Here's what's happening across the United States and around the world today.
Hunt for 2 suspects in French shooting that killed 12; 1 surrenders to police
PARIS (AP) — French police hunted Thursday for two heavily armed men — one with a terrorism conviction and a history in jihadi networks — in the methodical killing of 12 people at a satirical newspaper that caricatured the Prophet Muhammad. The prime minister announced several overnight arrests and said the possibility of a new attack "is our main concern."
Tensions in Paris were high as France began a day of national mourning. The most senior security official abandoned a top-level meeting after just 10 minutes to rush to a shooting on the city's southern edge. A policewoman died and a street sweeper was wounded. The shooter remained at large.
It was not immediately clear if that shooting was linked to the attack the previous day on the newspaper Charlie Hebdo, where two police were among the dead.
France's prime minister, Manuel Valls, said the two suspects in the Charlie Hebdo shootings were known to intelligence services, and the fear that they could carry out another attack "is our main concern." Valls told RTL radio there had been several arrests overnight; a security official put the arrest total at seven, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.
Valls said the suspects were likely being tracked by intelligence services, but "there is no such thing as zero risk."
U.S. & World
Stories that affect your life across the U.S. and around the world.
Obama and new Senate leader McConnell waste no time setting up showdowns
WASHINGTON (AP) — Not wasting any time, new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and President Barack Obama are setting course for showdowns over health care, a big oil pipeline, immigration policy and financing of the agency that tries to protect the U.S. from terrorists.
At the same time, both insist they are eager for compromise — if only the other side would give in.
"It seems with every new day, we have a new veto threat from the president," McConnell, R-Ky., complained Wednesday, his second day as Senate leader. Republicans won control of the chamber in the November elections, and strengthened their hold on the House.
With the 114th Congress just getting underway, the White House already has announced that Obama stands ready to veto three bills that Republicans hope to rush through. One would allow construction of the Keystone XL pipeline to bring oil from Canada. Another weakens Obama's signature health care law, by increasing the definition of a full-time employee who must be offered health coverage at work to 40 hours from the current 30. The third would alter a key provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank overhaul of financial services regulations.
"The president is not going to set the agenda for us here in the Senate," McConnell told reporters.
Egypt's leader el-Sissi calls for revolution in interpretation of Islam in face of militancy
CAIRO (AP) — Egypt's president opened the new year with a dramatic call for a "revolution" in Islam to reform interpretations of the faith entrenched for hundreds of years, which he said have made the Muslim world a source of "destruction" and pitted it against the rest of the world.
The speech was Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi's boldest effort yet to position himself as a modernizer of Islam. His professed goal is to purge the religion of extremist ideas of intolerance and violence that fuel groups like al-Qaida and the Islamic State — and that appear to have motivated Wednesday's attack in Paris on a French satirical newspaper that killed 12 people.
But those looking for the "Muslim Martin Luther" bringing a radical Reformation of Islam may be overreaching — and making a false comparison to begin with. El-Sissi is clearly seeking to impose change through the state, using government religious institutions like the 1,000-year-old al-Azhar, one of the most eminent centers of Sunni Muslim thought and teaching.
Al-Azhar's vision for change, however, is piecemeal, and conservative, focusing on messaging and outreach but wary of addressing deeper and more controversial issues.
Al-Azhar officials tout a YouTube channel just launched to reach out to the young, mimicking radicals' successful social media outreach to disenfranchised youth. They proudly point out that clerics in the videos wear suits, not al-Azhar's traditional robes and turbans, to be more accessible.
Dissidents free but questions hang over US-Cuba deal; no word from US spy or Fidel Castro
HAVANA (AP) — Three dissidents were free Thursday after being abruptly released in what a leading human rights advocate said was part of Cuba's deal with Washington to release 53 members of the island's political opposition.
Neither the Obama administration nor the Cuban government spoke publicly about the releases, adding to the unanswered questions swirling around the deal and the broader detente that the two countries announced Dec. 17.
President Barack Obama ended five decades of official U.S. hostility toward communist-governed Cuba by announcing that, along with an exchange of men held on espionage charges, he would move toward full diplomatic ties, drop regime change as a U.S. goal and use his executive authority to punch holes in the longstanding trade embargo.
His Cuban counterpart, Raul Castro, welcomed the announcement but said detente would not lead Cuba to change its single-party political system or centrally planned economy.
U.S. officials told reporters on Dec. 17 that Cuba had agreed to free the 53 detainees, considered by Washington to be high-priority political prisoners. Castro said they would be released in "a unilateral way." But since then, neither Cuba nor the United States has publicly identified anyone on the list or announced they have gone free.
Divers struggling to retrieve AirAsia black boxes turned away by currents; tail may be lifted
PANGKALAN BUN, Indonesia (AP) — Strong currents and blinding silt thwarted an attempt by divers to find AirAsia Flight 8501's black boxes Thursday, which they hope are still located in the recently discovered tail of the plane.
The flight data and cockpit voice recorders, which are crucial to helping determine what caused the jet to go down with 162 people aboard on Dec. 28, are located in the rear of the aircraft.
A day after an unmanned underwater vehicle spotted the plane's tail, lying upside down and partially buried in the sea floor, divers were unable to make it past choppy seas and 1-meter (3-foot) visibility, said National Search and Rescue chief Henry Bambang Soelistyo.
He said expert teams from Indonesia and France were looking at other options, including a crane to lift the tail.
