would compel the ship to enter Finnish waters, where officers could then legally board the vessel.

That process is set to change now. European members of NATO announced at the summit that they would launch a new program, called the "Baltic Sentry," to collectively patrol near Baltic Sea infrastructure.

The surveillance program involves frigates, maritime aircraft, and "a small fleet of naval drones," said NATO's secretary-general, Mark Rutte, at the summit.

The investigation into the Eagle S is of particular significance to the European Union because it's suspected for years that Russia has been intentionally trying to covertly damage Western undersea infrastructure. Other cables, such as two fiber-optic data cables running between Finland and Germany, were cut last year.

Though the Eagle S is registered in the Cook Islands, European officials say it's tied to Russia because it was carrying 35,000 tons of unleaded gasoline loaded in Russian ports.

They have accused the ship of being part of a Russian "shadow fleet," or a network of vessels with owners registered outside Russia that are actually carrying sanctioned Russian oil.

Russia has denied being involved in any way with such sabotage. The Russian Foreign Ministry did not respond to a comment request sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

• A Chinese social media app called Xiaohongshu is one of the biggest winners from a looming TikTok ban.
• It's so popular in the US that Chinese users have started a new hashtag to welcome Americans.
• The cultural exchange frenzy has birthed posts of people asking for help with English homework, among other requests.

A Chinese social media platform has grown so popular in the US that it's this week's most downloaded iPhone app — and it's become the site of a sudden East-Meets-West cultural exchange.

Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, hit the top spot on the US Apple store's ranking this week as a divest-or-ban law threatens to shut off American access to TikTok.

The app, commonly referred to as China's version of Instagram, has been flooded with posts from Chinese users greeting the influx of US newcomers.

One post titled "American please help me" went viral on Monday and received over 10,000 comments after its poster, from Zhejiang, requested help with their English homework.

Other popular posts also featured users, who listed their location as being in the US, offering their assistance for Chinese users' homework.

"Ask me any questions! I can help with your English homework, or answer questions about America (Texas). Thank you for welcoming us TikTok refugees," one post read. Several commenters uploaded photos of English-language worksheets in response.

The surge in American users on Chinese apps has also led to a rise in the hashtag #TikTokRefugee on Xiaohongshu, with dozens of Chinese creators posting guides on how to use the platform. The hashtag itself has been viewed over 64 million times, according to data seen by Business Insider.

"If you see a video that's downright awesome, just comment 6 or 66 or 666," said a cowboy hat-toting user, Big Tooth Chinese Redneck, in one viral video, referencing a Chinese internet slang term.

The sudden interest in Chinese social media platforms comes as TikTok continues to challenge the divest-or-ban law that the Senate passed in April. According to the law, TikTok will have to stop operating in the US on January 19 if its Chinese-based owner, Bytedance, doesn't sell the app.

The divest-and-ban law was passed amid widespread security concerns that the Chinese government could access user data if Bytedance continued to own the platform. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew told The Wall Street Journal in 2023 that such concerns are unfounded since the company would work with Oracle to store user data in the US.

TikTok argued its case with the Supreme Court on Friday, saying it will "go dark" in January if the court doesn't extend its divestment deadline. The court is expected to rule on the company's fate this week.

There's a lot on the line for TikTok now — it lost a challenge to the law in December when it brought the case before a panel of three judges from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

In December, President-elect Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court to pause the law until after his inauguration. Trump is set to take office on January 20.

Allowing TikTok to operate in the US is a reversal of Trump's policy position on the company. Trump pushed for a TikTok ban in 2020 when he was still president. But more recently, the president-elect told reporters in December that he had a "warm spot" in his heart for TikTok.

Still, TikTok's troubles have brought unexpected benefits to platforms like Xiaohongshu and Lemon8, which both surged to the top two spots on Apple app store rankings. Lemon8 is also owned by Bytedance.

Meagan Loyst, founder of the investor collective Gen Z VCs, told Business Insider on Monday that users were flocking to these platforms to protest the government's planned TikTok ban.

"It really is just retaliation towards the government in the simplest way, but in a way that feels very native to Gen Z," Loyst said.

Representatives for TikTok and Xiaohongshu did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Russia's state-owned gas giant is mulling a sweeping cut to its managing staff in St. Petersburg.
• A letter from Gazprom's board to its CEO suggested layoffs of 40% for its headquarters amid "challenges."
• The letter said wages among managers had risen to nearly $500 million a year.

Russian energy giant Gazprom is considering a 40% cut to its headquarters staff after posting its first loss in 24 years, according to a letter from one of its board members to the firm's CEO.

The letter, first reported by St. Petersburg-based outlet 47News on Monday, proposed that the central office head count be reduced from 4,100 to 2,500 people. It was dated December 23, 2024.

A Gazprom spokesperson confirmed the letter's authenticity with Agence France Presse and the state media outlet TASS.

In the proposal, Elena Ilyukhina, the board's deputy chairperson, wrote that wages for Gazprom managers had risen several times in the last two decades to about $486.5 million a year.

"The challenges facing the Gazprom group require a reduction in the time required for preparing and taking decisions," she wrote to CEO Alexei Miller.

Ilyukhina added that the company could instead rely on "automation and digitalization" for roles like accounting and planning.

47News wrote that Ilyukhina also estimated a 40% cut would align Gazprom's management-to-employee ratio with that of Rosatom, a state-owned nuclear energy firm.

Gazprom said in June 2024 that it had 498,000 employees for 2023. In comparison, Rosatom's director general told Russian leader Vladimir Putin in October that his company planned to have about 400,000 employees in 2024.

Ilyukhina added that some money saved in the proposed job cuts could be diverted to offering new performance bonuses for remaining employees.

Gazprom Group, which is mostly owned by the Russian state, posted its first annual loss in 24 years in May as wartime Western sanctions pushed its European customers to sever ties with Russian energy.

The company announced a net loss of 629 billion rubles, worth about $6.84 billion at the time, for the year 2023. It last suffered a net loss in 1999.

The gas producer has continued to face headwinds, with its flagship company announcing a $3.2 billion loss for the nine-month period ending in September 2024.

