Charlie Hebdo comes under fire on social media for publishing a cartoon depicting Italian earthquake victims as pasta dishes.
The cartoon which features in the satirical French magazine’s current issue refers to the town of Amatrice, one of the areas hardest hit by the 6.2-magnitude earthquake last week.
Amatrice is home of spaghetti all’amatriciana, a dish with ingredients including tomato sauce, and guanciale ham.
Photo Charlie Hebdo
The cartoon shows an injured man and a woman standing next to a pile of rubble from which feet can be seen. Each of the standing figures has been named after a pasta dish.
The bandaged man is shown under the words penne tomato sauce, a woman with burns is depicted as penne gratin, and bodies lying beneath layers of rubble as lasagna all beneath the heading “Earthquake Italian style”.
The image which is being circulated on social media has attracted huge criticism globally and in Italy it has made the pages of Italian national newspapers La Stampa and Corriere della Serra.
Photo Facebook
The French embassy in Italy released a statement saying the cartoons were not representative of France’s position.
It is not the first time hashtag #CharlieHebdo has been used on social media to express outrage at one of its cartoons.
Charlie Hebdo is no stranger to criticism. In 2015 it published a controversial cartoon of the young Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi who drowned while fleeing Syria and has also posted controversial sketches of the Prophet Muhammad.
Cartoonist Renald “Luz” Luzier, who designed Charlie Hebdo‘s cover image of Prophet Muhammad after the Paris attacks has said he is leaving the magazin.
Luz is quoted by the French newspaper Liberation as saying that his job had become “too much to bear” following the deaths of his colleagues.
Twelve people were murdered when two Islamist gunmen burst into the Charlie Hebdo offices on January 7.
“Each issue is torture because the others are gone,” Luz told Liberation.
Photo AFP
Luz joined Charlie Hebdo in 1992 and said his resignation was “a very personal choice”. He will leave in September.
“Spending sleepless nights summoning the dead, wondering what Charb, Cabu, Honore, Tignous would have done is exhausting,” he added.
Within days of the attack, Charlie Hebdo‘s surviving staff produced an edition with the headline “All is forgiven” above Luz’s cartoon of Prophet Muhammad holding a sign saying “Je suis Charlie”.
Pictorial depictions of Prophet Muhammad are considered forbidden by most Muslims.
Last month, Luz announced he would stop drawing images of Muhammad, as it no longer interested him.
He announced his plans to leave on May 18, but said many people were urging him to stay.
“They forget that the worry is finding inspiration,” he added.
Charlie Hebdo, which regularly struggled to make ends meet, is now backed up by tens of millions of euros of funding.
Luz said in a previous interview that financial security had posed questions about its future editorial direction.
Dieudonne M’bala M’bala has been found guilty of condoning terrorism after Paris attacks two months ago.
The controversial French comedian had posted on Facebook: “I feel like Charlie Coulibaly” just days after the Paris attacks in January.
The post combined the “Je Suis Charlie” slogan with the name of one of the three gunmen involved in the attacks, which included a mass shooting at the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine.
The comedian was given a two-month suspended sentence by the Paris court.
Dieudonne M’bala M’bala posted the comment on Facebook – in French “Je me sens Charlie Coulibaly” – following a huge march in Paris to condemn the attacks, in which 17 people were killed.
“Je Suis Charlie” banners featured heavily amongst marchers and quickly became a widely used slogan in solidarity with those killed.
Dieudonne M’bala M’bala told the court that he condemned the attacks “without any ambiguity”. He said the post was intended to illustrate how he often feels treated like a terrorist.
He had faced up to seven years in prison and a potential €100,000 ($106,000) fine.
Amedy Coulibaly killed a policewoman near a Jewish school on January 8 before going on to murder four Jewish hostages in HyperCacher supermarket.
Dieudonne M’bala M’bala insists he is not anti-Semitic but has a number of convictions for inciting racial hatred.
Several French cities have banned Dieudonne M’bala M’bala from performing.
