French ex-president Sarkozy stripped of Legion of Honor medal over corruption scandal
The decision was made via a decree released in the Journal Officiel that publishes the government's major legal information. It comes in line with the rules of the Legion of Honor.
The conservative politician, who was president from 2007 to 2012, has been at the heart of a series of legal cases since leaving office.
He was found guilty of corruption and influence peddling by both a Paris court in 2021 and an appeals court in 2023 for trying to bribe a magistrate in exchange for information about a legal case in which he was implicated.
He was sentenced to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet for one year, a verdict upheld by France's highest court, the Court of Cassation, in December.
Earlier this year, Sarkozy stood trial over allegations he received millions of dollars from Libya for his successful presidential campaign in 2007. He denies the claims. Prosecutors requested a seven-year prison sentence. The verdict is expected in September.
Sarkozy becomes the second former head of state to be stripped of the Legion of Honor — France's highest distinction — after Nazi collaborator Philippe Petain, who was convicted in 1945 for treason and conspiring with the enemy for his actions as leader of Vichy France from 1940-1944.
Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was stripped of his Legion of Honor award in the wake of widespread sexual misconduct allegations against him in 2017. Disgraced cyclist and former Tour de France star Lance Armstrong also had his French Legion of Honor award revoked.
Sarkozy retired from public life in 2017 though still plays an influential role in French conservative politics.
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San Francisco Chronicle
10 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
You really can see Russia from Alaska, and other things to know ahead of Friday's Trump-Putin summit
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Alaska has been U.S. territory since 1867, and it has since been the location of the only World War II battle on North American soil, a focus of Cold War tensions and the site of occasional meetings between U.S. and world leaders. Here's a look at Alaska's history with Russia and on the international stage: The fur traders established hubs in Sitka and on Kodiak Island. The Russian population in Alaska never surpassed about 400 permanent settlers, according to the Office of the Historian of the U.S. State Department. Russian settlers brutally coerced Alaska Natives to harvest sea otters and other marine mammals for their pelts, said Ian Hartman, a University of Alaska Anchorage history professor. 'It was a relationship that the Russians made clear quite early on was not really about kind of a longer-term pattern of settlement, but it was much more about a short-term pattern of extraction,' Hartman said. 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During the Cold War, military leaders worried Soviets might attack via Alaska, flying planes over the North Pole to drop nuclear weapons. They built a chain of radar systems connected to an anti-aircraft missile system. The military constructed much of the infrastructure in Alaska, including roads and some communities, and its experience building on permafrost later informed the private companies that would drill for oil and construct the trans-Alaska pipeline. Last year the Pentagon said the U.S. must invest more to upgrade sensors, communications and space-based technologies in the Arctic to keep pace with China and Russia, and it sent about 130 soldiers to a desolate Aleutian island amid an increase in Russian military planes and vessels approaching U.S. territory. Past visits by dignitaries Putin will be the first Russian leader to visit, but other prominent figures have come before him. Japanese Emperor Hirohito stopped in Anchorage before heading to Europe in 1971 to meet President Richard Nixon, and in 1984 thousands turned out to see President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II meet at the airport in Fairbanks. President Barack Obama visited in 2015, becoming the first sitting U.S. president to set foot north of the Arctic Circle, on a trip to highlight the dangers of climate change. Gov. Bill Walker welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping at the airport in Anchorage in 2017 and then took him on a short tour of the state's largest city. Four years later Anchorage was the setting for a less cordial meeting as top U.S. and Chinese officials held two days of contentious talks in their first face-to-face meeting since President Joe Biden took office two months earlier. Critics say Alaska is a poor choice for the summit Sentiment toward Russia in Alaska has cooled since Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022. The Anchorage Assembly voted unanimously to suspend its three-decade-long sister city relationship with Magadan, Russia, and the Juneau Assembly sent its sister city of Vladivostock a letter expressing concern. The group Stand Up Alaska has organized rallies against Putin on Thursday and Friday. Dimitry Shein, who ran unsuccessfully for Alaska's lone seat in the U.S. House in 2018, fled from the Soviet Union to Anchorage with his mother in the early 1990s. He expressed dismay that Trump has grown increasingly authoritarian. Russia and the U.S. 'are just starting to look more and more alike,' he said. Many observers have suggested that holding the summit in Alaska sends a bad symbolic message. 'It's easy to imagine Putin making the argument during his meetings with Trump that, 'Well, look, territories can change hands,'' said Nigel Gould-Davies, former British Ambassador to Belarus and senior fellow at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London. ''We gave you Alaska. 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Politico
an hour ago
- Politico
North Korean and Russian leaders reaffirm alignment over Ukraine
Russian President Vladimir Putin praised North Korean troops for their 'bravery, heroism and self-sacrificing spirit' on his front lines. Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un pose in Pyongyang, North Korea, on June 19, 2024. | Kristina Kormilitsyna, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP By Associated Press 08/12/2025 10:56 PM EDT SEOUL, South Korea — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a phone call to discuss their deepening ties and war efforts against Ukraine, the countries' state media said Wednesday, ahead of Putin's planned meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Alaska. Putin during the call on Tuesday praised the 'bravery, heroism and self-sacrificing spirit' displayed by North Korean troops as they fought with Russian forces to repel a Ukrainian incursion into Russia's Kursk border region, North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency said. Putin also shared with Kim information about his upcoming talks with Trump scheduled to take place Friday in Alaska, according to Russia's TASS news agency, citing the Kremlin. The North Korean reports did not mention the Trump meeting.