It's unclear if Miller has approved the layoffs suggested by Ilyukhina, and TASS reported that the company declined to comment beyond confirming that the letter is real.

Gazprom's press service did not respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

Russia had for years been a major supplier of natural gas to the European Union until Moscow's invasion of Ukraine prompted most of the region to start weaning itself off Russian energy. The transition has taken years, with the EU whittling down Russia's share of gas imports from 40% in 2021 to 8% in 2023.

Much of the gap has been filled by American gas supplies, with US gas imports to the EU jumping from 18.9 billion cubic meters in 2021 to 56.2 billion cubic meters in 2023.

More recently, Kyiv allowed the expiration of a pre-war contract to pipe Russian gas to Western customers such as Austria. Ukraine declined to renew the contract in early January.

• Ukraine has been releasing excerpts of what its forces say is a North Korean soldier's diary.
• They include a stick-figure sketch of using a comrade as "bait" to shoot down a drone.
• Other entries include musings on class struggles and a confession for stealing undisclosed Russian items.

Excerpts from a North Korean soldier's diary released by Ukraine show a glimpse at how Pyongyang's troops in Russia believed they could defend against drones and artillery strikes.

Ukraine's special forces have been releasing excerpts of the diary since Christmas week, saying the entries were written by a now-deceased North Korean private named Gyeong Hong Jong.

The latest of these, published on Thursday, appeared to feature the young soldier confessing that he was stealing items from his Russian allies to sell. He did not specify what the stolen goods were but wrote that he had been caught.

"While working in the barracks, I thought that no one was watching me and put the Russians' things in my pocket," the diary excerpt said, per Ukraine's special forces.

"I will no longer trade in other people's things. I will heroically advance in the forefront and destroy the enemy," the soldier added.

Other entries released by Ukraine included praises of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and musings on class struggle.

"Longing for my homeland, having left the warm embrace of my dear father and mother here on Russian land. I celebrate the birthday of my closest comrade Song Ji Myong," another entry read, per a translation by The Wall Street Journal.

One of the earliest entries, published by Ukraine on December 26, featured a stick-figure drawing of what the soldier described as "How to eliminate a drone."

The simple illustration showed a figure standing upright on open ground while another two stick figures fired at a quadcopter drone.

"If a UAV is spotted, gather in groups of three," the diary read, per The Journal's translation. "One person must act as bait to lure the drone while the other two take aim and neutralize it with precision shooting. The bait must maintain a distance of seven meters from the drone. The other two should prepare to shoot down the drone from a distance of 10 to 12 meters. When the bait stands still, the drone will stop and it can be shot down."

Ukraine's special forces said the North Korean soldier also wrote of how to avoid artillery strikes. An excerpt of his diary said that Pyongyang's troops were supposed to "disperse in small groups" if fired upon by artillery.

The excerpt also said he could hide in the location of "the previous hit" because he believed artillery doesn't repeatedly strike the exact same spot.

Business Insider couldn't independently verify the authenticity of the diary entries. Ukraine posted photos of what it said were the soldier's corpse and passport. The Journal also cited a former North Korean soldier and a former South Korean major general who said the choice of words in the diary aligned with the ideology and vernacular of North Korea's troops.

The soldier's diary could give insight into how North Korean forces are adapting battlefield doctrine for combat in Russia.

The West worries that Pyongyang's involvement will allow its forces to glean valuable lessons from battling Ukraine, especially as they face off against American and European equipment and encounter drone warfare.

Dorothy Camille Shea, the deputy US ambassador to the UN, said on Wednesday that Pyongyang "is significantly benefiting from receiving Russian military equipment, technology, and experience, rendering it more capable of waging war against its neighbors."

Western and South Korean intelligence says that 12,000 North Korean troops are stationed and fighting in Kursk, a Russian border region that Ukraine attacked in the summer of 2024.

Moscow hasn't addressed the presence of Pyongyang's troops on its soil, but Ukraine has increasingly been trying to cast a spotlight on North Korea's direct involvement in the war.

Most recently, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy published images of who he said were two captured North Korean soldiers. He did not provide evidence that they were North Korean, though Seoul's intelligence service backed up his claim.

"This was not an easy task: Russian forces and other North Korean military personnel usually execute their wounded to erase any evidence of North Korea's involvement in the war against Ukraine," Zelenskyy wrote. He has said that around 3,000 North Korean soldiers were wounded or killed.

Thousands of North Korean troops serve as a valuable source of manpower for Russia, which is relying on mass infantry assaults along the front lines to whittle down Ukraine's defenses.

Still, Pyongyang's reinforcements are still few compared to the over 600,000 people that Ukraine and the West believe Moscow has lost.

Russia is believed to be providing Kim with much-needed finances, economic support, food, and technology in exchange for the latter's troops.

• Behrouz Esbati, an Iranian general, partially blamed Russia for the fall of Bashar Assad in Syria.
• In a speech in Tehran, Esbati accused Russia of bombing an empty desert instead of hitting Syrian rebels.
• While difficult to verify, his frank remarks are notable since Russia is one of Iran's strongest allies.

A top Iranian general has accused Russia of lying to Tehran by saying its jets were attacking Syrian rebels while they were instead bombing the open desert.

In a rare break from Iran's diplomatic line on Syria, Brig. Gen. Behrouz Esbati partially blamed Moscow for the fall of Bashar Assad's government during a speech at a mosque in Tehran.

An audio recording of the speech was published on Tuesday by Abdullah Abdi, a journalist in Geneva who reports on Iran.

"We were defeated, and defeated very badly. We took a very big blow, and it's been very difficult," Esbati said of Assad's fall, according to a translation by The New York Times.

In the recording, Esbati, a senior commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, said Russia told Tehran it was bombing the headquarters of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel group spearheading Assad's ousting.

But Moscow's forces were instead "targeting deserts," Esbati said.

Esbati further accused Russia of turning off radars when Israel launched strikes on Syria in 2024, allowing Tel Aviv's forces to attack more effectively.

The general also largely blamed internal corruption for Assad's fall, saying bribery was rife among Syria's top-ranking officials and generals.

He added that relations between Damascus and Tehran grew tense over the last year because Assad refused an Iranian request to facilitate attacks on Israel through Syria.

