(PARIS) — French authorities on Sunday defended aggressive police actions to contain violence at yellow vest protests after a policeman was seen briefly brandishing a gun at a surging crowd in Paris.

French President Emmanuel Macron called for “the most severe” legal repercussions against violent protesters. After a sixth straight weekend of demonstrations by the grassroots movement demanding more help for French workers, Macron called for “order, calm and unity” while on a visit to Chad this weekend.

The numbers of protesters were sharply down Saturday from previous weekends, and most of their actions were peaceful. But violence again erupted in Paris, with protesters throwing projectiles and chasing police, who were firing tear gas and water cannon.

A video of the gun-wielding policeman surrounded by protesters near the posh Champs-Elysees Avenue in Paris circulated widely online. He briefly pulled out the weapon after being pushed off his motorcycle and did not fire, but the thre..

(JERUSALEM) — Israel’s leader says the American decision to withdraw its forces from Syria will not affect Israeli policy.

Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel will “continue to act against Iran’s attempts to entrench itself militarily in Syria, and to the extent necessary, we will even expand our actions there.”

Israel, like others, was caught off-guard by President Donald Trump’s abrupt move to withdraw all the roughly 2,000 U.S. forces from Syria in the coming weeks. The announcement sparked the resignation of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy to the global coalition fighting the Islamic State group. Several Republicans said leaving Syria was an abandonment of American allies, such as Israel.

Netanyahu, who flaunts a good rapport with Trump, says Sunday “cooperation with the U.S. will continue in full.”

(PARIS) — French authorities handed preliminary terrorism charges Sunday to a fugitive extremist who is suspected of fighting U.S. forces in Iraq and helping to organize the 2015 shooting attack at satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo that killed 12 people.

Peter Cherif, who recently was arrested in the former French colony of Djibouti and expelled to France, was immediately taken into custody and charged upon his arrival Sunday at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.

Cherif is accused of criminal association with a terrorist enterprise. France’s defense minister says he played an “important role in organizing” the Charlie Hebdo attack, though his specific actions were unclear.

He embodies a generation of French Muslim youths who traveled to war zones from Afghanistan and Iraq to Yemen and Syria. Cherif traveled to Iraq in the early 2000s and was arrested in Fallujah in 2004 and held for 19 months by U.S. troops. Cherif, also known as Abu Hamza, ..