The 2003 Casablanca bombings, commonly known as May 16, were a series of coordinated suicide bombings on May 16, 2003, in Casablanca, Morocco. Twelve suicide bombers loyal to the Salafia Jihadia organization detonated bombs hidden in backpacks in the Casa de España restaurant, the Hotel Farah, the Jewish Alliance of Casablanca, and sites near the Belgian consulate and an old Jewish cemetery. The attacks, which were later claimed by al-Qaeda, were the deadliest terrorist attacks in Morocco's history, claiming the lives of forty-five people and injuring at least 100. Despite deliberately targeting Jews, none of the victims were Jews as the attack occurred during Shabbat.
Christine Boutin is a French former politician leading the small French Christian Democratic Party. She served as a member of the French National Assembly representing Yvelines, from 1986 until 2007, when she was appointed Minister of Housing and Urban Development by President Nicolas Sarkozy. She was a candidate in the 2002 French presidential election, in which she scored 1.19% on the first round of balloting.
Trappes is a commune in the Yvelines department, Île-de-France region, Northern France. It is a banlieue located in the western outer suburbs of Paris, 26.7 km (16.6 mi) from the centre of Paris, part of the new town of Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines.
Marianne is a weekly Paris-based French news magazine founded in 1997 by Jean-François Kahn and Maurice Szafran.
The Treaty of Huế, concluded on 25 August 1883 between Vietnam and France, recognising a French protectorate over Vietnam divided into Annam and Tonkin. Dictated to the Vietnamese by the French administrator François-Jules Harmand in the wake of the French military seizure of the Thuận An forts, the treaty is often known as the 'Harmand Treaty'. Considered overly harsh in French diplomatic circles, the treaty was never ratified in France, and was replaced on 6 June 1884 with the slightly milder 'Patenôtre Treaty' or 'Treaty of Protectorate', which formed the basis for French rule in Vietnam for the next seven decades.
Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron is a French politician who is serving as the 25th and current president of France and ex officio one of the two co-princes of Andorra since 2017. He previously was Minister of Economics, Industry and Digital Affairs under President François Hollande from 2014 to 2016 and deputy secretary-general to the president from 2012 to 2014. He has been a member of Renaissance since he founded it in 2016.
On 6 August 2016, a man attacked two policewomen with a machete in Charleroi, Belgium, before being shot dead by another police officer.
On 19 June 2017, a car loaded with guns and explosives was rammed into a convoy of Gendarmerie vehicles on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, France. The driver, identified as Djaziri Adam Lotfi was killed as a detonation clouded the car in orange smoke. The attacker had been on terrorism watchlists for Islamic extremism since 2014, and pledged his allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi before the attack. In a letter to his family he stated that for years he had supported "the Mujahedeen who fight to save Islam and the Muslims," having practiced shooting "to prepare for jihad," and stated that the attack should be treated as a "martyrdom operation."
On 1 October 2017, a man killed two women at the Saint-Charles train station in Marseille, France. The women, 20-year-old and 21-year-old cousins, were attacked by an illegal immigrant from Tunisia using a knife. Patrolling soldiers, who had been deployed on national soil following an increase in Islamic terrorist threats, shot him dead at the scene. The brother of the attacker was later arrested and faced preliminary charges of suspicion of involvement in the train station attack. French police were cautious as to whether it was a terrorist attack, but it was later classified as jihadist terrorism by Europol.
On 23 March 2018, an Islamic terrorist carried out three attacks in the town of Carcassonne and nearby village of Trèbes in the Aude department in southwestern France, killing three people and injuring fifteen.
Leïla Chaibi is a French politician. She was elected as a Member of the European Parliament in 2019 on the list of La France Insoumise, and was re-elected in 2024. She presides over La France Insoumise’s delegation in the European Parliament.
On 3 October 2019, a police employee at the Paris police headquarters stabbed four of his colleagues to death and injured two others. He was shot dead by police at the scene.
On 16 October 2020, Samuel Paty, a French secondary school teacher, was attacked and killed in Éragny-sur-Oise, Île-de-France, France, by an Islamic terrorist.
Jean-François Ricard is a French magistrate, and since 25 June 2019 the first prosecutor of the National Terrorism Prosecution Office a parquet for the prosecution of terrorism in France.
The New Ecological and Social People's Union was a left-wing electoral alliance of political parties in France. Formed on May Day 2022, the alliance included La France Insoumise (LFI), the Socialist Party (PS), the French Communist Party (PCF), The Ecologists (LE), Ensemble! (E!), and Génération.s (G.s), and their respective smaller partners. It was the first wide left-wing political alliance since the Plural Left in the 1997 French legislative election. Over 70 dissident candidates who refused the accord still ran.
On 23 December 2022, a mass shooting occurred at three Kurdish locations in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, France. Three people were killed, and three others were wounded in and around a Kurdish cultural center on Rue d'Enghien.
Legislative elections were held in France on 30 June and 7 July 2024 to elect all 577 members of the 17th National Assembly of the Fifth French Republic. The election followed the dissolution of the National Assembly by President Emmanuel Macron, triggering a snap election after the National Rally (RN) made substantial gains and Macron's Besoin d'Europe electoral list lost a significant number of seats in the 2024 European Parliament election in France.
Operation Wuambushu is an ongoing French military-police operation in Mayotte, aimed at expelling illegal immigrants, destroying slums, and fighting crime on the islands.
Lucie Castets is a French civil servant and economist. Associated with the Socialist Party, Castets was nominated by the New Popular Front (NFP) to serve as Prime Minister of France in the aftermath of the 2024 legislative election, but her candidacy was rejected by president Emmanuel Macron.
