Police: 1 man found dead after raid linked to Paris attacks
Police: 1 man found dead after raid linked to Paris attacks
BRUSSELS (AP) — Police found a man dead when they stormed a house in Brussels at the end of a major anti-terror operation Tuesday, several hours after they were shot at during a raid linked to last year’s attacks in Paris, a prosecutor said.
It was not clear whether the dead man was one of the suspects sought in the raid earlier Tuesday in the Forest neighborhood of Brussels, the Belgian capital where several of the Paris attackers lived. Four police officers from the French-Belgian operation were injured when at least one suspect opened fire through the door, apparently with an assault weapon, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said.
Forest mayor Marc-Jean Ghyssels told local media two people had barricaded themselves in a home during the raid, but it was not clear what happened to them.
The prosecutor, who asked not to be identified because the operation was not finished, said it was not clear if suspects from the raid were on the run. He said many people fled the area when they heard gunfire, and it was too early to say if some were suspects or all were just people trying to escape.
The anti-terror raid in the Forest neighborhood was linked to the Nov. 13 gun and bomb attacks on a stadium, cafes and a concert hall in Paris that left 130 people dead. Yet police didn’t expect violent resistance on Tuesday, the prosecutor said. That indicated they were not targeting a major suspect like Salah Abdeslam, who fled Paris and remains on the run. Most of the attackers died that night, including Abdeslam’s brother Brahim, who blew himself up.
Four months on, Belgian police and magistrates are still piecing together the role Belgian nationals and others living here played in aiding the Paris attackers.
Obama abolishes last major restrictions on US travel to Cuba
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama sent an unmistakable message to Americans on Tuesday ahead of his historic trip to Havana: Cuba is open for business.
Punching fresh holes in the generations-old U.S. embargo, Obama’s administration removed the last meaningful restrictions on travel, putting a Cuba vacation within reach for millions of Americans over the coming years. The sweeping changes also clear a path for Cuban athletes to one day play Major League Baseball and other professional sports.
Although tourism is still technically off-limits, the ban becomes essentially unenforceable, with Americans permitted to travel on their own with no prior permission. White House officials said there would be “no shortage” of opportunities for Americans to fill the loosely defined requirement that they engage with locals in a bid to further U.S.-Cuban understanding.
“The travel ban is on life support here, because for all intents and purposes, anybody can go,” Sen. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican who supports Obama’s approach, said in an interview. “All these barriers are coming down.”
The White House announced the package of changes five days before Obama will embark on the first presidential trip to the communist country in nearly 90 years. The more lenient rules, like the trip itself, aim to further the rapprochement that Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro began more than two years ago.
Holidaymakers were slow to comprehend Ivory Coast attack
GRAND-BASSAM, Ivory Coast (AP) — It began like any other Sunday in this beach town: Kingor Nanan was preparing the Jah Live Reggae bar and restaurant for the day. A few customers had arrived, and he was sitting out front.
Then, before 1 p.m., he heard popping sounds, like firecrackers. A man wielding an assault rifle walked through the sandy alley that runs past the club to the beach.
“Everyone was screaming, so many people were outside. And the man, he shot this young man down. Then he took his gun, aimed it at me, looked me in the eye,” Nanan said. “He didn’t shoot.”
The attacker — described by Nanan as an Ivorian with cropped hair and ordinary clothes who spoke French — lowered his gun, turned and headed toward the sound of gunfire on the beach.
“Because I am a Rasta (and not a Muslim), he should have killed me,” the dreadlocked Nanan told The Associated Press on Tuesday, sitting on the same wooden bench he was on when he first saw one of the killers. Nearby, in blood-stained sand, a few stones marked where the young man was killed.
Activists demand action against industrial chemical in water
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Prized for its ability to make things super-slick, it was used for decades in the manufacture of Teflon pans, Gore-Tex jackets, ski wax, carpets and the linings of pizza boxes and microwave popcorn bags.
Now, with the suspected cancer-causing chemical PFOA being phased out in the U.S., it is still very much around, turning up in the water in factory towns across the country — most recently in upstate New York and Vermont — where it is blamed by residents for cancers and other maladies.
The latest cases have brought renewed demands that the Environmental Protection Agency regulate PFOA the way it does arsenic, lead and dozens of other contaminants, and set stringent, enforceable limits on how much of the substance can be in drinking water.
“Where is the government that is supposed to protect people and the environment? It’s an outrage,” said Tracy Carluccio of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, which uncovered PFOA, or perfluorooctanoic acid, in tap water in New Jersey a decade ago.
In their defense, EPA officials said that the agency has been considering for years whether regulations are needed for PFOA and related perfluorinated chemicals, but that it is a drawn-out testing and evaluation process dictated by the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. In the meantime, the EPA has taken action around the country to fine companies and force them to clean up such chemicals.
Europe’s migration deal faces hurdle in Turkish foe Cyprus
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — European Union leaders seek a mutually binding deal with Turkey to stem the flow of migrants by sea to Greece. But several nations stand in the way of such a pact — and tiny Cyprus could pose the greatest diplomatic challenge of all.
Leaders of the EU’s 28 divided nations plan to reconvene in Brussels this week in hopes of ironing out disagreements on a proposed agreement with Turkey. Their tentative agreement struck March 7 would allow Greece to return migrants to Turkey as Europe opens new routes for pre-screened migrants to seek asylum legally.
But Turkey demands big concessions from Europe in return, particularly on its long-held dream of joining the EU, an idea viewed with trepidation by many Europeans. Nowhere does mistrust run higher than in neighboring Cyprus, which has been divided into a Greek Cypriot south and militarized Turkish Cypriot north since 1974.
Cyprus announced Tuesday it has no intention of permitting full negotiations for Turkey’s EU membership — a position that could scuttle the whole deal. Each EU member must consent to any deal.
European Council President Donald Tusk arrived in the Cypriot capital, Nicosia, seeking to soothe government nerves over a proposed package that would include renewed negotiations on Turkish EU membership.