For a happy, new year

December 31, 2015 - Daily News Briefing

Navigating the challenges of a new year requires hope and faith. Making it a truly happy year requires love.

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Bill Cosby was arrested and charged Wednesday with drugging and sexually assaulting a woman at his home 12 years ago — the first criminal case brought against the comedian out of the torrent of allegations that destroyed his good-guy image as America's Dad. The case sets the stage for perhaps the biggest Hollywood celebrity trial of the mobile-news era and could send the 78-year-old Cosby to prison in the twilight of his life and pioneering career.

With less than 48 hours left in 2015, Turkey on Wednesday became the latest country to announce the foiling of a holiday attack plot, detaining two suspected Islamic State militants believed to be planning suicide bombings during New Year celebrations in the capital city's heart. The men were detained in a raid on a house in the low-income Mamak neighborhood, where police seized a suicide vest armed with a bomb, a second explosive device that was fortified with ball bearings and metal sticks and concealed inside a back pack, as well as bomb-making equipment, according to the prosecutor's office.

A rare winter flood threatened nearly two dozen federal levees in Missouri and Illinois on Wednesday as rivers rose, prompting evacuations in several places. The US Army Corps of Engineers has deemed 19 levees highly vulnerable to flooding; by midday, those levees, all under close scrutiny, were holding up. But people were moving out just in case, including the St. Louis suburb of Valley Park, where Mayor Michael Pennise ordered mandatory evacuations for 350 to 400 homes and dozens of businesses in the section of town near the fast-rising Meramec River. Swollen rivers and streams have been pushed to heights not seen since the massive 1993 floods in some places. At least 20 deaths over several days in Missouri and Illinois were blamed on flooding, mostly involving vehicles that drove onto swamped roadways, and at least two people were still missing Wednesday.

The US on Wednesday accused Iran of launching a "highly provocative" rocket test last week near its warships and commercial traffic passing through the Strait of Hormuz, exposing how tensions between the two countries could escalate even after a landmark nuclear deal. The strategic Persian Gulf waterway, which sees nearly a third of all oil traded by sea pass through it, has been the scene of past confrontations between America and Iran, including a one-day naval battle in 1988. But Saturday's incident brought no immediate response from Iranian officials or media, while French authorities downplayed its danger.

The Texas teenager known for using an "affluenza" defense in a fatal drunken-driving accident likely won't return to the United States anytime soon because of a Mexican judge's decision to delay his deportation, US law enforcement officials said Wednesday. Richard Hunter, chief deputy US marshal for the southern district of Texas, said during a news conference in Houston that a three-day injunction granted to Ethan Couch will likely take at least two weeks to resolve. Authorities believe the 18-year-old, sentenced only to probation for the 2013 wreck in Texas, fled to Puerto Vallarta with his mother as prosecutors investigated whether he had violated his probation.

China's Foreign Ministry says it will "wait and see" how sincere Japan was after South Korea and Japan reached a landmark agreement to resolve the issue of "comfort women." "Comfort women" is a euphemism for those who were forced to work in Japan's wartime brothels, an issue that has long plagued ties between South Korea and Japan, as well as between China and Japan. Earlier this week the foreign ministers of Japan and South Korea said in Seoul the issue would be "finally and irreversibly resolved" if all conditions were met. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said Japan's history of militarism and aggression had brought deep suffering to China and other Asian countries.

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