AM briefing: Gunman kills 11 at house party

The Sydney fireworks were spectacular but two men died in Australia from mishandling fireworks. Photo / AP

A gunman has stormed a house party and killed at least 11 people and himself during New Year celebrations in the southeastern Brazilian city of Campinas. Police in the state of Sao Paulo said the shooter is believed to have been angry over a separation from his former wife, who was among those killed. Local media reports said the couple's 8-year-old son also died in the shooting.

Police in Florence say a bomb squad officer lost an eye and had to have a hand amputated after a suspicious package he was examining exploded. Florence Police Chief Alberto Intini said that the package left outside a closed bookshop with links to a group of extreme right activists, CasaPound, had caught the attention of a passing police patrol. The explosives squad was called and that's when the officer was gravely injured.

German police say they have prevented a repeat of the assaults and robberies suffered by hundreds of women in Cologne a year ago by screening 650 mostly North African men at New Year's. Police detained and screened many of the men at the main railway station as they headed towards the centre of Cologne in western Germany. Cologne police chief Juergen Mathies did not say how many of the men were subsequently allowed into the city centre but denied that the checks amounted to racial profiling. He also said many of those detained had been aggressive.

As Australia Day approaches, people are being urged to hand in illegal fireworks after two New Year deaths. A 52-year-old was trying to light a large, old firework on the New South Wales Central Coast on Sunday, when it hit him in the head and on Saturday night a 46 -year-old man died in Victoria when a firework went off.

At least 23 people were killed and 17 others were missing after a ferry caught fire on Sunday off the coast of Indonesia's capital, officials said. The vessel was carrying more than 230 people from Jakarta's port of Muara Angke to Tidung, a resort island in the Kepulauan Seribu chain, when it caught fire, officials said. Most of the passengers were Indonesians celebrating the New Year's holiday, according to local media reports.

Syrian government warplanes carried out several air strikes and low-level clashes have persisted in some but a Russian and Turkish-backed ceasefire has largely held on its third day, a monitoring group and rebels say. Jets bombed the villages of Kafr Kar, Mintar and around the town of Banan in the southern Aleppo countryside, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. It said government forces also advanced overnight against rebels in the Eastern Ghouta area near Damascus, seizing 10 farms. But opposition groups did not follow through on threats to abandon the truce altogether.

- agencies