Paris authorities have issued a new alert after ten more drones have been spotted flying over the French capital.
According to new reports, police are searching for four men after a chase in the east of Paris.
The latest drones were seen hovering near the Eiffel Tower and several other areas further away from the centre.
Some 60 drones have been sighted since October 2014, over nuclear installations and central Paris, the government says.
The most recent have all been seen over Paris, prompting security fears after the murders of 17 people last month.
Security at key sites in Paris was tightened last month after the killings by Islamist gunmen at Charlie Hebdo magazine, in Montrouge and kosher supermarket HyperCacher.
Photo AFP
Flying drones over Paris is banned without a license and no night flights are allowed over the city at all. The heightened security presence was thought to be one of the reasons why the unmanned aerial vehicles were spotted.
There was a sighting in January over the Elysee Palace, home of President Francois Hollande, and last week near the US embassy.
Police sources told French media that the latest drones appeared at around 22:00 on March 3.
One of the machines was spotted by police on patrol close to Porte de Montreuil, on the edge of the city, French news channel BFM-TV reports.
They chased the drone in their car but lost track of it because of traffic.
The report suggested that the drone had been recovered by four men further south at Porte de Vincennes but they fled in a black car on the nearby Paris ring road.
The authorities have been unable to establish who is behind the drones.
The incidents above nuclear plants in the autumn were blamed on environmental activists, but no-one has admitted involvement in the latest incidents.
On March, an Al-Jazeera journalist, Tristan Redman, was fined €1,000 ($1,120) for flying a drone in the Bois de Boulogne park on the west side of the city last week, but that was not considered related to the case.
A gunman who was behind two deadly attacks in Danish capital Copenhagen has been shot dead, police say.
Copenhagen police say they killed the man in the Norrebro district after he opened fire on them.
It came after one person was killed and three police officers injured at a free speech debate in a cafe on February 14.
In the second attack, a Jewish man was killed and two police officers wounded near Copenhagen’s main synagogue.
Police say video surveillance suggested the same man carried out both attacks. They do not believe any other people were involved.
“We assume that it’s the same culprit behind both incidents, and we also assume that the culprit that was shot by the police task force… is the person behind both of these assassinations,” Chief Police Inspector Torben Molgaard Jensen told a news conference.
He said police would maintain a high presence in the city.
Early on Sunday, police said they had been keeping an address under observation in the district of Norrebro, waiting for the occupant to return.
When he appeared, he noticed the officers, pulled out a gun and opened fire, police said. They returned fire and shot him dead. The incident happened near Norrebro train station.
Norrebro is a predominantly immigrant district of Copenhagen, about 3 miles away from the synagogue where the shooting took place just hours earlier.
Police earlier warned residents that it was not safe to be in the city centre, although they stressed that there was no curfew in force.
A massive manhunt was launched after the first shooting, which took place during a free speech debate attended by Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks.
Officials said the gunman made his getaway by car, and a black Volkswagen Polo was later found abandoned a short distance from the scene, police said.
Police released photographs showing the alleged attacker apparently wearing a purple balaclava and thick puffer jacket.
Hours later, a gunman opened fire outside a synagogue in Krystalgade street, about 3 miles from the scene of the first attack.
A Jewish man was fatally shot in the head and two police officers suffered injuries to their arms and legs. The attacker fled.
A Jewish community group later said that the man killed had been on security duty while a confirmation ceremony was taking place inside the synagogue.
PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt had described the first attack as a “politically motivated” act of terrorism.
Cartoonist Lars Vilks, who has faced death threats over his caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, said he believed he was the intended target of the first attack. He was unhurt.
The French ambassador, Francois Zimeray, was also present during the attack
A description of the debate at the cafe asked whether artists could “dare” to be blasphemous in the wake of attacks by Islamist gunmen in Paris last month against satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
In the French attacks, two gunmen opened fire at Charlie Hebdo‘s office, shooting dead 12 people. The next day a suspected accomplice of the militants shot dead a policewoman and later took hostages at a Jewish shop, killing four of them.
