we have two reports from paris beginning tonight with nbc's richard engel. richard, good evening. >> reporter: good evening, brian. police here are reportedly still searching for six additional suspects. officials won't comment, but at least one of those suspects has reportedly been linked to that woman who's finally been tracked down. this is the woman, the one in the veil, that all of france has been looking for. it turns out she and a male companion escaped turkey well before the paris attacks. hayat boumeddiene became the most wanted person in france when her husband amedy coulibaly attacked a paris kosher grocery store and professed his allegiance to isis. authorities believe she and coulibaly were partners in terror. today we learned that boumeddiene left france traveling to madrid. and then ten days ago arrived in istanbul where she was spotted by an airport security camera. turkish intelligence followed her to an istanbul hotel. from there she traveled on to urfa, her cell phone tapped by turkish officials who say they lost contact january 8th when sh

we want to begin with nbc's richard engel in istanbul. richard, good evening. >> reporter: good evening, brian. the last year isis has been dominating headlines overshadowing al qaeda. something about dangerous rivalry is emerging, a game of one-upsmanship between the two groups. with the paris attacks, al qaeda is launching a comeback. the attack on "charlie hebdo" last week was al qaeda's most high-profile operation in years and today they bragged about it. in a video al qaeda in yemen claimed it targeted the magazine for insulting the prophet muhammad even laying out the chain of command behind the attack. ordered by alzwarhi, osama bin laden's successor. planned and financed by american-born cleric anwar al awlaki before he was killed in a u.s. drone strike in 2011 and carried out by cherif and said kouachi. reports suggest the brothers got their automatic weapons from this man, amedy coulibaly who purchased them from a belgian arms dealer and has now turned himself in to the police. coulibaly also bought the two machine guns he used t

and france, richard engel starts us off from paris tonight, richard, good evening. >> reporter: good evening, brian. those two brothers had been on the run for two days until this morning. they carjacked a vehicle, drove here on the outskirts of paris, barricaded themselves into a building, got into a gunfight with police and took a hostage. this tiny french village suddenly became a war zone. at 9:00 this morning local maintenance worker pascal heard helicopters overhead. his boss called him, he says, to tell him to stay inside just doors from where the gunmen were holed up. but he went instead to a nearby school. i gathered the children and helped usher them into classrooms, he said. at that moment police descended on the village quickly sealing it off. the kouachi brothers were surrounded. french police brought in helicopters. at nearby charles de gaulle airport, a runway was closed air traffic diverted. at 9:40 barricaded in the briefing press, cherif kouachi spoke to a french journalist by phone. i was sent by al qaeda, he said. it was anwar al awlaki. who financed me. he was ki

joining us now is richard engel from istanbul.

richard engel on all things foreign tonight. richard, thanks. >>> at this time last night we were in havana having traveled there with the most senior u.s. officials to visit cuba in decades and where today the so-called normalization talks got under way while the u.s. military base that is part of that island stole some of the attention. our chief foreign affairs correspondent andrea mitchell remains there and has our report from havana tonight. >> reporter: cuba is a country ready for change. optimism is everywhere. hope and smiles on the faces of american and cuban diplomats today. but on the opposite end of the island a story making waves back home. at the u.s. naval base at guantanamo bay, the base commander fired. captain john nettleton relieved of command in connection with an alleged affair with a woman on the base. he's now being investigated by ncis about the death of her husband whose body was found floating in the bay. the naval base itself an irritant to cuba since 1898 when the u.s. took control. cuba has long deman

it's where we begin tonight with our chief foreign correspondent richard engel. richard, good evening. >> reporter: good evening, brian. any major terrorist attack has the potential at least of bringing the world together. it did not happen this time. there have been protests at times deadly clashes in at least ten muslim countries since friday. outrage in the muslim world aimed at "charlie hebdo," but also at the millions who bought the magazine's latest issue which again lampooned muhammad on its cover. and at all those who say in solidarity i am charlie. hundreds of thousands of muslims gathered today in chechnya to say they are definitely not charlie. no charlie in afghanistan either. nor in pakistan. nor iran. only anger. in the west the slogan i am charlie, is interpreted as a defense of freedom of expression. here in the islamic world it's seen as standing with those who insult islam. images of muhammad are forbidden, any, even insulting ones. so why they ask are millions in the west rallying behind a magazine that mocks their prophet? we think muslims have

