week 3 - Paris, magazine, Charlie Hebdo ,attack

At least 12 people are dead after three hooded gunmen armed with Kalashnikovs attacked the headquarters of a French satirical magazine and opened fire on journalists and police guards.

The three men - described by a police union spokesman as “commandos” – are on the run after walking into the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris’s 11th arrondissement at about midday on Wednesday and fleeing in a getaway car driven by a fourth.

The death toll includes 10 journalists and two police officers. At least five people are seriously injured.

Rocco Contento, a spokesman for the Unité police union, said “it was a real butchery” in the building. He said the Charlie Hebdo offices were guarded and protection was increased in recent weeks because of fresh threats against the magazine, but the attackers had entered the building intending to kill.

Charlie Hebdo’s offices were firebombed in 2011 after a spoof issue featuring a caricature of the prophet Mohammed on its cover.

Contento said the attackers had got into a getaway car driven by a fourth man on fleeing the building, and drove to Porte de Pantin in north-east Paris, where they abandoned the first car and hijacked a second – turning the driver out into the road.

The French president, François Hollande, headed to the scene of the attack and the government said it was raising the security level to the highest level. “This is a terrorist attack, there is no doubt about it,” he told reporters. Newspaper offices, shopping centres, museums and stations have been placed under police protection.

Witnesses working in the building opposite heard shots as the attack began and saw a police officer “between life and death” lying on the road outside.

Streets were closed off around the building in the aftermath of the shooting and a few hundred metres away on the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir a police car’s windscreen was riddled with bullet holes.

In 2008, Charlie Hebdo was criticised for running Danish cartoons caricaturing the Prophet Mohammed. The magazine defended the publication in the name of freedom of expression.

Structure of  The Lead:

who:  three hooded gunmen

what:At least 12 people are dead

when: not given

why: the headquarters of a French satirical magazine

where: not given

how: opened fire on journalists and police guards

Keywords:

1. Kalashnikovs -卡拉什尼科夫衝鋒槍

2. satirical-諷刺

3.commandos-突擊隊

4. arrondissement -郡

5.midday-中午

6.flee-逃跑

7.butchery-屠殺

8.spoof-欺騙

9.caricature-漫畫

10.prophet-先知

11. metres -米

12.riddle-謎語

13.bullet-子彈

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/07/satirical-french-magazine-charlie-hebdo-attacked-by-gunmen

week2-NYPD, Rafael Ramos, Wenjian Liu, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, killed

Two NYPD officers were "assassinated" while sitting in their patrol car in Brooklyn Saturday afternoon by a gunman who had vowed online hours earlier to kill cops.

The gunman traveled to New York to carry out his plot after shooting his ex-girlfriend near Baltimore. His online postings said he was avenging the controversial deaths of two black men at police hands in Ferguson, Missouri, and Staten Island.

The officers, Wenjian Liu, 32, and Rafael Ramos, 40, were shot execution-style at point-blank range in the ambush attack near the intersection of Myrtle and Tompkins avenues in Bedford-Stuyvesant at 2:47 p.m., police said.

The killings happened just as the NYPD received word from police in Baltimore County, Maryland, that the gunman, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28, had shot his former girlfriend and might be on his way to New York to harm police.

"Two of New York's finest were shot and killed with no warning, no provocation," NYPD Commissioner William Bratton said during a news conference last night at Woodhull Medical Center, where both officers were pronounced dead. "They were quite simply assassinated, targeted for their uniform and for the responsibility they embraced to keep the people of the city safe."

The officers were working a critical response detail, aimed at combating a crime surge at the Tompkins Houses, a public housing project, when Brinsley walked up to the passenger side of the car, "took a shooting stance," and opened fire, Bratton said.

"They never had the opportunity to draw their weapons," Bratton said. "They may never even have actually seen their . . . murderer."Ramos was in the driver's seat and Liu in the passenger seat when they were hit, Bratton said.

After the shootings, Brinsley fled into the nearby G train subway station and fatally shot himself on the platform as pursuing officers closed in, police said.

Bratton said investigators believe Brinsley lived in Atlanta and had traveled to suburban Baltimore, where he shot his ex-girlfriend Saturday morning.The murder weapon, a silver-colored semiautomatic Taurus pistol, was recovered in the subway station, police said.

Structure of  The Lead:

who: Two NYPD officers

what:Two NYPD officers were "assassinated" 

when: Saturday afternoon

why: not given

where: Brooklyn 

how: by a gunman who had vowed online hours earlier to kill cops

Keywords:

1.assassinated-暗殺

2.cops-警察

3.avenge-復仇

4.ambush-伏擊

5.provocation-挑釁

6.stance-姿態

http://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/wenjian-liu-and-rafael-ramos-killed-by-ismaaiyl-brinsley-nypd-officials-say-1.9734523