Paris police attacker a radicalised Islamist, says French prosecutor

Police now believe stabbings were terrorist attack reveals Jean-François Ricard

A police administrator who stabbed and killed four people at Paris’s police headquarters on Thursday was a radicalised Islamist who slit the throat of at least one of his victims, the French anti-terrorist prosecutor revealed on Saturday.

Mickael H acted with premeditation, buying two knives shortly before the attack on Thursday lunchtime in the centre of the city, and exchanging more than 30 religious text messages with his wife.

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Family, faith, flag: the religious right and the battle for Poland’s soul

The rightwing Law and Justice party may be authoritarian and anti-LGBT, but its welfare programmes have transformed the lives of low-income Poles

“Every good Pole should know what the role of the church is … because beyond the church there is only nihilism.”

– Jarosław Kaczyński, chairman of the Law and Justice party, 7 September

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EU dismisses weekend talks leaving Johnson’s Brexit plan hanging by a thread

Sources say PM’s insistence on Ireland customs border means there is no basis for discussions

Boris Johnson’s Brexit plans look to be falling apart as the European commission said there are no grounds to accept a request from the UK for intensive weekend negotiations two weeks before an EU summit.

EU sources said there was no basis for such discussions, given the British prime minister’s insistence on there being a customs border on the island of Ireland.

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House Democrats subpoena White House over Ukraine documents

  • Top Democrats also seek records from Mike Pence
  • Trump demands full House vote on impeachment inquiry

House Democrats have subpoenaed the White House demanding documents that could shed light on Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine, in the latest escalation of their impeachment investigation into the president and his administration.

The move comes as the senior Democrats also formally requested documents relating to Ukraine dealings from Mike Pence, the vice-president.

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Johnson faces new constitutional crisis as Brexit talks grind to a halt

It appears increasingly unlikely PM will hit deadline for deal laid down in Benn act

Boris Johnson is careering towards a fresh constitutional crisis, after insisting there will be “no delay” to Brexit just hours after government lawyers promised in a court in Scotland that he would obey the law and request an extension if he failed to clinch a deal within a fortnight.

The prime minister tweeted that there must be “new deal or no deal – but no delay”, echoing the words he used in his party conference speech in Manchester on Wednesday.

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Anti-terror police take over Paris knife attack case

State employee killed four colleagues at police headquarters before being shot dead

French counter-terrorism police have taken over the inquiry into an attack by a state employee who killed four colleagues with a kitchen knife inside Paris’s police headquarters on Thursday.

The assailant, named in the media as Mickaël H, 45, was a computer scientist in the intelligence branch at police headquarters, and had worked for the police for 15 years. He had full security clearance in an office that coordinated counter-terrorist intelligence-gathering in the capital.

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Human trafficker was at meeting in Italy to discuss Libya migration

Abd al-Rahman Milad attended 2017 talks between intelligence officials and Libyan coastguard

One of the world’s most notorious human traffickers attended a meeting in Sicily with Italian intelligence officials to discuss controls on migrant flows from Libya.

Abd al-Rahman Milad, known as Bija, took part in a meeting with Italian officials and a delegation from the Libyan coastguard at Cara di Mineo, in Catania, one of the biggest migrant reception centres in Europe, on 11 May 2017.

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Pig ignorant: Spanish PM ridiculed for mixing up his hams

Pedro Sánchez confuses prized jamón ibérico for plain old jamón serrano in ‘serious error’

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has confused jamón ibérico, the prized Spanish ham, with run-of-the-mill jamón serrano in a gaffe on a par with a French politician referring to a fine burgundy as plonk.

Speaking at the centuries-old livestock fair in Zafra in Extremadura, western Spain, Sánchez left his audience open-mouthed when he told them “you can be sure that when the Chinese president visited Spain he would have been served a plate of jamón serrano from Extremadura”.

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Paralysed man walks using mind-controlled exoskeleton

French patient’s breakthrough could lead to brain-controlled wheelchairs, say experts

A French man paralysed in a nightclub accident has walked again thanks to a brain-controlled exoskeleton, providing hope to tetraplegics seeking to regain movement.

The patient trained for months, harnessing his brain signals to control a computer-simulated avatar to perform basic movements before using the robot device to walk. Scientists described the trial results as a breakthrough.

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Environment groups offer €30k reward to identify wolf’s killer

Naya, the first wolf sighted in Belgium for a century, believed to have been killed by hunters

Environmental groups are offering a €30,000 (£27,000) reward for information that helps identify who killed Naya, the first wolf sighted in Belgium for a century when she entered the country last year.

The wolf’s arrival completed the return of the predator to every mainland country in Europe, turning back decades of persecution.

