CURRENT EVENTS - JANUARY 2026

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Rock

Rock

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Sad start to 2026. Appears to be accidental despite social media rushing to claim it a terrorist attack.

Two women told French broadcaster BFMTV that they were inside when they saw a barman carrying a barmaid on his shoulders. The barmaid was holding a lit candle in a bottle that set fire to the wooden ceiling. The flames quickly spread and collapsed the ceiling, they told the broadcaster.
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apnews.com

About 40 people dead and 115 injured in fire at Swiss Alpine bar during New Year's celebration

About 40 people were killed and another 115 injured, most of them seriously, during a New Year’s celebration in a Swiss Alpine bar, police said.
apnews.com apnews.com

www.reuters.com

Dozens killed, 100 injured in fire at Swiss ski resort bar

Authorities said the fire appeared to be an accident rather than an attack.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com
 
I have seen several mentions of there being a "blast" wonder if a gas line went with it.
 
altmin said:
I have seen several mentions of there being a "blast" wonder if a gas line went with it.
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“… Two young French women who said they were in the bar told France's BFM TV that they saw the fire start in the basement section of the club after a bottle containing "birthday candles" was held up too close to the wooden ceiling….”
 

Fire triggered a flashover or backdraft, which caused further blasts​

There was some early confusion in the immediate aftermath of the incident, when it was unclear if some kind of explosive device had been involved. Police officials have said this was not the case.

It now appears that the tragedy was started with a fire that then caused an explosion inside Le Constellation bar.

AP reports:

While officials said Thursday it was too early to determine the fire’s cause, investigators have already ruled out that it could have been an attack.

The Swiss officials called the blaze an “embrasement généralisé,” a French firefighting term describing how a blaze can trigger the release of combustible gases that can then ignite violently and cause what English-speaking firefighters would call a flashover or a backdraft.

Victims suffered from serious burns and smoke inhalation.
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nycfan said:
Just to close the loop on this anti-vax prediction:

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I think you might be a tad too hasty with your proclamation. There is a chance that we all have died and were all sent to a Hell where Donald Trump is a two-term President ruling as Vladamir Putin's puppet, and it will be that way for all the rest of eternity. If so, I wish I had known what Hell was going to be like so I could have lived a better life when I was alive.
 
nycfan said:
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www.foreignaffairs.com

Cuba on the Brink

Where will the island’s crisis end?
www.foreignaffairs.com www.foreignaffairs.com
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“… In the last five years, well over a million people—more than one in every ten Cubans—have fled the country, mostly for the United States.

Today, under President Miguel Díaz-Canel, the island is enduring its worst economic crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union. GDP has declined 11 percent since 2020. The electric grid is falling apart. Security forces harshly repress antigovernment protests. In October, Hurricane Melissa devastated the island’s east, damaging or destroying some 90,000 homes and 250,000 acres of farmland.

Now, an outbreak of dengue and other mosquito-borne viruses has reached epidemic proportions.

Cuba’s unfolding tragedy is partly the result of external shocks, such as U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2016 election. After taking office, Trump reinstated many of the sanctions his predecessor had lifted. Between 2019 and 2020, for instance, he sharply restricted flights, remittances, and travel to the island, and in 2021, he redesignated Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, mainly for harboring a handful of fugitives from U.S. justice.

U.S. President Joe Biden only partially loosened these restrictions, and Trump has reinstated some of them in his second term. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic shattered the island’s tourism industry.

And with the second Trump administration mounting an increasingly aggressive pressure campaign to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, an already sharp reduction in oil aid from Caracas to Havana in recent years threatens to get worse, and Cuba risks losing its most important economic and geopolitical partner.

But the current emergency is also a mess of the Cuban government’s making. Despite Raúl’s reforms, authorities have been unwilling to break decisively from the country’s sclerotic central planning model. Additional private-sector expansions have been fitful, and bad monetary policy has contributed to severe inflation. The government has, likewise, been averse to any meaningful change to the island’s one-party system.

As a result, the island’s economy remains fragile and unresponsive, and past excitement in Washington for greater engagement with Havana has been replaced by skepticism, hostility, or disinterest.…”
 
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