New Charlie Hebdo sold in record time

PARIS: French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo’s new issue was sold out across France in record time.
Many Parisians joined long queues outside newspaper kiosks in the pre-dawn cold to get their hands on one of 700,000 copies released in a run that will eventually total five million.“This issue is symbolic, it represents their persistence, they didn’t yield in the face of terror,” said Catherine Boniface, a 58-year-old doctor, disappointed to have come up empty-handed at one Paris news-stand.
Charlie Hebdo’s surviving staff moved into the offices of Liberation newspaper to compile the new issue. Distributors quickly boosted the print run from an initial three million after the sales rush on Wednesday — dwarfing its normal run of around 60,000 copies, and the edition will also be available in English, Spanish, Italian, Arabic and Turkish. Proceeds will go to victims families.
A version was published in predominantly Muslim Turkey as an inset in the opposition daily Cumhuriyet, but the government announced it would block websites featuring the cover.Underlining the ongoing security worries, France’s biggest satirical weekly, “Le Canard Enchaine”, said it received a death threat the day after the Charlie Hebdo attack.
The French government said it has instructed prosecutors to get tough on people who condone terrorism or carry out racist and anti-Semitic attacks.Over 50 cases for condoning terrorism have been opened since the attacks that claimed 17 lives, including the arrest on Wednesday of controversial comedian Dieudonne Mbala Mbala.
He wrote “I feel like Charlie Coulibaly” on Facebook on Sunday – mixing the popular “Je Suis Charlie” homage to the slain journalists with a reference to the supermarket gunman.Under France’s ultra-fast-track court system, a 21-year-old in Toulouse was sent to prison for 10 months on Monday for expressing support for the Jihadists while travelling on a tram.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Tuesday the country was now engaged in a “war on terrorism”, in remarks reminiscent of former US president George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks in 2001.But Valls stressed that Muslims would always have a home in France.
“I don’t want Jews in this country to be scared, or Muslims to be ashamed of their faith,” he said.He admitted France’s intelligence capabilities and anti-terrorism laws needed to be strengthened and “clear failings” addressed.