Tag Archives: Security

Obama to deliver speech defending his counterterrorism fight

President Obama

By Ayesha Rascoe

WASHINGTON, Dec 6 (Reuters) – President Barack Obama will make the case on Tuesday that his counterterrorism policies have helped protect Americans from evolving international threats as he prepares to hand over the White House to a successor who has been critical of his approach.

Obama will deliver his final major speech on national security as president at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida.

He will argue that his administration has been successful in building coalitions and working with local governments to take out militant leaders and disrupt Islamic State and other groups without overextending the U.S. military, the White House said.

“This represents a more sustainable approach … one where we had a limited number of U.S. forces on the ground,” White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said on a call with reporters.

Some counterterrorism experts have pointed to the rise of Islamic State as an example of Obama being too slow to respond to an emerging threat.

While the United States has been successful in killing some key militant leaders, Obama’s “legacy has been tarnished by the way terrorist groups have regenerated and strengthened in the latter parts of his presidency,” said Robin Simcox, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

Republican President-elect Donald Trump referred to Obama and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton as the “co-founders” of Islamic State during the presidential campaign, blaming them for the initial spread of the militant group.

Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, has chided Obama for not speaking out more bluntly against “radical Islam.” He has also voiced support for waterboarding captives.

Obama signed an executive order after taking office in January 2009 that banned waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” or EITs. Such executive orders can be rescinded by a president’s successors.

Many lawmakers and human rights groups have denounced waterboarding, an interrogation technique that simulates drowning, as torture.

Some former officials from President George W. Bush’s  administration and the CIA officials have defended waterboarding and other EITs, denying they are torture and saying they elicited valuable intelligence.

Rhodes said Obama’s national security speech had been planned long before the Nov. 8 election and was not aimed specifically at the incoming Trump administration.

Rhodes said, however, that Obama would argue the administration’s decision not to use waterboarding had actually improved national security.

“We’ve actually been strengthened because it’s easier to get other nations to cooperate with us,” Rhodes said.

(Reporting by Ayesha Rascoe; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Iraqi forces preparing advance on south Mosul

captured Islamic State tank

By John Davison and Dominic Evans

SOUTH OF MOSUL/BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraqi security forces are preparing to advance toward Mosul airport on the city’s southern edge to increase pressure on Islamic State militants fighting troops who breached their eastern defenses, officers said on Thursday.

The rapid response forces, part of a coalition seeking to crush the jihadists in the largest city under their control in Iraq or Syria, took the town of Hammam al-Alil, just over 15 km (10 miles) south of Mosul, on Monday.

Officers say they plan to resume their advance north, up the western bank of the Tigris River towards the city of 1.5 million people who have lived under the ultra-hardline Sunni Islamists for more than two years.

More than three weeks after the U.S.-backed campaign to retake Mosul was launched, the city is almost surrounded by the coalition of nearly 100,000 fighters. But troops have entered only a handful of neighborhoods in the east of the city.

“We need to put wider pressure on the enemy in different areas,” said Major-General Thamer al-Husseini, commander of the elite police unit which is run by the Shi’ite-controlled Interior Ministry.

He said operations would resume within two days.

Lieutenant-Colonel Dhiya Mizhir said the target was an area overlooking Mosul airport, which has been rendered unusable by Islamic State to prevent attackers using it as a staging post for their offensive.

Army officers told Reuters in September the militants had moved concrete blast walls onto the runway to prevent planes from landing there.

Satellite pictures released by intelligence firm Stratfor also showed they had dug deep trenches in the runways and destroyed buildings to ensure clear lines of sight for defenders and to prevent advancing forces from using hangars or other facilities.

On the southern front, security forces took cover behind a mound of earth and fired at Islamic State positions from armored gun turrets.

The village of Karama was mostly deserted apart from a handful of residents and a few dozen Iraqi forces. A cement factory they recaptured three days ago was battered by gunfire.

“They used car bombs as we moved in and this street was heavily mined, but the battle wasn’t hard,” said 19-year-old recruit Abdel Sattar.