i want to go to nbc's chief foreign correspondent richard engel, who has, i believe, some new information. richard, good morning again. >> reporter: good morning. we just spoke to the deputy mayor here who told us he believes that this hostage siege is over. he believes that there was one hostage who was inside the printing press. he has been recovered safely. but there are french media reports that three police officers were injured here. four police officers injured in the raid in paris at the supermarket. the french media have been all over this and have been ahead of us in many ways. they have been -- the associated press -- i'm sorry, the french press has given a quite detailed account of what happened exactly at this location. they say that the two brothers, the kouachi brothers, were spotted in a separate room from their hostage and that when they were separated from their hostage, the french counterterrorism authorities decided that was the moment to go in and begin the assault. we heard that assault from where we are. we heard two explosions separated by about five minutes. we he

richard engel reported that president obama issued a statement, a very robust statement, close statement's death but it was pointed out that they don't have a good relationship. >> richard engel who has been reporting in the middle east for as long as i remember he is an expert, of course the president of the united states said he was close to the king and they were good friends. richard engel said he was surprised by that because he said it was well known that the king cannot stand president obama. so the truth is probably somewhere in between. sometimes you are friends with people on the world stage that you have to be because of security and stability and geo political reasons. it is not like they are chums. i got to go to saudi once. it snowed when i was there. it must have been like a global warming freak thing. i was at the king's horsefer farm. very interesting. they were very nice to me. >> great story. >> i was told not to eat a lot of hum s because i would get fat. i was like thanks for that tip. >>> ahead three youtube stars landed interviews with president obama. you will see

brian. >> richard engel on the death of a major world leader this week. richard, thanks. >>> the white house repeated today when israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu addresses the u.s. congress in march, president obama will not meet with him. the official reason, it's too close to israel's elections which the president doesn't wish to influence, but the white house calls it a departure from protocol from netanyahu to have accepted the invitation from the speaker of the house john boehner to address congress without any heads-up to the white house. >>> in cuba as we reported live from havana just this week those beginning of so-called normalization talks are now underway. and heading the talks are two veteran women diplomats on both sides, very different players at the same table looking for common ground after five decades of mistrust. our report tonight from our chief foreign affairs correspondent andrea mitchell. >> reporter: the complicated details of the historic opening to cuba being hammered out by two powerful women. assistant secretary of st

joining me now, nbc news chief foreign correspondent richard engel engel.at are you hearing about these attackers? >> well, we will learn a lot more about the attackers in the coming hours and days it seems. especially after these reports from two u.s. officials, two have been captured alive. which doesn't always happen as your previous guest was saying. a lot of dedicated militants wear suicide vests, they keep hand grenades on them so they won't be taken alive. two were captured alive and another one was killed in a raid operation. at this stage we just know that at least one of the three suspects was a well known radical. someone who in 2008 had actually been convicted on terrorism charges at the time he was trying to funnel fighters and money to the war in iraq. there were two brothers among the suspects of north african descent. it is unclear if they were working on their own, if this cell of three was independent or if it was officially tied to a major terrorist organization. and that has been something people have been trying to figure out all day. i

richard engel reporting on all of it tonight. richard, thanks. >>> this evening, we have learned a lot more about the final minutes of that airasia flight that crashed with 162 people on board. investigators are now zeroing in on what the aircraft did just moments before it disappeared from radar screens. our report on that tonight from nbc's katy tur. >> reporter: investigators have a clearer picture tonight of why airasia flight 8501 ended up a ghostly skeleton at the bottom of the java sea. officials now say radar data shows the airbus a-320-a was pushed beyond its limits in its last seconds. behaving more like a fighter jet than a passenger plane, when it suddenly accelerated and ascended, steeply climbing at 6,000 feet a minute, three times the average speed of a commercial aircraft before it likely stalled and plummeted into the java sea. >> it was either in a severe updraft and/or there was a command to the flight controls to pitch the nose up. climb rates of this magnitude at this altitude are extremely rare. >> reporter:

. >> reporter: this is richard engel. their faces are now known all over france. the kouachi brothers, said, 34, and cherif, 32, sons of algerian immigrants but born in paris. their story of radicalization goes back a decade. in 2005 cherif was a want-to-be rapper, who delivered pizza and worked the fish counter at a supermarket. he was also watching images of the iraq war. the abuse of prisoners at abu ghraib which he said enraged him. this is the low income housing project where the kouachi brothers lived in their early 20s. they were reportedly petty criminals and occasional drug users working odd jobs. cherif was also increasingly angry. he decided to travel to iraq to fight u.s. troops there and started training. he jogged every day at this local park and learned to use an assault rifle from a man he met in this local mosque. but before cherif could travel to iraq, he and several of his associates were arrested. one of france's leading terrorism experts. cherif was released after 18 months and initially appears he was under surveillance. but that became expen

>> richard engel starting us off from paris tonight.ichard, thanks. >>> the events of this past week involving islamic extremism are only reinforcing what many jews have come to question about france right now, whether the country is a safe place for them to live and work. the sentiment perhaps summed up best by a pillar of the jewish community in france who remarked on this broadcast last night that in world war ii, the optimists went to auschwitz and the pessimists went to new york. our report on that tonight from nbc's bill neely. >> reporter: murdered in paris, buried in israel, the four jews taken hostage and shot in a kosher supermarket. the son of one said his french father had always wanted to live in israel. he is here now, he said. in paris, where the men were murdered, jews debate their future and their security. france has the largest jewish population in europe, half a million. it also has the largest muslim population, 5 million. many jews feel under threat. some feel radical islamists want to wipe them out. you don't feel

richard engel reporting, late information. we had been talking about one hostage potentially as well as ongoing negotiations with these two brothers. >> i was going skrks richardask, richard, that's much different from what we've heard from others. who are the local officials telling you there may be five to seven hostages inside? >> reporter: the mayor of the adjacent town here just spoke to a few reporters. dmoes-- he knows the owner of the printing press personally. this gunfight started at 9:30 this local official herded some of the children who were on the street into an adjacent building and then evacuated them. schools have been evacuated, the entire town is shut down. they are saying that there may be more than one hostage. initially we thought there was just the owner of this printing press. he's been spotted by a witness, someone who accidentally walked into the business and saw this hostage drama unfolding and was told to leave. he witnessed the owner and one of the brothers but according to these local officials the

our chief foreign correspondent richard engel starts off our reporting. [ gunfire ] >> reporter: this is what it sounded like today. like a war. in the normally quiet belgium city of verviers. a neighbor filmed a counterterrorism raid that turn into a prolonged gun battle. it began, authorities say, when the suspects in the house opened fire. >> two of the suspects were killed. a third one has been arrested. luckily during this intervention no policeman was harmed. >> reporter: nor were any civilians. the suspects were clearly armed and dangerous. >> we found that this group was about to commit terrorist attacks in belgium. >> reporter: belgian authorities say the raid was one of three to arrest individuals recently back from syria. and there may be links to the paris attacks. an arms dealer from belgium reportedly sold weapons to the paris gunmen. in the wake of the paris attacks, europe is tightening its defenses with good reason. thousands of foreign fighters from europe who fought in syria have returned home, some of them apparently determined to bring their holy war with them. an

nbc's chief foreign xent richard engel has the poor. >> reporter: the group's beheader threatens to kill two japanese hostages unless japan pays $2 million, the same amount japan has committed to fighting the group. japan says it won't bow to terrorist demands. it's a reminder that isis remainingsremain remains a dangerous force to be reckoned with. being attacked by the u.s. has raised isis's profile, making it easier to recruit and make money. isis is making progress in battle. a senior u.s. military official with personal knowledge of events tells nbc news the u.s.-led air war kills about 1,000 isis fighters a month, many of them in and around the city of kobani. but they are being replaced each month with 1500 new recruits. and isis is holding the territory it controls. vast stretches of syria and most of central iraq. in yemen the american-backed government is teetering on the brink of collapse this is the same government that cooperates with the u.s. military and the cia allowing drone strikes to take a stand against al qaeda. they stormed the yemeni capital, but the president work

