Up to 80, including children, killed as truck plows into crowd in French resort city of Nice

NICE, France --Up to 80 people were killed when a truck plowed into a crowd watching a Bastille Day fireworks display in the southern French resort of Nice late Thursday.

French President Francois Hollande, in a televised address, said "several children" were among the dead as he extended the state of emergency in the country for three months, stressing the "terrorist nature" of the attack was "undeniable."

The latest death toll, which had steadily risen since the original estimate of 60, was given by French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve who also said 18 of the estimated hundred injured were in a "critical condition."

Nice prosecutor Jean-Michel Pretre said the truck drove two kilometers through a large crowd that was watching the fireworks.

The driver had also opened fire on the crowd, local government chief Christian Estrosi told BFM TV, and weapons and grenades were found inside the truck after he was killed.

If confirmed as an act of terror, the incident will be the third major attack on French soil in 18 months -- with several smaller-scale jihadist killings also having taken place.

Identity papers belonging to a 31-year-old French-Tunisian were found inside the truck, a police source said.

"The identification of the truck driver is still underway," said the source. The identity papers indicate the man is a resident of Nice.

The French government denied there was a hostage-taking incident after the attack.

"There is no hostage-taking," interior ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet told AFP, denying dozens of rumors following the incident. "An individual drove a truck into the crowd. He was killed by police."

"Investigations are currently under way to establish if the individual acted alone or if he had accomplices who might have fled," Brandet said.

Anti-terrorism investigators have taken over the probe, prosecutors said.

Sub-prefect Sebastien Humbert described the incident as a clear criminal attack, although the driver was not yet identified. Residents of the Mediterranean city close to the Italian border were advised to stay indoors. There was no sign of any other attack.

"Dear Nicois," local mayor Christian Estrosi tweeted, "The driver of a truck appears to have killed dozens of people. Stay at home for the time being. More news to follow."

The incident comes as France remains badly shaken by November 2015 attacks which killed 130 people at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris and nightspots across the city.

An AFP reporter described seeing a white truck driving at high speed onto the famed Promenade des Anglais as people were leaving.

"We saw people hit and bits of debris flying around," he said.

Terrified pedestrians screamed as they fled the area. "It was absolute chaos," he added.

Regional newspaper Nice Matin quoted its reporter at the scene saying there were many injured people and blood on the street. It published a photograph of a damaged, long-distance delivery truck, which it said was riddled with bullets and images of emergency services treating the injured.

Damien Allemand, the paper's correspondent, was quoted as saying: "People are running. It's panic. He rode up onto the Prom and piled into the crowd ... There are people covered in blood. There must be many injured."

Social media carried images of people lying apparently lifeless in pools of blood.

US President Barack Obama condemned "what appears to be a horrific terrorist attack", although no group had claimed responsibility for the incident.

US government agencies have received constant reports of Islamic State threats to attack France and those threats are regarded as current, a US security official said. However, two US officials said they had no information at this point about whether militants were involved in the Nice incident.

CNN said it has spoken to a witness, identified as an American pilot, who saw the truck ramming the crowd. The witness said the driver mowed people down, accelerating as he hit them. The witness said there was only one person in the truck.

Local mayor Estrosi has warned in the past of the risk of Islamist attacks in the region, following Islamic State bloodshed in Paris and Brussels over the past 18 months.

French President Francois Hollande, who was in the south of France at the time, had hours earlier said a state of emergency put in place after the Paris attacks in November would not be extended when it was due to expire on July 26.

"We can't extend the state of emergency indefinitely, it would make no sense. That would mean we're no longer a republic with the rule of law applied in all circumstances," Hollande told journalists in a traditional Bastille Day interview.

source: interaksyon.com

Paris vies to overtake London as finance hub post-Brexit

PARIS - British Prime Minister David Cameron once gleefully offered to "roll out the red carpet" for French executives wanting to escape staggering wealth taxes.

Now, with London's red carpet fraying after the Brexit vote to leave the European Union, Paris is stepping in to welcome bankers, investors and businesses who may want to escape the uncertainty hanging over the City's role as a global finance hub.

"In this new environment which is taking shape, we want France to be attractive," Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Wednesday.

As competition grows among Europe's capitals to benefit from the financial fallout of Brexit, Valls unveiled a series of measures to boost the allure of Paris.