NIMRUD RUINS

Separate forces advancing on the eastern side of the Tigris targeted two villages on Thursday on the edge of the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud, a military statement said.

Troops from the Ninth Armoured Division took the village of Abbas Rajab, four km east of Nimrud, and raised the Iraqi flag.

The Iraqi government says Nimrud was bulldozed last year as part of Islamic State’s campaign to destroy symbols which the Sunni Muslim zealots consider idolatrous. It would be the first such site to be recaptured from Islamic State.

Counter terrorism forces and an armored division fighting in the east of the city have been battling to hold on to half a dozen districts they surged into a week ago.

They have been hit by waves of attacks by Islamic State units, including snipers, suicide bombers, assault fighters and mortar teams, who have used a network of tunnels under the city and civilian cover in the narrow streets to wear them down in lethal urban warfare.

Residents contacted by telephone on Thursday said aircraft from the U.S.-led coalition supporting the Iraqi forces were circling the skies above eastern Mosul. They heard the sound of heavy clashes, artillery and mortar fire.

The militants were hitting back, they said. “Daesh (Islamic State) fighters were firing mortar bombs from a garden next to us which they had taken from a Christian,” one person said.

“They were bombarding the Zahra neighborhood where the Iraqi forces are. The war planes hit back with small rockets and destroyed the mortar and killed three of them,” he said, adding he had moved his family to another district.

Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) forces have been fighting in Zahra for a week, sometimes gaining ground only to be pushed back on the defensive. A senior CTS officer said on Thursday the neighborhood was fully under control.

“I’m very happy. I can’t believe that we’re over this terrible nightmare,” said another resident who returned to Zahra after taking refuge outside the city. “But we’re still frightened that Daesh might return”.

“We need more attacks on the other neighborhoods to liberate them and drive Daesh further away.”

The militants, who have ruled Mosul with ruthless violence, displayed bodies of at least 20 people across the city in the last two days – five of them crucified at a road junction – saying they had been killed for trying to make contact with the attacking forces, residents have said.

The United Nations has warned of a possible exodus of hundreds of thousands of refugees from the city. So far 45,000 have been displaced, the International Organization for Migration said on Thursday.

Those figures exclude the thousands of people forced to accompany Islamic State fighters as human shields on their retreat into Mosul from towns and villages around the city.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; Editing by Angus MacSwan and David Stamp)

South Korea says Trump pledged commitment to its defense

Donald Trump winning speech

By Jack Kim and Ju-min Park

SEOUL (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump pledged his commitment to defending South Korea under an existing security alliance during a phone call with South Korean President Park Geun-hye on Thursday, her office said.

Trump had said during the election campaign he would be willing to withdraw U.S. military stationed in South Korea unless Seoul paid a greater share of the cost of the U.S. deployment, but an adviser to the president-elect played down such comments on Thursday.

There are about 28,500 U.S. troops based in South Korea helping to defend the country against nuclear-armed North Korea, which has remained in a technical state of war with the South since the 1950-53 Korean conflict.

Park said the U.S.-South Korean alliance had grown in the past six decades and she hoped it would develop further.

She asked Trump to join in the effort to help minimize the threat from North Korea, which has carried out repeated nuclear and missile tests in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions and sanctions.

South Korea’s presidential Blue House said Trump agreed with Park and it quoted Trump as saying: “We will be steadfast and strong with respect to working with you to protect against the instability in North Korea.”

Trump’s transition team did not respond to requests for comment, but an adviser to the president-elect played down concerns about any changes in approach to alliances in Asia.

“I think what we are going to see is a very mainstream Republican administration,” he said, adding that sharing the costs of sustaining combined defense was a matter for negotiation, as it always had been.

“It’s going to be a respectful conversation that’s going to be done at the working level and will have absolutely nothing to do with the overall strength of these alliances, which is going to remain extremely close,” he said.

The adviser, who did not want to be identified by name, also noted that during the election campaign Trump had dropped comments he had made saying he would consider letting Japan and South Korea build their own nuclear weapons rather than have them rely on the United States nuclear umbrella.