Dieudonne M’bala M’bala is set to go on trial for a Facebook comment appearing to back Paris gunman Amedy Coulibaly.
The comment referred to a series of three attacks in Paris in January in which 17 people were killed.
The controversial French Comedian is charged with condoning terrorism.
If found guilty, Dieudonne M’bala M’bala could face up to 7 years in jail and a €5,000 ($5,900) fine.
He already has several convictions for inciting anti-Semitism.
Following a massive march in Paris to condemn the attacks, Dieudonne M’bala M’bala wrote on his Facebook account: “I feel like Charlie Coulibaly [French: je me sens Charlie Coulibaly].”
The statement combined the “Je Suis Charlie” slogan adopted worldwide after the Paris attacks with the name of one of the three gunmen involved in the attacks.
AmedyCoulibaly killed a policewoman near a Jewish school on January 8 before going on to hold up kosher supermarket HyperCacher the following day, when he murdered four Jewish hostages.
On January 7, two gunmen killed 12 people at magazine Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine that has frequently launched withering attacks on religion, including depictions of the Prophet Muhammad.
Dieudonne M’bala M’bala’s comment drew an angry response from many in France.
French PM Manuel Valls said that freedom of speech should not be confused with anti-Semitism, racism and Holocaust denial.
After Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said he had asked the authorities to investigate Dieudonne M’bala M’bala’s remarks, the comedian posted a response on his Facebook page, arguing that he was being treated as a public enemy when all he wanted to do was make people laugh.
The comedian’s detention drew claims of double standards over free speech from some quarters in France.
Dieudonne M’bala M’bala is also facing an inquiry into whether he condoned terrorism in a video in which he mocked the beheading of US journalist James Foley by Islamic State militants.
He was acquitted last year over comments made in a video in which he called for the release of a man who tortured and murdered Ilan Halimi, a Jewish man, in Paris in 2006.
Dieudonne M’bala M’bala has attracted controversy over his trademark “quenelle” gesture. It has been called an inverted Nazi salute, but the comic argues it was intended to be anti-establishment.
Suspects linked to the Charlie Hebdo massacre, Cherif and Said Kouachi, have taken a hostage at a business facility in a Paris suburb as French police close in on them.
Shots have been fired and several people are said to have been wounded at Dammartin-en-Goele, 22 miles from Paris, but officials denied reports of deaths.
Negotiations are now under way with police, reports say.
The development comes nearly 48 hours after the attack on Charlie Hebdo‘s office, when 12 people were shot dead.
The heavily armed gunmen fled Paris by car after the attack.
A convoy of police vehicles has been seen heading by highway to Dammartin-en-Goele.
At least 15 people have been killed during violent protests which erupted on the streets of Pakistan’s main cities in anger at anti-Islam film Innocence of Muslims made in the US.
Ten people were killed in the port city of Karachi and a further five died in the north-western city of Peshawar, hospital officials said.
Protesters also breached the diplomatic enclave in the capital, Islamabad, near the US embassy.
There has been widespread unrest over the amateur film, Innocence of Muslims.
Dozens of people have been reported wounded and some were in a critical condition.
Protests have already left several people dead around the world, including Pakistan, where the government had appealed in advance for peaceful protests, declaring a holiday and “day of love” for the Prophet Muhammad.
At least 15 people have been killed during violent anti-film protests which erupted on the streets of Pakistani main cities
Although US targets have borne the brunt of protests against the film, anti-Western sentiment has been stoked further by caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published this week in the satirical French magazine, Charlie Hebdo.
France shut embassies and other missions in around 20 countries across the Muslim world on Friday.
Protests were banned in France itself and in Tunisia, where France is the former colonial power, but there were widespread demonstrations elsewhere:
• A peaceful protest took place outside the US embassy in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur
• Some 3,000 people marched in the southern Iraqi city of Basra
• Thousands burned US and French flags in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka
• Crowds rallied in Baalbek in southern Lebanon in a protest organized by the Shia militant group, Hezbollah, burning US and Israeli flags
• There were fears of violence in the Libyan city of Benghazi where the US ambassador and three other American officials were killed in an attack on the US consulate in the city on 11 September
But it was in Pakistan’s major cities that protesters took to the streets in big numbers and tried to march on US diplomatic missions.
