France church attack: Priest killed in hostage-taking near Rouen

The area has been cordoned off and police have told people to stay away
A priest has been killed in an attack by two armed men at his church in a suburb of Rouen in northern France.

The attackers entered the church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray during Mass, taking the priest, Fr Jacques Hamel, 84, and four other people hostage.
Police later surrounded the church and French TV said shots were fired. Both hostage-takers are now dead.

President Francois Hollande said the men claimed to be from so-called Islamic State (IS).
Speaking in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, he said the attackers had committed a "cowardly assassination" and France would fight IS "by all means".

The IS-linked Amaq news agency said "two soldiers of the Islamic State" had carried out the attack.

Pope Francis decried the "pain and horror of this absurd violence".
French interior ministry spokesman, Pierre-Henri Brandet, said one of the hostages had been critically wounded. He said the hostage-takers had been "neutralised" after coming out of the church. Police were now searching the church for explosives.

Police sources said it appeared the attackers had slit the priest's throat with a knife.
The area has been cordoned off and police have told people to stay away.

Mr Brandet said the investigation into the incident would be led by anti-terrorism prosecutors. One of the men was known to the French intelligence services, French TV channel M6 has reported.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36892785

Ansbach explosion: Syrian asylum seeker blows himself up in Germany

A failed Syrian asylum seeker has blown himself up and injured 12 other people with a backpack bomb near a festival in the south German town of Ansbach.

The state of Bavaria's interior minister said the 27-year-old man had detonated the device after being refused entry to the music festival.

About 2,500 people were evacuated from the venue after the explosion. Bavaria has been on edge since a knife rampage on a train claimed by so-called Islamic State last Monday.

The Ansbach blast is reported to have happened at about 22:10 (20:10 GMT) outside the Eugens Weinstube bar in the centre of the town, which has a population of 40,000 and is home to a US military base.

The bomb went off close to the entrance to the Ansbach Open music festival.
A witness, Thomas Debinski, reported "panic" after the explosion, although some people had thought it was caused by a gas explosion. "Then people came past and said it was a rucksack that had exploded," he told Sky News.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36880758

Teenager attacks passengers with axe and knife on train in Germany

A teenager armed with an axe and a knife has attacked around 20 passengers on a train in northern Bavaria, according to local police.

Three people were seriously hurt and one person sustained light injuries before the attacker was shot dead by police, a police spokesman said on Monday evening.

Bavaria’s interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, said the attacker was a 17-year-old Afghan asylum seeker who had arrived in Germany as an unaccompanied minor and had been living with a foster family in Ochsenfurt, south of Würzburg, for “a few months”.

A police taskforce that happened to be in the vicinity then pursued the attacker, shooting dead the 17-year-old, who was carrying an axe and a knife when he had attacked members of the unit.

Asked whether the attack had an Islamist background, Herrmann said one witness inside the train said the teenager had shouted “Allahu Akbar” during the assault. The report was being investigated.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/18/about-20-people-injured-in-axe-attack-on-train-in-germany

‘Giant Meteor for President’ in Virtual Three-way Tie With Trump and Hillary Among Independent Voters

In what has become a presidential race based almost solely on scorn for the candidates, the establishment, fraud at the polls — and, hell, the entirely stale and wholly rigged electoral process — it’s clear no one will win in the traditional meaning of the word.
While third party candidates have experienced growing success in the dearth of acceptable duopoly offerings, a dark horse has emerged.

According to Public Policy Polling, ‘Giant Meteor for President’ now ranks as a serious contender — garnering “far more support than the third party candidates actually on the ballot.”

Meteor’s, well, meteoric rise in popularity isn’t difficult to understand, given the circumstances. After all, another poll today revealed a whopping 67 percent of Democratic voters would rather see President Obama stay in office for another term than endure a Hillary Clinton administration.

In addition to aversion to Clinton, Trump’s success could be attributed to the xenophobic vitriol and ‘fearanoid’ negativity common during similar periods of economic stratification that gave rise to such stunners as Adolf Hitler.

Maybe now — in a year pockmarked by political turmoil, typically ruinous scandal, and blatantly fraudulent electoral dealings — the people will slam down their collective foot to say they’ve finally had enough of the ‘lesser of two evils’ bullshit so ingrained in the American electoral mindset.

http://theantimedia.org/giant-meteor-for-president/