Notably, he confirmed plans to cut France's corporate tax rate to 28 percent from 33 percent, a move previously announced by President Francois Hollande.

Britain's vote to leave the European Union "created shockwaves, for all European citizens but also, in a very concrete manner, many businesses settled in the United Kingdom," Valls said.

Valls said he wanted to improve the tax and legal framework to "welcome even more companies (and) make Paris the capital of smart finance."

The prime minister announced a tweak to a system allowing foreign employees to benefit from tax reductions, making it applicable for eight years instead of five.

Beyond these fiscal measures, the government also plans to put in place a "single entry point" to facilitate administrative matters for foreign companies seeking to set up shop in France -- where red tape can be a nightmare to navigate.

This service will help companies with questions about real estate, residency permits, schools and other issues.

Valls said France would open "as many international sections as needed in schools" to allow children of foreign employees to be taught in their mother tongue.

The Brexit vote has several European capitals clamoring to take London's spot as a major finance center, such as Frankfurt, Luxembourg and Dublin.

France is traditionally perceived as "anti-business", with its inflexible and hard-to-understand labor code.

According to the World Bank's 2016 "Ease of Doing Business" report, France ranks 27th out of 189 countries, while Britain comes in sixth.

'Supertax'

The Socialist government came into power in 2012 promising as 75 percent "supertax" on top earners -- which sent the rich fleeing -- and became another symbol of France's opposition to big business.

However the measure was slowly watered down and quietly dropped in 2015, as it failed to do much to boost a stagnating economy.

Hollande has since steered his government on a wildly different path to stimulate the economy, with a series of economic and labour reforms that have enraged the left flank of his party, which now accuses him of being too pro-business.

As an indication of how difficult the reforms have been, Valls had to force both sets of reforms through parliament without a vote using a special constitutional measure.

source: interaksyon.com

Paris attacks suspect Abdeslam captured in Brussels

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Top Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam, Europe's most wanted man, was wounded and captured in a dramatic raid by armed police in the Belgian capital on Friday.

Abdeslam, 26, and four other suspects were arrested in the gritty Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek, where the Franco-Moroccan allegedly helped plan the November 13 attacks in which 130 people died and 350 were injured.

Abdeslam was lightly wounded in the leg, prosecutors said. France said it would swiftly seek his extradition.

"The battle against terrorism does not end tonight, even though this is a victory," French President Francois Hollande told a news conference in Brussels with Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel.

"I think of the victims of November 13, because Salah Abdeslam was directly linked to the preparation, the organization and unfortunately the perpetration of these attacks."

Hollande, whose embattled presidency will be defined by his response to the worst terror attacks on French soil, said Paris would request Abdeslam's extradition from Belgium "as rapidly as possible."

Michel, who rushed out of an EU summit for a crisis meeting with Hollande, said Abdeslam's capture was "extremely important in the battle for democracy against this abominable form of extremism."

The two leaders received the congratulations of US President Barack Obama who reaffirmed a "shared commitment" to "degrading and destroying" Islamic State.

Also arrested was a man known under the fake name of Amine Choukri who also used a false Syrian name, Monir Ahmed Alaaj.

Abdeslam and the so-called Choukri were fingerprinted by police in Germany on October 5, one month before the attacks.

Choukri could also be a so-called Soufiane Kayal who was pulled over by police on the Austrian border with Hungary in September, again with Abdeslam.

The only man known for sure to be still be on the run is Mohamed Abrini who was filmed with Abdeslam two days before the attacks at a filling station on a motorway close to Paris.

Last survivor
Former small-time criminal Abdeslam is believed to be the last surviving member of the 10-man jihadist team that carried out attacks on the Bataclan rock venue, restaurants, bars and the Stade de France stadium.

He apparently fled by car to his hometown Brussels the day after the rampage, having refused to blow himself up, and is believed to have spent much if not all of the subsequent four months in the city.

His brother Brahim carried out one of the suicide bomb attacks in Paris and was buried in a quiet ceremony in Brussels on Thursday, the day before Salah was captured.

Prosecutors said special forces raided a house in Molenbeek on Friday because of evidence found in an operation in Brussels on Tuesday, in which a Paris-linked suspect died in a gun battle with police and two other people escaped.