Business Insider couldn't independently verify Esbati's claims. But they represent an exceptionally frank assessment among Iran's top ranks of its position in Syria, where a new political leadership is still coalescing in Assad's absence.

Iran officially held a much milder tone as Assad's government fell, saying at the time that the fate of Syria would be up to its people and that it "will spare no effort to help establish security and stability in Syria."

Assad, a longtime ally of both Iran and Russia, fled Damascus in early December as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham forces stormed toward the capital from the northwest. International observers believe the rebel advance largely happened as Moscow, a key source of military strength for Assad, found its resources stretched thin by the war in Ukraine.

The Russian defense ministry didn't respond to a request for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.

Esbati's remarks came as a former senior aide to Assad told the Saudi government-owned outlet Al Arabiya on Monday that Russian President Vladimir Putin had stalled military assistance for Syria.

Kamel Saqr said that Assad had asked Putin to personally approve airlifting military aid to Syria — and that the Russian leader agreed.

The aid was to be transported via Iranian aircraft, but Saqr said Tehran told Assad it didn't receive any requests from Moscow.

Assad then asked Moscow about this, but "no answer came," Saqr said.

Assad's fall, which neither Moscow nor Tehran stepped up to prevent, has brought deep implications for Russia's forces in the region. Moscow had previously relied on an airbase and a naval base, which it maintained under a deal with Assad, for its operations in Africa and the Mediterranean.

It's unclear whether Russia will eventually be able to continue maintaining those two facilities, but reports show that it's preparing to move much of its equipment out of Syria. On Friday, Ukraine said Moscow was planning to move its assets to Libya.

• Russian daily losses hit another record high in December, the UK MOD said.
• The ministry said this marks the fifth straight month that Moscow's daily losses have climbed to new highs.
• Russia's worst day for losses was on December 19, when 2,200 of its troops were killed or wounded, per the MOD.

December marked the fifth month in a row that Russian losses in Ukraine broke records for average daily highs, the UK's Defense Ministry said on Tuesday.

"The average daily Russian casualties reached a new monthly war high during December 2024," the ministry wrote in an intelligence update. "The daily average loss rate was 1,570, the fifth straight month that Russian Forces have sustained new war high average daily losses."

It said Russia suffered its highest daily loss in the war on December 19, saying that 2,200 of its troops were injured or killed that day.

Citing figures reported by Ukraine, the ministry said December was "likely the most costly month of the war for Russia," with a total of 48,670 dead or wounded.

The ministry added that December was the sixth straight month that Russia suffered an increase in its monthly losses.

It did not say if these numbers included losses taken by North Korean troops, of whom Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview on Sunday that 3,800 were killed or wounded.

The British ministry has regularly said over the last year that Russia has increasingly been suffering from high losses due to its reliance on mass infantry assaults aimed at wearing down Ukraine's defenses.

Ukrainian brigades, which say they are sometimes outnumbered one to five and often underequipped, have slowly yielded about 1,600 square miles of territory in 2024.

But the grinding assault has come at a high cost for Russia, with the Washington-based think tank Institute for the Study of War estimating that Moscow lost about 40 troops for each square mile it seized.

The UK Defense Ministry added in its Tuesday update that Russian monthly losses would likely continue to worsen as the Kremlin fights on multiple fronts, often sending infantry on foot to exhaust Ukrainian defenses.

The strategy, while producing limited results, has heightened perceptions that the war hinges more than ever on either Ukraine or Russia's ability to sustain their resources on the battlefield.

Questions now hang over American aid to Kyiv, with President-elect Donald Trump, who repeatedly said he wants a swift resolution to the war, set to take office on January 20.

But a chief worry for both sides is also manpower. Ukraine has been struggling to replenish its ranks as the war drags on, pivoting in 2024 to a now much-criticized system of creating fresh brigades instead of reinforcing existing ones.

Meanwhile, Russia has been sticking to mass recruitment by offering large bonuses to new soldiers. In December, it announced that it was pouring $126 billion, or about 32.5% of its federal budget for 2025, into defense spending.

The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

• The deadly Azerbaijani plane crash on Christmas Day is souring Russia's attempt to keep Baku close.
• Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev has repeatedly said Russia shot down the plane, and is demanding answers.
• Putin apologized, but Aliyev is still pressuring Russia and says it must take responsibility.

Azerbaijan's president has repeatedly accused Russia of covering up the cause of a plane crash that killed 38 passengers on Christmas Day, publicly criticizing Moscow again on Monday.

"The initial investigation and its results have been reported to me, but I can say with full certainty that the blame for the deaths of Azerbaijani citizens in this disaster lies with representatives of the Russian Federation," Ilham Aliyev said in remarks to state news agency Azertac.

"And we demand justice, we demand punishment of the guilty, we demand full transparency and human behavior," said Aliyev, who spoke just after meeting families of the crash victims.

His comments mark a sudden and rapidly deepening point of tension between Azerbaijan and Russia as the latter has tried to maintain ties since the outbreak of full war in Ukraine. While Baku and Moscow are not close allies in the traditional sense, Russia supplies arms to Azerbaijan and has sought to be the main mediator for its bitter conflict with Armenia.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin visited Aliyev in August for two days, and the pair were photographed chatting in their work shirts on sofas in Aliyev's home, alongside the First Lady of Azerbaijan.

The tone in their relations has shifted dramatically since the crash.

Aliyev has repeatedly said that preliminary investigations showed the Azerbaijan Airlines flight was shot down by Russian air defense systems, saying it was "riddled with holes" and affected by electronic warfare. The plane was flying to the Chechen city of Grozny and made its emergency landing in Kazakhstan.

"If timely measures had been taken to close the Russian airspace near the city of Grozny, if all the rules of ground services had been observed, as well as proper coordination between the armed forces of the Russian Federation and civilian services, this tragedy would not have happened," Aliyev said on Monday.

Notably, Aliyev chose to speak in Russian instead of Azerbaijani, which he said was to honor the flight's two deceased pilots, who spoke Russian.

The Azerbaijani president said that Baku wasn't alleging Russia shot down the plane intentionally but accused Russian officials of not investigating the crash properly.

