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Eiffel Tower to get anti-terrorist glass barrier round base

PARIS (Reuters) – The Eiffel Tower, one of the world’s most famous landmarks, will get a glass wall built round its base under a plan to provide extra protection against terrorist attacks, a source in the Paris mayor’s office said on Thursday.

The 324-metre-high structure, which gets about seven million visitors a year, already has protective metal fencing around its base, erected temporarily for the Euro football championship of 2016.

France has been hit by Islamist militant attacks including bombings and shootings in Paris in November 2015 in which 130 people were killed.

Glass panels two-and-a-half meters high would be erected around the base of the tower as an anti-terrorist measure if the plans are approved, the source said. The project would go before a sites commission and then the environment ministry.

“We have three aims: improve the look, make access easier and strengthen the protection of visitors and staff,” Jean-Francois Martins, a city official, said in a statement.

The cost of the project will be around 20 million euros ($21.36 million), le Parisien newspaper said.

(Reporting by Chine Labbe; Writing By Richard Balmforth)

Cars torched as Paris suburb seethes over alleged police violence

PARIS (Reuters) – Cars and rubbish-bins were set ablaze in a night of violence in a tense Paris suburb following allegations of police brutality in the arrest of a 22-year-old local man.

One policeman has been placed under formal investigation for suspected rape and three others for unnecessary violence on Feb. 2 during the arrest of the man in Aulnay-sous-Bois outside the French capital.

The area is one of several where riots erupted in 2005 after two youths who fled police died electrocuted in a power station where they took cover.

That incident sparked three weeks of rioting in which 10,000 cars and 300 buildings were set on fire, prompting then interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy to declare a state of emergency and drawing worldwide attention to the contrasts between Paris and the bleak suburbs that surround it.

In Aulnay, where the unemployment rate of 19 percent is near double the national average, petrol-bombs were thrown and police used tear gas in the overnight confrontation around, a suburb some 15 kilometers (9.32 miles) north-east of central Paris.

“This violence is incomprehensible,” Aulnay-sous-Bois mayor Bruno Beschizza said of the incidents.

One report on BFM TV spoke of police firing real bullets into the air to escape when surrounded by a group of angry locals at one point in the night of Monday. It spoke of 24 arrests.

Local police said in a statement the man arrested on Feb. 2, who was only identified by his first name, Theo, accused one of the policemen involved of inserting a baton in his anus.

A hospital examination had revealed wounds to his rectum, face and head, it said.

Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said an investigation would see to establish exactly what had happened, adding that: “Police officers must always behave in exemplary manner.”

Interior Minister Bruno Le Roux, questioned in parliament, said the arrested man was now in hospital with serious injuries but called for calm in the area.

The area where the arrest and subsequent violence took place is a spot where thousands of low-cost, low-rent apartments were built at the end of the 1960s to house workers at a nearby Citroen car factory that hired a lot of its workforce from French former colonies in Africa.

The factory closed in 2013.

(Writing By Richard Balmforth; Editing by Brian Love)

French soldier shoots, wounds machete-wielding attacker at Paris Louvre

Carrousel du Louvre in Paris, sight of recent terrorist attack attempt

By Michel Rose and Elizabeth Pineau

PARIS (Reuters) – A French soldier shot and wounded a man armed with a machete and carrying two bags on his back on Friday as he tried to enter the Paris Louvre museum in what the government said appeared to have been a terrorist attack.

The man shouted Allahu Akbar (God is greatest) and rushed at police and soldiers before being shot near the museum’s shopping mall, police said, adding a second person had also been detained after acting suspiciously.

The attacker was alive but seriously wounded, the head of Paris police Michel Cadot told reporters at the scene, adding the bags he had been carrying contained no explosives.

“The soldier fired five bullets,” Cadot said, describing how the man hurried threateningly toward the soldiers at around 10 a.m. (0900 GMT).

“It was an attack by a person … who represented a direct threat and whose actions suggested a terrorist context.”

Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said during a visit to Bayeux in Normandy: “It appears to be an attempted attack of a terrorist nature.”

The soldier who fired the bullets was from one of the patrolling groups that have become a common sight around the capital since a state of emergency was declared across France in November 2015. An anti-terrorism inquiry has been opened, the public prosecutor said in a statement.

Another soldier was slightly wounded in the incident.

The identity and nationality of the attacker remains unknown for now, French Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet told reporters. Interior Minister Bruno le Roux abandoned a trip to the Dordogne region to return to Paris.

