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BRUSSELS (AP) --
French, German, Belgian and Irish police arrested more than two dozen suspects in anti-terrorism raids Friday, as European authorities rushed to thwart more attacks by people with links to Mideast Islamic extremists.
Rob Wainwright, head of the police agency Europol, told The Associated Press that foiling terror attacks has become "extremely difficult" because Europe's 2,500-5,000 radicalized Muslim extremists have little command structures and are increasingly sophisticated.
Highlighting those fears, a bomb scare forced Paris to evacuate its busy Gare de l'Est train station during Friday morning rush hour. No bomb was found. A man also briefly took two hostages at a post office northwest of Paris, but police said the hostage-taker had mental issues and no links to terror.
Visiting the tense French capital, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met President Francois Hollande and toured the sites of last week's terror attacks: the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket. Twenty people, including the three gunmen, were killed.
One of those Paris attackers had proclaimed allegiance to the Islamic State group, and French and German authorities arrested at least 14 other people Friday suspected of links to IS.
Thirteen more people were detained in Belgium and two were arrested in France in a separate anti-terror sweep following a firefight Thursday in the eastern Belgian city of Verviers. Two suspected terrorists were killed and a third wounded in that raid on a suspected terrorist hideout. Federal magistrate Eric Van der Sypt said Friday the suspects were within hours of implementing a plan to kill police.
In Ireland, police arrested a suspected French-Algerian militant at Dublin Airport as he tried to enter the country using a false passport. The man, who was being interrogated, landed on a European watch list after expressing support in social media for last week's attacks, authorities said.
AMY TAXIN, Associated Press
SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) —
For Mexicans living in the U.S. illegally and hoping to stay in the country under President Barack Obama's new immigration policy, things just got one step simpler.
On Thursday, the Mexican government began issuing birth certificates to its citizens at its consulates in the United States.
That will make it a little easier for Mexicans hoping to obtain U.S. work permits, driver's licenses and protection from deportation.
Up until now, Mexico required its citizens to get birth certificates at government offices in Mexico. Many of those living in this country had to ask friends and relatives back home to retrieve the paperwork.
Pedro Zamora, a 52-year-old cook, took advantage of the new program to obtain his birth certificate at the Mexican consulate in Santa Ana, California. He plans to apply for a California driver's license this week.
Before the change took place, Zamora had to ask his sister-in-law to pick up his son's and daughter's birth certificates in Colima, Mexico, so they could apply for Obama's immigration program for those brought to the U.S. illegally as children. But Zamora said the paperwork got lost in the mail — twice.
"It would take seven or 15 days and there was a risk of losing it," Zamora said.
DAN SEWELL, Associated Press
CINCINNATI (AP) —
Christopher Lee Cornell showed little direction in his life, spending hours playing video games in his bedroom in his parents' apartment, rarely going out or working, and voicing distrust of the government and the media. But in recent weeks, his parents say, they noticed a change in him.
They thought it was a change for the better: The 20-year-old suburban Cincinnati man was helping his mother around the house, cooking meals, sitting with his parents to watch movies, and talking about having become a Muslim.
"He said, 'I'm at peace with myself,'" his father, John Cornell, recalled Thursday — a day after his son was arrested in an FBI sting and charged with plotting to attack the U.S. Capitol with pipe bombs and guns and kill government officials.
The arrest came with U.S. counterterrorism authorities on high alert against homegrown extremists and "lone wolves" — disaffected or disturbed individuals who hold radical beliefs but have no direct connection to a terrorist organization.
The bearded, long-haired Cornell was taken into custody outside a gun range and store west of Cincinnati after, the FBI said, he bought two M-15 semi-automatic rifles and 600 rounds of ammunition as part of a plan to go to Washington.
The FBI said he had for months sent social media messages and posted video espousing support for Islamic State militants and for violent attacks by others.
It was unclear from court papers if he had made contact with any terrorist groups.