“He has moved on to talk about non-proliferation in a way that you would hear from any Republican president,” he said.

“We are very much committed to both non-proliferation and assuring the allies that not only will they continue to be under the nuclear umbrella, but that we are going to be strengthening our missile defense in ways that alleviate some of their concerns about North Korea.”

The Blue House said the call between Park and Trump lasted about 10 minutes and Park said she hoped Trump would be able to visit South Korea soon.

COST SHARING CONCERNS

There has been concern in South Korea that a Trump presidency will demand that Seoul sharply raise its share of the cost of maintaining the U.S. military presence.

Under a five-year cost-sharing accord reached two years ago, Seoul agreed to contribute $867 million toward U.S. military costs in 2014, about 40 percent of the total. The deal called for the amount to rise annually at the rate of inflation.

Trump said earlier this year that the United States was paid “peanuts” for the troop presence and that he would be willing to withdraw U.S. forces from South Korea and Japan, but “would not do so happily.”

South Korea believes its share of the cost is much higher when the vast amount of land occupied by the U.S. forces, including a large area in central Seoul, are considered.

Some members of the South Korean parliament have suggested that the country has little choice but to consider nuclear armament if U.S. forces are withdrawn while North Korea continues to develop nuclear weapons and missiles that could carry them.

South Korea’s Defense Ministry spokesman Moon Sang-gyun said on Thursday the country paid its share of the cost of maintaining the U.S. military and the contribution had been recognized by the U.S. government and Congress.

South Korea and the United States have also agreed to deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system with the U.S. military to counter missile threats from North Korea.

South Korea has consistently said it had no plan to buy the THAAD system, which is built by Lockheed Martin Corp and costs an estimated $800 million a piece, that will likely add to the cost of maintaining the U.S. military presence.

The official newspaper of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party said on Thursday the U.S. wish for North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program was “only a fantasy of a bygone era” and the policy of pressure and sanctions had failed.

“The only accomplishment of the Obama administration is that it is leaving behind for the new administration coming next year the burden of having to deal with a strong nuclear power,” Rodong Sinmun said in a commentary.

It did not mention Trump by name. But Choson Sinbo, a pro-North Korean newspaper published in Japan and controlled by Pyongyang, said: “Trump is well advised to learn the lesson of history from Obama’s failure.

“Otherwise, the new owner of the White House will be met with the ashes of the calamity started by the previous owner.”

(Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by Nick Macfie and Bill Trott)

Creepy clown sightings no laughing matter as Halloween nears

clown at clown convention

By Patricia Reaney

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Sightings across the United States of creepy clowns with red lips and fixed smiles are have become anything but a laughing matter and have cast a menacing tone as Halloween approaches.

Since late August, the trend of trying to scare unsuspecting people has grown with scary-looking clowns lurking in woods, appearing on dark roads or driving in cars, some brandishing knives.

The spine-chilling sightings have been reported in states ranging from California and Minnesota to South Carolina, New Jersey and New York and have generated the hashtag #IfISeeAClown and @ClownSightings on Twitter, which has 335,000 followers.

Even the White House weighed in on the sightings. Press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters in response to a question at a briefing that local police take it quite seriously.

“If anything is suspicious, anything, be it somebody verbally or physically acting menacing in any type of costume, notify the police right away,” said Capt. Laurence Martin of the Wayne Police Department in New Jersey, which responded to a report of a clown sighting last week.

In nearby Fair Lawn, where young adults were stopped following a scary clown sighting report, police said trick-or-treaters should be vigilant.

“Have a heightened awareness about what is going on around you,” said Sgt. Brian Metzler of the Fair Lawn Police Department.

Best-selling author Stephen King, whose 1986 novel “It” weaves a tale of a Maine town being terrorized by a supernatural being that appears as a clown named Pennywise, took to Twitter to address the phenomenon.

“Hey, guys, time to cool the clown hysteria – most of em are good, cheer up the kiddies, make people laugh,” he said in a recent post.

