Police thwart ‘terror attack’ at Bank of America building in Paris, officials say

(PARIS) —The director of the Louvre Museum in France has resigned, months after $102 million in jewels were stolen, according to the office of the French president.

Laurence des Cars’ tenure has been under intense scrutiny since the heist and she has faced calls for resignation.

Christophe Leribault has been named the new director of the Louvre. Leribault’s resume includes running the Versailles Palace, another world-renowned French landmark and tourist attraction, and was also the previous head of Paris’ Orsay Museum.  

Leribault will oversee a long-overdue multi-million-dollar renovation project.   

A French government spokesperson said he’s the perfect choice, saying, “He will notably have to direct major projects for the future of the institution, on the one hand securing and modernizing the Louvre, and on the other, the continuation of the ‘Louvre — New Renaissance’ project.”

French President Emmanuel Macron praised des Cars’ resignation “as an act of responsibility at a time when the world’s largest museum needs both stability and a strong new impetus to successfully complete major security and modernization projects,” the Élysée said in a statement Tuesday.

“The President thanked her for her work and commitment over the past few years and, recognizing her undeniable scientific expertise, entrusted her with a mission within the framework of the French G7 presidency, focusing on cooperation between the major museums of the participating countries,” according to the statement.

At least seven suspects have been arrested in connection with the October robbery but the jewels have not been recovered.

Empress Eugénie’s crown was the only item the thieves did not escape with during the robbery. The thieves dropped it on the street outside the Louvre during the roughly five-minute long heist.

The crown “was crushed and significantly deformed” during the heist, the Louvre said in a statement earlier this month. However, “it remained largely intact,” meaning museum officials believe it can be fully restored.

In light of the robbery, security lapses at the museum have been exposed, including that the password to the world-famous museum’s video surveillance system was “Louvre,” according to a museum employee with knowledge of the system.

During testimony before a French Senate committee after the robbery, des Cars said the only camera installed outside the Apollo Gallery, where the stolen jewels were displayed, was facing west and did not cover the window where the thieves used power tools to break in and exit.

Des Cars said all of the museum’s alarms and video cameras work, but said there was a “weakness” in the museum’s perimeter security “due to underinvestment.”

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(LONDON) — Israel’s strike on the world’s largest natural gas field could severely impact Iran’s energy sector and several nearby Gulf states, energy experts told ABC News.

On Wednesday, Israel launched air strikes on South Pars, a natural gas field that covers about 3,700 square miles and serves as a vital source of fuel for Iran. It is located offshore in the Persian Gulf and contains about 1,800 trillion cubic feet of usable gas, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

South Pars accounts for about 70% of the gas Iran consumes, Ira Joseph, a senior research associate at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, told ABC News.

David G. Victor, a professor of innovation and public policy at the University of California at San Diego, agreed on the importance of South Pars to Iran.

“It’s the single most important natural gas field to Iran,” he told ABC News. “If you start tanking the Iranian economy, eventually, other parts of that infrastructure are going to start falling apart too.”

South Pars is part of a giant gas field that transverses to other nations — another section, the North Dome, is part of the same natural gas field but lies in Qatari territorial waters.

Combined, South Pars and the North Field account for about 10% of the gas traded in the world and about 20% of the world’s liquified natural gas (LNG) annual exports, Joseph noted.

Iran also exports gas into Turkey, Iraq and Central Asia — so those exports have been disrupted by the war, according to Joseph. Turkey acquires up to 15% of its gas from Iran, he added.

The U.S. is relatively insulated from natural gas price shocks due to the strikes on Iran’s gas fields because the U.S. is a big producer and doesn’t have enough export capacity to fully link itself to Asian and European markets, Catherine Wolfram, a professor of energy economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told ABC News.

Countries like Japan, Korea and the Europeans who are dependent on imports will take a big hit to their supply as a result of the attack on South Pars, she said.

But the impacts of the strikes on the South Pars field extend “far beyond” energy prices, Naho Mirumachi, a professor of environmental politics at King’s College in London, told ABC News.

The current volatility of gas production can have “serious” impacts on agriculture and the global production of food, especially since natural gas is vital for fertilizer production, she noted. Fertilizer shortages or higher prices of fertilizer will likely translate to increases in food costs, according to Mirumachi.

“Food production cannot wait for gas production to return to normal, so farmers and businesses could face declining crop yields,” she said.

There has never been an attack of this magnitude on South Pars field because of a historical understanding within the region to not disrupt or inhibit each other’s vital infrastructure, according to the University of California’s Victor.

“There had been a kind of norm that exists in many wars, which is, don’t attack each other’s vital infrastructure,” he said. “Both sides had an interest in not obliterating each other’s energy infrastructure and then causing this enormous harm in the global market.”

The strike on South Pars triggered an escalation of attacks on oil and gas facilities in the region.

Iran launched a series of retaliatory strikes against the vital energy infrastructure in nearby Gulf states. It issued evacuation orders for several energy assets in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, before hitting the world’s largest LNG terminal — an import and export facility — at Ras Laffan in Qatar.

“Targeting energy infrastructure constitutes a threat to global energy security, as well as to the peoples of the region & its environment,” a spokesperson for the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote in a post on X on Wednesday.

In a social media post late Wednesday, President Donald Trump said neither the U.S. nor Qatar was aware Israel would attack the South Pars Gas Field, calling for Israel to not do so again unless Iran continues attacking Qatar’s LNG facilities.