The worst of the violence took place in the country’s biggest city, Karachi, and the north-western city of Peshawar, close to Pakistan’s lawless tribal belt.
Police in Karachi fired live bullets in the air to disperse the crowds and one of those killed was a policeman. Health officials said 10 bodies were taken to two hospitals.
Several cinemas and banks were set on fire and there were reports of looting.
In Peshawar, protesters ransacked cinemas and a driver for Pakistan’s ARY TV was killed when police opened fire on the crowd.
In the capital, Islamabad, which saw its first clashes between protesters and security forces on Thursday, a police checkpost was burned as demonstrators breached the “red zone” where the main embassies and government offices are based.
Police used live rounds and tear gas as the crowd swelled to thousands of people.
The focal point of people’s anger was the US embassy and he had seen more people injured in one hour than all of Thursday.
The low-budget film that has prompted the unrest was made in the US and is said to insult the Prophet Muhammad.
Its exact origins are unclear and the alleged producer for the trailer of the film, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, is in hiding.
Anti-US sentiment grew after a trailer for the film dubbed into Arabic was released on YouTube earlier this month.
US citizens have been urged not to travel to Pakistan and the US embassy has paid for adverts on Pakistani TV showing President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemning the film.
New protests are under way in Muslim countries against anti-Islam film Innocence of Muslims made in the US.
In Pakistan, a government-declared “special day of love” for the Prophet Muhammad has seen violent clashes and at least one death in the northern city of Peshawar, and clashes elsewhere.
The US has paid for adverts on Pakistani TV that show President Barack Obama condemning the film.
There has been widespread unrest over the amateur film, Innocence of Muslims.
The protests have already claimed several lives around the world.
New protests are under way in Muslim countries against anti-Islam film Innocence of Muslims made in the US
Although the US has borne the brunt of protests, anti-Western sentiment has been stoked further by caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published in satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo.
In Peshawar, protesters attacked and ransacked two cinema buildings. A driver for a Pakistani TV station was killed when police opened fire to disperse protesters, seven of whom were reported wounded.
Clashes between police and protesters are also being reported from the cities of Rawalpindi, Lahore and Karachi.
In the capital Islamabad, which saw fierce clashes between protesters and security forces on Thursday, the security forces have effectively sealed off large parts of the city. Rubber bullets were fired by police during skirmishes at one of the entrances to the city.
Dozens of protests against the film had already been held across Pakistan over the past week – killing at least two people – but Thursday was the first time violence had erupted in the capital.
All major political parties and religious organizations have announced protests for Friday, along with trade and transport groups.
The Pakistani authorities have urged people to demonstrate peacefully, with mobile phone services cut across the country to reduce security risks.
Meanwhile, the US charge d’affaires Richard Hoagland was summoned to the Pakistani Foreign Office and an official protest was lodged with him. He is reported to have responded that the US government had nothing to do with the film.
The US state department has issued a warning against any non-essential travel to Pakistan.
France has closed its embassies and other official offices in about 20 countries across the Muslim world on Friday after French magazine Charlie Hebdo published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, including two drawings showing him naked.
French Muslim leaders condemned the magazine and said an appeal for calm would be read in mosques across the country on Friday.
Charlie Hebdo sold out on Wednesday but is publishing another 70,000 copies, to coincide with Friday prayers.
In Tunisia – where France is the former colonial power – the government has banned Friday protests.
Calls to protest against the caricatures have turned up in Tunisian social media. Interior Minister Ali Larayedh said it was believed that some groups were planning violent protests after Friday prayers.
There are also fears of violence in the Libyan city of Benghazi after rival groups said they would take to the streets.
One group intends to denounce extremism and urge militias to disband, following an attack on the US consulate in the city on 11 September that killed the US ambassador and three other American officials.