More than 230 people have died in France in the past two years at the hands of attackers allied to the militant Islamist group Islamic State.

The country is less than three months away from a presidential election in which security and fears of terrorism are among the key issues.

Paris was also planning to submit its official bid to host the 2024 Olympic Games on Friday with a launch show at the Eiffel Tower around 1730 GMT.

The city had in recent months been gradually recovering from a dip in foreign tourism caused by the attacks.

The most recent deadly attack took place in the southern city of Nice in July last year when a man drove a truck into a crowd on the seafront killing 86.

In September, in an attempted attack, a group of women parked a car containing gas canisters near Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral.

Police cordoned off and evacuated the area around the museum for a time on Friday but began to allow traffic to pass less than two hours after the incident. Louvre officials closed the museum and kept visitors inside for a time before beginning to let them leave.

(Reporting by Emmanuel Jarry, Chine Labbe, Bate Felix; Editing by Andrew Callus, John Irish and Janet Lawrence)

Traces of explosives found in Egyptair crash: investigators

Part of a plane chair among recovered debris of the EgyptAir jet that crashed in the Mediterranean Sea is seen in this handout image

By Lin Noueihed and Tim Hepher

CAIRO/PARIS (Reuters) – Egyptian investigators said on Thursday traces of explosives had been found on the remains of victims of an Egyptair flight that crashed en route from Paris to Cairo, but French officials warned against drawing conclusions on the cause of the crash.

Flight MS 804 plunged into one of the deepest parts of the Mediterranean Sea on May 19, killing all 66 people on board.

Egypt’s investigation committee issued a statement saying the coroner had found traces of explosives on the remains of some victims. It gave no more details but said its findings were sent to prosecutors investigating foul play.

“The technical investigation committee … places itself and its expertise at the disposal of prosecutors,” it said.

A judicial source said the prosecution had not received details about the explosives traces but would include the coroner’s findings in its inquiries.

An Egyptian source familiar with the matter said Egypt had informed France months ago about its findings but French investigators had requested more time to study them.

“That is why it took so long to make an announcement,” the source said, declining to be named as the investigation is continuing.

Paris newspaper Le Figaro reported in September that French investigators had seen traces of TNT on the plane’s debris but were prevented from further examining it. Egyptian officials denied at the time obstructing French inquiries.

France has hinted at its frustration at the pace of the investigation but has stopped short of openly criticising Cairo, with which it enjoys broadly positive relations and which has ordered French Rafale fighter jets.

SMOKE

France’s foreign ministry said the causes were still being investigated and appeared to hint that it had been kept at arm’s length.

“France, like it has been from the beginning of this tragic accident, remains at the disposal of the relevant Egyptian authorities to contribute to this investigation, including with the means of its experts,” it said.

In a rare statement on an ongoing foreign investigation, France’s BEA air crash investigation agency said on Thursday no conclusions could be drawn on what might have caused the crash.

“In the absence of detailed information on the conditions and ways in which samples were taken leading to the detection of traces of explosives, the BEA considers that it is not possible at this stage to draw conclusions on the origin of the accident,” a spokeswoman said.

The BEA is accredited to the Egyptian-led investigation because the Airbus aircraft was designed and built in France.

Two Western sources briefed on the investigation expressed reservations about the explosives findings and said a technical cause remained the most likely. The pattern of wreckage also suggested the plane hit the sea intact at high speed, they said.

One of the sources said the traces of explosives reportedly found appeared to be identical to samples previously held in stock, whereas there would usually be tiny forensic differences. Neither source agreed to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Airbus declined comment.

Audio from the flight recorder mentions a fire on board the plane in its final moments and analysis of the flight data recorder showed smoke in the lavatory and avionics bay.

The Paris prosecutor’s office opened a manslaughter investigation in June but said it was not looking into terrorism as a possible cause at that stage.

No group has claimed responsibility for the crash.

In October 2015, a bomb brought down a Metrojet plane carrying Russian holidaymakers home from the Red Sea resort of Sharm al-Sheikh, killing all 224 people on board.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for that attack, saying it smuggled aboard explosives in a soft drink can.

(Additional reporting by Asma Alsharif, Haitham Ahmed in Cairo and John Irish in Paris; Editing by Janet Lawrence, Larry King and Andrew Hay)

French Middle East peace conference to be postponed: Palestinian official

Benjamin Netanyahu shakes hands with Palestine President

RAMALLAH/PARIS (Reuters) – France will postpone a proposed Middle East peace conference in Paris to January next year, Voice of Palestine radio reported on Wednesday, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refusing to participate and U.S. attendance in doubt.