One of Abdeslam's fingerprints was found at the scene of Tuesday's raid, sparking the huge manhunt that led to his capture.

A witness told AFP the operation began at around 1530 GMT when dozens of police cars swooped into the rundown Molenbeek neighborhood.

"I heard about three or four shots fired, but they were muffled, as if taking place indoors," said Karim, an Oxfam charity employee who lives in the largely Muslim Molenbeek.

Footage in Belgian media appeared to show a white-hooded Abdeslam being dragged to a waiting police car by armed special forces officers.

Belgium has been at the centre of the investigation into the Paris attacks almost from day one, and has been criticized for alleged blunders that let the perpetrators slip under the radar.

Paris network 'much wider'
With Belgium having arrested a series of people over links with Abdeslam, Hollande said many more were involved in the Paris attacks than originally believed.

"We realize that there were many more people than we at first thought," Hollande said.

Investigators believe Abdeslam hired one of he cars used in the attacks and then used it to drive suicide bombers to the Stade de France with the task then of blowing himself up.

But he apparently backed out, and an explosives-filled suicide vest was later found in Paris in a region that mobile phone signals indicated he had been in.

Police believe he fled across the border the next morning. Several people have been arrested on suspicion of helping him and one of his fingerprints was found in December at different Brussels apartment.

The ringleader of the attacks, IS member Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was also from Brussels. He was killed in a raid in Paris in November.

Another of the Paris attackers, Bilal Hadfi, was last week buried quietly in the same cemetery as Abdeslam's brother.

Both had links to Molenbeek, a largely immigrant district which has been a hotbed of Islamist violence for decades.

Abdeslam and his brother had run a bar in the area until it was shut down by the authorities a few weeks before the Paris attacks.

Belgian authorities have meanwhile identified the man killed in the raid on Tuesday linked to Abdeslam as Algerian national Mohamed Belkaid, 35, who was living illegally in Belgium.

Police found a Kalashnikov assault rifle, extremist Islamic literature and an IS flag near Belkaid after he was shot.

He was reportedly on a list of IS fighters leaked last week as a volunteer to commit a suicide bomb attack.

Prosecutors also said he was wanted in connection with the Paris attacks.

source: interaksyon.com

G20 SUMMIT | Paris attacks, Syria divide reshape world leaders' agenda

ANTALYA, Turkey - World leaders joined a heavily-guarded summit in Turkey on Sunday to forge a united front against jihadist violence after the Paris gun and bomb assaults but facing stark divisions over conflict-riven Syria.

US President Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin of Russia, China's President Xi Jinping and other leaders gathered at the Mediterranean resort ofAntalya two days after the Paris attacks claimed byIslamic State jihadists that killed at least 129 people.

The Paris killings darkened the mood of the summit of the Group of 20 top world economies, with security and the Syrian conflict now eclipsing an economic agenda that will also deal with the spreading refugee crisis, climate change and tax avoidance.

Several sources told AFP that the leaders were working on a rare separate statement to denounce the Paris attacks and terrorism, urged on by host President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who said the summit agenda was now "very different" given the massacre in Paris.

"We need to lead an international fight within a coalition against collective acts of terrorism," Erdogansaid on the eve of the summit after meeting withChina's Xi, who described terrorism as "a common enemy of humanity".

The gathering, which will take place without French leader Francois Hollande who remains home to lead his shaken country, offers the first possibility of a meeting between Obama and Putin since Russia launched its own air campaign in Syria.

The West suspects the Russian bombardment is aimed at propping up the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, a difference that risks driving a wedge through the summit, which officially kicks off at midday Sunday (1000 GMT).

The White House has said no formal summit is so far scheduled between the pair, whose icy body language at previous encounters has grabbed as many headlines as their comments.

Erdogan wants to use the summit to cement his status as a global leader after winning a resounding victory in an election last month, held three weeks after a twin suicide bombing in Ankara that killed 102 people and was blamed on Islamic State militants.

But while even Putin and Obama are likely to have no trouble standing together in shared abhorrence of terrorism, overcoming differences on Syria will prove far trickier.

Heightened security

All musical events, including at the official dinner on Sunday night, have been cancelled as a mark of respect for the Paris victims and Turkish state media said the already tight security at the summit was stepped up.