Throughout the week, Benghazi residents have left wreaths and placards condemning the attack outside the US mission.
Meanwhile, Ansar al-Sharia, the jihadist militia blamed by some local people for the attack, called for protests “in defence of the Prophet Muhammad”. Both protests are scheduled for the same time.
In the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, more than 2,000 people protested peacefully in front of the US embassy.
Some protesters were holding signs insisting that insulting religion was not freedom of speech.
In Cairo, where the protests against the film began, Egyptian security forces are patrolling the streets around the US embassy.
Radical Islamists have clashed with security forces there in recent days, although President Mohamed Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood has stayed away from the unrest, only condemning the film and calling for peaceful demonstrations.
The low-budget film that sparked the controversy was made in the US and is said to insult the Prophet Muhammad.
Its exact origins are unclear and the alleged producer for the trailer of the film, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, is in hiding.
Anti-US sentiment grew after a trailer for the film dubbed into Arabic was released on YouTube earlier this month.
A legal complaint has been filed against French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which published obscene cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
The complaint accuses the magazine of inciting hatred.
A little-known Syrian organization lodged the complaint with prosecutors in Paris, who will decide if action should be taken against Charlie Hebdo.
France is braced for protests, with plans to close some embassies in foreign capitals on Friday.
Embassies, consulates, cultural centres and schools in some 20 countries are to shut as a precaution. Public protests in Muslim countries sometimes take place after traditional Friday prayers.
A tenet of Islam bans the portrayal of its founder, the Prophet Muhammad.
A legal complaint has been filed against French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which published obscene cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad
Feelings in the Islamic world have already been running high over amateur video Innocence of Muslims mocking the Prophet Muhammad, which emerged in the US this month. Some 30 people have died in violent protests over the film.
Concern has been expressed by the White House over the decision to publish the cartoons.
The complaint against Charlie Hebdo was filed on Wednesday by an organization called the Syrian Freedom Association, which was registered earlier this year in France but appears to be little-known among Syrian expatriates.
It accuses Charlie Hebdo of “throwing oil on the fire by disseminating a cartoon against the Prophet Muhammad”.
While the complaint refers to “a” cartoon, there are several in the latest issue of the magazine.
Charlie Hebdo is accused of “publicly provoking discrimination, hatred or violence of an ethnic, racial or religious kind”.
Daniel Cohn-Bendit, leader of the main Green group in the European Parliament and a prominent figure in German and French politics for decades, dismissed Charlie Hebdo as “idiots” in an interview for French channel BFMTV on Thursday.
While such cartoons should not be banned, he said, there were “limits to provocation”.
“They are masochists, they must enjoy it,” he added
The French government met Muslim representatives in Paris on Wednesday as part of efforts to defuse anger over the cartoons.
Nerves were rattled after a lunchtime fire-bomb attack on a kosher grocery store in Sarcelles, a Paris suburb that is home to a large Jewish community, but prosecutors said it was too early to draw conclusions.
A French Jewish umbrella organization, the Crif, said in a statement it feared the attack, which left one person slightly hurt, was connected to the film protests.
One of the magazine’s cartoonists, Renald “Luz” Luzier, defended their publication.
They had not, he said, been aimed at provoking a violent reaction. He said the magazine had simply been doing what they usually do to cover news stories, on this occasion the uproar over the American film.
“I don’t think we decided to put oil on fire, we just did our work,” he said.
“Everybody’s looking or drawing flags like [it’s] a provocation but it’s not, it’s only drawings, it’s only a little sketch of papers, we are not in the Crusades.”
Luz said he had been under police protection since Charlie Hebdo’s Paris offices were burned down in a petrol bomb attack in November, following an edition in which the Prophet Muhammad was named as “guest editor”.
Some 20 cartoons feature in Wednesday’s Charlie Hebdo. They include graphic depictions of the Prophet Muhammad naked, with allusions to other current news stories such as the topless picture scandal involving the Duchess of Cambridge.
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