Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/814176
ByAngelaCharltonand Sylvie Corbet The Associated Press PARIS A gunman opened fire on police on Paris' iconic Champs-Elysees bou- levard Thursday night, kill- ing one officer and wound- ing three people before po- lice shot and killed him. The Islamic State group quickly claimed responsi- bility for the attack, which hit just three days before a tense presidential election. Security already has been a dominant theme in the campaign, and the vio- lence on the sparkling av- enue threatened to weigh on voters' decisions. Candi- dates canceled or resched- uled final campaign events ahead of Sunday's first round vote. Investigators searched a home early Friday in an eastern suburb of Paris be- lieved linked to the attack. A police document ob- tained by The Associated Press identifies the address searched in the town of Chelles as the family home of Karim Cheurfi, a 39-year- old with a criminal record. Police tape surrounded the quiet, middle-class neighborhood in Chelles, and worried neighbors ex- pressed surprise at the searches. Archive reports by French newspaper Le Pa- risien say that Cheurfi was convicted of attacking a po- lice officer in 2001. Authorities are trying to determine whether "one or more people" might have helped the attacker, Inte- rior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet told reporters at the scene of the shooting. One officer was killed and two police officers were seriously wounded when the attacker emerged from a car and used an automatic weapon to shoot at officers outside a Marks & Spencer's department store at the center of the Champs-Ely- sees, anti-terrorism prose- cutor Francois Molins said. A female foreign tourist also was wounded, Molins said. The Islamic State group's claim of responsibility just a few hours after the attack came unusually swiftly for the extremist group, which has been losing territory in Iraq and Syria. In a statement from its Amaq news agency, the group gave a pseudonym for the shooter, Abu Yusuf al-Beljiki, indicating he was Belgian or had lived in Bel- gium. Belgian authorities said they had no informa- tionaboutthesuspect.ISde- scribed the shootings as an attack"intheheartofParis." The attacker had been flagged as an extremist, ac- cording to two police offi- cials, speaking on condi- tion of anonymity because they weren't authorized to publicly discuss the inves- tigation. Brandet said officers were "deliberately" tar- geted, as has happened re- peatedly to French secu- rity forces in recent years, including in the run-up to the 2012 election. Police and soldiers sealed off the area, ordering tour- ists back into hotels and blocking people from ap- proaching the scene. Emergency vehicles blocked the wide Champs- Elysees, an avenue lined with boutiques and nor- mally packed with cars and tourists that cuts across central Paris between the Arc de Triomphe and the Tuileries Gardens. Subway stations were closed off. The gunfire sent scores of tourists fleeing into side streets. "They were running, run- ning," said 55-year-old Badi Ftaïti, who lives in the area. "Some were crying. There were tens, maybe even hun- dreds of them." French President Fran- cois Hollande said he was convinced the circum- stances of the attack in a country pointed to a ter- rorist act. Hollande held an emergency meeting with the prime minister Thurs- day night and planned to convene the defense coun- cil Friday morning. The incident recalled two recent attacks on sol- diers providing security at prominent locations around Paris: one at the Louvre mu- seum in February and one at Orly airport last month. FRANCE 3Parisofficersshot,1fatally,inChamps-Elyseesattack By Matthew Lee and Josh Lederman The Associated Press WASHINGTON The "Amer- ica First" president who vowed to extricate Amer- ica from onerous overseas commitments appears to be warming up to the view that when it comes to global agreements, a deal's a deal. From NAFTA to the Iran nuclear agreement to the Paris climate accord, Presi- dent Donald Trump's cam- paign rhetoric is collid- ing with the reality of gov- erning. Despite repeated pledges to rip up, renegoti- ate or otherwise alter them, the U.S. has yet to withdraw from any of these economic, environmental or national security deals, as Trump's past criticism turns to tacit embrace of several key ele- ments of U.S. foreign policy. The administration says it is reviewing these ac- cords and could still pull out of them. Yet with one exception — an Asia-Pa- cific trade deal that al- ready had stalled in Con- gress — Trump's adminis- tration quietly has laid the groundwork to honor the international architecture of deals it has inherited. It's a sharp shift from the days when Trump was de- claring the end of a global- minded America that nego- tiates away its interests and subsidizes foreigners' secu- rity and prosperity. A day after his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, cer- tified that Iran was meet- ing its nuclear obligations, Trump on Thursday re- peated his view the seven- nation accord was a "ter- rible agreement" and "as bad as I've ever seen nego- tiated." "Iran has not lived up to the spirit of the agreement and they have to do that," Trump said at a news con- ference with Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni. He said U.S. officials were analyzing the deal carefully and would "have something to say about it in the not too distant future." Earlier Thursday, he de- livered a similar assess- ment of the North Amer- ican Free Trade Agree- ment, railing against the 1990s trade deal while of- fering no indication he was actively pushing for whole- sale changes. As a candi- date, Trump threatened to jettison the pact with Mex- ico and Canada unless he could substantially renego- tiate it in America's favor. "The fact is, NAFTA, whether it's Mexico or Can- ada, is a disaster for our country," Trump said. Trump's administration has been focused on mar- ginal changes that would preserve much of NAFTA, according to draft guide- lines that Trump's trade envoy sent to Congress. To the dismay of NAFTA crit- ics, the proposal preserves a controversial provision that lets companies chal- lenge national trade laws through private tribunals. FOREIGN POLICY On ce cr it ic al o f gl ob al d ea ls , Trump slow to pull out of any | NEWS | REDBLUFFDAILYNEWS.COM FRIDAY, APRIL 21, 2017 4 B