A film adaptation of King’s book is due to be released next year but the studio has denied any link to the scary clown sightings.

While the reports and hoax calls have been a headache for police, a concern for parents and resulted in arrests in some states, it has been a boost for online costume stores.

“There has been a bit of an uptick,” said Leigh Wendinger, the inbound marketing manager for Minnesota online retailer HalloweenCostumes.com.

She said clown costumes are up about 40 percent this year but it was difficult to say if it is due to the creepy clown sightings.

Online retailer HalloweenExpress.com has seen a three-fold rise in clown masks this year. The Kentucky-based company said eight of the top 10 sellers are evil or scary clown masks this season, compared to five in the top ten last year.

Assailant shot outside Israeli embassy in Turkey: officials

Riot police near Israeli Embassy in Turkey

By Umit Bektas and Jeffrey Heller

ANKARA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A suspected assailant was shot and wounded near the Israeli embassy in the Turkish capital Ankara on Wednesday, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman and Turkish police said.

“The staff is safe. The attacker was wounded before he reached the embassy,” the spokesman said in a text message. “The assailant was shot and wounded by a local security man.”

Broadcaster CNN Turk said the suspect, whom it described as mentally unstable, had attempted a knife attack.

Turkish police told Reuters the assailant shouted “Allahu akbar”, or “God is Greatest”, outside the embassy before he was shot in the leg.

Police were examining his bag but had so far not attempted to detonate it, a Reuters cameraman at the scene said. The area outside the embassy had been cordoned off.

The assailant was apprehended at the outer perimeter of the secured zone around the embassy, the Israeli spokesman said.

Private broadcaster NTV identified the suspect as a man from the central city of Konya.

It was not immediately clear if there was a second would-be assailant, but Turkish media reports had initially suggested that there had been two attackers.

Turkey faces multiple security threats, including Islamic State militants, who have been blamed for bombings in Istanbul and elsewhere, and Kurdish militants, following the resumption of a three-decade insurgency in the mainly Kurdish southeast last year.

(Additional Reporting by Ece Toksabay in Ankara and Ori Lewis in Jerusalem; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Daren Butler)

China expresses concern about Indian missiles on border

A signboard is seen from the Indian side of the Indo-China border at Bumla, in Arunachal Pradesh,

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s Defence Ministry said on Thursday that it hoped India could put more efforts into regional peace and stability rather than the opposite, in response to Indian plans to put advanced cruise missiles along the disputed border with China.

Indian military officials say the plan is to equip regiments deployed on the China border with the BrahMos missile, made by an Indo-Russian joint venture, as part of ongoing efforts to build up military and civilian infrastructure capabilities there.

The two nuclear-armed neighbors have been moving to gradually ease long-existing tensions between them.

Leaders of Asia’s two giants pledged last year to cool a festering border dispute, which dates back to a brief border war in 1962, though the disagreement remains unresolved.

Asked about the missile plans at a monthly news briefing, Chinese Defence Ministry spokesman Wu Qian said maintaining peace and stability in the border region was an “important consensus” reached by both countries.

“We hope that the Indian side can do more to benefit peace and stability along the border and in the region, rather than the opposite,” Wu said, without elaborating.

China lays claim to more than 90,000 sq km (35,000 sq miles) ruled by New Delhi in the eastern sector of the Himalayas. India says China occupies 38,000 sq km (14,600 sq miles) of its territory on the Aksai Chin plateau in the west.

India is also suspicious of China’s support for its arch-rival, Pakistan.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping when he visits China next month to attend the G20 summit.

Modi’s government has ordered BrahMos Aerospace, which produces the missiles, to accelerate sales to a list of five countries topped by Vietnam, according to a government note viewed by Reuters and previously unreported.

Modi visits Vietnam, which is embroiled in a dispute over the South China Sea with Beijing, before arriving in China.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

Munich raises security for beer festival after Islamist attacks

German Police Officers

BERLIN (Reuters) – Organizers of the world’s biggest beer festival, Munich’s Oktoberfest, have raised security after Islamist attacks in Germany last month, including banning rucksacks, introducing security checks at all entrances and erecting fencing.

