This is no doubt a momentous day for Hollande, who had pledged to legalize same-sex marriage during his first year in office, and succeeded in doing so despite vociferous protests from swaths of his citizenry. No actual same-sex marriage figures to be conducted until the 29th, as French law states that a marriage license must be filed ten days prior to the ceremony.
France legalizes gay marriage despite angry protests
(Photo: AFP - Getty Images)
France became the 14th country in the world to allow same-sex couples to wed Tuesday, when its parliament approved a law that has sparked often violent street protests and a rise in homophobic attacks.
A big day for our French friends, no doubt. The law goes a step further than just marriage, as well — it also grants adoption rights to same-sex couples.
A car exploded outside the French embassy in the Libyan capital Tripoli Tuesday morning in what was likely a planned attack. No group has claimed responsibility for the explosion, which wounded two French security guards and damaged part of the embassy’s compound.
French President Francois Hollande has called on Libya to investigate the bombing, which reportedly killed nobody, but injured three: “France expects the Libyan authorities to shed the fullest light on this unacceptable act, so that the perpetrators are identified and brought to justice.”
On Saturday, March 2, at noon, Chadian armed forces operating in northern Mali completely destroyed a terrorist base. …The toll included several dead terrorists, including their leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar.A statement from the Chadian armed forces • Announcing the killing of Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an al-Qaeda commander who claimed responsibility for masterminding a lethal hostage situation at an Algerian gas plant in January. Chad’s President Idriss Deby also announced Friday that his forces had killed Adelhamid Abou Zeid, another prominent al-Qaeda commander, in the same area as the attack that killed Belmokhtar. The French, who launched jet strikes on mountain regions in Northern Mali believed to house bases for Islamic militants, have not yet confirmed the deaths of either Belmokhtar or Abou Zeid. source
This is the final phase of the process since it is in that massif [the Ifoghas mountains] that AQIM forces have probably regrouped. Our Chadian friends launched an attack yesterday which was very harsh with significant loss of life. I want to praise what the Chadians are doing.French President Francois Hollande • Speaking on his nation’s military collaboration, along with African forces, against al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, a militant group in Mali now waging a weakening insurgency in the country’s far north. The group had claimed control of broad swaths of northern Mali in 2012, causing the government to request international military help, which Hollande and France (Mali was a French colony until 1960) have provided in the form of 4,000 soldiers deployed. And lest you think there’s a military operation of this sort the United States isn’t involved in, predator drones have been offered to the effort as well, which U.S. officials claim will be used to glean deployment information. source
I just want to say thank you from myself and the people of Mali - Vive la France! I hope Francois Hollande continues to help us and that that we can stay free like this.Timbuktu resident Bena Abdel Kadir • Praising France and President Francois Hollande for approving military engagement in Mali, where the French have been fighting, aided by Malian forces, to uproot an Islamic rebel movement now contained in their lone remaining stronghold, the northeastern city of Kidal. Timbuktu, also in northern Mali, was freed from rebel control by this collaboration, and reports of the scene when Hollande visited suggest a great deal of jubilance towards the French leader, who pledged to keep troops in Mali “as long as necessary,” until state sovereignty has been restored. In other words, an open-ended military engagement, the sort of which has become dubiously familiar to the international community over the last decade. source
Al Qaeda-linked Islamist rebels launched a counteroffensive in Mali on Monday after four days of French air strikes on their northern strongholds, seizing the central town of Diabaly and promising to drag France into a brutal Afghanistan-style war.
France, which has poured hundreds of troops into the capital Bamako in recent days, carried out more air strikes on Monday in the vast desert area seized last year by an Islamist alliance grouping al Qaeda’s north African wing AQIM alongside Mali’s home-grown MUJWA and Ansar Dine militant groups.
“France has opened the gates of hell for all the French,” said Oumar Ould Hamaha, a spokesman for MUJWA, which has imposed strict sharia, Islamic law, in its northern fiefdom of Gao. “She has fallen into a trap which is much more dangerous than Iraq, Afghanistan or Somalia,” he told Europe 1 radio.
The UN is already estimating that approximately 230,000 people have been displaced by the fighting in Mali, and the French government has heightened security in many public locations to prevent a possible retaliatory attacks on France’s civilian population. President Francois Hollande was also sure to specify that France’s only goal in Mali is to support the mission of a 15-member group of West African nations which received United Nations support back in December. source
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French court bans future publication of Kate topless pictures
BBC:
A French court has blocked the future publication of topless photos of the Duchess of Cambridge sunbathing.
The injunction came after the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge took action against France’s Closer magazine for selling and distributing the images.
The publishers must give the originals to the couple within 24 hours.
Photo via AFP
Don’t mess with the royal family.
The English-speaking girl was discovered around midnight on Wednesday, huddled between the front and back seats of the British-registered BMW, under the legs of two dead women thought to be her mother and grandmother, a public prosecutor said.
Apparently too scared to move, she went unnoticed by police for some eight hours until investigators finally opened the doors of the car, standing on a forest road near Lake Annecy, to begin a close forensic inspection.
“She’s clearly shocked but she’s doing okay. She’s not injured,” Annecy prosecutor Eric Maillaud told reporters in a late-night briefing.
Four people were found killed in the attack in the French Alps — the young girl’s presumed parents and grandmother, and a local cyclist who had been reported missing.
EDIT: Corrected direction of the flight — which was headed FROM Rio De Janeiro to Paris.
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