"The cover-up of this incident by Russian state agencies and the focus on absurd theories causes surprise, regret, and rightful indignation," he said.

Russia's federal transport agency had initially said the Azerbaijani Airlines flight was struck by birds, then blamed Ukrainian drones and fog for forcing the plane out of Grozny airspace.

The US, on the other hand, has said that it had seen "early indications" that the Azerbaijani Airlines flight was possibly "brought down by Russian air defense systems."

Meanwhile, Putin's press office issued an apology on December 28 without taking responsibility for the crash.

"Vladimir Putin offered his apologies that the tragic incident had occurred in Russia's airspace and once again conveyed his deep and sincere condolences to the families of the plane crash victims and wished those injured the quickest recovery," its statement said.

But Aliyev is refusing to lighten the pressure on Russia, saying that Putin's apology was "not enough" and that Moscow "must acknowledge its guilt" and punish those responsible.

He added on Monday that investigators were uncovering inconsistencies in Russia's airspace regulations that he said pointed to "serious criminal issues here."

The now-widening rift between Moscow and Baku comes as Azerbaijan has sought to reduce Russian influence on regional matters, especially when dealing with its archrival, Armenia.

For example, Russia had stationed peacekeepers in the contested region of Nagorno-Karabakh until September 2023, when Azerbaijan seized the area and flushed out Moscow's forces. Some pro-Kremlin commentators in Russia have also said that Azerbaijani volunteers are appearing among Ukraine's ranks.

But Russia has responded relatively tamely, as it seeks more ex-Soviet allies to deal with its increasing isolation from Western sanctions and the war in Ukraine.

"I would like to note from the start that our relationship is developing in a positive way," Putin said in October when hosting Aliyev in Moscow, referencing Russian investments in the Azerbaijani economy.

Per Azertac, Aliyev responded and said that "the dynamics of our bilateral relations have been quite noticeable."

• Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Alexander Lukashenko apologized in a call for helping Russia invade Ukraine.
• "I am not in charge," Zelenskyy quoted the Belarusian leader as saying in early 2022.
• Lukashenko's spokesperson denied that an apology took place but confirmed that a call happened.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Belarus' leader, Alexander Lukashenko, apologized over the phone in early 2022 for his country's role in allowing Russia to invade Ukraine.

In a wide-ranging interview with the podcaster Lex Fridman published on Sunday, Zelenskyy recalled the war's first moments, saying that he and his wife were woken up by missile strikes at 4 a.m. local time.

"My children were asleep, but my wife was awake. There were strikes. Missile strikes, we heard them," Zelenskyy said, according to a translation provided by Fridman.

"And later, by the way, a few days after, after the first days of the war, I spoke with Lukashenko on the phone," Zelenskyy added.

Zelenskyy recounted the conversation, in his words, proceeding in this fashion:

And he apologized. And he said that: "It was not me. Missiles were launched from my territory, and Putin was the one launching them."

These are his words. I have witnesses.

"And I apologize," he said. "But believe me. Volodya, this is not me. I am not in charge. I am not in charge," he told me. "These are just missiles. This is Putin. I told him don't do that. This was done without me."

I told him that I believed him. I told him, "You are a murderer too, I'm just saying."

And he told me, "You must understand, you can't fight the Russians."

I told him that we never fought them. I said: "It's war, the missiles came from your land, from Belarus. How did you allow this?"

Zelenskyy also said Lukashenko suggested in his apology that Ukraine should strike an oil refinery in Belarus in retaliation.

"Hit the refinery, you know how much I care about it," Zelenskyy quoted Lukashenko as saying.

Lukashenko's spokesperson denied on Monday that the Belarusian leader apologized to Zelenskyy.

"The President of Belarus did not apologize to Zelensky for the simple reason that we have nothing to apologize for," Natalia Eismont, Lukashenko's press secretary, told the pro-Kremlin Russian outlet RBC News.

Eismont confirmed that a phone call between Zelenskyy and Lukashenko took place days after the war began. She added, however, that the Belarusian leader had instead admonished Zelenskyy and blamed the latter's policies for the conflict during the call.

Eismont said Lukashenko's youngest son connected the two leaders for the call because he'd saved Zelenskyy's personal contact information on his mobile phone.

Belarus has maintained close ties to Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and Lukashenko, its leader since 1994, has long been a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Lukashenko hosted some 30,000 Russian troops, as well as weapons and armored vehicles, in early 2022. The Russian forces massed on Belarus' border with Ukraine and eventually invaded the Kyiv region from the north.

Belarus, a transit country for Russian energy to European countries, is heavily reliant on trade with Moscow, especially after Western sanctions in 2022 stifled about 70% of Minsk's exports to the European Union.

Lukashenko's government has said Russia contributes to more than half of Belarus' trade, while German researchers estimated in the first year of the Ukraine war that the Russian share of Belarusian trade had surpassed 60%.

Lukashenko's press service didn't respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

• Ukraine's new attack in Kursk is featuring some impressive drone jamming, Russian military bloggers said.
• The bloggers reported that Ukrainian forces were able to break through because of "powerful electronic warfare."
• it's made it difficult for Russian drone operators to work in the area, they wrote.

Ukraine launched a renewed offensive in Russia's Kursk region on Sunday, where Russian pro-war bloggers say Kyiv's drone jammers have been working exceptionally well.

The "Operation Z" channel, a collection of dispatches from Russian war correspondents, wrote that the attack had focused on the Bolshesoldatsky district, to the northeast of the Ukrainian-held pocket in Kursk.

"In order to break through, the Ukrainian Armed Forces covered the area with powerful electronic warfare systems, making it difficult for our UAVs to operate," wrote the Telegram channel, which has over 1.6 million subscribers.

Razvedos Advanced Gear & Equipment, a Russian military news Telegram channel with over 152,000 subscribers, echoed those comments in a post on Sunday.

"It cannot be said that they were not expected in this direction, but they managed to VERY effectively use electronic warfare," it wrote of the fighting in Bolshesoldatsky.

Roman Alekhine, a military blogger with about 218,000 subscribers, wrote on his channel: "The enemy has covered the attack area with electronic warfare, so many drones are useless."