Drawing some 6 million tourists, the Oktoberfest is a major highlight of the year for residents, who often wear traditional lederhosen or dirndls, and visitors from all over the world travel there. This year’s festival runs from Sept. 17 to Oct. 3.

However, Bavarians are on edge after jihadist militant group Islamic State claimed two attacks in July, one on a train near Wuerzburg and one at a music festival in Ansbach, in which asylum-seekers injured 20 people.

On top of that, an 18-year-old German-Iranian killed nine people in a shooting rampage in a shopping center in Munich.

“We want to do everything we can in terms of security so that the people of Munich and their guests can revel in a relaxed way. We looked at all options,” deputy Munich mayor Josef Schmid told reporters.

The city has increased the number of stewards to as many as 450 from 250 last year and erected a two-meter high metal fence around Theresienwiese, the open ground where the Oktoberfest is held, to ensure nobody can avoid the checks, he said.

The main Munich breweries have their own tents with long beer tables and bands. Last year they served 7.3 million liters of beer, as well as huge quantities of sausages, bretzel and whole spit-roasted bulls.

The Oktoberfest has its origins in the wedding in 1810 of Bavarian Crown Prince Ludwig and Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen. The public festivities went on for five days and were so popular they have been repeated annually.

(Reporting by Madeline Chambers; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Canada security questioned after FBI tip thwarts attack

Police photograph of taxi where suicide bomber detonated in Canada

By Andrea Hopkins

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Aaron Driver first came to the attention of Canadian officials in late 2014 after he voiced support for Islamic State on social media. In 2015, the Muslim convert was arrested for communicating with militants involved with attack plots in Texas and Australia. Early this year, he agreed to a court order known as a peace bond that restricted his online and cell phone use.

Yet it took a tip from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to alert Canadian intelligence officials to what police say was an imminent attack Driver was planning on a major Canadian city.

Driver, 24, died after he detonated an explosive device in the backseat of a taxi as police closed in and opened fire, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said in Ottawa.

The RCMP said Driver, one of only two Canadians currently subject to a peace bond, was not under constant surveillance before the tip from the FBI came on Wednesday morning.

Driver’s father, Wayne Driver, questioned why authorities did not intervene more decisively earlier. He said he wished his son had been forced into a de-radicalization program.

“I don’t think [the peace bond] was very effective at all. I mean, look at the outcome,” Driver’s father told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

“Why wasn’t he on some kind of parole where he had to report a couple times a month instead of never?”

RCMP Deputy Commissioner Mike Cabana said that even when, as in Driver’s case, there is enough evidence for a court-ordered terrorism-related peace bond, the tool cannot really prevent an attack.

“Our ability to monitor people 24 hours a day and 7 days a week simply does not exist. We can’t do that,” Cabana told reporters at a news conference in Ottawa.

Phil Gurski, a former Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) analyst and now a risk consultant, said it takes about 20 to 40 officers in multiple surveillance teams to watch a suspect.

“It is not like Hollywood films where it is one car following one guy,” said Gurski. “So you have to start prioritizing.”

With Driver’s death, one Canadian resident remains under a terrorism-related federal peace bond, a type of restraining order issued by a provincial judge. According to the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, nine more such orders are pending, nine have already expired, and three applications for peace bonds have been withdrawn.

LIMITS TO PEACE BONDS

Driver’s peace bond required him, among other things, to get permission before purchasing a cell phone, stay off social media websites and refrain from communications with members of Islamic State and other radical groups.

After Driver’s foiled attack, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said peace bonds have limits.

“Those issues will obviously need to be very carefully scrutinized,” he said in an interview with CBC.

While some 600 RCMP officers and staff were transferred from organized crime, drug and financial integrity files to the counter-terrorism beat in recent years, critics of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s new Liberal government have argued that not enough money is being spent to fight terrorism.

The 2016 budget provided C$35-million over five years to combat radicalization, but little in the way of new funding for the RCMP or CSIS.

