Paris mayoral election: Emmanuel Grégoire, a surprising Socialist candidate
Grégoire's first-round election victory, with 52.61% of the vote, concluded a bitter struggle to succeed outgoing PS mayor Anne Hidalgo. The campaign began in November 2024 and pitted a long-time former deputy mayor who had been disavowed by the mayor (Grégoire); a leader of the Socialist group in the Paris Council who was supported by the party apparatus but little known (Féraud, who won 44.33%); and a surprise 33-year-old candidate, director of the Pavillon de l'Arsenal urban planning center and museum, who had never been elected before (Waller, who won 3%).
"Now I have only one obsession: to unite all the Socialists and the left, and to win the battle against the right," said Grégoire, speaking before a euphoric crowd of his supporters, gathered at the cultural venue La Rotonde in Paris' 19 th arrondissement.
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LeMonde
7 days ago
- LeMonde
Bashar al-Assad: France's highest court upholds personal immunity for sitting heads of state
On Friday, July 25, the Cour de Cassation, France's highest court of appeals, decided that the personal immunity granted to sitting heads of state allows for no exceptions. The ruling is a major disappointment for human rights defenders and international law experts fighting against impunity. And as a result, the arrest warrant issued in November 2023 by Parisian investigating judges against former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, who was accused of ordering chemical attacks in the suburbs of Damascus in 2013, has been annulled. This decision was made just days before the 12 th anniversary of the sarin gas attack on Ghouta, which killed around 1,000 to 1,500 people, including several French-Syrians. This decision effectively prevents French courts from prosecuting sitting heads of state, who, like prime ministers and foreign affairs ministers, enjoy personal immunity. The court did not uphold Prosecutor General Rémy Heitz's suggestion that the arrest warrant for al-Assad be maintained by setting aside his personal immunity, since France had not recognized him as the "legitimate sitting head of state" since 2012, given the "mass crimes committed by the Syrian regime."
AFP
25-07-2025
- AFP
Story of dead surgeon linked to Brigitte Macron is fabricated
"Surgeon linked to Brigitte Macron transgender speculation found dead," says a July 3, 2025 post on X. "Solidifies suspicion that Macron is married to an XY Groomer." The video opens by showing first responders parked below a Parisian building, with a voiceover and subtitles claiming it is the site where the surgeon, François Faivre, fell to his death. The clip goes on to depict what purports to be an interview with the dead man's sister, Anne Dupont. Then it claims to show a portion of an initial interview the surgeon gave about Brigitte Macron to the magazine Closer before his death. "According to Ms. Dupont, her brother is a colleague of the famous doctor Patrick Bui," the subtitles say. "François Faivre had promised journalists he would shed light on the controversial surgical operations of Mrs. Brigitte Macron." The rumor that a surgeon died before releasing further information on Brigitte Macron spread in articles and in posts across Facebook, Instagram, Threads, TikTok and YouTube. The claims were widespread in French and also appeared in Catalan, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese and Russian. Many posts reference the "Enquête du jour" website, where the video and an accompanying article appear to have originated. Image Screenshot of an X post taken July 25, 2025 Image Screenshot of an Instagram post taken July 25, 2025 The claims followed years of transphobic disinformation targeting the French first lady. In January, Owens released the "Becoming Brigitte" series, which claimed without substantive evidence that Brigitte Macron was not only formerly a man, but also Emmanuel Macron's blood relative. It also alleged Emmanuel Macron became France's president as part of CIA mind-control program, reigniting longstanding French conspiracy theories. On July 23, the Macrons filed a defamation suit against Owens in the US state of Delaware. More iterations of the dead-doctor narrative followed. "Of course they waited until now the file this lawsuit," says one July 24 Facebook post. "The doctor who did Brigitte's surgeries conveniently died last month." But like Owens's allegations about Brigitte Macron's gender history, the online claims that her surgeon died under suspicious circumstances are unfounded. The doctor referenced in the claims does not appear to exist, and the purported news reports cite evidence that is manipulated or entirely invented. The fabricated "François Faivre" The video claims François Faivre worked at the American Hospital of Paris alongside Patrick Bui, who supposedly spoke to him about Brigitte Macron undergoing a transgender surgery operation. While Bui does appear on the hospital's website, the medical center told AFP July 8 it had "no record of a cosmetic surgeon named François Faivre being able to practice there" (archived here). Searches of the French health insurance directory surfaced no matching results for a doctor named "François