Paris
Paris’ popular, gay mayor, Bernard Delanoë, was stabbed this week by an unbalanced man who says he hates “gays and politicians.” Delanoë was strolling through the Hôtel de Ville at 2:30 a.m., listening to one of the bands at the Sleepless Night festival, an all-night extravaganza of concerts across the city that the self-proclaimed “mayor of fun” had organized. Suddenly Azedine Berkane, a 39-year-old Algerian-born Muslim, leaped out of the crowd and plunged a knife into the mayor’s stomach. “The party must go on,” Delanoë gasped, before being whisked to the hospital for emergency surgery. He is expected to recover completely. Berkane, who has a history of psychiatric hospitalization, told police that the mayor’s open homosexuality was an offense to Islam.
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