Ping-emitting beacons in the black boxes still have about 20 days before their batteries go dead, but high waves had prevented the deployment of ping locators, which are dragged by ships
In religiously conservative Pakistan, a TV show focuses on a topic once considered taboo: Sex
KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) — In religiously conservative Pakistan, a television call-in advice show is tackling an issue rarely discussed in public: Sex.
Once a week, a doctor appearing on HTV's "Clinic Online" focuses on sexual issues, fielding questions about sexually transmitted disease, fertility and how to deal with husbands having multiple wives in this Muslim-majority country of 180 million people.
"It wasn't an easy decision," said Faizan Syed, the CEO of HTV, a private satellite channel. "The biggest question was how society would perceive or handle it."
The answer is surprisingly well. Before the first episode aired, Syed said producers discussed every aspect of the show, including whether to air it late at night to ensure that the audience was mostly adults and not children. In the end, Syed said they decided to air it during the day when men likely would be at work and women at home alone, making it easier for them to call the show
The show doesn't mirror the occasional salaciousness of American daytime television talk shows or the winking raunchiness of Dr. Ruth Westheimer. Instead, the Karachi-shot show aired nationwide features Dr. Nadeem Uddin Siddiqui clinically answering questions, mainly from women calling in from villages or remote areas of the country. Many women in Pakistan don't even have a basic education, let alone a working knowledge of sex.
Protesters shout at fans as Bill Cosby returns to the stage for first time since November
KITCHENER, Ontario (AP) — Bill Cosby said he had a "wonderful time" and got a standing ovation from polite Canadian fans at his first show following a string of cancellations in the wake of sexual assault allegations from more than 15 women.
But outside protesters braved below-freezing weather to shame the ticket-holders as they streamed in and are likely to do so again at the second of three performances in Ontario on Thursday.
Cosby's show in Kitchener was his first show since November when the entertainer saw at least 10 performances get canceled on his North American tour.
Like his last show in Melbourne, Florida on Nov. 21 there were no disruptions during the performance and the crowd laughed throughout.
Wearing a sweater saying "hello friend," Cosby climbed the stage decorated with two giant posters of him with Nelson Mandela.
Public statements in Sony case could cause bind for US, depending where evidence trail leads
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration's extraordinary decision to point fingers at North Korea over the hacking of Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. could lead to a courtroom spectacle if charges are ultimately filed against someone without ties to the isolated country, such as a disgruntled employee or an unrelated hacker.
Legal experts say potential complications illustrate why federal authorities rarely announce they've solved a case before an arrest.
"Once the government says it has good reason to believe North Korea did it, then that is good reason to believe that the defendant did not do it unless the defendant was an agent of North Korea," said Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society.
U.S. officials for weeks have been emphatic blaming North Korea for the hack attack, citing similarities to other tools developed by the country in specific lines of computer code, encryption algorithms and data deletion methods. The Obama administration — reeling over persistent public skepticism whether North Korea was to blame — asserted its certainty again last week, announcing a new round of sanctions against North Korea that officials said will be just the first step of retaliation.
FBI Director James Comey told a cybersecurity conference in New York on Wednesday that the hackers "got sloppy" and mistakenly sent messages directly that could be traced to Internet addresses used exclusively by the North Korea. Comey said the hackers had sought to use proxy computer servers, a common ploy to disguise hackers' identities and throw investigators off their trail by hiding their true locations.
At least 25 wrong arrests mar Philippines anti-terror work; some held for more than decade
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — More than a decade ago, the military declared they had killed an Abu Sayyaf kidnapping suspect named Abdulmukim Idris. Yet a man authorities accuse of being Idris continues to languish in a maximum-security jail where the Philippines holds some of its most notorious terror suspects.
In the country's dogged pursuit of terror suspects, it also has nabbed two "Black Tungkangs," two "Abdasil Dimas," two "Hussien Kasims." Those are just a few of the signs that Philippine law enforcers have made a slew of mistaken arrests in going after Abu Sayyaf and other Islamic militant groups long active in this Southeast Asian nation's south.
Complaints of false arrests prompted low-key but unprecedented reinvestigations of some of the country's high-profile terrorism cases by state prosecutors. They have led to the release of more than two dozen people who were either mistaken for Abu Sayyaf fighters or brought to trial without evidence, according to official findings.
In their latest review, issued in August, state prosecutors said such faulty arrests of villagers, some of whom could not be identified even by a single witness, are "abhorred in civilized societies like ours."
An Associated Press investigation that included interviews with prosecutors, key witnesses and a freed detainee shows that dozens more people remain behind bars despite a lack of evidence against them. For instance, of the two detainees accused of being the Abu Sayyaf militant who used the nom de guerre Black Tungkang, one remains in custody, even though a former hostage has sworn that neither was the right man.
Eat less sugar? Salt? Meat? 5 things to look for as government writes new dietary advice
WASHINGTON (AP) — You've heard it before: Eat fewer calories, more fruits and more vegetables. Those recurring themes as well as some new advice about sugar, salt, meat and caffeine could be part of the government's upcoming dietary guidelines for healthy eating.
Whether individuals listen or not, the dietary guidelines affect nutritional patterns throughout the country — from federally subsidized school lunches to labels on food packages to your doctor's advice. They also form the basis for the government's "My Plate" icon, which replaced the food pyramid a few years ago.
A government advisory committee made up of medical and nutrition experts is set to issue preliminary recommendations this month. It indicated in draft recommendations circulated in December that it may suggest some changes in current dietary advice.
The secretaries of the Agriculture and Health and Human Services Departments will take those recommendations into account as they craft the final 2015 guidelines, expected by the end of the year.
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