Monday, January 12, 2015
RECORD PARIS RALLY FOR TERROR VICTIMS
Newspapers around the world are hailing France’s show of unity in the face of terrorism after yesterday’s marches across the country gathered a record 4 million people, including at least 1.5 million in Paris alone. See our selection of today’s best front pages here. Here are 41 Front Pages From Around The World.
The country remains on high alert, and the Defense Ministry announced the deployment of 10,000 troops after last week’s attacks that killed 17 people. As many as 4,700 police will also protect France’s 717 Jewish schools, the Interior Ministry announced. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is campaigning for reelection, is expected to visit the kosher supermarket where four hostages were killed Friday.
As the investigation into the attacks continues, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has suggested the possibility that the dead Islamists had accomplices, especially Amedy Coulibaly, who killed a policewoman Thursday before taking hostages and killing four at the kosher supermarket the following day. Coulibaly is also being linked with an attack on a jogger shortly before the attacks. The hunt for his partner Hayat Boumeddienne continues, but Turkey’s foreign minister said she crossed into Syria Thursday, confirming previous reports that she had flown from Madrid to Istanbul before the attacks. She is nonetheless believed to have played a role in how the Kouachi brothers and Coulibaly coordinated the crimes.
11 BILLION EUROS
As a crucial general election in debt-ridden Greece draws nearer, an official report showed that Germany, of all countries, owes a whopping 11 billion euros ($13 billion) to Athens for a forced Nazi occupation loan.
MORE ISLAMIST ATTACKS IN NIGERIA
At least 39 people were killed in separate attacks over the weekend in Nigeria, Vanguard reports. The most chilling bombing took place in the northern Borno state Saturday as a 10-year-old girl wearing what is believed to be a remote-controlled suicide vest was killed along with 19 other people. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram is believed the perpetrator. The group carried out its deadliest attack yet last week, killing an estimated 2,000 people in the city of Baga. The escalation of violence comes just weeks ahead of a crucial presidential election.
WORLDCRUNCH-TO-GO
While the world tries to get its collective head around what’s happened in the French capital, life here is bound to change, Worldcrunch senior editor Liz Garrigan writes. The Paris-based American journalist and mother of two sees it already. “When I picked up my 7-year-old from school after work on Thursday, we walked as usual down rue de Grenelle amid the typical end-of-day bustle of the city,” she writes. “‘Mom,” he said, ‘Antonio told me we shouldn’t ride the Metro because there are bad guys with bombs.’ I’d had a talk with him that morning — an abbreviated, edited-for-my-audience explanation of what had happened — but I hadn’t said anything about IF or HOW we should change the way we go about our daily lives. The best I could do was tell him at the time was that the police were chasing the bad guys outside of Paris and that the Metro was the best way for us to get home.”
Read the full article, What Paris Has Lost, Reflections Of An Expat Mom.
AIRASIA BLACK BOX RETRIEVED
Indonesian search teams have located AirAsia flight QZ8501’s two black boxes and retrieved one of the flight data recorders from the plane that crashed in the Java Sea Dec. 28 with 162 people on board. The retrieved recorder will be flown to Jakarta, where data analysis could take up to two weeks. It should help investigators determine what caused the crash. A search and rescue official said the plane might have exploded before hitting the water because of a change in pressure inside the jet.
SCHOOLS REOPEN AFTER PESHAWAR ATTACK
Students have returned to school in Pakistan nearly a month after the Taliban attack on a Peshawar school that killed more than 150 people, most of them children, Dawn reports. Pakistani authorities have tightened security around all schools in the country.
ON THIS DAY
Today is the anniversary of Jack London’s birth. Get your 57-second shot of history in our daily video feature.
HAITI PROTESTS ELECTIONS
Clashes between protesters and police forces erupted over the weekend ahead of tonight’s midnight deadline that could see the parliament dissolved and President Michel Martelly ruling by decree, the BBC reports. Demonstrations have been ongoing for months, and Martelly’s opponents have accused him of stalling the elections, which were initially scheduled for 2011. Today also marks the fifth anniversary of an earthquake that killed more than 230,000 people. Haiti, one of the world’s poorest countries, has scarcely started to recover, with close to 80,000 people still living in squalid makeshift camps.
CROATIA ELECTS FIRST FEMALE PRESIDENT
Conservative candidate Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic has narrowly defeated Croatia’s incumbent Ivo Josipovic to become the country’s first female president. The defeat of the center-left leader could pave the way to a return of conservative politics in Croatia with a general election due to be held by the end of the year. Read more from The New York Times.
GOLDEN GLOBES
Actor Michael Keaton and the movies Boyhood and The Grand Budapest Hotel were the most notable winners at yesterday’s 72nd Golden Globe Awards during which artists also paid tribute to the victims of French terror attacks.