Alekhine later posted that some Russian drone operators were still able to switch to unjammed frequencies.

Sergei Kolyasnikov, another military blogger with about 498,000 subscribers, reported that about 10 Ukrainian tanks and armored vehicles had entered the Bolshesoldatsky region.

"The area is covered with some powerful electronic warfare, nothing is flying at all," he wrote.

The specifics of Ukraine's new push this week into Russian territory are still unclear. Kyiv initially launched a surprise counteroffensive into Kursk in August, where it took an estimated 480 square miles of Russian land but has been slowly pushed back since.

Ukraine has stayed mostly silent on the matter. But Andriy Kovalenko, head of the Center for Countering Disinformation run by Ukraine's national security and defense council, alluded to an assault on Sunday by posting that Russian troops in Kursk "were attacked from several directions and it came as a surprise to them."

Andriy Yermak, chief of staff for Ukraine's president, also hinted at an attack by writing on his Telegram channel that Russia was "getting what it deserves" in Kursk.

Meanwhile, Russia has outright declared that Ukraine had attacked again.

"On January 5, at about 09:00 Moscow time, in order to stop the advance of Russian troops in the Kursk direction, the enemy launched a counterattack with an assault group consisting of two tanks, a barrier vehicle, and 12 combat armored vehicles with troops in the direction of the Berdin farm," its defense ministry told state media.

As reports of Ukraine's jamming efforts emerged, the defense ministry published a video of a Russian drone operator coordinating a tank strike on an unknown target in a forested area, saying he was working in Kursk.

The Ukrainian and Russian Defense Ministries did not respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

Electronic warfare has increasingly been key on the battlefield as both Russia and Ukraine turn to cheap drones for reconnaissance, loitering munitions, and close-range bombing runs.

One development has seen both sides deploy wired drones. These use long fiber optic cables unfurled from a spool as the aerial system takes flight, allowing it to bypass jamming systems.

Should they become mainstream, they may pose yet another challenge for militaries that are already spending big on preparing against drone threats. The US, for example, is paying some $250 million to Anduril, Palmer Luckey's defense startup, for 500 drones and an electronic warfare system called Pulsar.

• A top analyst said Ukraine's decision to create new brigades instead of bolstering existing ones isn't working.
• Many of the new units are now being divided up and sent to existing brigades that need replenishment.
• It's turning out to be "one of the more puzzling force management choices" Kyiv has made, the analyst said.

Ukraine's 2024 strategy for solving a shortage of soldiers — its biggest challenge thus far — by forming new brigades instead of reinforcing old ones is performing poorly, said a top analyst on the war.

Michael Kofman, a senior fellow for the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in a social media thread on Saturday that Kyiv's decision was "one of the more puzzling force management choices" it has made.

"Expanding the force with new brigades, when men are desperately needed to replace losses among experienced formations deployed on the front lines, had visible tradeoffs," Kofman wrote.

With little experience, the new units have been "generally combat ineffective," he added.

'"As was seen in 2023, new formations perform poorly in offensive and defensive roles. Requiring considerable time to gain experience, cohesion, confidence, etc.," Kofman wrote.

The result is that the strategy has at least partially disintegrated, with battalions from the new brigades eventually sent to shore up losses in units that were already fighting, Kofman wrote.

Ukrainian leadership said in May that it aimed to create 10 new brigades, each of which typically consists of several thousand men. In doing so, its leaders hoped to provide fresh units that could rotate into combat or fill gaps on the front line.

"There is simply no other effective way to counteract the overwhelming enemy," a spokesperson for Ukraine's armed forces said in November. "After all, today we have a 1,300 km-long front with active combat clashes."

Some elements of these brigades were aided by training from Western forces, such as the 155th Mechanized Brigade. About half of its recruits drilled in France.

But the 155th's debut late last year created a crisis for Ukraine as reports emerged that it suffered from high rates of desertion and was being picked apart to siphon resources to other brigades.

Local journalist Yuriy Butusov reported just before the New Year that the new brigade, often finding itself whittled down, had to juggle specialists such as drone jamming operators into infantry roles. The backlash to the news was severe, with Ukrainian figures voicing questions about the new strategy as a whole.

"Perhaps it's sheer idiocy to create new brigades and equip them with new technology while existing ones are undermanned," wrote Lt. Col. Bohdan Krotevych, who serves as chief of staff in the Azov Brigade. The 155th is supplied with dozens of French-made armored vehicles, howitzers, and personnel carriers.

Kofman wrote that the 155th's scandal was "just the most egregious case" of Ukraine's force management problems.

Divvying up new units has led to a "steady fragmentation of the defensive effort and loss of cohesion," he said.

"This patchwork groupings of forces must hold the front," he added.

Ukraine has, over the last year, faced a slow but persistent Russian assault in the eastern regions of the Donbas, where Moscow has been throwing a steady supply of men and equipment at Kyiv's outnumbered and exhausted defensive lines. Russia's gains have been incremental and its reported losses are staggering, but it is advancing nonetheless.

Another pain point has been a lack of Western military aid to go around. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in September that Kyiv had sought to arm 14 of its brigades with Western weapons, but that arms packages in 2024 couldn't even supply four of them.

It's turned to domestic production to fill some of its needs, and Zelenskyy said on New Year's Eve that 30% of the weapons Ukraine used in 2024 were created locally.

Amid the manpower and equipment shortages, Ukrainian units have also been developing new drones at breakneck speed, often cobbled together from commercial parts.

Kofman said these drones have proven to be "force multipliers," letting troops lay mines safely and harassing Russian units before they can reach the front.

"However, tech innovation, tactical adaptation, and better integration are insufficient to compensate for failure to address the fundamentals," Kofman added. "Russian gains may appear unimpressive, but UA needs to address manpower, training, and force management issues to sustain this fight."

Kofman and the Ukrainian Defense Ministry did not respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

The last year has increasingly turned the war into a conflict of attrition, not just in manpower but also in resources. Russia is now entering a third year of sustaining its economy in the face of the West's sweeping sanctions, relying heavily on defense manufacturing and offering large bonuses to new recruits.