France has been trying to persuade Netanyahu, who has repeatedly rejected the conference proposal, to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the French capital to try to revive moribund peace talks between the two sides.

Voice of Palestine radio quoted Palestinian Ambassador to France Salman El Herfi as saying that Paris had informed the Palestinians of its delay to the peace conference until January “to make better preparations”.

It said Herfi would meet French officials on Wednesday to discuss the issue and that he had said that if Israel refused to come in January, the international conference would still go ahead, but without the main protagonists.

Asked to comment on the situation, a spokesman for the French foreign ministry replied: “As of now, France has never officially confirmed any date for this conference. We will do so once we have had the results of our talks with all the parties concerned.”

France has repeatedly tried to breathe new life into the peace process this year, holding a preliminary conference in June where the United Nations, European Union, United States and major Arab countries gathered to discuss proposals without the Israelis or Palestinians present.

The plan was to hold a follow-up conference before Christmas with the Israelis and Palestinians involved to see whether the two sides could be brought back to negotiations.

The conference of foreign ministers was aimed at agreeing on a joint statement that would reaffirm the two-state solution on the basis of pre-1967 borders and according to Security Council resolutions, diplomats said.

The Palestinian mission in Paris was not immediately available for comment.

(Reporting by Ali Sawafta and John Irish; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Ralph Boulton)

Year-old Paris attack probe sights new suspect, but mastermind elusive

People mourning outside of Paris attacks

By Chine Labbé

PARIS (Reuters) – French investigators believe they have identified a Belgian militant in Syria as a coordinator of the deadly Islamic State (IS) attack on Paris, but a year on they are still struggling to pinpoint the mastermind.

Just ahead of the Nov. 13 anniversary of an assault that killed 130 people and injured hundreds, victims and relatives of the dead still seek answers. And the only living person believed to be part of the hit-team, now behind bars, refuses to talk.

A painstaking investigation led by an exceptionally large team of six judicial magistrates has inched forward in search of the “remote-controllers” – those who pulled the strings from abroad, at IS bases in Iraq and Syria or elsewhere.

A source close to the investigation told Reuters this week that a new name had been added to the web of militants involved as coordinators – Oussama Atar, a 32-year-old from a Brussels suburb, now believed to be in Syria.

“It’s a very strong suspicion,” said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We are wary of being definitive while the investigation is still under way.”

Atar was jailed in Iraq on arms-trafficking charges before ultimately joining IS ranks in Syria in 2012, and is suspected of playing a key coordination role in the Nov. 13 rampage, but not of being “mastermind in chief”, the source said.

In particular, Atar is suspected of having recruited two Iraqis who blew themselves up outside the Stade de France sports stadium north of the French capital as part of a broader series of assaults in the heart of Paris on Nov. 13 last year.

He is also suspected of being the person to whom other suicide bombers reported before blowing themselves up in further attacks in Belgium that killed 32 on March 22 this year.

SURVIVORS DISSATISFIED WITH PROBE

Atar, the latest addition to France’s suspects list, was identified in a group of photos shown to a militant arrested in Austria. But that advance means little for the survivors of the attacks, in which 90 of the 130 killed were shot or blown up by armed suicide bombers at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris.

“Even if there’s little chance of bringing the attack mastermind to justice, it would be nice to know his name,” said Emmanuel Domenach, who was at the Bataclan when it was attacked.

Sting, a veteran English pop star who has used his celebrity to champion social campaigns such as defense of forest tribes in South America, is scheduled to play on Saturday at the historic venue to mark its post-attack reopening.

Bernard Bajolet, head of France’s foreign intelligence service, told a parliamentary inquiry in May that the orchestrators of the Nov. 13 attack had been identified but declined to name names to protect his sources.

Investigators, however, have yet to make such an identification, another source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters, and do not know who Bajolet was referring to.

At one stage, it was assumed that the mastermind of the attacks was Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgo-Moroccan killed by elite French police in a spectacular assault on a flat close to Paris a few days after the Nov. 13 killings.

He was subsequently relegated by investigators to a coordinator role like Atar’s.

Three teams took part in the attack – suicide bombers at the Stade de France, gunmen who opened fire on cafes in Paris, and the squad that killed 90 at the Bataclan.

Salah Abdeslam, captured in Belgium after fleeing Paris on the night of the attack and later transferred back to France, is in solitary confinement in a jail on the edge of Paris, but refused to speak at court hearings. He is believed to be the sole survivor of the IS hit team.

