French police have arrested a man in the Paris region as part of the investigation into the 13 November attacks in the city, sources say, the BBC reports.
Some 2,700 raids have been conducted since the attacks, with 360 people placed under house arrest across France, the AFP news agency reports.
Police have also arrested two people in northern France suspected of supplying weapons to one of the gunmen in the January attacks, reports say.
They were taken in for questioning.
Photo:Â EPA/JULIEN WARNAND
Turkey should not become a part of the EU, the President of the Czech Republic, Milos Zeman said on Wednesday as he addressed voters in the north of the country, TASS reports.
He indicated that although Turkey is a NATO member-state, sometimes it behaves as if it were an ally of the Islamic State terrorist grouping.
Zeman criticized the EU’s plans to remit €3 billion to Turkey for the upkeep of 2 million refugees stranded on its territory, since Ankara is supposed to block the road to Europe for them.
He believes Turkey is capable of hosting the refugees on its territory, in no small a measure because it shares religion with them.
Zeman called for caution in the process of building up relations with Turkey. He added that the Turkish ambassador to the Czech Republic was likely to file a note of protest with the Prague Castle.
An artist has created a life-size chocolate sculpture of Russian President Vladimir Putin set to become the most interesting exhibit at the Festival of Chocolate fair in St. Petersburg on Saturday, CBS reports.
Sculptors gathered information from open sources about the weight and height of President Putin.
With the sculpture near completion on Thursday, the St. Petersburg-based sculptors had already used more than 70 kilograms of chocolate.
The creators expect their creation to be a become a Guinness record. It was originally commissioned by the festival to make a bust of the President, sculptors went one step further and made him life-size.
A representation of his dog, Connie, and a briefcase was also added.
After the festival, the sculpture will be not eaten or sold and will return to the St. Petersburg workshop where it was crafted.
The so-called “storming leader of special forces in Bab Amre battalion”, Ali al-Daloub al-Fa’ouri, and the senior commander of al-Sham Legion, al-Zaher Baibars al- Salmouni, have been identified among the dead, the terrorist groups said.
The terrorist groups also said Amer al-Omar from the so-called Jaish al-Sunna and Jumaa al-Omar of the so-called Islamic Union of Ajnad al-Sham have been killed in the Monday clashes.
The terrorists confirmed that they had to retreat from their positions following heavy airstrikes and massive ground operations by the Syrian army and popular forces.
Reports from Northern Aleppo province said on Monday that militant groups have sustained heavy casualties in the joint offensive of the Syrian Army and popular forces on their concentration centers.
The militants’ gathering centers and defense lines in Bashkoy and Hraytan came under attack by the pro-government forces, whose operations in the Northern part of the country pinned down the terrorist groups in their vulnerable positions.
Battlefield reports said the pro-government troops have seized a large number of weapons and military equipment in the attack.
The Syrian army and its allies have gained the upper-hand in different parts of Aleppo city and province in the last two months. Reports said earlier today that the Syrian army repelled the militant groups’ offensive on their military checkpoint Southeast of Aleppo province, and killed or wounded at least 50 of them in their counter-assault.
The Syrian Army’s military checkpoint near al-Aziziyah came under attack of the militant groups, who failed to infiltrate into the government defense lines and fled the battlefront after leaving scores of dead or wounded members as a result of the Syrian forces’ counter-assault.
The downing of the Russian jet by Turkey was an attack on anti-terrorism efforts, Armenian Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan said at a press conference with visiting Serbian Defense Minister Bratislav Gasic.
“At a time when international attention is focused on the fight against international terrorism, such actions are a blow to these efforts,” Ohanyan said.
The Armenian Defense Minister called on the international community to prevent the escalation of the incident.
Lusine Avanesyan
Public Radio of Armenia
Stepanakert
The OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs participated in an OSCE monitoring and crossed the line of contact from Nagorno Karabakh to Azerbaijan today. Before that they had a meeting with NKR President Bako Sahakyan to discuss issues related to the settlement of the Karabakh conflict.
Russian Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group Igor Popov told reporters after the meeting they discussed the opportunities of organizing a meeting between the Armenian and Azerbaijani Presidents. But the main issue on the agenda was the situation at the line of contact and the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
“The escalation of tensions and the use of heavy weapons are unacceptable. We’ll meet with army representatives to hold serious discussions on the issue,” Popov said.
