A female police employee has been fatally stabbed in a knife attack at a police station in Rambouillet, south-west of Paris. Anti-terror prosecutors have taken over the inquiry, and the killing is being treated as a possible terrorist attack. The 49-year-old unarmed administrative officer was stabbed in the neck.

The 36-year-old attacker, who reportedly came to France from Tunisia several years ago, was shot and later died in hospital. The stabbing took place in the secure entrance to the police station on Friday afternoon as the worker was returning from her break at 14:20 (12:20 GMT). Witnesses said the man had been seen walking around while on his mobile phone outside the police station and he seized his chance to go in as the woman went through the security doors. He reportedly lunged at the officer, and her colleagues then opened fire on him. Prosecutors said the way the attack had unfolded, as well as remarks made by the attacker and the fact that the victim was a police official had persuaded them to launch an anti-terror investigation.(BBC)…[+]

India’s healthcare system is buckling as a record surge in Covid-19 cases puts pressure on hospital beds and drains oxygen supplies. Families are left pleading for their relatives who are desperately ill, with some patients left untreated for hours. Crematoriums are organising mass funeral pyres. On Friday India reported 332,730 new cases of coronavirus, setting a world record for a second day running. Deaths were numbered at 2,263 in 24 hours. Dr Atul Gogia, a consultant at the Sir Ganga Ram hospital in Delhi, told the BBC there had been a “huge surge” in patients, leaving no space in the emergency room. “We do not have that many oxygen points. Whatever oxygen points are there, they’re full. Patients are coming in with their own oxygen cylinders or without oxygen. We want to help them but there are not enough beds and not enough oxygen points even to supply them oxygen if it is there,” he said. (BBC)…[+]

The sister of an Orthodox Jewish woman murdered in France in 2017 is to file a legal claim in Israel in the hope of getting a trial against the killer. Kobili Traoré cannot stand trial in France after a court deemed he was not criminally responsible due to his mental state. He killed Sarah Halimi, 65, in what French courts have now accepted was an anti-Semitic attack. He chanted verses from the Quran as he attacked her inside her Paris flat.

He also chanted God is great in Arabic before throwing her over the balcony of the third-floor flat in the city’s eastern Belleville area. Mr Traoré, who was 27 at the time of the attack, is currently in a psychiatric hospital. Israel’s criminal law may apply to anti-Semitic crimes committed abroad that have been denounced by an Israeli citizen, in this case Ms Halimi’s sister Esther Lekover. However, France does not extradite its nationals. Ms Lekover’s two lawyers “deplore being forced to expedite this procedure, but they cannot accept a denial of justice which offends reason and fairness far beyond the Jewish community of France”, they said in a statement.(BBC)…[+]

An instrument on Nasa’s Perseverance rover on Mars has made oxygen from the planet’s carbon dioxide atmosphere. It’s the second successful technology demonstration on the mission, which flew a mini-helicopter on Monday. The oxygen generation was performed by a toaster-sized unit in the rover called Moxie – the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment. It made 5 grams of the gas – equivalent to what an astronaut at Mars would need to breathe for roughly 10 minutes. Nasa’s thinking is that future human missions would take scaled-up versions of Moxie with them to the Red Planet rather than try to carry from Earth all the oxygen needed to sustain them.(BBC)…[+]