Faivre." Image Screenshot of the French state health insurance directory taken July 25, 2025 The video's depiction of the alleged doctor further suggests his identity was invented. The rail moulding on the wall disappears abruptly, and one of the hanging certificates trails off into illegible gibberish -- both common indicators of images generated be artificial intelligence. Image Screenshot of a YouTube video taken July 25, 2025 with highlights added by AFP AFP attempted to identify "François Faivre" by plugging the video's visuals into the facial-recognition tool PimEyes. The results uncovered an image of an individual on the iStock photo bank of Getty Images, published May 28, 2017 (archived here). Image Screenshots of an X post and the iStock photo library both taken July 25, 2025 The same face appears in different pieces of commercial content that are otherwise disconnected (archived here, here, here and here). AI technologies can create deceptive content based off existing photos. Further inconsistencies Other elements of the supposed report showed evidence of manipulation. For example, the images of the alleged crime scene are actually footage of Paris that AFP published October 15, 2022, nearly three years before the surgeon was claimed to have died (archived here). Image Screenshot of a Facebook post taken July 25, 2025 Image Screenshot of an AFP YouTube video taken July 25, 2025 The deepfake detector in the Verification Plugin, also known as InVID-WeVerify, assessed that the voices in the video were "very likely generated by AI." Image Screenshot of the results accessed via the Verification Plugin tool on July 25, 2025 The shot of the doctor's supposed sister also shows signs of manipulation. The size of her eyes changes frequently, while her blinking appears irregular, again pointing towards the use of . Image Screenshot of a video on the Enquête du jour website taken July 7, 2025 Invented reports, impersonated journalists Closer, the magazine alleged to have interviewed the surgeon, confirmed to AFP July 11, 2025 that none of its journalists had ever spoken to the supposed doctor. The "Enquête du jour" website that laundered the claims, meanwhile, was created June 25 -- just one week before the article appeared -- according to domain registration data (archived here). The site was registered in Delaware under the name "Ano Nymous." As of July 25, the site is no longer available. Image Screenshot of search results for the site taken July 7, 2025 The site's articles also appropriated the identities of at least six French journalists. Audrey Parmentier, whose byline accompanied the report about the surgeon's death, confirmed to French media she did not author the stories on the website. Freelance journalist Aurélien Defer told AFP July 3 he was "completely taken aback" to discover he had been impersonated. "From what I understand, almost all of the published articles serve to give this site the appearance of a reliable and general information source in order to be able to spread false information about Brigitte Macron," he said. Image Screenshot of Enquête du jour taken July 3, 2025 Defer said the method of impersonating journalists resembled Russian disinformation campaigns, a connection also made by the misinformation monitoring service NewsGuard. NewsGuard wrote the "François Faivre" claim used similar tactics to the Russian influence operation Storm-1516 (archived here). Brigitte Macron is among a group of influential women -- including former US first lady Michelle Obama and Canada's Diana Fox Carney -- about whom AFP has debunked gendered disinformation.
LeMonde
24-07-2025
- LeMonde
French culture minister's corruption trial complicates Paris' political landscape
More than the order for Culture Minister Rachida Dati to stand trial for alleged corruption and influence peddling on Tuesday, July 22, it was her fierce attacks on the judges in response to the decision that stunned France's political class. "When you are a public official, when you are a minister, you don't attack judges. We are not Trump's America; we are the French Republic," said Clément Beaune, a former MP for Paris from Macron's Renaissance party, speaking on France 2 on Wednesday. Pierre-Yves Bournazel, the center-right Horizons party's candidate for the Paris mayoral elections, also criticized Dati, who will likely be one of his rivals in the race for city hall: "Dati's constant drama cannot be the alpha and omega of the Paris campaign," said Bournazel, who wants to "bring the project back to the center of the debate" and presents himself as a "bulwark against the Trump-ification of Parisian political life." President Emmanuel Macron and Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin spoke out in support of Dati, and their statements even provoked reactions within their own camp. "The fact that the president and the justice minister, both responsible for the proper functioning of the judiciary, rushed to the rescue of Ms. Dati, shocks all those for whom the promise of irreproachable ethics and the renewal of political practices heavily influenced their decision to join Emmanuel Macron in 2017," said Gilles Le Gendre, a former Renaissance MP for Paris. "A minister must leave the government when charged," Macron had said in 2017.