richard engel, nbc news istanbul. >>> let's get down to business with cnbc's layne nah dowdy. >> good morning. toyota is king of the road. for the third straight gees the jap nieces automaker sold more than 10.2 million in 2014 ahead of volkswagen and general motors. gm had been the top seller for more than 70 years until being sur passed by toyota in 2008. >>> microsoft shows off windows 10 this morning. it offers more consistent experience across pcs, smart phones and xbox. >>> walmart has launched gnaw service letting customers pick up their tax refunds in cash at stores. analysts say the service may appeal to people who don't have a bank account and walmart could benefit as well. consumers are inclined to spend that cash in stores. >>> let's get the latest in sports from francis rivera. >> good morning. day three of the australian open. on the men's side roger federer eventually won in four sets. andy murray dominated australia 6-1, 6-3 6-2. second seat maria sharapova bounced bank against alexandra panova. she finished strong taking the final set 7-5 to advance to the third round

brian. >> richard engel, part of our coverage of this story tonight. richard, thanks. we want to bring in michael lighter former under both president obama and bush. he does national security work for the federal government. michael, now that you're in the private sector, what is your government experience tell you, what was your first thought upon hearing this news today, and anything about it indicate we could be in for more? >> well, i think from what we saw these guys were pretty sophisticated, brian. this wasn't the run-of-the-mill home grown where they do one stupid thing with an axe. they were organized. they knew their target. they knew how to get away for a period. that's a level of sophistication we haven't seen. i think what is most telling here is really how vulnerable these soft targets are to these sorts of acts. and whether we'll see more, i think success, unfortunately, breeds success. right now the al qaeda message, wherever it's coming from syria or yemen, is gaining traction in many nations including france. >> so safe to be on alert a little bit hig

let's turn to richard engel. ning and are now reportedly dead, according to several media outlets. richard, good morning again. >> reporter: good morning. this all began here this morning or this hostage siege, i should say, began here this morning around 9:00 a.m. the two brothers, the prime suspects in the murders at the satirical newspaper two days ago had been on the run for 48 hours. they came here. this is a fairly sleepy town, very close to the international airport. they were spotted. people weren't looking for them here, but police spotted them in an industrial area. a gunfight broke out, and then those two brothers holed themselves up, barricaded themselves inside a printing press. they took, we now know, one hostage, a hostage who is now free. and for the last seven hours, they had been holed up inside that building. and we hadn't heard much from them. just a short time after they barricaded themselves in the building, that's when the second incident took place. that's when the other militant, a friend

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chief foreign correspondent richard engel, you've been tracking this all down at its roots.s it a claim of responsibility propaganda attempt by aqap al qaeda in the arabian peninsula based in yemen? >> i think it's a propaganda attempt and claim of responsibility. how commanded it was on a day to day basis from yemen. it's unclear. they are saying this went back years but the way sort of modern terrorist attacks have been operating is the home base gives the operators a great deal of autonomy, they tell them do an attack but don't necessarily stay in daily phone call communications with their operatives. they give them a lot of initiative. so what i was saying earlier and you played that clip earlier, the biggest takeaway from this al qaeda is going out of its way to make sure the world knows that it hasn't gone away and it is still capable of carrying out spectacular attacks and it is not a forgotten organization that has been surpassed by isis. for the last year isis has been dominating headlines. isis controls a state, something that al qaeda since the days in afghanistan

let's turn to our team, richard engel live in istanbul and bill neely will join us by phone.k about the sweep in europe which is related to groups they were observing and in many countries concerned something could happen to imitator mirror paris. was this because of any communications that we know of from aqap or isis saying strike now if you can? >> reporter: since paris, we have seen both isis and al qaeda issue numerous statements telling their supporters to mobilize saying that now is the time to go and carry out their holy war in their home countries, not to try to come to syria or join the caliphate but to turn on the on switch and launch attacks. in the wake of the paris attacks, the european security networks have decided that groups that were under their surveillance can no longer be trusted to be out on the streets and decided to launch several raids in several different countries. germany, belgium, france and over the next couple of days we'll see more of these attacks. in some ways this is a different strategy. we are seeing from isis initially isis and al qaeda

richard engel.> this seems like the kind of attacks that militant groups have been carrying out with some success for the last 50 years. and we saw a similar attack from militant militants, small group commando-style operations that are planned ahead of time clearly. the militants going in preparing for the very likely possibility that they will die. going in with extra ammunition. you see they're carrying the ak-47s but vests in which you can carry more magazines. reports we've been hearing are about 30 to 50 shots fired. which would indicate if they were firing with standard magazine, they would have had to stop at one stage, reload and continue firing. so a very cold-blooded kind of attack. and the same kind of operations that isis and other groups have been calling for. they've been telling their supporters not to come to syria and iraq. to stay in their own countries, to stay to tell no one, and carry out these attacks like we saw. >> just looking at these images as they pass by him, they just