The Nov. 13 attacks and subsequent assaults this year have shaken French society.

A state of emergency imposed after the Paris killings was about to be lifted when, on France’s July 14 national holiday, an IS devotee ploughed a truck into a crowd of revelers in the Riviera resort city of Nice, killing 86. About two weeks later, an Islamist slit a priest’s throat in a church in Normandy.

As armed soldiers continue to patrol the Paris landmarks where tourist numbers have thinned, Europe’s largest community of Muslims lives in greater fear of mistrustful neighbors.

Meanwhile the ruling Socialist party has torn itself apart over an abortive attempt to introduce a law stripping people convicted of terrorism of their nationality, and security and immigration promise to be major issues in next year’s presidential election.

(Additional reporting by Gerard Bon; writing by Brian Love; editing by Andrew Callus and Mark Heinrich)

Israel says ‘no’ to Middle East peace conference in Paris

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting at his office in Jerusalem

By Luke Baker

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel on Monday formally rejected France’s invitation to take part in a Middle East peace conference in Paris later this year, saying it was a distraction from the goal of direct negotiations with the Palestinians.

At a meeting in Jerusalem with Israel’s acting national security adviser and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s diplomatic adviser, French envoy Pierre Vimont was informed that Israel wanted nothing to do with the effort to revive talks that last broke down in 2014.

“(They) told the French envoy in a clear and unequivocal manner that Israel’s position to promote the peace process and reach an agreement will only come through direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.

There was no immediate comment from Vimont but the French foreign ministry said it still planned to hold the conference before the end of the year.

The plan was to hold a follow-up conference before year-end with the Israelis and Palestinians involved and see whether the two sides could be brought back to negotiations. The last, U.S.-backed talks ended in failure in April 2014.

The Palestinians have said they will attend the Paris conference if it goes ahead.

Israel, which regards the United States as the chief broker in the Middle East, has long maintained that only direct negotiations with the Palestinians can lead to peace and sees France’s efforts as a diversion.

“Any other initiative, including this one, will only distance peace from the region,” Netanyahu’s office said, adding that it expected France “not to promote a conference or a process that is contrary to (our) official position.”

Israel says an international conference will also give Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas a platform on which to grandstand, rather than engaging directly with the Israelis.

The Palestinians say they cannot resume talks with Israel until it suspends the building of settlements on occupied land the Palestinians seek for an independent state and meets previous commitments, including the release of prisoners.

Despite two U.S. attempts to resolve the conflict during Barack Obama’s presidency, talks have stalled over issues including settlements and Palestinian political divisions.

While most of the so-called “final status” issues are clear to both sides, critics say there will be little chance of a breakthrough without genuine U.S. pressure on Israel to halt settlement building and without the Palestinians overcoming the internal splits between Hamas and the Fatah party.

Many analysts believe the prospect of a two-state solution to the conflict is now beyond reach, with no signs of Israel ending its nearly 50-year occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want for their own capital.

(Additional reporting by Ori Lewis in Jerusalem and John Irish in Paris; Writing by Luke Baker; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Police swoop on Paris migrant camp after Calais Jungle clearout

Migrants stand near their tents at a makeshift migrant camp on a street near the metro stations of Jaures and Stalingrad in Paris.

By Johnny Cotton and Emmanuel Jarry

PARIS (Reuters) – French riot police swooped on an illegal migrant camp in northeastern Paris just after dawn on Monday, sparking a brief standoff at a site where numbers have soared since the closure of the Jungle camp in the northern port city of Calais.

The operation, largely consisting of identity checks on some of an estimated 2,500 migrants sleeping rough around a canal and urban train bridge near Paris’s Stalingrad metro station, came as pressure mounts on the government to clear and shut the camp.

Tension has risen in tandem with speculation that police will move in to evacuate and close the camp definitively in the coming days, as the Paris authorities are demanding.

A Reuters journalist at the scene said a digger moved in to clear a small part of the camp, a tentacular sprawl of tents, mattresses, blankets and the meager belongings of migrants who come in large part from war-torn countries such as Afghanistan.

Migrants shouted at police in riot gear as the digger swept debris and rubbish away in a small section of the camp, which was otherwise left largely intact. One policeman sprayed a migrant with tear gas.

After a couple of hours, police allowed migrants to move back in after a tidy-up by municipal cleaning workers.

In a letter sent to Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo requested that the camp be shut rapidly on humanitarian and sanitary grounds.

