The British police have identified the attacker who struck in the heart of London on Wednesday as 52-year-old Khalid Masood. “Masood was not the subject of any current investigations and there was no prior intelligence about his intent to mount a terrorist attack,” London’s Metropolitan Police said in a statement on Thursday. The police added that Masood was known by “a number of aliases” and had been living in the West Midlands. He was born in Kent in southeast England.

“Five people remain in a critical condition and two have life-threatening injuries,” London police said in a statement. Hours earlier, the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group claimed responsibility for the British Parliament attack that left at least four people dead, including the attacker. A statement published by the Amaq News Agency, which is seen as the group’s official press service, said the assailant was a “soldier” of Daesh.

The statement said the man launched the attack because of Britain’s participation in the US-led bombing on territories in Syria and Iraq. The person “carried out the operation in response to calls for targeting citizens of the coalition,” Daesh said. The wording of the statement did not however clearly show that if the attack was directly orchestrated or facilitated by the terror group, but indicated that the assailant was inspired by Daesh ideology.

It comes after Prime Minister Theresa May said the attacker was British-born and known to the country’s domestic intelligence agency, MI5, and had been investigated before. “What I can confirm is that the man was British-born and that some years ago he was once investigated by MI5 in relation to concerns about violent extremism,” she told MPs on Thursday, a day after an attack outside the UK Parliament in London which also injured some 40 people.

“He was a peripheral figure,” she added. “The case is historic, he was not part of the current intelligence picture.” She added that “when operational considerations allow, he will be publicly identified.” In a defiant speech to the Parliament, May said, “We are not afraid and our resolve will never waver in the face of terrorism.” Lawmakers earlier held a minute’s silence in honor of the victims. The assailant plowed a car on Wednesday into pedestrians and stabbed a police officer, an incident that has been declared a terrorist incident.

Police have arrested eight people during the investigation into the incident. MI5 Director General Andrew Parker earlier said his agency had fully mobilized its operational response in support of the police. “We stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our police colleagues, grieving at their loss while also applauding the professional excellence of their response,” he said in a statement. Meanwhile, the British Queen expressed her “deepest sympathy” with the people affected by the terror attack, calling it an act of “awful violence.” “My thoughts, prayers and deepest sympathy are with all those who have been affected by yesterday’s awful violence,” she said in a statement issued on Thursday.

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A car mounted the pavement and ploughed into pedestrians crossing the busy Westminster Bridge beside London’s Big Ben. Parliament has been placed on lockdown with MPs locked inside and armed police carrying shields protecting the building.

Reports suggest that 12 people have been injured and Scotland Yard said the attack is being treated as a “terrorist incident”. A “police officer has been stabbed” and the “alleged assailant was shot by armed police”, Commons Leader David Lidington has told MPs. Metropolitan police said they were called to a firearms incident on Westminster Bridge.

The Sun

Blood tests have revealed that a man, who was shot dead after taking a soldier hostage at Paris’ Orly Airport, was under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Investigators are still trying to understand what motivated Saturday’s assault by 39-year-old Ziyed Ben Belgacem, which led to a major security scare and the temporary closure of the capital’s second-busiest airport.

“Toxicology tests carried out on Sunday showed an alcohol level of 0.93 grams per liter in his blood, and the presence of cannabis and cocaine,” said a judicial source on Sunday. A subsequent police search of Belgacem’s flat found cocaine, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said. Ben Belgacem, who was born in France to Tunisian parents, reportedly grabbed a soldier on patrol at Orly’s southern terminal on Saturday morning.

The attacker, who had also fired at police in a northern Paris suburb earlier that morning, was shot dead by two other soldiers after a scuffle. Speaking on Sunday, Ben Belgacem’s father insisted that his son was “not a terrorist” and that his actions were caused by drink and drugs.

“He called me at seven, eight in the morning and said, ‘There you go, Papa.’ He was extremely angry, even his mother couldn’t understand him,” he told Europe 1 radio. “He told me: ‘I ask for your forgiveness. I’ve screwed up with a gendarme.'”

The attack at Orly comes with France still on high alert following a wave of attacks that have claimed more than 230 lives in two years. The violence has made security a key issue in France’s two-round presidential election on April 23 and May 7.

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Flights have resumed at Paris’ Orly Airport one day after a man was shot and killed while attempting to stage a shooting attack. Officials announced on Sunday that schedules at Orly, which is Paris’ second-biggest airport and serves domestic and international flights, were returning to “normal.”

On Saturday, a 39-year-old French national identified as Ziyed Ben Belgacem, carrying a petrol can in his backpack, grabbed a soldier’s gun and fired shots before he was gunned down by security forces. One soldier was reportedly slightly wounded in the incident, but no one else was harmed. Severe chaos was also caused in flight schedules for several hours following the shooting.

French anti-terror investigators, who took into custody Belgacem’s father, brother, and cousin following the incident, released the father but held the other two as they sought to build a profile of the assailant. An autopsy is to be carried to determine if the attacker was under influence as a small amount of cocaine was found during a search of his apartment in a northern Paris suburb.

Police said Belgacem had had a record of criminal activities and had been known to authorities. Since September last year, he had been under judicial monitoring. He had also shown signs of radicalization, although there was no indication immediately that he had traveled abroad.

