death

This month marked the 20th anniversary of the death, on January 8th 1996 at the age of 79, of François Mitterrand, the first socialist president to be elected under France’s Fifth Republic. He served two successive terms in office from 1981 until 1995, during which time current president, François Hollande, and other leading Socialist Party figures received their political schooling. Mediapart editor-in-chief Edwy Plenel takes stock of Mitterrand’s legacy of which, he argues here, the socialists now in power have retained only the dark side.

One of the 'New Philosophers', he left Marxism to become an anti-totalitarianism militant, and later supported Nicolas Sarkozy's bid for president.

The man, believed to be Syrian, was killed in the Channel Tunnel's French entrance as he tried to climb a Britain-bound freight shuttle.

The Slovakian, 25, died in extreme conditions in a tough Horn of Africa desert training camp after he was refused water and made to climb steep slope.

Béart, 85, whose career spans six decades, died of a heart attack as he walked to his hairdresser just nine months after a farewell concert.

The death of labour minister Robert Boulin was officially recorded as suicide, but strong evidence suggests an official cover-up of his murder.

The Jack Russell, which played Jean Dujardin's dog in The Artist and appeared in Water for Elephants, was suffering from a prostate tumour.

The enquiry was opened in 2012 after the Palestinian leader's widow filed complaint he had been murdered by poisoning with polonium-210.

Bianchi, 25, who died in Nice, had been in a coma since crashing at high speed into a mobile crane at the Japanese Grand Prix in October 2014.

A police source said the UK-bound man fell off a freight carriage he mounted in France, the second migrant death in the tunnel in a month.

The young woman was shot in the head when a car drove by with a passenger firing a hunting rifle to 'add to the atmosphere' of a wedding.

The couple died after their car was in a collison with a bus near Beziers, close to Narbonne whose rugby team Collins joined in January.

The male victim was on a sail trip with friends off the French Pacific Ocean archipelago when a bull shark attacked him metres from their boat.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula announced death of Nasr bin Ali al-Ansi, who claimed his group organised attack on French magazine staff.

A 28-year-old man has been arrested after the body of David King, 70, who went missing last October, was found in a well in his garden.