With Europe still on edge in the wake of last week’s events in Paris, two gunmen were killed and another injured during a counter-terrorism operation in the Belgian town of Verviers, which officials said had prevented an imminent but unspecified, attack. About ten other raids were carried out at the same time elsewhere in the country, and Belgium’s terror alert was raised to its second-highest level.
Belgian authorities believe that some of those who police had targeted in the raids had recently returned from Syria, but said that there was no immediate link to the Paris incidents.
Separately, as funerals were held for five of the people killed in the Charlie Hebdo attack, French President Francois Hollande said that freedom and democracy were “not negotiable”, while attempting to also reassure France’s five million Muslims that their religion would be respected.
Pope Francis, traveling in the Philippines, also spoke out about the murders and the subsequent debate over free speech. Defending freedom of expression, he said it also had its limits.
You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others. There is a limit.
Or, as The Times puts it in Friday’s headline:
(image: The Times/Nick Sutton)
Meanwhile in the US, following protests, Duke University reversed a decision to begin a weekly Muslim call to prayer from its campus chapel, saying that consideration of a “serious and credible” security threat had been part of their change of heart.
* POLITICS * Republicans are holding a retreat in Hershey, PA; the first time in ten years members of both chambers of Congress have gone away together, to discuss their joint strategy on issues like immigration in the wake of the House bill passed this week.
Newly-elected Iowa Senator Joni Ernst – she of the memorable hog castration campaign ad – will deliver the GOP response to Tuesday’s State of the Union address.
* BUSINESS * Switzerland took currency markets by surprise when it announced it was lifting the cap which prevented the Swiss Franc rising against the Euro. The SFr subsequently rose as much as 30 per cent in chaotic trade. Joe Weisenthal at Bloomberg BusinessWeek explains what happened and why it’s important. Paul Krugman writes about why, with Switzerland, “..you don’t get surprises. Until you do.”
Job cuts were announced by both BP and – on a somewhat greater scale – Schlumberger as the oil industry deals with the continuing fall in crude prices.
* CULTURE * On Martin Luther King’s birthday, Spike Lee blasted the Oscar snubs for Selma; while Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers talks about the absence of Ava DuVernay from Best Director nods thus: “..the Academy had the chance to nominate the first ever black woman for Best Director in its 87-year history. “And what do you say?’ ‘Oh no, it’s one of the best pictures, but nobody directed it — she didn’t do anything at all!
Critic Kenneth Turan writes in the Los Angeles Times that the best Hollywood movies “aren’t being made by Hollywood.”
Isaac Mizrahi and a QVC host had a particularly spirited debate about whether the Moon is a star or a planet. (while the characteristics of the moon make it “practically a planet” it is, technically, a satellite, or, er, moon.)
* MEDIA * The White House said that legislation to resolve the issue of net neutrality wouldn’t be necessary, since the FCC had the authority to make rules on how ISPs manage web traffic.
Finally, Google said it is ending sales of Google Glass in its current form, but insists the move is just the end of the product’s first chapter.
(YouTube/Comedy Central)
The Overnight Note 