Trudeau was elected in October 2015 pledging to end Canada’s combat role against Islamic State and roll back some of the security powers his Conservative Party predecessor had implemented.

Ray Boisvert, a former assistant director of intelligence at CSIS, said Driver was likely on an increasingly long list of so-called “B-listers” – people known to law enforcement, but considered lower risk than others and not followed regularly.

“The problem today, of course is that a target can go from mildly radicalized to highly ‘weaponized’ in a matter of weeks – or sooner,” Boisvert, who left CSIS in 2012 and is now a security consultant to private firms, said in an email.

Mubin Shaikh, a former undercover operative with CSIS, told Reuters he considered Driver a threat back in 2015, in part because he was a Muslim convert.

“That’s a red flag,” he said on Thursday.

In October 2014, a Canadian Muslim convert shot and killed a soldier at Ottawa’s national war memorial before launching an attack on the Canadian Parliament. The same week, another convert ran down two soldiers in Quebec, killing one.

Shaikh, now a Canadian counter-terrorism and national security consultant, said law enforcement officers walk a fine line in determining which Islamic State sympathizers are just talkers, and which represent an actual threat to Canada.

“You don’t know who is going to be the one guy who is not just talking but may take action,” he said. “It’s better to assume that they are going to be a threat.”

(Additional reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal, Leah Schnurr in Ottawa, Ethan Lou in Toronto, Rod Nickel in Winnipeg; Editing by Sue Horton, Diane Craft and Frances Kerry)

France’s Hollande meets religious leaders amid row over attacks security

A young girl prays near flowers and candles at the city hall in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray to pay tribute to Father Jacques Hamel, who was killed in an attack on a church

y Andrew Callus and Chine Labbé

PARIS/SAINT-ETIENNE-DU-ROUVRAY, France (Reuters) – President Francois Hollande demonstrated interfaith unity with France’s religious leaders on Wednesday after two Islamist militants killed a Roman Catholic priest in a church, igniting fierce political criticism of the government’s security record.

One of the assailants was a known would-be jihadist awaiting trial under supposedly tight surveillance, a revelation that raised pressure over the Socialist government’s response to a wave of attacks claimed by Islamic State since early in 2015.

“We cannot allow ourselves to be dragged into the politics of Daech (Islamic State), which wants to set the children of the same family against each other,” the Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal André Vingt-Trois, told journalists after the meeting at the Elysee presidential palace.

He was flanked by representatives of other Christian denominations as well as Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist leaders.

Hollande and his ministers were already under fire from conservative opponents over the policing of Bastille Day celebrations in the Riviera city of Nice in which 84 people died when a delivery man drove a heavy truck at revelers.

Former president Nicolas Sarkozy, who is expected to enter a conservative primary for next year’s presidential election, stepped up his attack on Hollande’s record since the first major attack against satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo last year.

“All this violence and barbarism has paralyzed the French left since January 2015,” Sarkozy told Le Monde newspaper. “It has lost its bearings and is clinging to a mindset that is out of touch with reality.”

Sarkozy has called for the detention or electronic tagging of all suspected Islamist militants, even if they have committed no offense. France’s internal security service has confidential “S files” on some 10,500 suspected or aspiring jihadists.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve rejected Sarkozy’s proposal, saying that to jail them would be unconstitutional and in any case could be counterproductive.

“What has enabled France to break up a large number of terrorist networks is keeping these people under ‘S file’ surveillance, which allows intelligence services to work without these individuals being aware,” he said on Europe 1 radio.

Cazeneuve later told reporters that summer festivals that do not meet tight security standards will be canceled, as the government assigned 23,500 police, soldiers and reservists to protect 56 major cultural and sports events.

In an acknowledgement that the last two attacks occurred outside Paris, the minister announced a shift in the balance of the 10,000 soldiers already on the streets. Some 6,000 will now be based in the provinces.

