Headlines

Police in France foil an “advanced stage” terror plot following the arrest of a French national suspected of membership in a militant group at a Paris suburb, the interior minister says. Bernard Cazeneuve said in a televised address on Thursday night that the individual was arrested earlier in the day in Argenteuil, adding the arrest helped thwart a plot in France. “He was part of a terrorist network that planned to strike France,” the minister said. Cazeneuve said there was no “tangible evidence that links this plot to the attacks in Paris and Brussels” at the moment. 

This came after Belgian police arrested six people in Brussels as part of an investigation into the bomb attacks that hit the Brussels airport and a metro station on March 22. Nearly 35 people were killed. The attacks raised concerns among European Union countries about the EU security and its response to threats from Takfiri groups. The Daesh terrorist group, which claimed responsibility for Brussels attacks, was also behind bombings in the French capital last November that killed 130 people.

On Thursday, EU justice and home affairs ministers held an emergency meeting in Brussels, calling on the European parliament to work for a scheme to share strategic intelligence data. The ministers said the European states could not keep crucial information to themselves anymore. Officials say some states, including France and Germany, refuse to give their strategic data to other EU countries despite professed readiness to do so. "Sometimes there is a lack of political will, a lack of coordination and most importantly in some cases, a lack of trust," said EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos. "These horrendous attacks cannot continue to be wake-up calls for ever."

Details

Presstv

25.Mar.2016

Hits: 1686

Write comment (0 Comments)

US authorities in Atlanta, Georgia, have temporarily evacuated the city’s international airport over a ‘false’ alarm. Passengers were ordered out of public areas of the domestic terminal at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport on Wednesday over a suspicious package. The site, however, was quickly cleared and operations resumed, airport officials said. Parts of the Denver airport were also evacuated on Tuesday following the deadly bomb attack in Brussels, Belgium. Authorities tightened security at US airports after the Tuesday incidents in Europe, where some Americans went missing in Brussels attacks. 

Officials said about a dozen US citizens including three Mormon missionaries, a US Air Force airman, and four members of his family, were also injured there. Among those missing were US government personnel, a State Department spokesman told reporters in Washington. "We still have not accounted for every official US government employee or their family members on the ground," said the spokesman, Mark Toner. "Partly that reflects the size of the mission or three missions: there's a bilateral mission, there's a mission to the EU, as well as a mission to NATO."

Early on Tuesday, three coordinated nail bombings rocked EU’s de facto capital, leaving at least 34 people dead and many more wounded. Two of the explosions ripped through the international departure hall of the airport in Zaventem, near the American Airlines check-in desk and another near a coffee shop. An hour after the airport bombings, another bomb went off at Maelbeek metro station, 10 kilometers away.

Details

Presstv

24.Mar.2016

Hits: 1411

Write comment (0 Comments)

People in Argentina have taken to the streets to protest President Barack Obama’s visit, coinciding with the 40th anniversary of a US-backed military coup that led to seven years of a bloody dictatorship. 

Demonstrators, including human rights groups and leftists, marched in the capital Buenos Aires on Wednesday, expressing their anger at Washington’s support for the 1976 coup. “It’s a march against Obama’s visit; also against the Argentine government, who received him with honors,” said Alejandro Bodart, director of the Workers Socialist Movement.

“The left are mobilizing against Obama because it is a slap in the face that on the 40th anniversary of the coup the head of North American imperialism, which supported the coup at the time, arrives,” he added.

Details

Presstv

24.Mar.2016

Hits: 1117

Write comment (0 Comments)

The former GM of Camair and former Minister of State in charge of Territorial Administration and Decentralization and Secretary General at the Presidency of the Republic, convicted in 2012, were expected before the Supreme Court on the 22nd of March 2016. The first deputy chairman of the Supreme Court submitted that Yves Michel Fotso, one of the co-defendants in the Marafa Hamidou Yaya affair was absent due to ill health and the hearing was postponed to the 5th of April.

