ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) — A Croatia man was sentenced Tuesday to 50 years in prison for fatally stabbing a 7-year-old student in an attack at a school that shocked the European Union country where such violence is rare.
The attack on Dec. 20, 2024, at the Precko Elementary School in Zagreb also wounded three students and a teacher.
The 20-year-old attacker, who was identified only by his intials L.M., was 19 when he walked into his former school wielding a knife and stabbed the children and the teacher. He later tried to kill himself.
Police last year said the man had lived in the vicinity of the school. Children between the ages of 7 and 15 attend elementary schools in Croatia.
The sentence handed down by a panel of judges at the County Court in Zagreb can be appealed. Kresimir Skarica, a lawyer representing the family of the deceased victim, said the verdict was expected, the Index news portal reported.
“There are no winners or losers in this case,” Skarica said.
In May 2023, a teenager in neighboring Serbia opened fire at a school in the capital Belgrade, killing nine fellow students and a school guard.
FILE - Police secure access to the elementary school where a 7-year-old girl died and a teacher and five other students were wounded in a knife attack in Zagreb, Croatia, Friday, Dec. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Ronald Gorsic, File)
PARIS (AP) — France’s fractured parliament is debating an emergency bill Tuesday designed to prevent a U.S.-style government shutdown next week, after negotiations on a 2026 budget collapsed.
With just days left before the new year, President Emmanuel Macron and his Cabinet met Monday night to present the brief draft law. It aims ″to ensure the continuity of national life and the functioning of public services,″ including collecting taxes and disbursing them to local authorities based on tax and spending levels in the 2025 budget, the Cabinet said.
Lawmakers in the National Assembly, the French parliament’s powerful lower house, made several amendments to the bill and are expected to vote on it late Tuesday, followed by the Senate. It is likely to pass despite deep divisions among the assembly's three main camps — Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally, left-wing forces and Macron's centrist minority government.
The next step will be harder: building a real budget for 2026, and averting a new political crisis.
Macron is desperate to bring down the huge deficit to 5% and bring back investor confidence in France’s economy after protracted political deadlock and turmoil prompted by his ill-fated decision to call snap elections last year.
“We need a budget as fast as possible so that we can move on,” Finance Minister Roland Lescure said Tuesday on BFM television. “The longer (the temporary budget) lasts, the more it costs.”
France has a high level of public spending driven by generous social welfare programs, health care and education — and a heavy tax burden that falls short of covering the costs.
Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu, who resigned then was reappointed this fall, is expected to make a public address later Tuesday about the budget situation.
Lecornu's minority government won relief earlier this month when parliament narrowly approved a key health care budget bill, but at the cost of suspending Macron’s flagship pension reform meant to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.
Parliament members sit as France's National Assembly vote on a national health care budget that would suspend Macron's unpopular pension reform raising the retirement age, in Paris, France, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