“We are worried about the ceasefire violations, especially when heavy weapons are used,” US Co-Chairs James Warlick said during the OSCE monitoring.
“We intend to raise the issue during our meetings on the opposite side and hope to achieve progress,” Warlick said.
The OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs successfully crossed the line of contact accompanied by Andrzey Kasprzyk, the Special Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office. However, the Azerbaijani side opened fire from machine guns at the end of the monitoring.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said during a meeting with his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad, which took place in Moscow on Tuesday, that Damascus achieved positive results in the fight against the Islamic State terrorist group, TASS reports.
Assad arrived in Moscow on the first trip abroad since the civil war began in Syria in 2011.
“The Syrian people have been resisting practically single-handedly, fighting with international terrorism for several years now. They are sustaining heavy losses, but recently they have achieved significant positive results in this struggle,” the Kremlin’s website quotes Putin as saying.
The Russian president also said Moscow is concerned about the participation of nationals coming from the former Soviet states in the fighting against Syria’s government forces.
“This concerns us, I mean Russia, as unfortunately on the Syrian territory there are descendants of the former Soviet republics with arms in hands against the government forces, there are around 4,000 of them, at least,” the Russian leader said.
Putin noted that “the attempts of the international terrorism to put under control significant territories in the Middle East and to destabilize the situation in the region arouse legal concerns in many countries of the world.”
The Russian leader stressed that Russia’s authorities cannot allow that these people return to the country after receiving combat experience and ideological training.
Russia is ready to make its contribution not only to the fight against terror in Syria, but also in the political settlement in contact with other powers and with the participation of all political forces, ethnic and religious groups, Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with Bashar Assad.
“With regard to the settlement in Syria, we proceed from the assumption that based on the positive dynamics in the combat operations, the long-term settlement can be finally achieved through a political process with the participation of all political forces, ethnic and religious groups,” the Russian leader said as quoted on the Kremlin website. Putin also said that ultimately, “the Syrian people certainly must have the final say.”
The Russian president said that Syria is a friendly country to Russia. “We are ready to make a fair share of contribution not only in the fight against terrorism, but also in the political process — of course, in close contact with the other world powers and with the countries of the region that are interested in the conflict’s peaceful settlement,” Putin said.
Former Los Angeles Lakers forward Lamar Odom is fighting for life after being found unconscious at a brothel in Nevada.
Following news of former LA Laker’s alleged overdose, his ex-wife Khloe Kardashian rushed to be by his side at Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas. She was quickly followed by sister Kim Kardashian West and mother Kris Jenner, who was pictured looking distraught outside the hospital in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
Doctors are currently treating Odom’s case as a non-suicidal drug-overdose, according to a source at the hospital who spoke with E! News. The source says that doctors found ‘virtually every drug imaginable’ in the 35-year-old’s system. Other sources told TMZÂ that he suffered multiple strokes is on kidney dialysis and has just a 50/50 chance of survival.
The exact kind of stroke Odom is believed to have suffered involves a blood clot blocking blood flow to the brain, and is often a result of a cocaine overdose, the reports.
Odom is reportedly on life support in a coma, with his heart, lungs and kidneys failing.
Armenia has sent out invitations to the heads of a number of international parliamentary structures to observe the referendum on Constitutional amendments scheduled for December 6 with a view of holding the referendum in an open and transparent manner in compliance with democratic standards.
Armenian  Parliament Speaker Galust Sahakyan in the name of the RA National Assembly has sent invitations to the Chairperson of the IPA CIS Council Valentina Matvienko, the President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz, the OSCE PA President Ilkka Kanerva and the PACE President Anne Brasseur.
The CIS Interparliamentary Assembly, the European Parliament, the OSCE PA and PACE have been invited to observe the referendum.
Jurgen Klopp has been appointed Liverpool’s new manager on a three-year deal, the BBC reports.
The 48-year-old German replaces Brendan Rodgers, who was sackedon Sunday after three and a half years in charge with the club 10th in the Premier League.
Klopp has been out of work since May, when he ended a seven-year spell at Borussia Dortmund to take a sabbatical.
He is expected to have Zeljko Buvac and Peter Krawietz – his former assistants at the Bundesliga club – at Anfield.