Some in Ukraine hope that if it can solve its manpower issues and maintain its defensive lines, it will eventually exhaust Russia's ability to funnel money and men into the war.

• Ukraine's investigators are probing the 155th Mechanized Brigade, a unit partially trained by France.
• Nicknamed "Anne of Kyiv," the highly publicized brigade was an effort by France to bolster Ukraine's defenses.
• But it's come under scrutiny after a Ukrainian reporter said 1,700 of its troops had deserted.

Ukraine's State Bureau of Investigation is probing a brigade specially trained to use French weapons after reports that hundreds of soldiers deserted the unit.

Tetyana Sapian, a spokesperson for the investigative agency, told Interfax-Ukraine on Thursday that authorities had launched a criminal investigation into abuse of power and desertion at the 155th Mechanized Brigade.

"The investigation is ongoing. It is too early to talk about any preliminary results," she said.

The infantry brigade, named "Anne of Kyiv" after an 11th-century Kyiv princess who became a queen of France, has about 5,800 soldiers. Around 2,000 of them underwent months of training in France in 2024.

There, they enjoyed a relatively high profile; French President Emmanuel Macron personally met several of 155th's battalions during a public visit to a French base in October.

Paris armed the brigade with its own weaponry, including 18 AMX 10 armored vehicles, 18 truck-mounted Caesar howitzers, and 128 armored troop carriers. The unit also fields some of Germany's prized Leopard 2A4 main battle tanks.

By November, the 155th was set to hit the front lines, with French officials saying these Ukrainian troops were now equipped to fight with Western battlefield training.

1,700 desertions, war reporter says

But a report last week by Ukrainian journalist Yuriy Butusov said the brigade has been buckling from desertion and leadership issues, even before it was deployed to Pokrovsk.

"Before the brigade fired the first shot, 1,700 servicemen left it voluntarily," wrote Butusov.

He did not provide evidence for his claim, but published a tally of the unit's strength over time that said hundreds of men deserted monthly from March to November, forcing the 155th to keep replenishing personnel.

A key factor in the desertion rate, Butusov wrote, was that many in the unit had been forcibly recruited off Ukraine's streets. About 50 men also went AWOL while the unit was training in France, Butusov added.

Uncertainty also hangs over the 155th's leadership. Days into its deployment on the front line, the brigade's commander, Col. Dmytro Ryumshin, abruptly announced that he would step down. Ryumshin, a seasoned officer with experience commanding two other brigades, thanked his troops in a Facebook post, saying that the 155th had undergone a "tough but significant journey."

He was replaced by Col. Maksimov Taras Viktorovych, a former commander of the 14th Mechanized Brigade.

Troops divvied up for other units

The 155th has also been moving soldiers to other units in need of replenishment, and according to Butusov, it's dealt with at least seven significant personnel changes since March.

Drone-jamming specialists in the 155th, for example, had to fill infantry roles amid a manpower shortage, he wrote.

Mariana Bezuhla, a controversial Ukrainian member of parliament known for criticizing military leadership, said in early December that the 155th was being "torn to pieces, seconded to others."

"Even the fact that the French tried to make the brigade specialized did not save it from the stupid military decisions of our generals and tore the unit apart," she said.

Butusov's report has since drawn outcry among Ukrainian figures, such as Lt. Col. Bohdan Krotevych, who serves as chief of staff in the Azov Brigade.

"Perhaps it's sheer idiocy to create new brigades and equip them with new technology while existing ones are undermanned," he wrote on X.

Serhii Sternenko, a well-known Ukrainian lawyer who provides crowdfunded drones to military units, said his organization was assisting the 155th because the brigade lacked officially provided drones and jammers.

"Why create a new brigade when existing brigades are critically understaffed, only to later divide it and transfer personnel to the old brigades? What's the point?" he wrote on Tuesday on his Telegram channel.

The brigade's fate threatens to mar the legacy of Macron's efforts to position France as a staunch ally of Ukraine. Paris has pledged some $3 billion in military aid to Kyiv, and Macron has been one of the most vocal European leaders pushing for Ukraine's accession to the European Union.

He's also floated the idea of sending French troops to Ukraine if Russia were to score a massive breakthrough.

The French and Ukrainian Defense Ministries did not respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

When contacted by BI, the 155th Mechanized Brigade's communications service said: "Until the official investigation is completed, the brigade commander will not provide any comments."

Overall, the "Anne of Kyiv" brigade is just one of several training projects that France and Europe have been working on with Ukraine. Since late 2022, over 63,000 Ukrainian troops have been trained under the European Union Military Assistance Mission, a EU-funded program that gets member states to teach and equip Kyiv's forces.

The program has a $420 million budget for the next two years ending in November 2026.

January 3, 2025: This story was updated to reflect a response from the 155th Mechanized Brigade.

• Even while at war, Ukraine has been piping gas for Russia to European customers.
• But that arrangement, which dates back to the fall of the Soviet Union, has now expired.
• Russia earned an estimated $5 billion from the transits in 2024, with Ukraine getting up to $1 billion.

Russia is no longer able to send natural gas to Europe through Ukraine's pipelines after a five-year deal, struck before the war began, expired on Wednesday.

It marks the end of a long-standing arrangement that used Ukraine as a conduit for westbound Russian gas — an agreement that continued even as full-scale war broke out in 2022.

European countries that received that gas, such as Slovakia and Austria, were paying Russia for this energy. Reuters calculated in December that the Russian economy would earn about $5 billion in 2024 alone from piping gas through Ukraine.

The news agency also estimated that Kyiv stood to receive between $800 million to $1 billion over that year from collecting transit fees.

But Ukraine had signaled for months that it planned to let the deal expire on January 1, 2025, and it's now made good on that pledge.

"When Putin was presented with the Russian presidency more than 25 years ago, the annual gas transit through Ukraine to Europe totaled more than 130 billion cubic meters. Today, it equals 0," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote.

Ukraine's energy minister, Herman Halushchenko, said the transit deal ceased because of national security reasons.

The Russian gas conglomerate Gazprom confirmed on Wednesday that its energy flows through Ukraine had stopped, citing "repeated and explicit refusal of the Ukrainian side to extend these agreements."