City Hall officials say the numbers living and sleeping rough in the area have swollen by about a third since the evacuation last week of the Jungle camp in Calais, where more than 6,000 people were living, most of them in the hope of making it across the short Channel sea crossing to Britain.

The Calais camp, a vast shanty town on sandy scrubland where demolition workers were due to finish their destruction job by the end of Monday, came to symbolize Europe’s fraught efforts to cope with a record influx of migrants fleeing strife and poverty in countries from Afghanistan to Sudan.

French President Francois Hollande urged Britain at the weekend to shoulder its part of the responsibility for 1,500 minors who have been housed temporarily in container boxes in Calais following the clearout. The rest of the 6,000-plus inhabitants of the Jungle have been dispatched to lodgings across France, pending examination of their asylum cases.

“It’s up to Britain now to fully live up to its duty, that’s not finished yet,” said Pascal Brice, the head of France’s refugee agency, Ofpra.

(Writing by Brian Love; editing by Mark Heinrich)

New computer glitch delays United Airlines flights

By Ingrid Melander and Tim Hepher

PARIS (Reuters) – Thousands of passengers were delayed worldwide after a computer glitch temporarily halted departures at United Airlines, the latest in a series of outages to affect rival companies in the industry.

“Earlier tonight we experienced an issue with our weight reporting system, which caused system wide flight delays,” the airline said in a statement on its Twitter feed late on Thursday in the United States.

“We have resolved the issue and are working to get customers to their destinations as soon as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

Passengers said they had been forced to wait onboard planes or inside terminals as flights were delayed for several hours.

“On the plane for more than an hour, away from the gate and no communication. What’s happening?,” one passenger tweeted.

In Paris, passengers complained as check-in lines grew for a flight to New York, a Reuters reporter said on Friday morning.

The airline said the problem had been resolved as of 3 a.m. eastern time (0700 GMT) on Friday.

It is the third computer glitch to hit United’s owner United Continental Holdings in recent months and the latest in a series of problems that have tested the reliance on technology of some of the world’s largest carriers.

On June 2, software needed to dispatch United’s flight plan briefly lost functionality.

In July, the same airline’s flights were disrupted after a computer problem blocked access to reservations records.

The following month, Delta Air Lines canceled hundreds of flights and delayed many others after a power outage hit its computer systems.

And in September, a system-wide computer problem at British Airways caused significant delays.

After the two previous incidents, United Continental Holdings said in July it had invested in backup plans.

But multiple recent outages have prompted some experts and passenger groups to question whether the airline industry has invested enough in technological infrastructure, given new profits from baggage and cancellation fees.

(Reporting by Ingrid Melander, Tim Hepher; Editing by Keith Weir)

French tourism companies want special police force amid safety fears

French Army soldiers secure the area of the Notre-Dame de la Garde basilica in Marseille, France,

PARIS (Reuters) – France’s tourism sector on Tuesday urged French authorities to set up a special police force in Paris to fight crime targeting tourists as safety fears curb the number of visitors to the French capital.

Foreign tourist arrivals to France could fall 4-5 percent this year following Islamic militant attacks and repeated robberies against Asian tourists, warned Alliance 46.2, a group representing firms that rely on foreign visitors.

Its members include department store chain Galeries Lafayette and holiday group Club Med and AccorHotels.

“The image of France has deeply deteriorated and it’s likely that 2017 will still feel the impact. The recovery may therefore be long,” it said.

Armed French police stand guard during the18th edition of the Techno Parade music event in Paris

An armed French policeman maintains a security presence during the18th edition of the Techno Parade music event in Paris, France, September 24, 2016. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes

An armed robbery against reality TV star Kim Kardashian on Monday only exacerbates the situation.

The decline in visitor figures, if confirmed, would be the steepest in 40 years and put up to 30,000 jobs at risk in the struggling French tourism sector, the statement said.

Foreign tourists have avoided France since Islamic State gunmen killed 130 people in an attack in Paris last November. In July, a gunman drove a truck into crowds celebrating Bastille Day on July 14 in the Riviera city of Nice, killing 86.

Repeated robberies against foreign tourists, notably Asian tourists, have also added to safety worries, Alliance 46.2 said.

The tourism sector represents 7-8 percent of France’s gross domestic product and employs about 2 million people.

The French government last month pledged more aid to the sector, bringing to 10 million euros its contribution to a campaign to promote the country abroad.

France is the most-visited country in the world, with almost 85 million foreign tourists last year. France is still targeting 100 million foreign tourists by 2020.

(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)

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