Deaths at 4 in police knifings; killer slain
PARIS — A civilian employee carried out an attack at Paris police headquarters with a knife Thursday, stabbing four police colleagues to death before he was shot and killed, French authorities said.
The man, a technology administrator in the police intelligence unit, started the attack in his office then moved to other parts of the large 19th-century building across the street from the Notre Dame Cathedral.
Three of the people he killed were police officers; the fourth was an administrator, the Paris prosecutor said.
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An officer stopped the attack when he shot the assailant in the compound’s courtyard, said a police official. The official was not authorized to talk publicly about the case and requested anonymity.
The employee who carried out the attack had worked for the city’s police force since 2003 without ever arousing concerns, French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said.
“This man was known inside the computer department, he worked alongside his colleagues and never presented any behavioral difficulties,” he added.
Paris prosecutor Remy Heitz said authorities opened a murder investigation, for the moment ruling out a terrorism inquiry. He said the 45-year-old assailant’s home was being searched.
Space station trio safely back on earth
ZHEZKAZGAN, Kazakhstan — An American, a Russian and the first person from the United Arab Emirates to fly into space landed safely Thursday after a six-hour flight from the International Space Station.
The capsule carrying Nick Hague, Alexey Ovchinin and Hazzaa al-Mansoori touched down on the steppe in Kazakhstan in Central Asia at 3:59 p.m. Kazakhstan time, the impact sending a cloud of dust into the sky.
Al-Mansoori, the first of two men chosen by the United Arab Emirates to fly to the space station, returned after an eight-day mission while space veteran Ovchinin and Hague, who was on his maiden flight, are back after spending six months at the station.
The three men were extracted from the capsule and put on fold-out chairs so that they could rest and undergo preliminary medical checks.
Al-Mansoori, a former military pilot and the first Arab to have traveled to the International Space Station, will return home to a hero’s welcome.
The UAE has a fledgling space program with big ambitions. It launched its first locally made satellite, KhalifaSat, in October from Japan, and it also wants to launch a probe to Mars in 2020.
Images indicate ship readying oil transfer
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Satellite images released Thursday show that a once-detained Iranian-flagged oil tanker sitting off the coast of Syria has been approached by a smaller Iranian tanker, an indication the ship could be preparing to transfer its cargo.
Images released by Maxar Technologies show the Jasmine alongside the Adrian Darya 1 on Wednesday, with mooring lines between them and a crane deployed on the larger vessel.
The Adrian Darya 1, formerly named the Grace 1, was detained off the British overseas territory of Gibraltar in July while carrying $130 million in crude oil, on suspicion of breaking European Union sanctions by taking the oil to Syria. Gibraltar later released the tanker, after it said Iran promised the ship wouldn’t go to Syria.
The ship later sailed toward the Syrian coast, angering Britain.
The oil shipment website TankerTrackers.com said Tuesday on Twitter that the Adrian Darya 1 was “postured in an STS (Ship-to-Ship) formation with a smaller Iranian-flagged Handymax (350K barrel capacity) tanker,” the Jasmine. It noted this was “not a confirmation of any oil transfer just yet. We’ll compare imagery later.”
However, the website said Wednesday that it was ending its public coverage of the Iranian tanker’s movements after a tweet by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Pompeo tweeted that despite Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad “Zarif’s promise to the UK that the #AdrianDarya1 would not deliver oil to Syria, it is now transferring oil off the Syrian coast. Will the world hold Iran accountable if this oil is delivered to Syria?”
9 people die as typhoon slams S. Korea
SEOUL, South Korea — A powerful typhoon lashed southern South Korea, with authorities saying Thursday that the storm left nine people dead and five others missing and knocked out power to tens of thousands of homes.
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Typhoon Mitag carried strong winds and heavy rainfall to the southern part of the country Wednesday and Thursday.
The Interior Ministry said the nine dead included six people who were buried by landslides. It said another seven people were injured in typhoon-related incidents and that about 310 people were displaced from their homes.
“My heart is aches because human casualties aren’t small,” President Moon Jae-in wrote on Facebook.
A ministry report said the storm knocked out power to 48,670 homes. Hundreds of homes and other buildings flooded.
Moon said the government was mobilizing all available equipment and administrative resources for the recovery.