Lawyers of the former General Manager of the defunct Cameroon Airlines, Yves Michel Fotso explained in a letter addressed to the court that their client was bedridden. They therefore requested the postponement. Accused of embezzling $ 29 million (about 24 billion CFA francs) for the purchase of a presidential plane in 2001, the former Secretary General at the Presidency of the Republic, Marafa Hamidou Yaya, and businessman, Yves Michel Fotso, were sentenced to 25 years in prison on the 22nd of September 2012 in Yaounde. 

The Supreme Court scheduled to review cassation appeals brought by the two personalities forty months after the verdict of the High Court in Mfoundi. The Fotso-Marafa case against the State of Cameroon also involves two former Secretaries-General at the Presidency of the Republic and a former Prime Minister; Jean Marie Atangana Mebara, Marafa Hamidou Yaya and Ephraim Inoni.

Details

Chi Prudence Asong

23.Mar.2016

Hits: 1986

Write comment (0 Comments)

Following Tuesday's attacks in Brussels which left at least 30 people dead, African residents in Matonge district prepare to pick up their lives and move on.

Named after a lively area of Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Matonge took shape in the wake of the country's independence in 1960, though the area already had African associations. The following year, as more Congolese citizens moved to Belgium to study, an aristocratic philanthropist called Monique Van der Straten founded "Maisaf" (La Maison Africaine), a hostel for these students, on rue Alsace-Lorraine, in the heart of today's Matonge.

A community – with nightclubs, bars and shops – grew up in the network of streets south of Chaussée de Wavre, and other African immigrants followed in the wake of the Congolese pioneers.

Meanwhile the Brussels metro system has partially re-opened after Tuesday’s attacks. But for some travellers, it may be an option they are now looking to avoid.

Cars have also returned to the European district, but the main international airport remained closed on Wednesday.

It seems a cloud of fear now hangs over the Belgian capital.

In response to whether he felt secure, one man said: “No, a bit insecure, but basically you know, what to do? You have no influence on the conditions here.”

Brussels is now on the highest level of security alert and has more soldiers on the streets.

The capital is diverse and some in the Muslim community are worried about being judged.

“People look into our eyes, into our face and they feel, these are people, maybe they can do it. But we don’t have anything to do with that,” said Karim, a shop-owner.

“So it will be very affected, our society. In fact, our society needs to now wake up and inform to the leaders who can do something to change this.”

Maelbeek station, where one of the blasts happened, remains closed as police investigations continue.

In this time of tragedy, the people of Brussels are uniting in their grief and horror.

Reporting from Brussels, euronews’ Sandor Zsiros said: “As well as the shock and fear, there’s a strong feeling of solidarity in Brussels.

“People are keeping together and, on the community sites, many offered free transport or accommodation for those who were blocked here because of the airport closure.

“And the local Muslim community has organised blood donations for the wounded.”

(AfricaLink/Euronews/DW)

Details

Elangwe Pauline

23.Mar.2016

Hits: 2425

Write comment (0 Comments)

Authorities in Ivory Coast say they have arrested 15 people suspected to have links with the deadly terrorist attack on a popular beach resort earlier this month. The national prosecutor also released a photo of a key suspect on the loose.

Ivorian authorities say the suspect, whose name they believe to be Kounta Dallah, played a key role in organizing the attack that killed 19 people in Grand-Bassam.

They are now calling for the population to help track him down.

National prosecutor Richard Adou said the man is believed to have organized and executed everything that happened in Grand-Bassam, so we have already launched a warrant against him.

No other information about him was released.

The Ivorian authorities have also announced 15 people have been arrested in connection with the attack.

Adou said they cannot release the nationalities of the suspects because the investigation is underway.

On Monday, The Associated Press, citing unnamed police sources, reported that among those arrested were at least three Malians and one Ivorian.

The national prosecutor said national and international warrants are also being prepared for other suspects.

The authorities said they are working with other countries in the investigation, and a reconstruction is planned in the coming days to better understand the

succession of events.

Details

Elangwe Pauline

23.Mar.2016

Hits: 2058

Write comment (0 Comments)