The leaders will probably struggle to find common ground over the Syria crisis, with host Turkey deeply opposed to Russia's air strikes and finding only a lukewarm reaction so far to its proposal for a safe zone free of Islamic State jihadists to be created inside Syria as a haven for refugees.

"I pray and hope that G20 will provide a platform whereby all of these issues can be discussed openly and then we can understand each other," Erdogan said.

Top diplomats gathered in Vienna on Saturday agreed a fixed calendar for Syria that would see a transition government in six months and elections in 18 months but failed to agree on the future of Assad.

Yet officials in Antalya have insisted that they will not allow terrorism to derail the summit.

The refugee crisis is a key topic, with host Turkey housing some 2.2 million Syrian refugees from the conflict but the European Union wanting Ankara to do more to prevent migrants undertaking risky boat crossings to the EU.

Discussions on climate change will assume greater importance than usual coming just ahead of a UN conference in Paris that aims to agree a legally binding global climate treaty.

Other key guests at the summit include Saudi King Salman, whose delegation according to the Hurriyet daily has booked 546 hotel rooms at a cost of up to 15,000 euros ($16,115) each and hired 400 luxury cars.

Focus beyond economies

Although the G20 usually focuses on economic issues, the fight against terrorism was already expected to be on the agenda. The summit comes two weeks after a suspected bomb attack on a Russian airliner killed 224 people in the Sinai Peninsula.

It also comes just over a month after two suspected Islamic State suicide bombers blew themselves up at a peace rally in the Turkish capital Ankara, killing more than 100 people in the worst such attack in the country.

Events such as the attacks in Paris made it crucial for the world's top economies to stand shoulder to shoulder at the summit, China's vice finance minister said.

"We must work together, we must enhance our solidarity," Zhu Guangyou told a news conference in the coastal resort of Belek, where leaders began gathering for the summit.

Speaking in Vienna, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said there was growing consensus among global powers that they had to work together to confront Islamic State.

Turkey's battles

The G20 summit takes place just 500 km (310 miles) from Syria, where a 4-1/2-year conflict has transformed Islamic State militants into a global security threat and spawned Europe's largest migration flows since World War Two.

Erdogan condemned the Paris killings and pointed to Turkey's own long battle with domestic security threats, which include its fight with Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants in its southeast and recent bomb attacks linked to Islamic State.

Ankara sees a growing threat to its security from radical Islamists. Security sources said the Turkish army killed four Islamic State militants when they came under attack from across the Syrian border on Saturday. One official said the frequency of such attacks was on the rise.

Turkish officials said Erdogan would push in bilateral meetings with leaders including Obama for more coordinated and decisive action against Islamic State in Syria.

But he would also emphasize Turkey's opposition to U.S. support for Kurdish rebels who are fighting the radical Sunni insurgents, they said. Turkey says these rebels have close ties to the PKK, considered a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union as well as by Ankara.

"Terrorism has no nationality or religion. All terrorism is bad, we must leave aside the feeling that our terrorist is bad and your terrorist is good," Erdogan said.

NATO-member Turkey opened its air bases in July to the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, but critics say it woke up late to the threat.

Following January's attacks in Paris by gunmen on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the wife of one of the gunmen fled through Turkey to IS-controlled Syria.

Turkey stepped up its fight against Islamic State in July, but the campaign has largely seen air strikes and military action against PKK fighters in Turkey and northern Iraq.

On Friday night Turkish jets pounded PKK targets in northern Iraq, where the group's headquarters are located.

Selahattin Demirtas, co-leader of Turkey's pro-Kurdish opposition HDP, said the Paris attacks were a result of the world's failure to deal with Islamic State (ISIL).

"The world, including Turkey, has not undertaken an effective, coordinated effort against ISIL. Just the opposite, everyone used ISIL, or elements within it, for their own interests," he said at an event in Istanbul.

source: interaksyon.com

Hollande elected French president

PARIS — Francois Hollande was elected France’s first Socialist president in nearly two decades on Sunday, dealing a humiliating defeat to incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy and vowing change in Europe.

The result will have major implications for Europe as it struggles to emerge from a financial crisis and for France, the eurozone’s second-largest economy and a nuclear-armed permanent member of the U.N. Security Council.

