France Pays Price for Front-Line Role

France, which has been hit by deadly terror attacks twice this year, is paying the price for its front-line role in combating Islamic militants.

French special forces have been tracking Islamist militants in the Sahara since 2013. France was the first European country to join the U.S. air strikes on Islamic State in Iraq last year and is the only European country to join the U.S. in air strikes in Syria.

“This attack is linked to our engagement in Syria and Iraq, to our engagement in the Sahel,” Louis Caprioli, the ex-head of DST, France’s former anti-terrorism unit, and now an adviser to Paris-based security consultants Groupe GEOS, said in a telephone interview.

Last night, 127 people in Paris were killed and more than 200 wounded in coordinated assaults on cafes, a soccer match and a concert hall. It’s the largest number of deaths in a terrorist attack on a Western country since the 2004 bombings at train stations in Madrid that killed 191. The attacks follow 17 murders the French suffered at the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine and a kosher supermarket in January.

“It was an act of war that was prepared and organized abroad, and with complicity” from individuals in France, French President Francois Hollande said Saturday. Islamic State said in a posting on Twitter that eight of its suicide bombers carried out the attacks.

Mali, Iraq

France sent troops to Mali in January 2013 to prevent the country falling to an al-Qaeda affiliate based in the Sahel, as the southern rim of the Sahara is called. That intervention has now been transformed into a mission covering Niger and Chad to prevent Islamic militants based in southern Libya from destabilizing the area. French forces work closely with the U.S. which flies drones over the region from a shared based in Niger.

France joined U.S. air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq in September 2014, before any other European country. A year later, France extended its air strikes to Syria and has bombed an Islamic State training camp and oil facilities. France has nine Rafale jets based in Abu Dhabi and has sent six Mirage 2000’s to Jordan. The Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier is scheduled to leave this week for a second tour of duty in the region.

“Contemporary activity by France makes them a tier-one target,” said Thomas M. Sanderson, director of Washington D.C.-based Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “They’re not the primary actor from the air, we are, but they are much more reachable than the U.S. is.”

Hollande said that France will combat Islamic State “in all ways” at home and abroad.

Algerians 1995

In an Odaxa poll published Sept. 7 in Le Parisien, 61 percent of the French said they favor an intervention by ground troops in Syria.

“France will probably deepen its involvement in anti-Islamic State operations in Syria and Iraq at a time when the Syrian battlefield in particular is becoming crowded and complicated,” risk analysts Stratfor said in a note to clients.

The identities of the eight attackers who died in last night’s attack aren’t known. But there are 571 French residents with radical Islamic Groups in Syria now and 141 have died there, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Nov. 12. Another 370 have been arrested upon their return and domestic security forces are following 11,000 people, he said.

This isn’t the first time France’s involvement abroad has led to terrorism at home. In 1995, Algerian Islamists set off eight bombing attacks that killed eight people and wounded 200 in Paris to punish France for supporting the government in that country’s civil war. And European settlers who wanted to keep Algeria part of France carried out attacks in the early 1960’s, including attempts to assassinate President Charles de Gaulle.

“For 20 years we have fought this Salafist doctrine,” Caprioli said.

England-France friendly to go ahead

The soccer friendly between England and France in London will go ahead as planned on Tuesday, despite major concerns over safety following the deadly attacks in Paris.

The match was confirmed by the French and English federations on Saturday after they consulted with the British government.

“We will use the opportunity to pay our respects to all affected, and also to express our solidarity with the people of France,” FA chairman Greg Dyke said.

Paris attacks: Details emerge

A young French lawyer specializing in white collar crime. An engineer from Spain. An American college student studying design on a semester abroad. They were among the first victims to be identified after the gun-and-suicide bombing attacks that killed at least 129 people in Paris. Among the confirmed dead:

—Valentin Ribet, 26, a lawyer with the Paris office of the international law firm Hogan Lovells. He was among scores of people killed at a rock show in the Bataclan concert hall. Ribet received a master of laws degree from the London School of Economics in 2014, and earlier did postgraduate work at the Sorbonne university in Paris. His law firm said he worked on the litigation team, specializing in white collar crime. “He was a talented lawyer, extremely well liked, and a wonderful personality in the office,” the firm said.

—Nohemi Gonzalez, 23, a junior at California State University, Long Beach. The university said Gonzalez, from El Monte, California, was attending Strate College of Design in Paris during a semester abroad program.

—Djamila Houd, 41, of Paris, originally from the town of Dreux, southwest of the capital. The newspaper serving Dreux — L’Echo Republicain — said Houd was killed at a cafe on the rue de Charrone in Paris. According to Facebook posts from grieving friends, she had worked for Isabel Marant, a prestigious Paris-based ready-to-wear house.

—Thomas Ayad, 32, producer manager for Mercury Music Group and a music buff who was killed at the Bataclan. In his hometown, Amiens, he was an avid follower of the local field hockey team.

—Alberto Gonzalez Garrido, 29, of Madrid, who also was at the Bataclan concert. The Spanish state broadcaster TVE said Gonzalez Garrido was an engineer, living in France with his wife, also an engineer. They both were at the concert, but became separated amid the mayhem.

— Mathieu Hoche, 38, a technician at France24 news channel, also killed at the concert. A friend, Antoine Rousseay, tweeted about how passionately Hoche loved rock ‘n’ roll.

—Nick Alexander, 36, of Colchester, England, who was working at the Bataclan selling merchandise for the performing band, Eagles of Death Metal. “Nick was not just our brother, son and uncle, he was everyone’s best friend — generous, funny and fiercely loyal,” his family said in a statement. “Nick died doing the job he loved and we take great comfort in knowing how much he was cherished by his friends around the world.”