The Saturday shooting comes as France remains in a state of emergency over terrorist attacks. The emergency state was initially imposed in November 2015, when terrorist attacks in and around Paris killed 130 people and injured 350 others. The emergency rule has been extended several times because the French government believes the risk of terror attacks remains high.

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European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini has warned that the current polarization and division in the US may result in destabilizing the rest of the world.

“I have never seen the US so polarized, divided and burdened by conflicts as now. However, the one who would like to play a global leadership role needs to be internally strong, self-confident and cohesive,” said Mogherini during an interview with German-language newspaper Die Welt published on Wednesday.

She stressed that the current tensions in the new US administration may become a “destabilizing factor” for the rest of the world.

Mogherini made the remarks shortly after a trip to Washington, where she met with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, then-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, US President Donald Trump’s aide and son-in-law Jared Kushner and several other officials.

‘Widening US-EU rift’

She added that while several key elements of the new US administration’s foreign policy remain obscure, future EU policies should be aimed at finding out “where our positions coincide.” “In the future there may be more topics, on which the European Union and the United States will have different positions,” she added.

The 2016 presidential election in the US exposed more than ever the deep division within the society in which minor groups, including Muslims, African Americans and Hispanics, are marginalized.

Despite tapping into the division, Trump managed to gain electoral victory and became president but lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly three million ballots.

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French police are stealing blankets and sleeping bags from refugees who are forced to sleep in freezing conditions in Paris, says a report. According to an exclusive report published by The Independent on Saturday, police in the French capital are also using teargas on men, women and children refugees and “violently” forcing them out of the city.

Several Eritrean families said that police told them to “get out of France” while officers took their blankets in terrible weather conditions, with temperatures reaching below -7 degrees Celsius.

“While we were there we witnessed the police taking people’s belongings – some in the night, some in the daytime – it’s quite a visible phenomenon,” said the deputy director of the Refugee Rights Data Project, Natalie Stanton. “The same night the government announced a plan to keep everyone warm, we witnessed police picking up blankets and putting them in a big rubbish bin on the back of a truck, then driving away,” she added.

According to the report, around two thirds of the refugees interviewed said they were woken in the middle of the night by police and forced to relocate. Around half of those interviewed reported the incident as being violent.

One middle-aged man said that the police had kicked him so hard that he was forced to stay in hospital for 20 days. Some others said that the police used teargas against them when they did not immediately comply. “If we question them or say we have nowhere to go, they bring out the teargas,” said an Afghan refugee.

“Some people had such horrendous experiences during their journeys that it’s just another problem,” said Stanton, noting that most of the refugees were “shocked” by the treatment they received in France. “They were thinking they would have somewhere safe to sleep,” she added.

Over 340 refugees and people displaced by war in their countries — staying on the streets of Paris’s La Chapelle district — were interviewed for the report. Most hailed from Afghanistan, the rest were from mainly African nations.

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British MPs pass a bill that allows Prime Minister Theresa May to start negotiations on Brexit. Lawmakers in the House of Commons voted 494 by 122 Wednesday for a law that enables May to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty to start formal negotiations on leaving the European Union.The article would initiate two years of talks between London and the 28-nation bloc.

May attempted to get the article 50 bill through the House of Commons without any change, hoping for initiation of negotiations before the end of March, while MPs made efforts to have more say in the process but to no avail. “This, elementally, is a straightforward bill which serves only to give the prime minister the power to trigger Article 50 and thereby respect the result of the referendum,” said Brexit Secretary David Jones.

Meanwhile on Wednesday, the shadow business secretary, Clive Lewis, resigned from his post, arguing that he will not “vote for something I believe will ultimately harm the city I have the honor to represent, love and call home.”

“I will continue to support our party and our leader from the back benches to the very best of my ability,” he said. Last year, nearly 52 percent of Britons voted to end their country’s decades-long membership in the 28-nation bloc. Ahead of the June referendum, two third of the MPs had campaigned for staying in the EU. The bill should now move to the House of Lords, where the prime minister’s Conservative party does not enjoy a majority.

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A court in Italy has ordered a new trial for three-time ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi on corruption charges, creating a new obstacle to his bid to return to office. Milan Judge Carlo Ottone De Marchi scheduled the new trial for Berlusconi on April 5, local media reported on Saturday.

The 80-year-old former Italian statesman allegedly paid as much as 10 million euros and gave expensive gifts to young women to “buy” their silence in various other court cases involving him. The new trial is now aimed at determining whether the payments amounted to hush money and interfered in the other judicial proceedings.

Berlusconi has denied any wronging. One of his lawyers, Federico Cecconi, has said the new prosecution is “the first trial for the crime of generosity.” Berlusconi is the leader of Italy’s center-right Forza Italia Party, currently the opposition party in the parliament.

Last year, Berlusconi was tried for a sexual relationship with an underage teenager when he was premier and then using his influence to cover it up. While he was acquitted in that case, several other complaints of sexual misconduct have been filed against him, in addition to the accusations of financial corruption.

A 2013 tax fraud conviction forced him out of his Senate seat and barred him from holding public office for the next few years. Berlusconi has challenged the ban, taking his case to the European Court of Human Rights. Berlusconi eyes participating in Italy’s national elections, due in 2018, but his hopes for running for office may be dashed with the newly-scheduled trial.

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