SEOUL — A light truck crashed into a market in South Korea on Thursday, ploughing 150 meters along a passageway lined with stalls before coming to a halt, killing two people and injuring 18, according to emergency officials and media reports.

The incident took place at a market located in Bucheon, about 20 kilometers west of the capital Seoul, a fire official told a televised briefing.

Two people who had suffered cardiac arrest were later confirmed to have died, the Yonhap News Agency said.

The truck appeared to reverse for 28 meters before accelerating towards the outdoor market, the fire official said.

The driver had blamed a sudden surge of acceleration for the incident, he said.

The driver was not intoxicated when tested for alcohol, a police official said at the briefing.

Authorities would hand the vehicle over to investigators to try to determine the cause of the crash, the official said.

CCTV footage aired on Korean television showed shoppers going about their business at an outdoor market before a blue truck accelerated along a passageway lined by stalls and crashed into one of the stores.

Police had arrested the driver who was in his 60s and he was being questioned, Yonhap said. — Reuters

PARIS — France marks the 10th anniversary on Thursday of attacks in Paris in which Islamic State gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people in a rampage through cafes, restaurants and the Bataclan concert hall, and many survivors are still traumatized.

The attacks were the deadliest on French soil since World War Two, scarring the national psyche and prompting emergency security measures, many of which are now embedded in law.

The assault began with suicide bomb blasts outside the Stade de France sports stadium where then-President Francois Hollande and the German foreign minister were watching a friendly soccer international, and continued with gunmen opening fire at five other locations in central Paris.

Starting at 11:30 a.m.(1030 GMT), President Emmanuel Macron will join officials, survivors and relatives of victims paying tribute to those killed and wounded in the attacks. The memorial events begin at the Stade de France and move on to the restaurants and cafés that were attacked, as well as the Bataclan.

ATTACK ON THE BATACLAN
Sebastian Lascoux was inside the Bataclan where the rock band Eagles of Death Metal were playing when what he thought was the noise from firecrackers pierced the concert hall. It quickly became apparent that the venue was under attack.

People “ended up all squashed together and collapsed as one,” he recalled. “And then (there was) the smell of blood,” said Mr. Lascoux, now aged 46. One of his friends was shot dead trying to shield another member of their party.

“He saved her life,” added Mr. Lascoux, who still suffers from post-traumatic stress and cannot be in crowded places or enclosed spaces, even cinemas. Loud pops remind him of gunshots.

Like some other survivors, Mr. Lascoux plans to attend Thursday’s commemorations.

“What made the November 13 attacks unique was that everyone was a potential victim,” historian Denis Peschanski said.

“Either they were old enough to be there, or, like me, they were old enough to have children who could have been there, even though I was lucky they weren’t.”

‘LIFE GOES ON’
Catherine Bertrand, a survivor of the Bataclan attack, and vice-president of a victims’ association, said: “We all agree that it has marked us forever. We are all deeply traumatized by that evening, and our thoughts of course turn to the victims and their loved ones.”

She stressed that life must go on, though, saying: “There are concerts at the Bataclan, life goes on, we meet up between friends” at the places where the attacks took place.

Ten years on, the threat of such attacks in France is different. Militant jihadist groups such as Islamic State no longer have the same means to coordinate attacks on French soil, security sources say.

But the group’s online propaganda is still effective and able to radicalize youngsters fascinated with violence on social media. Anti-terrorism prosecutors this week launched a probe into the former partner of the presumed sole surviving perpetrator of the attacks.— Reuters

WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives took a procedural step toward ending the longest government shutdown in US history on Wednesday, advancing a stopgap funding package to restart disrupted food assistance, pay hundreds of thousands of federal workers and revive a hobbled air-traffic control system.

The Republican-controlled chamber voted 213-209 to move towards a final vote on the measure, with President Donald Trump’s support largely keeping his party together in the face of vehement opposition from House Democrats, who are angry that a long standoff launched by their Senate colleagues failed to secure a deal to extend federal health insurance subsidies.

Eight Senate Democrats on Monday broke with party leadership to pass the funding package, which would extend funding through January 30, leaving the federal government on a path to keep adding about $1.8 trillion a year to its $38 trillion in debt.

“I feel like I just lived a Seinfeld episode. We just spent 40 days and I still don’t know what the plotline was,” said Republican Representative David Schweikert of Arizona, referring to a popular 1990s US sitcom.

“I really thought this would be like 48 hours: people will have their piece, they’ll get a moment to have a temper tantrum, and we’ll get back to work.”

He added: “What’s happened now when rage is policy?”

House Democrats remain adamantly opposed, angered by the Senate deal that came less than a week after Democrats won high-profile elections in New Jersey, Virginia and New York City that many thought strengthened their odds of winning an extension of health insurance subsidies. While the deal sets up a December vote on those subsidies in the Senate, Speaker Mike Johnson has made no such promise in the House.

Democratic Representative Mikie Sherrill, who last week was elected as New Jersey’s next governor, spoke against the funding bill in her last speech on the US House floor before resigning from Congress next week, encouraging her colleagues to stand up to Mr. Trump’s administration.

“To my colleagues: do not let this body become a ceremonial red stamp from an administration that takes food away from children and rips away healthcare,” Ms. Sherrill said.

“To the country: stand strong. As we say in the Navy, don’t give up the ship.”

NO CLEAR WINNER FROM SHUTDOWN
Despite the recriminations, neither party appears to have won a clear victory. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday found that 50% of Americans blamed Republicans, while 47% blamed Democrats.

A final vote on passage is expected later on Wednesday. If approved by the House, the funding package would have to be signed into law by Mr. Trump. The White House said he supports the bill.

The vote came on the Republican-controlled House’s first day in session since mid-September, a long recess intended to put pressure on Democrats in the shutdown standoff. The chamber’s return also set the clock ticking on a vote to release all unclassified records related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, something Mr. Johnson and Mr. Trump have resisted up to now.

Mr. Johnson on Wednesday swore in Democrat Adelita Grijalva, who won a September special election to fill the Arizona seat of her late father, Raul Grijalva. She provided the final signature needed for a petition to force a House vote on the issue, hours after House Democrats released a new batch of Epstein documents.

That means that after performing its constitutionally mandated duty of keeping the government funded, the House could once again be consumed by a probe into Mr. Trump’s former friend whose life and 2019 death in prison have spawned countless conspiracy theories.

The funding package would allow eight Republican senators to seek hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages for alleged privacy violations stemming from the federal investigation of the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by Mr. Trump’s supporters.

It retroactively makes it illegal in most cases to obtain a senator’s phone data without disclosure and allows those whose records were obtained to sue the Justice Department for $500,000 in damages, along with attorneys’ fees and other costs. — Reuters