The now-defunct Ukrainian-Russian deal laid bare the complexities of the war and its political consequences in Europe, with European Union nations struggling to reduce their reliance on Russian energy even as they supplied arms to Ukraine and tried to sanction Moscow.

And as thousands died every week amid bitter fighting in Luhansk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, and Kursk, gas flowing through the same areas allowed both Kyiv and Moscow to profit off each other's goods and facilities.

Ukraine has piped Russian gas to Europe since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and energy customers initially expressed concerns that they wouldn't be able to find an alternative supply in time if the deal expired.

Slovakia's prime minister, Robert Fico, criticized Kyiv's decision in a New Year's address, saying cutting off cheap Russian gas to Europe would create a "drastic impact" on EU nations but not hurt Russia.

Austria, on the other hand, cut ties with Gazprom in December, accusing Russia of blackmailing the Austrian gas company OMV by using energy as a bargaining chip over European support of Ukraine.

Losing Austria as a customer was yet another blow to Moscow's gas industry as Europe weans itself off its Russian energy supply.

The EU said in March that about 8% of its natural gas came from Russia in 2023, down from 40% in 2021.

Since the war began, the US and Norway have emerged as two of the biggest winners among natural-gas suppliers. The EU said gas purchases from the US in 2023 had tripled since 2021, filling nearly 20% of the union's gas imports.

Some countries on the continent, such as Hungary, an EU member led by a president who keeps close ties with Moscow, still have access to Russian gas through the TurkStream pipeline, which runs along the Black Sea to the Balkans.

Moldova, which isn't an EU member state, and its separatist-controlled territory, Transnistria, are expected to be hit hard by the cessation of the Ukraine-Russia deal, with the country's largest power plant historically reliant on Russian gas.

Correction: January 2, 2025 — An earlier version of this story misstated Robert Fico's title. He's the prime minister of Slovakia, not the president.

• FBI identified Shamsud-Din Jabbar as the suspect in the New Orleans truck attack.
• Jabbar, now deceased, was a US citizen from Texas and had a criminal record.
• At least 15 people were confirmed dead, and dozens more were injured.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has identified the suspect in Wednesday's deadly attack in New Orleans as Shamsud-Din Jabbar.

The agency said Jabbar, who was confirmed dead after a shootout with police, was a 42-year-old US citizen from Texas. His actions are being investigated as a terrorist attack.

At least 15 people are confirmed dead, and dozens more were injured, after the suspect drove a truck into crowds on Bourbon Street at about 3:15 a.m. on New Year's Day. Two police officers were shot but are in stable condition.

The FBI said an ISIS flag, as well as weapons and a "potential" improvised explosive device, were found in the Ford F-150 pick-up truck Jabbar used.

It added other IEDs were found in the French Quarter, and the agency is investigating Jabbar's potential connection to terrorist organizations.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill told NBC News that "multiple individuals" were involved, and that they had rented a house from Airbnb.

"There was a house fire in New Orleans this morning that was connected to this event where we believe the IEDs were being made," she added.

President Joe Biden said in a press conference that, hours before the attack, Jabbar had posted videos "inspired by ISIS, expressing a desire to kill."

Jabbar's criminal record, obtained from the Texas Department of Public Safety and viewed by Business Insider, shows two prior arrests in 2002 and 2005.

The first was for theft of $50-$500. The other was for driving with an invalid license. Both were classified as misdemeanors.

FBI Assistant Special Agent Alethea Duncan said in a press conference that the FBI does not believe Jabbar acted alone. She did not specify how many additional suspects the agency is investigating.

"We are aggressively running down every lead, including those of his known associates," Duncan said. "We're asking anyone who has information, video, or pictures to provide it to the FBI."

She later added that Jabbar was an Army veteran, and the FBI believes he was honorably discharged.

US military spokespersons told media on Wednesday evening that Jabbar had served in the Army from 2007 to 2015, during which he was deployed to Afghanistan from February 2009 to January 2010.

He filled information technology and human resource roles at the time and was later an information technology specialist in the Army Reserve from 2016 until 2020. He left the military as a staff sergeant.

Jabbar also graduated from Georgia State University in 2017 after studying information technology, per an online résumé reviewed by CNN.

Sean Keenan, a freelance journalist for The New York Times, reported that he had interviewed Jabbar in 2015 for Georgia State University's newspaper. Jabbar told Keenan that he had difficulty adjusting back to civilian life — particularly with getting used to non-military speech.

"You may have a lot of skills and training from the Army," Jabbar was quoted as saying in the article. "But you may not be able to speak the language to really translate it and be understood when you apply for a civilian job."

Jabbar had also complained that bureaucracy in the Department of Veteran Affairs meant he might not receive his benefits if he made small mistakes on his paperwork.

Based on Jabbar's resume, CNN reported that he worked at Deloitte and Accenture, two of the biggest consultancies. A Deloitte spokesperson told Business Insider in a statement that he worked in a "staff-level role" since his 2021 hiring.

"We are shocked to learn of reports today that the individual identified as a suspect had any association with our firm," the Deloitte statement said. "Like everyone, we are outraged by this shameful and senseless act of violence and are doing all we can to assist authorities in their investigation."

Accenture did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

Jabbar also held a real estate license in Texas from 2019 to 2023. He took classes in real estate from 2018 to 2021, per the Texas Real Estate Commission.

Citing court documents, CNN reported he had been divorced twice, although The New York Times reported him as having only separated from his second wife.

His second wife had a temporary restraining order against him granted in 2020, per CNN.

According to the Times, Jabbar was divorced from his first wife in 2012, who has forbidden their two daughters from seeing him. Dwayne Marsh, her new husband, said that in recent months he had started acting strangely.

Jabbar's brother, Abdur, told the outlet that Jabbar had grown up as a Christian but converted to Islam many years ago.

"What he did does not represent Islam," the brother said. "This is more some type of radicalization, not religion."

Chris Pousson, a retired Air Force veteran who went to school with Jabbar and reconnected with him in 2015, told the outlet that he remembered Jabbar as "quiet, reserved, and really, really smart."

Jabbar was always polite and well-dressed, he said, and although he noticed Jabbar writing increasingly religious posts on Facebook around 2015, the latest news is "a complete 180 from the quiet, reserved person I knew."

