At least 10 people, including two children, were killed and four others were seriously wounded on Wednesday in a shooting rampage that followed a bar brawl in a western Montenegrin city, officials said. The shooter was on the run.

Police identified the attacker as 45-year-old Aco Martinovic. He killed the owner of the bar in the city of Cetinje, the bar owner’s children and his own family members, Interior Minister Danilo Saranovic said at a news conference.

“At this moment, we are focused on arresting him,” Saranovic told reporters.

Police dispatched special troops to search for the attacker in Cetinje, located some 18 miles northwest of the capital, Podgorica. All the roads in and out of the city have been blocked as police swarmed the streets.

Saranovic described the suspect as dangerous and appealed on the residents to stay indoors.

“The level of rage and brutality shows that sometimes such people … are even more dangerous than members of organized criminal gangs,” Saranovic said.

Martinovic was at the bar throughout the day with other guests when the brawl erupted, said Police Commissioner Lazar Scepanovic. He said that Martinovic then went home, brought back a weapon and opened fire at around 5:30 p.m.

“He killed four people” at the bar, before heading out and then continued shooting at three more locations, said Scepanovic. “He tried to take the lives of four more people, and then fled with the vehicle he was using, which we have found.”

He said that the suspect received a suspended sentence in 2005 for violent behavior and has appealed his latest conviction for illegal possession of weapons. Montenegrin media have reported he was known for erratic and violent behavior.

Small Montenegro, which has some 620,000 people, is known for its gun culture and many people traditionally have weapons.

Fireworks explosion near Honolulu kills 3

Emergency crews arrived to a chaotic and gruesome scene in a Honolulu neighborhood after a large New Year’s firework tipped over after being lit and ignited a fiery, shrapnel-studded blast that killed three people and injured more than 20 others, several of them critically.

Two women died at the scene and a third woman died at a hospital, authorities said Wednesday.

Hawaii Gov. Josh Green graphically described the deaths in a news conference to emphasize the potential danger of fireworks. “We’re talking about the worst possible, war-zone injuries that took their lives.”

Some of the more than 20 people taken to hospitals with severe burns and shrapnel wounds included children, officials said.

The blast happened at a three-story home with a bottom-level carport.

The explosion happened when a lit bundle of aerial, mortar-style fireworks called a “cake” tipped over or fell off a table and fired sideways into crates containing additional fireworks, which then exploded.

Officials said was tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of fireworks was at the home.

A fourth person was killed in a different fireworks explosion elsewhere on Oahu, officials said. At least four other serious injuries occurred in unrelated fireworks accidents overnight.

Russia warns of oil spill environmental damage

Russian officials warned of severe environmental damage Wednesday as thousands of people came out to clean up tons of fuel oil that spilled out of two storm-stricken tankers more than two weeks ago in the Kerch Strait, near Moscow-occupied Crimea.

More than 10,000 people, largely volunteers, raced to rescue wildlife and remove tons of sand saturated with mazut, a heavy, low-quality oil product, according to Russian news reports.

Authorities in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region last week announced a region-wide emergency, as the fuel oil continued washing up on the coastline 10 days after one tanker ran aground and the other was left damaged and adrift on Dec. 15.

The move came days after Russian President Vladimir Putin called the oil spill an “ecological disaster.”

On Wednesday, New Year’s Day, Krasnodar officials said the oil kept on surfacing on the beaches of Anapa, a popular local resort.

More than 71,000 tons of contaminated sand and soil had been removed along 35 miles of shoreline since the original spill, Russia’s emergencies ministry reported on Wednesday morning.

On Dec. 23, the ministry estimated that up to 200,000 tons in total may have been contaminated.

Some Russian media critical of the Kremlin cited Russian volunteers as saying that state support has been inadequate as they grapple with the consequences of the spill. Some said they experienced headaches, nausea and vomiting after spending hours inhaling toxic fumes, and complained of insufficient equipment and protective measures.

Power restored after Puerto Rico outage

Power was restored to nearly all electrical customers across Puerto Rico on Wednesday after a sweeping blackout plunged the U.S. territory into darkness on New Year’s Eve.

By Wednesday afternoon, power was back up for 98% of Puerto Rico’s 1.47 million utility customers, said Luma Energy, the private company overseeing transmission and distribution of power in the archipelago. Lights returned to households as well as to Puerto Rico’s hospitals, water plants and sewage facilities after the massive outage that exposed the persistent electricity problems plaguing the island.

Still, the company warned that customers could still see temporary outages in the coming days. It said full restoration across the island could take up to two days..

Pope doubles down on abortion

Pope Francis ushered in the New Year with a renewed appeal for the faithful to reject abortion, calling for a “firm commitment” to protect and respect life from conception to natural death.

Francis, 88, celebrated a New Year’s Day Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on Wednesday that was dedicated to Mary, the mother of Jesus.

In his homily, he prayed that everyone learns to care for “every child born of a woman” and to protect “the precious gift of life: life in the womb, the lives of children, the lives of the suffering, the poor, the elderly, the lonely and the dying.”

“I ask for a firm commitment to respect the dignity of human life from conception to natural death, so that each person may cherish his or her own life and all may look with hope to the future,” he said, using the terminology of the church’s opposition to abortion and euthanasia.

Paid leave for prenatal visits starts in N.Y.

Pregnant New Yorkers will be entitled to at least 20 hours of paid leave to attend prenatal medical appointments under a law that took effect Wednesday.

Gov. Kathy Hochul said the policy makes New York the first state in the country to offer paid leave for prenatal care.

All pregnant workers in the private sector are eligible for the paid time off. Workers can schedule the paid leave for pregnancy-related medical appointments such as physical examinations, end of pregnancy care and fertility treatments, among other things.

Hochul pushed for the measure in the state’s last legislative session as a way to help reduce maternal and infant deaths in New York.

“No pregnant woman in New York should be forced to choose between a paycheck and a check-up — and that’s why I pushed to create the nation’s first paid prenatal leave policy,” Hochul said in a statement last month.

Record low homicide year in El Salvador

El Salvador closed 2024 with a record low 114 homicides, continuing notable security gains under a second full year of a state of emergency that has given the government extraordinary powers and curtailed some fundamental rights.

President Nayib Bukele said via the social platform X that the number announced Wednesday by the small Central American country’s Attorney General’s Office made it the safest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

Not all nations had published their 2024 annual homicide totals, but the 1.9 homicides per 100,000 in population that Bukele said had been achieved would put it below what any Latin American country had reported in 2023. El Salvador’s official total does not include the killings of five suspected gang members in shootouts with security forces.

In March 2022, El Salvador’s notoriously powerful street gangs killed 62 people in a matter of hours. The congress granted Bukele’s administration a requested “state of exception” to crackdown on the gangs that included suspending some Constitutional rights and giving police more powers to arrest and hold suspects.

More than 83,000 people have been arrested since, the majority jailed without due process. Bukele has said that 8,000 people who were innocent have been released.

U.K. sees flooding during New Year celebrations

Parts of the United Kingdom were flooded Wednesday as heavy rains and powerful winds continued to disrupt New Year’s celebrations.

Several communities in the Manchester area were flooded, with several homes evacuated and cars submerged up to their roofs on roads and in parking lots after nearly a month’s worth of rain fell in two days.

A major incident was declared and mountain rescue teams were called in to help firefighters respond to swamped properties and stranded vehicles, Greater Manchester Police said.

— From news services