we'll be talking with richard engel live from tur key. we've got a report out of cleveland tonight sort of mind bending. two decisions have just been made by the national republican party. both of which were a surprise. both of which are going to have a big impact in politics over the next several months. so we've got a lot going on in the news tonight. but we're going to start with isis. when the american journalist james foley was killed by the isis terrorist group in august amid the shock and the disgust at his killing and the way they killed him the fact that they turned his killing into a propaganda video, amid that horror about james foley's murder some of the people who knew james foley in the last months of his life were able to provide at that time a sort of different picture of james foley and what his time in captivity had been like. they were able to basically, for a lot of us i think, replace the terrible images we were fed by isis of the way he was killed. we were able to replace those images with their descriptions instead

now in this area. >> lester holt thank you very much for being with me. >>> joining me now is richard engel. richard, good morning. >> good morning. as lester was talking about, this is the second hostage incident going on right now in france. this was the original one. this began about seven hours. the kouachi brothers france accuses of carrying out wednesday's attack against the newspaper. for the last 48 hours they've been on the run. a massive manhunt has been underway until six or seven hours ago they came to the village which is close to the international airport. they were spotted by french security officials and quickly got into a gunfight. there are reports that one of the french police officers was shot in that gunfight. as the gunfight continued, the brothers barricaded themselves inside a printing press. that printing press is less than one mile from here. there are believed to be at least one hostage, perhaps other hostages being held inside the printing press by the two brothers, and this village is completely surrounded. a heavy security presence has been brought in. behind m

nbc's richard engel is live for us outside the printing plant location. richard, good evening. >> reporter: good evening, brian. things began to unfold in this small french village very close to the charles de gaulle international airport around 9:00 a.m. local time. the two brothers after killing 12 people in paris two days ago had been on the run. then they were spotted this morning in this village by local police. a gun fight broke out and the two brothers barricaded themselves in the industrial park right on the edge of this village. they barricaded themselves inside the printing press, took one hostage, then the city became a war zone. there were hundreds of riot police hundreds of special forces helicopters that descended on this town, surrounded the place, surrounded the two brothers. then just a few hours later, as this hostage situation was unfolding, another one began, in paris, related. a man dressed in black carrying a weapon went into a kosher supermarket, took hostages and demanded that the two brothers here in this village be released or he'

let me bring in richard engel. he's in paris this morning. good morning. >> reporter: good morning. we're learning more about the fourth named suspect hayat boumeddiene. turkish authorities say she's went through turkey she came in on a flight with pegasus airlines. she was coming from madrid. she was traveling with a male companion. this happened before the attacks in paris on january 2nd. she then with this male companion, unclear of the relationship between the two of them, checked into also on the asian side an economical hotel. stayed in turkey for about a week, and then crossed the border into syria. the turk tissue prime minister says turkey should be head response for what may be a breakdown? policing. turkey says as soon as she crossed the -- as soon as she entered turkey with this male companion on january 2nd turkish intelligence picked her up started following her was tracking her on their own accord. they were either suspicious or her names was on a watch list. once french authorities put out their bolo and distributed her picture to the public put it out on the media,

richard engel, nbc news, istanbul. >>> terror in the sky. this is video of passengers evacuating two planes which were the target of bomb threats made on twit arer. they were escorted by f-16 fighter jets until they landed safely at atlanta's international airport. one plane was a delta airlines jet and the other from milwaukee. bomb squad served the planes but didn't find anything. >> we will definitely go back and track down the twitter feeds and try to track down who made the initial threats on twitter. >> authorities say the person who made the threats also tweeted, come get me, i got guns. come at me. >> the twitter account was from an address listed in chicago and an investigation determined the person behind the threats did not actually live there. the student film from here in the bay area that could land one filmmaker an academy award. >>> we are waking up to some fog. a little bit different story from yesterday specially across the tri-valley. we still have a high surf advisory in effect for today if you are headed for some of the