Turo, a carsharing company, confirmed to BI that Jabbar used a truck rented through its app to carry out the attack and that it is "actively partnering with the FBI."

"We are not currently aware of anything in this guest's background that would have identified him as a trust and safety threat to us at the time of the reservation," a Turo spokesperson said.

The attack comes ahead of three major events in New Orleans, including the college football Sugar Bowl game, which was scheduled for January 1. Officials said it has been postponed 24 hours.

The city also has its annual Mardi Gras festivities starting on January 6 and the 59th Super Bowl scheduled for February 9.

• Authorities say a driver deliberately plowed into a crowd of people in New Orleans early Wednesday.
• 15 people were killed, and at least 35 more were injured.
• The suspect is a 42-year-old named Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, the FBI now says.

The man accused of plowing into a crowd in the heart of New Orleans in an ISIS-inspired attack that killed 15 people acted alone, an FBI official said Thursday.

Law enforcement officials identified the suspect in the attack as Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, a 42-year-old US Army veteran, and have described it as a premeditated act of terrorism.

Officials say he killed 14 people and injured at least 35 more others after driving into the crowd with a rented truck early on New Year's Day and started shooting before being killed in a shootout with police.

At a press conference Thursday, Christopher Raia, an FBI counterterrorism official involved in the investigation, walked back earlier claims that other people may have assisted Jabbar with the attack.

He said officials have since reviewed hundreds of hours of surveillance footage and other records, and believe Jabbar acted alone.

"We do not assess, at this point, that anyone else has been involved in this attack except for Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar," Raia said at the New Orleans press conference.

Raia also said investigators have not found any links between the New Orleans attack and a Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas outside a Trump hotel, while cautioning the investigations into each event were still in their early stages. Both trucks were rented through the vehicle-sharing app Turo, and officials say the perpetrator in the Las Vegas attack was an active-duty Army soldier.

"At this point, there's is no definitive link between the attack here in New Orleans and the one in Las Vegas," Raia said.

The truck slammed through Bourbon Street

New Orleans was still reeling Thursday after the driver, later identified as Jabbar, drove a rented Ford pickup truck through the crowd on Bourbon Street at about 3:15 a.m. on New Year's Day.

Several improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, were also found near the scene of the attack. An ISIS flag was found in the vehicle's trunk, according to Raia.

Raia said that authorities initially believed other people may have been involved in the attack because of witnesses who said they saw people setting down coolers containing the IEDs.

But surveillance footage showed that Jabbar set down coolers containing two IEDs himself, Raia said. According to Raia, footage showed other people later "checking out" the coolers, but they did not seem to have any role in the attack. Reports of additional IEDs could not be substantiated, Raia said.

Officials had also earlier said that a fire in a New Orleans house, which was rented from Airbnb, may have been where the IEDs were assembled. But authorities said at Thursday's press conference that they now believe the fire is likely unrelated to the attack.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry said "information changes" as the investigation continues.

"No one dumps a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle and solves it in five seconds," he said at the press conference Thursday.

Jabbar's criminal record, obtained from the Texas Department of Public Safety and viewed by Business Insider, shows two prior arrests in 2002 and 2005. The first was for theft, while the other was for driving with an invalid license. Both were classified as misdemeanors.

Support for ISIS posted on Facebook

At Thursday's press conference, Raia said Jabbar rented the Ford truck in Houston on December 30 and headed to New Orleans on December 31.

He said Jabbar made a series of Facebook posts during his journey expressing support for ISIS and posting a last will and testament.

Raia also said that investigators believe Jabbar joined ISIS before this past summer.

In a statement to Business Insider, the car-sharing app Turo said Jabbar used its service to rent the truck.

"We are heartbroken to learn that one of our host's vehicles was involved in this awful incident," the statement reads. "We are actively partnering with the FBI. We are not currently aware of anything in this guest's background that would have identified him as a trust and safety threat to us at the time of the reservation."

Starting Wednesday evening, Texas authorities performed a search of a location in Houston believed to be linked to Jabbar, the FBI said.

At Thursday's press conference, officials said they had obtained two laptops and three phones connected to Jabbar, which they have been examining.

The agency said it's made no arrests but had deployed specialized personnel, including a SWAT team, crisis negotiators, and a bomb squad, to the Houston location.

The search finished early Thursday, with the agency saying that it could not release more information, but that "there is no threat to residents in that area."

Superintendent Anne E. Kirkpatrick of the New Orleans Police Department said during an earlier press conference that a man drove a pickup truck down Bourbon Street "at a very fast pace." Kirkpatrick said the man drove into the crowd intentionally.

She also said the driver shot two police officers, who she said were in stable condition.

Kirkpatrick said it appeared that most of those injured were locals rather than tourists.

Eyewitness accounts

NOLA Ready, the city's emergency preparedness campaign, had initially said there was "a mass casualty incident involving a vehicle that drove into a large crowd on Canal and Bourbon Street."

Kevin Garcia, a 22-year-old who was present at the time, told CNN, "All I seen was a truck slamming into everyone on the left side of Bourbon sidewalk."

He said that "a body came flying at me," and that he heard gunshots.

One witness told CBS that a driver plowed into the crowd on Bourbon Street at high speed and that the driver got out and started firing a weapon, with the police firing back.

Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana said on X on Wednesday that a "horrific act of violence took place on Bourbon Street earlier this morning."

"Please join Sharon and I in praying for all the victims and first responders on scene," he wrote, referring to his wife. "I urge all near the scene to avoid the area."

Bourbon Street, in the city's French Quarter, is a famous party destination.

Some streets in and around the French Quarter were due to be closed for New Year's celebrations, with Canal Street expected to stay open unless traffic got too bad, the local outlet Fox 8 WVUE-TV reported.

As a result of the attack, the Sugar Bowl football game between the University of Georgia and the University of Notre Dame was postponed from Wednesday night to Thursday afternoon.

Local officials tried to assure the public that the city was now safe, with additional law enforcement deployed everywhere.

"The city of New Orleans is not only ready for game day today but also to host large-scale events," New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said Thursday.