“NO MORE ATTACKS WILL BE MADE BY ISRAEL pertaining to this extremely important and valuable South Pars Field unless Iran unwisely decides to attack a very innocent, in this case, Qatar,” Trump said.

Iran warned that it would target energy facilities throughout the region.

The attacks on energy centers began on March 7, with Israeli air strikes on major Iranian oil storage facilities causing “black rain” to fall on the Tehran, Iran’s capital with nearly 10 million residents. The Israeli military said the facilities were struck because they were “used by the Military Forces of the Iranian Terror Regime in Tehran.”

On March 11, the International Energy Agency announced it would release 400 million barrels of oil from its strategic reserve — the largest-ever release of reserve oil in the group’s history — in response to the blockade on the Strait of Hormuz. A fifth of the global oil supply passes through the waterway, which lies between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.

The U.S. also executed a strike on Kharg Island on March 13. The small island is situated in the Persian Gulf, off the southwestern coast of Iran, and processes 90% of Iranian oil exports.

Every military target on Kharg Island was “obliterated,” Trump said in a social media post. But its oil infrastructure was left intact.

The conflict has sent energy prices soaring, with Brent crude — the international standard for oil — peaking at $119 per barrel on Thursday morning.

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(LONDON) — The leaders of all 27 European Union nations will meet for an “extraordinary meeting” later this week, European Council President Antonio Costa said on Sunday, in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s escalating pressure campaign to acquire Greenland.

European leaders are mobilizing after Trump on Saturday announced a 10% tariff to be imposed on all goods sent to the U.S. from eight NATO nations — Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the U.K., the Netherlands and Finland — that recently sent small contingents of troops to Greenland to take part in military exercises there.

On Sunday, Trump sent a letter to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store in which the president again expressed his desire to take control of Greenland. Store’s office confirmed to ABC News on Monday that Oslo received the message from Trump. The details of the letter were first reported by PBS.

“Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America,” Trump wrote.

“Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also,” the president continued. “I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland.”

Costa said he had called the meeting due to the “significance of recent developments.”

European leaders are mobilizing after Trump on Saturday announced a 10% tariff to be imposed on all goods sent to the U.S. from eight NATO nations — Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the U.K., the Netherlands and Finland — that recently sent small contingents of troops to Greenland to take part in military exercises there.

Costa said recent conversations with European leaders had reconfirmed their “strong commitment” to international law, Arctic security through NATO and solidarity with Denmark and Greenland in the face of Trump’s continued effort to acquire the Arctic island.

European leaders also agreed that “tariffs would undermine transatlantic relations and are incompatible with the EU-U.S. trade agreement,” Costa said, noting the bloc’s “readiness to defend ourselves against any form of coercion” and to engage “constructively with the US on all issues of common interest.”

An EU Council spokesperson confirmed to ABC News that the summit would be an in-person meeting in Brussels.

Trump said the new tariffs will come into force on Feb. 1 and will increase to 25% on June 1. The president said the measures would remain in place until the U.S. is able to purchase Greenland.

Greenland is a self-governing territory of the Kingdom of Denmark. Trump first raised the prospect of acquiring the minerals-rich island in his first term. Danish and Greenlandic politicians have repeatedly rebuffed such proposals.

Trump’s new tariffs raise the risk of a fresh transatlantic trade war. A French official confirmed to ABC News on Monday that French President Emmanuel Macron “will request the activation of the EU’s anti-coercion instrument in the event of new U.S. tariffs.”

That mechanism, colloquially known as the bloc’s “trade bazooka,” would allow the EU to impose severe restrictions on U.S. goods and services. Among the available measures would be restrictions on U.S. investment in EU nations, blocks on access to public procurement schemes and limits on intellectual property protections.

Trump has repeatedly suggested that U.S. sovereignty over the world’s largest island is necessary to ensure American security and blunt Chinese and Russian influence in the Arctic region. On Sunday, the president again claimed that only the U.S. can ensure the security of Greenland.

A 1951 defense agreement grants the U.S. military access to Greenland. Danish politicians have repeatedly expressed willingness to work with Washington to expand the American and NATO presence there.

Danish officials have also sought to head off concerns about the supposed vulnerability of the Arctic. Last year, Copenhagen announced a $6.5 billion Arctic defense package in response to U.S. criticism that it had failed to adequately protect Greenland.

But such steps do not appear to have deterred Trump, who has said he would consider taking Greenland by force if other means to acquire the land fail.

Indeed, it was the recent deployment of more NATO forces to the Arctic territory that prompted Trump to threaten a new raft of tariffs. The troops traveled to Greenland to take part in the Danish-led Operation Arctic Endurance.

Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen and Greenlandic Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt are scheduled to visit NATO’s headquarters in Brussels on Monday for a previously planned meeting with the alliance’s Secretary General Mark Rutte, NATO said in a press release.

On Monday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer urged “calm discussion” between allies. “The security of Greenland matters and it will matter more as climate change reshapes the Arctic,” he said, noting the need for “greater attention, greater investment and stronger collective defense.”

“The United States will be central to that effort, and the U.K. stands ready to contribute fully alongside our allies through NATO,” Starmer said, adding that any decisions about the territory’s future should be left to Greenlanders and Danes.

Trump’s use of tariffs against allies, Starmer continued, “is completely wrong. It is not the right way to resolve differences within an alliance. Nor is it helpful to frame efforts to strengthen Greenland’s security as a justification for economic pressure.”

ABC News’ Victoria Beaule, Tom Soufi Burridge and Kevin Shalvey contributed to this report.

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