Epoch Times
an hour ago
- Epoch Times
US State Department Spotlights Beijing's Global Repression in New Report
The State Department has called out the Chinese regime for intimidating and exacting reprisals against targets globally to advance its political goals. In its long-anticipated international human rights report, published on Aug. 12, the department noted the wide-ranging ways the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP's) campaign takes form, including assaults, harassment, hacking, anonymous threats, and bullying through proxies. Victims of the regime's long-arm tactics, often called transnational repression, are wide ranging, with the report listing ethnic Uyghurs, spiritual practitioners, dissidents, foreign journalists, and Chinese students and faculty members studying outside China as common targets. The department cited research by the D.C.-based nonprofit Freedom House, which found that the CCP is responsible for 'the most comprehensive and sophisticated' transnational repression campaign in the world, at times co-opting other countries' institutions to force targeted individuals back to China—where they're often in danger of persecution. One of the most prominent episodes took place during CCP leader Xi Jinping's visit to San Francisco for the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in late 2023. During the multi-day event, protesters arranged through Chinese foreign influence programs, attacked pro-democracy activists with flagpoles and chemical spray, the State Department's report said. There have been repercussions for these transnational acts of violent repression. In May, the Justice Department indicted two men for allegedly harassing and surveilling a victim by installing a tracking device on the victim's car and slashing their tires in an effort to stop them from protesting Xi's trip. The report noted the case of a former Chinese undercover agent who after defecting to Australia, revealed his 15-year-long involvement in targeting Chinese dissidents in several countries under orders from the CCP's secret police operating on foreign soil. The agent, Eric, in 2024 told The Epoch Times that his handler in 2021 asked him to locate a Thailand-based Falun Gong practitioner who had fled China to escape the CCP's persecution of his faith. The handler, in assigning him the job, gave him photos showing the name and location of the target's apartment, as well as several photos of the man and his family. The victim, Li Guixin, confirmed that one of these photos was never previously posted on the internet. Threats from the CCP have also been experienced by the international media. In June 2024, a French reporter and a French filmmaker received threatening phone calls from a China-based number, following the broadcast of their documentary about the attempted forced repatriation of a Chinese dissident, the State Department reports. According to Reporters Without Borders, an unidentified individual hacked into the journalists' group chat on an encrypted app, sending Chinese-language messages asking them not to release the film. Those reporters weren't alone in being hacked by agents of the CCP. The United States has, in recent years, identified a number of Chinese state-sponsored cyber attackers like Salt Typhoon and i-Soon—whose victims include The Epoch Times—that pilfer intelligence from Western governments, civil groups, and others deemed to suit the regime's interests. 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The report named dozens of political prisoners: pastors, a Catholic bishop, Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetans, Uyghurs, rights lawyers, scholars, and others. The report covers the 2024 calendar year before the Trump administration began. The text underwent revisions in March, which the department said was made to improve readability and better align with the legislative and presidential mandates of the new administration. It pared down the volume of content focused on abuses based on gender identity. Regarding the 'China' section of the report, Nina Shea, who has served on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom for over a decade, said the information only 'scratches the surface of the Chinese Communist Party's human rights atrocities and violations.' 'I understand the need not to duplicate the annual reports on religious freedom and human trafficking but that leaves a big hole in this report, since religious communities across the board are the largest CCP targets today,' she told The Epoch Times. She said the report 'would benefit with stand alone sections on China's surveillance system as a method of control and limitation on individual freedom, as well as ones on the CCP's social credit system, ideological indoctrination measures, forced ethnic assimilation, and one on forced organ harvesting and other coerced bio- and medical interventions.' The report should also expand sources to include the various Justice Department cases against CCP agents and spies in the United States, who have targeted Chinese American members of religious and political groups that the regime has labelled the 'five poisons' to the CCP, she said, calling the omission a 'major oversight' in the transnational repression section. 'A fuller picture is needed to accurately describe the totalitarian suppression of human rights under CCP rule today,' she said. The China report was part of the department's set of Country Reports on Human Rights Practices delivered annually to Congress.
