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.
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