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The traditional New Year's Eve celebrations on the Champs-Elysees will be the first large assembly to be sanctioned in Paris since France's state of emergency started in November. Each year, hundreds of thousands of people gather on Paris's Champs-Elysees to celebrate the "Reveillon," as the French call December 31. But after a year that started with the Charlie Hebdo attacks and ended with the November 13 shooting and bomb attacks that killed 130 people, it was unclear whether New Year celebrations in Paris would go ahead as usual. France has been under a state of emergency since November 13, and...

France once led the world in lambasting George W. Bush's "war on terror". But as Francois Hollande looks to enshrine emergency powers in the constitution, the country's leaders are suddenly sounding like the US president they once held in contempt. [...] The French, presided over by a monarchical president who embodies "Republican" values, have proven more willing than Americans in the wake of the 9/11 attacks to cede their civil liberties if it makes them safer. More than 90 percent of adults in France support the prolonged state of emergency championed by the government, a study by French polling firm...

German gun club lobbyists were invited to the German Interior Ministry (BMI) last week to discuss something that has been bothering them for a while - the European Commission's proposed plans to tighten Europe's gun laws, which were suddenly revived from legislative stagnation in the wake of the "Islamic State" attacks in Paris in November. By all accounts, the visit was a success. "The proposal contains things that the BMI said would be difficult for them, and where changes would be called for," said Joachim Streitberger, head of Germany's association of shooting ranges (BVS), after he emerged from the meeting....

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is promising, if elected president, to pull the United States out of the nonbinding climate change accord that nearly 200 countries agreed to earlier this month. Cruz, a GOP presidential candidate, on Tuesday told reporters in Tennessee that the agreement is part of an extreme focus on climate by President Obama. "Barack Obama seems to think the SUV parked in your driveway is a bigger threat to national security than radical Islamic terrorists who want to kill us. That's just nutty," he said, according to The Washington Post. "These are ideologues, they don't focus on the...

Shocked by the bloody Paris attacks, European Union leaders on Friday vowed an "uncompromising fight against terrorism" and called for wide-ranging countermeasures ranging from beefed-up immigration controls to a crackdown on illicit weapons-trafficking. Leaders of the 28 EU member countries also pledged quick action to better restrict violent extremists' ability to finance their actions, including via the imposition of asset freezes. The Brussels summit was the first time the EU leaders had assembled since the Nov. 13 attacks, claimed by the Islamic State organization, that killed 130 and wounded hundreds more in Paris. ...

The CEO of Air France on Sunday described the device that prompted a diversion of Flight 463 to Kenya was a fake bomb, the AP reports. Original post: Kenyan authorities are questioning several passengers after an Air France flight from Mauritius to Paris was forced to make an emergency landing in Kenya early Sunday after a suspicious device was found in a restroom. Authorities have removed the device from the plane and are working to determine whether it contains explosives. Air France Flight 463, a Boeing 777, departed from Mauritius late Saturday night with 473 people aboard, headed for Charles...

An Air France flight from Port Louis, Mauritius to Paris was forced to make an emergency landing in Kenya Sunday morning, after a suspected bomb was found on board. Pilots reportedly made an urgent request to land the plane after a "suspicious package" was discovered in the bathroom. Kenya's Airports Authority initially "confirmed" the package was in fact an explosive device, but Air France CEO Frederic Gagey contradicted that claim, saying that upon further examination the package was made from paper and a timer - but with no explosives whatsoever. ...

Air France flight makes emergency landing in Kenya over bomb scare 1 hour ago An Air France flight from Mauritius to Paris has been forced to make an emergency landing in Kenya after a suspect package was found on board. The pilots of the Boeing 777 requested to land at Moi International Airport in Mombasa after the package was discovered in the toilet. The aircraft was safely evacuated and the item is now being examined by bomb experts, police spokesman Charles Owino said. (snip)

Michel Houellebecq is a sardonic and iconoclastic French novelist, winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt, and subject of considerable controversy in Europe these days. He deserves to be controversial here in the United States as well. He calls his most recent novel a work of "political fiction." Titled "Soumission" (in English, "Submission," in Arabic, an accurate translation would be "Islam"), it is set in the near future, in France, "a Western civilization now ending before our very eyes." Coincidence No. 1: "Soumission" was published in France the same week jihadis attacked the offices of Charlie Hebdo, slaughtering as many members...

The electronic lock to a synagogue south east of Paris was coated with poison which led to 14 Jews being sickened. The incident took place on Monday evening, Dec.14, in the community of Bonneuil-sur-Marne. Women arrived at the closed shul at around 9:00 p.m. to participate in a meeting. Ralph Botbol, president of the synagogue, said that just after arrival, two women began experiencing itchy hands, and one woman's face "swelled significantly." Several more congregants began experiencing intense burning sensations in their eyes and itchy rashes on their skin, at which time emergency services were called. More than a dozen...