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Paris police HQ attack: search continues in bid to find killer’s motive

Incident in which four officers died treated as murder and not yet referred to anti-terror unit

French detectives are continuing to work to establish the motive of a state employee who killed four colleagues with a kitchen knife inside Paris’s police headquarters on Thursday.

The assailant, named in the media as Mickaël H, 45, had held an administrative job in the IT department for more than 15 years. On Thursday afternoon, he killed three police officers and another member of staff and injured two other officers before being shot dead.

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US diplomats told Zelenskiy that Trump visit was dependent on Biden statement

Newly released texts show diplomats made clear that better Kyiv-Washington relations were linked to cooperation

US diplomats told Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, that a prestigious White House visit to meet Donald Trump was dependent on him making a public statement vowing to investigate Hunter Biden’s company, and a Ukrainian role in the 2016 elections, according to texts released on Thursday night.

The texts, released by three congressional committees holding impeachment hearings, show that the diplomats made clear that any improvement in Kyiv’s relations with Washington would be dependent on Zelenskiy’s cooperation in Trump’s quest to find damaging material about son of his leading political opponent, and on the Democrats in general.

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Russia is helping China build a missile defence system, Putin says

Days after Beijing unveils state-of-the-art missiles, Moscow reveals plan that would ‘radically enhance China’s defence capability’

Russian president Vladimir Putin has said that Moscow is helping China build a system to warn of ballistic missile launches.

Since the cold war, only the United States and Russia have had such systems, which involve an array of ground-based radars and space satellites. The systems allow for early spotting of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

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#AllIsFineWithMe: Russian women fight strict beauty standards with body-positivity

Social media trend was started by a teen to push back against unrealistic beauty standards

In a new wave of Russian feminism, thousands of women are posting selfies on social media showing their pimples, cellulite and hair loss to challenge beauty stereotypes that women’s rights activists say fuel low self-esteem and eating disorders.

The #AllIsFineWithMe trend – started by a Russian teen who has struggled with anorexia – is the latest initiative to push back against unrealistic pressures on women and girls to look perfect, often driven by airbrushed images on social media.

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‘I couldn’t do anything to help them’: witnesses talk about Paris police attack – video

A witness said he heard gunshots and saw Paris police officers in tears when a police employee, who stabbed and killed four colleagues, was shot dead on Thursday. The perpetrator reportedly used a knife against other employees in his office and the courtyard of the building, which is near Notre Dame

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EU calls on Boris Johnson to publish Brexit plan in full

Ireland’s Leo Varadkar says PM’s pledge of no hard border contradicts written proposal

Jean-Claude Juncker has called on the British government to publish its Brexit plan in full after Boris Johnson was accused by Ireland’s prime minister of misleading parliament over the impact on the Irish border.

The move came on a dramatic day during which Johnson’s hopes of securing a deal by the time of a crunch summit appeared to unravel:

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Paris police attack: administrator kills four at police headquarters

Knife-wielding employee shot dead after attack in building near Notre Dame Cathedral

Parts of central Paris were sealed off on Thursday after an employee at the city’s police headquarters stabbed and killed four colleagues before being shot dead.

The man, who worked in the technology department, reportedly stabbed a colleague in his office with a ceramic knife before turning it on others, with the last attacked in the courtyard outside the historic building near Notre Dame Cathedral.

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Swedish court acquits police who killed man with Down’s syndrome

Officers fired 25 shots at Eric Torell in August 2018 as he played with a toy gun

A Stockholm court has acquitted police officers who fired 25 shots at a man with Down’s syndrome while he played with a toy gun.

Prosecutors charged three officers with negligence and misconduct in the events leading up to the fatal shooting of Eric Torell, 20, in August 2018. But the court was unable to establish with certainty that the police were wrong to use lethal force.

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EU parliament: Boris Johnson Brexit plan not remotely acceptable

Leading MEP says it is ‘nearly impossible’ to see how Irish border plan can be basis of deal

The European parliament has told Boris Johnson that his proposals for the Irish border do not “even remotely” amount to an acceptable deal for the EU, in comments echoed by Ireland’s prime minister.

The committee of MEPs representing the parliament’s views on Brexit said the prime minister’s proposals could not form the basis for an agreement, describing them as a “last-minute” effort. The European parliament will have a veto on any withdrawal agreement.

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Pissoirs and public votes: how Paris embraced the participatory budget

Residents of France’s capital can propose ideas for and vote on what 5% of the city’s budget will be spent on every year – and their suggestions range from the quixotic to the ambitious

Arnaud Carnet was crossing Paris on his bicycle one day when something strange caught his eye: a dilapidated old urinal stationed at the foot of the high walls of the last operational prison in the city.

This graffitied, ripe-smelling structure was far from a standard street pissoir. Carnet discovered that it was in fact the last remaining 19th-century vespasienne urinal in the city. He decided he needed to save it.

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