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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (April 21, 2017)
Page 8A NATION/WORLD East Oregonian Friday, April 21, 2017 Paris police shot on Champs-Elysees; IS group claims attack By LORI HINNANT and SYLVIE CORBET Associated Press PARIS — A gunman opened fire on police on Paris’ iconic Champs-Ely- sees boulevard Thursday night, killing one officer and wounding three people before police shot and killed him. The Islamic State group quickly claimed responsi- bility for the attack, which hit just three days before a tense presidential election. Security already has been a dominant theme in the campaign, and the violence on the sparkling avenue threatened to weigh on voters’ decisions. Candidates canceled or rescheduled final campaign events ahead of Sunday’s first round vote. Investigators searched a home early Friday in an eastern suburb of Paris believed linked to the attack. A police document AP Photo/Kamil Zihnioglu Police seal off the Champs Elysees avenue in Paris, France, after a fatal shooting in which a police officer was killed along with an attacker Thursday. obtained by The Associated Press identifies the address searched in the town of Chelles as the family home of Karim Cheurfi, a 39-year-old with a criminal record. Police tape surrounded the quiet, middle-class neighborhood in Chelles, and worried neighbors expressed surprise at the searches. Archive reports by French newspaper Le Parisien say that Cheurfi was convicted of attacking a police officer in 2001. Authorities are trying to determine whether “one or more people” might have helped the attacker, Inte- rior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet told reporters at the scene of the shooting. One officer was killed and two police officers were seriously wounded when the attacker emerged from a car and used an automatic weapon to shoot at officers outside a Marks & Spencer’s department store at the center of the Champs-Elysees, anti-terrorism prosecutor Francois Molins said. A female foreign tourist also was wounded, Molins said. The Islamic State group’s claim of responsibility just a few hours after the attack came unusually swiftly for the extremist group, which has been losing territory in Iraq and Syria. In a statement from its Amaq news agency, the group gave a pseudonym for the shooter, Abu Yusuf al-Beljiki, indicating he was Belgian or had lived in Belgium. Belgian authorities said they had no informa- tion about the suspect. IS described the shootings as an attack “in the heart of Paris.” The attacker had been flagged as an extremist, according to two police officials, speaking on condi- tion of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to publicly discuss the investi- gation. Brandet said officers were “deliberately” targeted, as has happened repeatedly to French security forces in recent years, including in the run-up to the 2012 election. Police and soldiers sealed off the area, ordering tourists back into hotels and blocking people from approaching the scene. Emergency vehi- cles blocked the wide Champs-Elysees, an avenue lined with boutiques and normally packed with cars and tourists that cuts across central Paris between the Arc de Triomphe and the Tuileries Gardens. Subway stations were closed off. The gunfire sent scores of tourists fleeing into side streets. “They were running, running,” said 55-year-old Badi Ftaïti, who lives in the area. “Some were crying. There were tens, maybe even hundreds of them.” French President Fran- cois Hollande said he was convinced the circumstances of the attack in a country pointed to a terrorist act. Hollande held an emergency meeting with the prime minister Thursday night and planned to convene the defense council Friday morning. Once a vocal critic, Trump slow to pull out of global deals By MATTHEW LEE and JOSH LEDERMAN Associated Press WASHINGTON — The “America First” president who vowed to extricate America from onerous over- seas commitments appears to be warming up to the view that when it comes to global agreements, a deal’s a deal. From NAFTA to the Iran nuclear agreement to the Paris climate accord, President Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric is colliding with the reality of governing. Despite repeated pledges to rip up, renegotiate or otherwise alter them, the U.S. has yet to withdraw from any of these economic, environmental or national security deals, as Trump’s past criticism turns to tacit embrace of several key elements of U.S. foreign policy. The administration says it is reviewing these accords and could still pull out of them. Yet with one excep- tion — an Asia-Pacific trade deal that already had stalled in Congress — Trump’s administration quietly has laid the groundwork to honor the international architecture of deals it has inherited. It’s a sharp shift from the days when Trump was declaring the end of a global-minded America that negotiates away its interests and subsi- dizes foreigners’ security and prosperity. A day after his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, certi- fied that Iran was meeting its nuclear obligations, Trump on Thursday repeated his view the seven-nation accord was a “terrible agreement” and “as bad as I’ve ever seen negotiated.” “Iran has not lived up to the spirit of the agreement and they have to do that,” Trump said at a news confer- ence with Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni. He said U.S. officials were analyzing the deal carefully and would “have something to say about it in the not too distant future.” Earlier Thursday, he deliv- ered a similar assessment of the North American Free Trade Agreement, railing against the 1990s trade deal while offering no indication SAMSUNG GALAXY S8 AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File President Donald Trump gives a thumbs-up as he walks to board Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington. he was actively pushing for wholesale changes. As a candidate, Trump threatened to jettison the pact with Mexico and Canada unless he could substantially rene- gotiate it in America’s favor. “The fact is, NAFTA, whether it’s Mexico or Canada, is a disaster for our country,” Trump said. Trump’s administration has been focused on marginal changes that would preserve much of NAFTA, according to draft guidelines that Trump’s trade envoy sent to Congress. To the dismay of NAFTA critics, the proposal preserves a controversial provision that lets companies challenge national trade laws through private tribunals. Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University, said Trump may be allowing himself to argue in the future that existing deals can be improved without being totally discarded. “That allows him to tell his base that he’s getting a better deal than Bush or Obama got, and yet reassure these institutions that it’s really all being done with a nod and a wink, that Trump doesn’t mean what he says,” Brinkley said. So far, there’s been no major revolt from Trump supporters, despite their expectation he would be an agent of disruption. In addition to Tillerson’s Iran certification, this week’s reaf- firmations of the status quo included delaying a decision on whether to withdraw from the Paris climate accord. GM quits Venezuela after government seizes factory VALENCIA, Venezuela (AP) — General Motors announced Thursday that it was shuttering its operations in Venezuela after authorities seized its factory in the country, a move that could draw the Trump adminis- tration into the escalating chaos engulfing the South American nation amid days of deadly protests. The plant in the indus- trial city of Valencia was confiscated Wednesday as anti-government protesters clashed with security forces and pro-government groups in a country battered by economic troubles, including food shortages and triple- digit inflation. Three people were killed and hundreds arrested in the deadliest day of protests since the unrest began three weeks ago. The seizure arose from an almost 20-year-old lawsuit brought by a former GM dealership in western Vene- zuela. The dealership had been seeking damages from GM of 476 million bolivars — about $665 million at the official exchange rate, or $115 million on the black market where many Venezu- elans are forced to turn to sell their increasingly worthless currency. FREE From the network with a stronger signal in the Middle of Anywhere. Via trailing credits: 30-month Retail Installment Contract, Device Protection+ and qualifying turn-in required. Things we want you to know: New Postpaid or Shared Connect Price Plan required. 30-month Retail Installment Contract, credit approval, new customer number port-in and device turn-in also required. A $25 Device Activation Fee may apply. 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