Fourteen people were mildly poisoned by a toxic substance that was applied to the keypad of an electronic lock of a synagogue south of Paris. Members of the Jewish community of Bonneuil-sur-Marne on Monday called rescue services to report a sudden strong burning sensation in their eyes and itchy rashes on their skin, Le Parisien reported. Some 25 firemen rushed to the synagogue, which is under police and military protection whenever it is open. They treated congregants who were poisoned and traced its source to the lock. Described as a nonlethal irritant, the substance found on the pad was sent...

I had just finished writing this post on the now-daily wild and rampant Islamic antisemitic attacks, that are little reported and even less commented on, when this came over the transom: a Paris synagogue was attacked with a chemical poison. Synagogues are under siege in Paris and the whole of Europe by devout Muslims. This most certainly is a dry-run for something more gruesome. “Paris synagogue daubed with poisonous substance,” By JTA, December 17 2015 (thanks to Armaros): 14 members of Jewish committee mildly injured in suspected anti-Semitic attack Fourteen people were mildly poisoned by a toxic substance that was...

Two people are under arrest in Austria in connection with the deadly Paris attacks. Details are sketchy but here’s what The Wall Street Journal has (emphasis mine). According to the prosecutors’ office, two people were arrested over the past few days at a Salzburg shelter for refugees. A spokesman declined to give the nationalities of those arrested.A person with knowledge of the matter said one of those arrested was from Pakistan and the other from Algeria. Both men are about 30 years old and were traveling with fake Syrian passports, the person said.The men arrested had entered Europe via...

MIAMI (CBS12) -- A flight from Paris is being held on the tarmac at Miami International Airport due to a suspicious item. Miami-Dade Police are investigating the item on board American Airlines flight 63 from Paris. There are 214 people on board. The search by the bomb squad is not impacting other operations at the airport. The plane has been moved to a remote area of the airport for the investigation, according to Miami-Dade Aviation Department Communications Director Greg Chin.

The American Airlines flight, a Boeing 777 aircraft, landed at Miami International Airport at 3:32 p.m. ET on Tuesday after departing from Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris at 6:14 a.m. ET. The aircraft, which was carrying 217 passengers and 14 crew members, was led to a secure area of the airport. Two units of the local bomb squad are on scene, but it is unclear if anything suspicious had been found. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as well as other federal agencies, have been notified and the area has been secured. Other details were not immediately available.

If global warming was a concern in the 1800s, Hollywood might have portrayed the COP21 Paris global warming pow wow like this. Of course, Hollywood seldom uses such racial stereotypes anymore - unless they are of White Southerners. Vice-Chief Kerry of the Developed Tribes: "All chiefs must dance to the rain gods, or no rain will fall on our lands. Or too many rains. After rain dance, we smoke peace pipe." Chief Boingo of the Undeveloped Tribes: "Our people will not dance. Unless much wampum is given to our people. For we have suffered greatly. The clouds do not...

If representatives of the nearly 200 nations gathered in Paris for the UN Conference on Climate Change had instead formed a coalition to fight a real threat -- Islamic terrorism -- they might have accomplished something useful. Instead, what they came up with is a document that even Secretary of State John Kerry, in a rare moment of candor, confessed is pointless. Here's Kerry: "...The fact is that even if every American citizen biked to work, carpooled to school, used only solar panels to power their homes, if we each planted a dozen trees, if we somehow eliminated all of...

Facebook, Google and Twitter have agreed to delete hate speech deemed illegal in Germany within 24 hours. The move follows pressure from German authorities concerned about the increasing volume of racist abuse being posted on social networking sites. ...

It has been a while since the 6m people of Nicaragua did much to attract global attention. But the Central American state burst on to the world stage at this week's climate change conference in Paris when it became the first nation to declare it had no intention of publishing a national plan to combat global warming. That would be "a path to failure" said Paul Oquist, Managua's lead negotiator, explaining his country did not want to be a part of a process dooming the world to "the hell" of dangerous global warming. More than 180 of the 195 countries...

The UN Climate Change conference is wrapped up yesterday. After two weeks of world leaders opining mindlessly, protesters heckling speakers, and participants enjoying lavish French cuisine, bureaucrats agreed to squander billions of dollars to solve a non-existent problem...[Break]... The accord is so preposterous that even the "godfather of climate science", former NASA scientist James Hansen is ripping the deal apart before the ink is dry: "It's a fraud really, a fake," he says, rubbing his head. "It's just bullshit for them to say: 'We'll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.'...