CALIFORNIA SHOOTING MAY BE TERRORISM
FBI officials investigating the Wednesday San Bernardino shooting that left 14 people dead and 21 wounded are probing a potential terrorist motive, though that connection has yet to be substantiated, the Los Angeles Times reports. Police officers told reporters that the level of planning and the arsenal used by killers Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik suggest it was more than a response to a workplace dispute. “Certainly they were equipped and they could have continued to do another attack,” San Bernardino police Chief Jarrod Burguan said. The Los Angeles Times reports that Farook is believed to have been in contact with a potential terror suspect, meaning there could be a “deeper terror matrix,” the newspaper quoted a senior federal source as saying.
WORLDCRUNCH-TO-GO
A return to national borders, a fight against radical Islam, a rejection of the EU and its asylum policies. France’s Far-Right National Front leader Marine Le Pen answers questions from Le Temps in the wake of the Paris attacks, and ahead of Sunday’s regional elections, when the party is expected to make major gains. Read the full piece, “You Must Name Your Enemy — The Marine Le Pen Interview.”
GERMANY JOINS ANTI-ISIS COALITION
German lawmakers voted overwhelmingly (445 to 146) to support the government’s plan to join the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition in Syria and Iraq, Die Welt reports. The decision means that warplanes and up to 1,200 German troops could be deployed to Syria, and it comes three weeks after the Paris terror attacks that killed 130 people.
- Unconfirmed reports, meanwhile, claim that Britain could be the next ISIS target, in retaliation for bombing the jihadist group’s positions in Syria.
- Australia has taken steps to strip suspected terrorists holding two nationalities of their Australian citizenship, a move that could affect half of the Australians fighting with jihadists in the Middle East, AP reports.
