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European Ministers to Talk Security in Paris after Train Attack

European ministers will gather in Paris for security talks at the weekend following last week's "targeted and premeditated" jihadist attack on a high-speed train that was foiled by passengers, it was announced Wednesday.

Prosecutors have charged 25-year-old Moroccan Ayoub El Khazzani over the attack, which saw him watch a jihadist video on his phone before entering a toilet in the train, remove his shirt, and step out armed with an assault rifle, 270 rounds of ammunition and a Luger pistol strapped to his chest.

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France Honors 'Heroes' for Train Attack Courage

President Francois Hollande bestowed France's highest honor on a group of Americans and a Briton on Monday saying the whole world "admires their courage and cool composure" in overpowering a Moroccan gunman on a crowded train.

Anti-terror investigators were questioning the alleged attacker, 25-year-old Ayoub El Khazzani, who boarded the high-speed train in Brussels bound for Paris on Friday armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, a Luger automatic pistol, ammunition and a box-cutter.

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French 'Anarchist Cell' Cleared of Terror Charges over Rail Sabotage

An alleged "anarchist cell" at the center of one of France's most politically-charged legal sagas is finally to be tried for sabotaging high-speed train lines.

But in a major blow to police, who conducted a seven-year investigation into the group, the four will not face terror charges, judicial sources told Agence France Presse on Saturday.

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Turkey Kurdish Leader on Surprise Trip to Brussels

The co-chair of Turkey's main Kurdish party is to make an unscheduled trip to Brussels on Wednesday, his party said, amid reports he will meet representatives of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Selahattin Demirtas of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) postponed his scheduled program in Ankara Wednesday, a party official told AFP, saying: "He is due to travel to Brussels."

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Juncker Urges EU Members to Resist 'Populist' Rejection of Migrants

EU governments have a duty to help the flood of migrants arriving in Europe and not cave in to "populist" demands to turn them back, European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker said Wednesday.

In an interview with Agence France Presse Wednesday, Juncker said he was disappointed that EU ministers had failed late last month to agree on how to distribute a total of 40,000 mostly Syrian and Eritrean migrants from overstretched Italy and Greece.

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Eichhorst Regrets Leaving Lebanon without Seeing Election of President

European Union Ambassador to Lebanon Angelina Eichhorst has expressed regret that she will leave Lebanon at the end of her mission amid a continued vacuum at the presidential palace in Baabda.

In remarks to An Nahar daily published on Friday, the diplomat said: “I regret that I will leave Beirut in this situation, without knowing when a president will be elected.”

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Pro-Greek Demos in Brussels, Amsterdam ahead of Crunch EU Summit

Several thousand demonstrators gathered in Brussels on Sunday and several hundred in Amsterdam to plead for solidarity with cash-strapped Greece on the eve of a make-or-break summit with European leaders.

Addressing the crowd in Amsterdam, veteran Greek MEP Manolis Glezos urged Athens' creditors to give the country "one more year" to resolve its debt crisis.

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Turkey Slams Belgian PM over 'Armenian Genocide' Remarks

Turkey on Saturday lashed out at Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel for recognizing the massacres of Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces during World War I as genocide.

Michel, the youngest prime minister in Belgium's history, said during a parliamentary session on Wednesday that the 1915 mass killings "must be viewed as a genocide."

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Minister: Russia to Prolong Embargo if EU Extends Sanctions

Moscow will extend its embargo on European Union agricultural products but is unlikely to go further if the EU extends sanctions as expected, economy minister Alexei Ulyukayev said Thursday.

"We'll just keep the status quo: the embargo on produce introduced in response to the sanctions regime -- of course, it's a symmetrical measure," Ulyukayev told RIA Novosti state news agency.

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French Court Acquits Strauss-Kahn of Pimping Charges

A French court on Friday acquitted former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn of pimping charges, drawing a line under the latest in a series of legal woes over his sexual escapades.

The 66-year-old economist merely nodded his head in acknowledgment of the verdict, the finale of a colorful trial which dragged intimate details of his sex life into the public eye.

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