DEATH AT THE ALTAR

Tuesday’s attackers interrupted a church service, forced the 85-year-old priest to his knees at the altar and slit his throat. As they came out of the church hiding behind three hostages and shouting “Allahu akbar” (“God is Greatest”), they were shot and killed by police.

The knifemen arrived during morning mass in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, a working-class town near Rouen, northwest of Paris, where Father Jacques Hamel had been celebrating mass. One of the hostages was badly wounded during the attack.

Islamic State said on its news agency that its “soldiers” carried out the attack. It has prioritized targeting France, which has been bombing the group’s bases in Iraq and Syria as part of a U.S.-led international coalition.

Police said they arrested a 16-year-old local youth after the incident but Cazeneuve said on Wednesday he did not appear to be linked to the church attack.

One of the attackers, 19-year-old Adel Kermiche, was a local man who was known to intelligence services after his failed bids to reach Syria to wage jihad.

Kermiche first tried to travel to Syria in March 2015 but was arrested in Germany. Upon his return to France he was placed under surveillance and barred from leaving his local area.

Less than two months later, Kermiche slipped away and was intercepted in Turkey making his way toward Syria again.

He was sent back to France and detained until late March this year when he was released on bail pending trial for alleged membership of a terrorist organization. He had to wear an electronic tag, surrender his passport and was only allowed to leave his parents’ home for a few hours a day.

Kermiche’s tag did not send an alarm because the attack took place during the four hour period when he was allowed out.

According to the justice ministry, there are just 13 terrorism suspects and people convicted of terrorist links wearing such tags. Seven are on pre-trial bail. The other six have been convicted but wear the electronic bracelet instead of serving a full jail term.

France was already in a state of shock less than two weeks after the Nice truck attack. In November, 130 people died in shooting and suicide bombings in and around Paris.

In March, three Islamist militants linked to the Paris attackers killed 32 people in suicide attacks on Brussels airport and a metro station in the Belgian capital.

Since the Bastille Day killings in Nice, there has been a spate of attacks in Germany too.

(Reporting by Andrew Callus and Chine Labbe; Editing by Paul Taylor)

NASA’s New mission; improving good security in West Africa

ourists take pictures of a NASA sign at the Kennedy Space Center visitors complex in Cape Canaveral, Florida

By Nellie Peyton

DAKAR (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A drive by NASA to stream climate data to West African nations using its earth-observing satellites could boost crop production in a region hit hard by climate change, experts say.

NASA last week launched a hub in Niger’s capital Niamey that will use space-based observations to improve food security and better manage natural disasters, said Dan Irwin, manager of the SERVIR project, named after the Spanish word meaning “to serve”.

The project, which will cover Burkina Faso, Ghana, Senegal and Niger, is one of four regional hubs worldwide, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

“The model is demand driven,” said Irwin, who describes SERVIR’s vision as “connecting space to village”. NASA performed a study in the region two years ago and found that governments either did not have good data, or were not using it, he added.

The Sahel is one of the most vulnerable regions in the world to climate change, where rising temperatures and increasingly erratic rainfall are wreaking havoc on farmers, disrupting food production, and fuelling widespread hunger and malnutrition.

“The whole livelihood along the Sahel depends on a few main crops, namely millet and sorghum,” U.N. World Food Program analyst Matthieu Tockert told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“These crops are highly dependent on rainfall, so any data that allows for proper forecasts is key,” Tockert said.

Farmers in Senegal say that traditional methods of predicting the weather are no longer reliable. A program launched last month by the country’s aviation and meteorology agency aims to solve the problem by sending texts to farmers.

“There is an immediate need to connect available science and technology to development solutions in West Africa,” said Alex Deprez, director of USAID’s West Africa regional office.

In East Africa, SERVIR scientists have since 2008 built a system to track water in streams and rivers and predict when and where droughts or floods will occur, and created maps that show which land is the most fertile, and which areas risk erosion.

SERVIR could adopt similar programmes in West Africa, but the first step will be to identify the region’s most pressing needs, with a priority on improving food security, Irwin said.

(Reporting by Nellie Peyton, Editing by Kieran Guilbert and Katie Nguyen.)