Top 10: Bigger migrant caravan set to leave Honduras next month

1. Another, bigger migrant caravan is set to leave from Honduras next month

Another migrant caravan — this one estimated at 15,000 people — is preparing to leave Honduras on Jan. 15, according to migrant rights advocates and Spanish-language media.

“They say they are even bigger and stronger than the last caravan,” said Irma Garrido, a member of the migrant advocacy group Reactiva Tijuana Foundation.

Meanwhile, thousands of Central American migrants from a caravan that left Honduras in October remain stranded at the U.S.-Mexico border and languishing in crowded Tijuana shelters while they wait out a lengthy process to file asylum requests with the United States.

Coordinators who helped direct the migrants on the 2,000-mile trek with bullhorns, arranging for buses and giving advice along the way, have mostly vanished. Many of the migrants say they feel abandoned and unsure where to turn next. Some are ready to return home.

Related: President Trump: U.S. will cut off aid to Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador

2. Algeria deports Syrian refugees to Niger

Rabat – Algeria has deported dozens of Syrian refugees to Niger, saying they entered the country irregularly, reported Syria TV on Wednesday.

Quoting a source, Syria TV said Algeria deported about 50 Syrians, including women and children, to Niger.

The source added that the migrants had been stranded for 85 days due to their irregular status before they were deported. The source also expressed fear that Niger might deport the migrants back to Syria, a conflict zone since 2011.

Several Syrian activists condemned Algeria’s move. The Syrian president of the Syrian Center of Studies and Legal Research, Anwar Al Bounni, wrote on his Facebook in November that dozens of fleeing Syrians “are stuck in an Arab country, Algeria.”

3. Champs-Élysées New Year's Eve bash to go ahead despite “yellow vest” protests

New Year's Eve celebrations on the Champs-Élysées in Paris will go ahead despite plans for another "yellow vest" anti-government protest on the famed avenue, city officials said on Thursday.

Tens of thousands of tourists and locals traditionally ring in the new year on the wide shopping boulevard, which ends with the Arc de Triomphe monument. [...]

On Facebook 7,400 people are listed as planning to attend what it calls a “festive and non-violent event.”

Related: French 'yellow vest' protests planned for Saturday, New Year's Eve

Related: France's ramshackle 'Yellow Vest' protesters have Emmanuel Macron's back against the wall — but they're nervous about replacing him

4. Ambush leaves 10 Burkina Faso police officers dead

“The toll is 10 officers who have lost their lives and three wounded," the ministry said in a statement, adding that a convoy of police from the Toeni region and reinforcements from the Dedougou area were ambushed.

The officers were attacked while heading to the village of Loroni, near the border with Mali, after a school there had been attacked and textbooks torched by armed assailants, a security source told AFP. [...]

Most attacks are attributed to the jihadist group Ansarul Islam, which emerged near the Mali border in December 2016, and to the JNIM (the Group to Support Islam and Muslims), which has sworn allegiance to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

Those groups are believed to be responsible for more than 255 deaths since 2015.

5. Associate of Charlie Hebdo attackers jailed after seven years on the run

French jihadist Peter Cherif, a close associate of the Charlie Hebdo attackers, was transferred overnight to the Paris prosecutor's office to face new charges and finally begin a five-year prison term handed down in 2011.

The 36-year-old Frenchman fled on the last day of his March 2011 trial in Paris, where he was set to be jailed for five years for fighting with al Qaeda in Iraq. He had been on the run ever since.

He was re-arrested in Djibouti on 16 December and expelled to France, where he was immediately taken into custody and charged upon his arrival at the capital's Charles de Gaulle Airport.

French authorities brought new preliminary charges against him on Thursday, placing him under formal investigation for “terrorist conspiracy.”

Related: Threatened with death, Zineb El Rhazoui responds (VIDEO)

Charlie Hebdo attack survivor, Zineb el Rhazoui, appears on C News to explain her statements about Islam and French secular culture.

6. Police in Malmö to clamp down on New Year's Eve fireworks

Police in Malmö are scaling up their operation at the city’s Möllevången Square this New Year’s Eve, hoping to prevent a repeat of the fireworks mayhem captured in a viral video last year.

There will be extra officers patrolling the square, all equipped with body cameras and spotlights, and footage the square's many security cameras will be observed in real time.

“We are going to make sure that we have sufficient personnel on the scene; there will be a lot more of us about than on a normal Saturday night, you’ll notice it,” Kalle Persson, at the police operations centre for southern Sweden, told The Local.

Video from Jan 2017:

7. Man nabbed for trying to strangle pregnant girlfriend

(ANSA) - Forlì, December 27 - A 29-year-old Moroccan man allegedly took his pregnant girlfriend to an isolated road where he beat her up while accusing her of being unfaithful and injured her with a screwdriver before trying to strangle her, police in Forlì said Thursday after arresting the man.

He held her for several days in a hotel where he allegedly threatened to kill her, they said.

The victim is a 29-year-old Italian of Moroccan origin, police said.

8. Indian court remands 10 suspected suicide attack plotters in custody

[...] Members of the cell, which police said had links to an Islamic State-inspired group, were arrested in raids in Delhi and nearby cities on Wednesday, the National Investigation Agency said.

M.S. Khan, a lawyer representing the accused, told the court they were innocent. The court remanded them in custody for 12 days.

Police earlier brought the suspects to court, amid tight security, with their faces covered.

Additional Sessions Judge Ajay Pandey ordered that proceedings be held in a closed session, with media and public excluded, for security reasons.

9. Revealed: How Iran wages “CYBER TERRORISM” to secretly spy on MILLIONS and incite “CHAOS”

Furious Iranians, making use of cyber technology to disseminate their message, have been part of a popular uprising that erupted in Tehran in December 2017.

But now the theocratic regime - led by Iran’s IRGC and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) - is using “cyber attacks” to suppress its people, the Iranian Resistance document seen by Express.co.uk claims.

It explains: “Millions of Iranians have access to the internet and more than 48 million own smartphones.” [...]

“The continuous cyber resistance by the public has driven the regime to route internet traffic through one of the state-controlled systems, making it very difficult for any subscriber to evade state-sponsored cyber repression.”

The ominous paper argues the Iranian regime is among very few governments in the world where “its testbed of cyber attacks and strategies is its own citizens.”

It contends this approach is “in line with Tehran’s longstanding worldview of instilling fear and repression at home, while promoting terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism and chaos abroad.”

10. German charged over death of “slave” under IS rule in Iraq

German prosecutors have indicted a woman alleged to have belonged to the Islamic State group's “morality police” in Iraq and to have let a small girl she and her husband held as a slave die of thirst. [...]

Federal prosecutors said Friday W. patrolled parks in Fallujah and Mosul in 2015, ensuring women adhered to IS dress and behavior codes.

They said she and her husband bought a 5-year-old girl as a slave. The husband left the girl chained outdoors as punishment for wetting her mattress. W. allegedly did nothing to prevent her dying.