With only votes from abroad left to count, Hollande had won with 51.67% of the vote to 48.33% for Sarkozy, becoming France’s first Socialist president since Francois Mitterrand left office in 1995.

Greeted after his win by a huge throng of supporters in Paris’s iconic Place de la Bastille, Hollande hailed his victory as part of a movement rising in Europe against fiscal austerity.

“You are much more than a people who want change. You are already a movement that is rising across all of Europe and maybe the world,” he told the cheering masses.

He has wasted no time in pushing his agenda.

He told a crowd in his hometown of Tulle that “France chose change,” warning fellow European leaders he would move ahead with his vow to refocus EU fiscal efforts on growth.

“This is the mission that is now mine: to give the European project a dimension of growth, employment, prosperity—in short, a future,” he said.

“This is what I will say as soon as possible to our European partners and first of all to Germany… We are not just any country on the planet, just any nation in the world, we are France.”

Sarkozy conceded defeat and indicated that he intends to step back from frontline politics.

“The French people have made their choice… Francois Hollande is president of France and he must be respected,” the outgoing leader told an emotional crowd of supporters. “In this new era, I will remain one of you, but my place will no longer be the same. My engagement with the life of my country will now be different.”

Sarkozy stopped short of confirming his retirement, but leaders in his right-wing UMP party told AFP he had told them he would not lead them into June parliamentary elections.

Hollande and his team urged supporters to give the Socialists a strong mandate in the two-round parliamentary vote on June 10 and 17.

“There is still much to do in the months to come, first of all to give a majority to the president,” Hollande told the crowd in Paris.

Two polls released Sunday showed the Socialists and Sarkozy’s right-wing UMP party neck-and-neck ahead of the vote, with 31% planning to vote Socialist and 30% for the UMP.

Hollande led in opinion polls throughout the campaign and won the April 22 first round with 28.6% to Sarkozy’s 27.2%—making the right-winger the first-ever incumbent to be trailing in the first round.
Gray skies and rain showers greeted voters across much of France, but turnout was high. The latest interior ministry figures said 81.03% of the 46 million eligible voters had turned out.

The election was marked by fears over European Union-imposed austerity and globalization, and Hollande has said his first foreign meeting will be with German Chancellor Angela Merkel—the key driver of EU budget policy.

The 57-year-old Socialist has vowed to renegotiate the hard-fought fiscal austerity pact signed by EU leaders in March to make it focus more on growth.

Hollande appeared to be winning over European leaders quickly on Sunday, with some capitals already echoing his call for growth measures.

Germany reached out, with Merkel inviting Hollande to Berlin and her foreign minister vowing to work with Paris on a growth pact.

“The chancellor invited the French president-elect Hollande to come to Berlin as soon as possible after his inauguration,” Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said after a phone call between the pair.

“We will work together on a growth pact,” Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told reporters in Berlin. “I am confident the Franco-German friendship will be further deepened.”

On the domestic front, Hollande has said he will move quickly to implement his traditionally Socialist tax-and-spend program, which includes boosting taxes on the rich, increased state spending and hiring 60,000 teachers.

Sarkozy fought a fierce campaign, saying a victory for Hollande would spark market panic and financial chaos. He called him a “liar” and “slanderer” in the final days of the race.

But he failed to overcome deep-rooted anger at meager economic growth and increasing joblessness, and disappointment after he failed to live up to the promises of his 2007 election.

Sarkozy, 57, was also deeply unpopular on a personal level, with many voters turned off by his flashy “bling bling” lifestyle—exemplified by his marriage to former supermodel Carla Bruni—and aggressive behavior.

The first round of the election last month saw a record 18% score for Marine Le Pen of the far-right, anti-immigrant and anti-Europe National Front.

Sarkozy turned increasingly to the right ahead of the run-off, vowing to restrict immigration and “defend French values.” But Le Pen refused to call on her supporters to back him and she cast a blank ballot.

Hollande is expected to be sworn in by May 15.

After seeing Merkel he will set off for a series of international meetings, including a G8 summit in the US on May 18-19 and NATO gathering in Chicago on May 20-21.

In a telephone call, U.S. President Barack Obama invited Hollande for talks before the G8 summit, expressing hope the pair would work “closely,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

source: japantoday.com