France has deployed 7,000 soldiers to beef up security after a schoolteacher was stabbed to death and three others wounded, according to France's interior minister, who said that the suspected Islamist attack was linked to the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Breaking News France: 7000 Soldiers are being deployed across France as #HamasTerrorist supporters continue to cause chaos and the French authorities scramble to prevent further killings. #France Mass uncontrolled #Illegals being allowed into the country are causing… pic.twitter.com/1PdVT61Ovw

— Jim Ferguson (@JimFergusonUK) October 14, 2023

A 20-year-old Russian-born Chechen, Mohamed M, was arrested shortly after the Friday attack at a secondary school in the northeastern city of Arras, roughly 115 miles north of Paris. According to interior minister Gerald Darmanin, who added that authorities have detained 12 people near schools or places of worship since the Hamas attack on Israel, Sky reports.

⚡Graphic Video

THE SCENE OF THE MURDER OF A TEACHER IN FRANCE

The suspect is a Chechen. Today he killed a teacher in the courtyard of a school in France. He was arrested and taken into custody.#France pic.twitter.com/BjhMFJfX8Q

— ⚡NOW⚡ (@warinsightshq) October 13, 2023

The teacher's murder comes nearly three years to the day after a Chechen Muslim beheaded a French teacher on Oct. 16, 2020, near his school in a Paris suburb.

"Three years after the assassination of Samuel Paty, terrorism has struck a school again and in a context that we all know," said French President Emmanuel Macron.

Of note, France has banned all pro-Palestinian protests. Despite this, hundreds of demonstrators gathered in central Paris on Thursday.

"Pro-Palestinian demonstrations must be prohibited because they are likely to generate disturbances to the public order," said Darmanin, who called on police to protect all locations visited by French Jews, such as synagogues and schools, and that any foreigner committing acts of anti-Semitism on French soil will be "immediately expelled."

Meanwhile, the Lourve and the Palace of Versailles were both evacuated over bomb threats.

Le Louvre évacué en catastrophe après une alerte à la bombe.

L’invasion et l’islamisation du pays, ardemment voulues par les dirigeants de droite et de gauche depuis 40 se paient très cher.

Et ce sont les Français qui passent à la caisse.#attentat #islamisme #terrorisme… pic.twitter.com/h5ygei1Jxv

— Jean MESSIHA (@JeanMessiha) October 14, 2023

Alarms rang out through the Louvre, a vast space also in a former royal palace Paris overlooking the Seine River, when the evacuation was announced, and in the underground shopping center beneath its signature pyramid.

Police cordoned off the monument from all sides, and the underground access, as tourists and other visitors streamed out. Videos posted online showed people leaving, some hurriedly and some stopping to take photos, others apparently confused about what was happening. -AP

The Palace of Versailles, Louvre Museum, as well as several other Tourist Locations in Paris, France are currently being Evacuated following a reported Bomb Threat. pic.twitter.com/qL9nP5ucSY

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) October 14, 2023

BREAKING: Bomb alert at Palace of Versailles in France, people evacuating pic.twitter.com/ujLoclDM5t

— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) October 14, 2023

The Lourve welcomes some 30,000 - 40,000 visitors per day.

By Irina Slav of OilPrice.com,

The New York state authorities have rejected a request by Orsted, BP, and Equinor for raising the price of electricity in future power purchase contracts featuring offshore wind energy.

Offshore wind developers have been pressured by rising raw material and component costs, and higher borrowing costs, which has cast doubt over the viability of many projects. Indeed, Reuters reported that some projects planned for the waters off the coast of New York may need to be reconsidered in light of the authorities’ decision.

"Sunrise Wind's viability and therefore ability to be constructed are extremely challenged without this adjustment," Orsted told Reuters.

Sunrise Wind is an offshore project with a planned capacity of 924 MW that could supply electricity to 600,000 households. According to Orsted, it would also involve several hundred million dollars in investments in the state and 800 jobs.

"These projects must be financially sustainable to proceed," the president of Equinor Renewables Americas told Reuters, referring to the offshore wind projects the Norwegian energy major is leading in the U.S.

Per Reuters, Equinor is involved in three projects with BP—the 816 MW Empire Wind 1 and the 1.26 GW Empire Wind 2, as well as the Beacon Wind farm, with a projected capacity of 1.23 GW.

Indeed, rising costs have compromised the financial sustainability of many wind power projects and earlier this year led to the cancellation of a large-scale one off the coast of the UK.

Swedish Vattenfall, which led the Norfolk Boreas project, said it would quit it after it saw costs rise by 40%, which made the project unviable.

To tackle the rising cost problem, wind developers have turned to governments, asking for additional tax incentives and higher electricity prices, busting the myth of cheap wind power.

The New York Public Service Commission said that if they had agreed to do what the wind developers wanted, that would have added 6.7% to New Yorkers’ electricity bills, which are already among the highest in the State.

By Michael Kern of OilPrice.com

There are no plans for the creation of a natural gas cartel similar to the OPEC cartel in crude oil, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Friday. 

“There are no discussions to set up a (gas) cartel,” Novak told RT Arabic TV as quoted by Reuters. 

The Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) is an organization of gas producers and exporters but it is not coordinating supply to the market the way OPEC does. Russia is a member of the GECF and its top energy official Novak said in the televised interview that the gas organization was “mostly about exchanging views.”  

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the halt of most of Russian pipeline gas supplies to Europe, the EU has turned to LNG imports and increased deliveries via offshore pipelines from Norway and North Africa to replace the Russian supply, which accounted for around one-third of all European gas imports before the war in Ukraine. 

The EU aims to ditch Russian gas by 2027. 

Having lost the European market, Russia has raised pipeline exports to China and its global LNG exports, which are neither sanctioned nor too shunned in gas-starved Europe. 

This year, the exports of Russian gas giant Gazprom to Europe have slumped and dragged its profits down. Gazprom has reported a massive drop in its first-half net profit as deliveries to Europe plunged compared to the same period in 2022 when Russia was still supplying pipeline gas to its European customers.  

The major drop in Gazprom’s gas deliveries to key customers was due to the halt of Russian pipeline gas exports to nearly all European countries.

Gazprom started to reduce supply via the Nord Stream pipeline to Germany in June 2022, claiming an inability to service gas turbine maintenance outside Russia due to the Western sanctions against Moscow for the invasion of Ukraine. This was weeks before the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines at the end of September 2022, which definitively closed all pipeline gas routes of Russia’s gas to Germany.