TRUMP ALLOWS RELEASE OF KENNEDY ASSASSINATION FILES
US President Donald Trump said Saturday he will allow long blocked secret files on the assassination of John F Kennedy to be opened to the public for the first time. The November 22, 1963 assassination—an epochal event in modern US history—has spawned multiple theories challenging the official version that Kennedy was killed a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald. So the release of all the secret documents has been eagerly anticipated by historians and conspiracy theorists alike. Trump’s announcement followed reports that not all the files would be released, possibly to protect still relevant intelligence sources and methods. But Trump appears to have decided otherwise. “Subject to the receipt of further information, I will be allowing, as President, the long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened,” he said in a tweet. The files are due to be opened in their entirety Thursday, nearly 54 years after Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas —unless the US president decides otherwise. Millions of classified Kennedy files have been made public under a 1992 law passed in response to a surge in public demand for disclosure in the wake of Oliver Stone’s conspiracy-heavy movie on the assassination. But the law placed a 25-year hold on a small percentage of the files that expires October 26.
FRANCE CHARGES 8 OVER PLOT TARGETING POLITICIANS
France has charged eight men, including three minors, following an investigation into far-right activists allegedly plotting to target politicians and mosques, prosecutors announced Saturday in Paris. The men—aged between 17 and 29—are accused of being party to a “criminal terrorist conspiracy”, and of links to Logan Alexandre Nisin, a militant who was arrested near Marseille in June. Nisin is the founder of a group dubbed OAS. He was detained after posting that he planned to attack blacks, jihadists, migrants and “scum.” The 21-year-old had earlier come to the attention of French authorities as the administrator of a Facebook page glorifying neo-Nazi Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in a bomb and gun rampage in 2011 in Norway. The prosecutor’s office in Paris said that the group formed by Nisin “had plans to commit violent actions with vague outlines.” Anti-terror police had arrested 10 people on Tuesday over the alleged plot, but two of them, including Nisin’s mother, were released, the Paris prosecutor’s office said. Among the potential targets for attacks were places of worship, including mosques, politicians, “people of North African descent or black people” and “anti-fascist” activists, a probe source said.
IS CALIPHATE’S END ‘ IN SIGHT’ — TRUMP
WASHINGTON, D.C.: US President Donald Trump said Saturday a transition can soon begin to set conditions for lasting peace in Syria now that the end of the Islamic State “caliphate is in sight” with the fall of Raqa. The United States and its allies will support diplomatic negotiations “that end the violence, allow refugees to return safely home, and yield a political transition that honors the will of the Syrian people,” Trump said in a statement. The declaration came four days after US-backed Kurdish-led forces recaptured Raqa, the capital of IS’s self-proclaimed caliphate and its last major stronghold in Syria. Trump said the entire city has been liberated from IS control, which he said marked a “critical breakthrough” in the global struggle against the militant group. “With the liberation of ISIS’s capital and the vast majority of its territory, the end of the ISIS caliphate is in sight,” Trump said, using an alternate acronym for the Islamic State group.