—Guillame Decherf, 43, a writer who covered rock music for the French culture magazine Les Inrocks. He was at the Eagles of Death Metal concert, having written just two weeks earlier about the band’s latest album. He had two daughters.

France: Plans To Go Ahead With Climate Change Summit

France plans to go ahead with a global climate change summit in Paris at the end of the month, the prime minister said on Saturday, despite a wave of deadly attacks on Friday night that killed 127 people in the capital.

The conference "will be held because it's an essential meeting for humanity," Prime Minister Manuel Valls told TF1 television on Saturday evening.

He said the summit would also be an opportunity for world leaders to show their solidarity with France after the attacks.

About 118 world leaders are expected to attend the opening day of the Nov. 30-Dec. 11 conference, which is due to nail down a global deal to limit rising greenhouse gas emissions.

In Washington, officials confirmed that both U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry still planned to attend.

Overall, between 20,000 and 40,000 delegates are expected to attend.

"Security at U.N. climate conferences is always tight but understandably it will be even tighter for Paris," said Nick Nuttall, spokesman of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat in Bonn.

The United Nations has the main responsibility for security inside the conference venue at Le Bourget, to the north of the capital.

On Saturday, an angry President Francois Hollande promised a "merciless" response to the wave of attacks by gunmen and bombers that killed 127 people across Paris, describing the assault, claimed by Islamic State, as an act of war.

Organizers of a march to press for climate action planned for Paris on Nov. 29, the eve of the summit, said they would meet on Monday "to discuss ways forward," said Alice Jay, director of the citizens' campaign group Avaaz and one of the organizers.

Organizers have been hoping to imitate a "People's Climate March" in New York last year that attracted hundreds of thousands of people, the largest protest against global warming in history.

Paris attacks: Galvanize a stronger global military response

WASHINGTON - The Paris terror attacks are likely to galvanize a stronger global military response to Islamic State, after a U.S.-led air war that has lasted more than a year has failed to contain a group now proving itself to be a growing worldwide threat.

Paris attacks: Security increased at St. Louis sporting events

The National Hockey League has sent out an advisory to its clubs, including the St. Louis Blues, to be on heightened alert this weekend in the wake of the attacks in Paris Friday. This comes on the heels of a night where St. Louis police had extra officers on street for the U.S. Men’s National Team’s World Cup qualifying match against St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Chief Sam Dotson says he was in touch with the FBI Friday as events were unfolding in France.  The bureau had no evidence of any credible threat to the U.S. men’s soccer match being held, but considering one of the targets in Paris had been near the stadium where France and Germany were playing soccer, no one was interested in taking any chances.  Dotson says extra police were added to a ring of manpower that was already equivalent to a Cardinals playoff game.

Dotoson said, “We're prepared.  We already had extra officers here, but as we saw what was happening in Paris this afternoon, I thought it was prudent. I talked to the mayor and he agreed we needed an extra layer down here just to make people feel safe.  There are not threats toward anything going on in St. Louis and no reason to believe anything will happen here but it`s our job to be prepared and we're prepared."

Downtown Saturday, another big crowd will be in place as the Blues take on the Blackhawks at Scottrade Center.  Once again, the NHL issuing a statement Friday night saying, “We have sent an advisory to our clubs to be on heightened alert given (the) events in Paris.”

Android Circuit: Blackberry's Misguided

Taking a look back at seven days of news across the Android world, this week’s Android Circuit includes Apple Music arriving on Android, the failure of Android One, a review of the Nexus 5X, Google’s smartphone manufacturing plans, the BlackBerry Priv reviewed, TAG Heuer’s Android Wear smartwatch with a twist, Android Wear sales estimates, and eleven killer Android Marshmallow tips.

Android Circuit is here to remind you of a few of the many things that have happened around Android in the last week.

Apple Music Arrives On Android

It was promised before the end of the year at Apple’s Developer Conference in June, and now it has arrived on Android. The beta version of the subscription music service from Cupertino, Apple Music, is now available to download in the Google Play Store. But the goal that many people thought this app had – to lure people from Android to Apple – seems to have backfired with the UI choices.

Anyone looking for streaming music on Android is likely already using a service. Once more you have Spotify and Pandora, alongside Google’s own offering of Google Play Music. Apple has to bring users from those services over to Apple Music to make this an effective approach. Open up Apple Music and do you find the Apple experience, do you find everything that makes iOS a popular OS?

No, you find an app that follows the Android style guide from Google, that acts like every other app, and hides its Apple-ness very effectively. Google has the confidence to ignore the iOS conventions when it writes apps for iOS, why has Apple not followed suit?

Apple Music in general seems to be missing a solid purpose beyond ‘do the same as Spotify and Pandora’. It really should be aspiring to something bigger. 

Android One Has Failed

Google’s Android One project was set up with three fixed reference deigns for manufacturers to use, and Google taking charge of software and OS updates over the air. Now that both of those features have been handed back to manufacturers, is there any point in going with Android One, as opposed to a regular Android smartphone? Android One offered a handful of locked-down reference designs with common components, software support that was managed by Google, and a chance to increase the margins on low-cost smartphones in many new markets around the world. The power in the first two elements has been lost, and that removes the financial incentive of the third element.

What was once a promising Android initiative to bring  level of quality and support to low-cost Android devices now looks like little more than window dressing over the regular Android offering.