Man arrested in Paris for allegedly planning terror attack with Louvre as potential target
French police officers stand in front of the Louvre Museum after a robbery in Paris, France, on October 19, 2025. Robbers break into the Louvre and flee with jewelry on the morning of October 19, 2025. (Photo by Jerome Gilles/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
(PARIS) — A man was arrested in France for allegedly planning a terror attack that may have sought to target the Louvre Museum in Paris, according to the French Interior Ministry and prosecutors in Paris.
Officials told ABC News the investigation began after the suspect was stopped by police in Paris on April 28, where he was allegedly driving with a forged license. Officials said the man’s phone was accessed after that traffic stop.
The Interior Ministry said the attack that was allegedly being planned would probably have targeted the museum, which is the world’s most-visited, but said the man was arrested before details of the attack had been fully formulated.
Police said the suspect also was planning an attack specifically targeting members of the Jewish community in Paris, the ministry said.
The man, a 27-year-old Tunisian national, was arrested on May 7 and was in pre-trial detention, officials said. ABC News has reached out to the man’s lawyer for comment.
An investigation was opened on Monday “on the grounds of terrorist association with the goal to commit crimes against individuals,” according to the French Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office.
Investigators accessed the suspect’s phone, officials said, and found jihadist propaganda videos, hundreds of images of firearms and knives, ISIS-related imagery used on social media and encrypted communications with overseas contacts, who are believed to be potentially linked to extremist networks.
The suspect, according to what was found on his devices, discussed knowledge of access routes into the Louvre, possible placement of explosives inside the museum and production of ricin toxin, officials said.
The man who was arrested arrived in Europe via Lampedusa, Italy, in 2022 and was residing in the Paris region without residency status, officials told ABC News.
Investigators reported to prosecutors that the suspect denied any intent to commit a crime during questioning, claiming his activities were driven by “curiosity” about ISIS ideology.
South Korean President Lee Jae-myung takes an oath during his inauguration at the National Assembly on June 04, 2025 in Seoul, South Korea. (Photo by Anthony Wallace – Pool/Getty Images)
(SEOUL, South Korea) — South Korea’s ruling Democratic Party swept nationwide local elections Wednesday, tightening President Lee Jae Myung’s grip on power one year into his term, though the conservative opposition captured Seoul’s mayor’s office.
The vote drew 61% turnout, the highest for a local election in three decades.
Lee enters his second year Thursday with approval ratings around 60%, according to South Korea’s major pollsters. That is the second-highest at the one-year mark since 1987, behind only former President Moon Jae-in.
When South Koreans elected Lee a year ago, they did so in the wreckage of a constitutional crisis after then-President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law on Dec. 3, 2024, vowing to “eradicate the anti-state forces.”
He sent troops toward the National Assembly to stop lawmakers from voting it down. The attempt failed within hours, and Yoon was impeached and removed by the Constitutional Court four months later, triggering the snap election that made Lee president.
Governing out loud
Lee has made the presidency unusually public. He live-streams weekly cabinet meetings, a first in Korean history, and his office briefs on camera far more than its predecessor.
Lee also uses social media to announce policy, rebut coverage he disputes, take questions and air his opinions — often without the vetting a formal statement would get. Aides call it a deliberate effort to reach citizens directly rather than through the traditional layers of staff that usually filter a president.
“Unlike politicians before him, he’s citizen-friendly — clearly distinct,” said Park Myoung-ho, a political science professor at Dongguk University.
His style has drawn criticism, however. In May, Lee used social media to attack Starbucks Korea over a promotion that critics linked to a 1980 massacre of pro-democracy protesters, branding the company “low-grade profiteers” guilty of “gutter-level behavior.”
“Given how much power a president holds, it’s too direct and too unfiltered,” said Lee Hyun-woo, who teaches political process at Sogang University and warned that the president’s posts are often misread because Koreans are used to presidents speaking in measured, formal language.
A record-breaking market
The benchmark KOSPI, which bottomed out near 2,300 in April 2025 after President Donald Trump’s tariffs, has surged to a record high above 8,700, blowing past Lee’s campaign pledge to reach 5,000. The rally has been catalyzed by a global boom in semiconductors and AI infrastructure that has lifted companies like Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.
But rising share prices have not reached many ordinary households across the country and home prices around Seoul are starting to climbing again and is testing one of Lee’s central promises.
Walking the line between Washington and Beijing
Lee’s central foreign-policy bet has been that South Korea no longer has to choose between its U.S. alliance and its largest trading partner, China — an approach his government calls “national-interest-centered pragmatism” — and within seven months of taking office, he had held summits with the leaders of the United States, China and Japan.
“On foreign policy, he’s done better than expected,” said Shin Yul, a political science and diplomacy professor at Myongji University.
But the results have been mixed. Lee repaired ties with Japan, but his January state visit to Beijing largely fell flat.
His pragmatism faced a major test in February when the war between Iran and a U.S.-Israeli coalition threatened the Strait of Hormuz, the route for much of South Korea’s oil imports.
Lee’s government leaned on national reserves, increased purchases of U.S. crude and secured replacement supplies from outside the region. A senior presidential official said the effort, together with the market’s resilience, helped keep Lee’s approval ratings steady through the spring.
Two presidents, two reckonings
In February, a Seoul court sentenced former President Yoon to life in prison for the martial-law attempt; his former defense minister got 30 years. To Lee’s supporters it was accountability for an assault on democracy. To Yoon’s base, it felt like political revenge.
But Lee carries his own legal shadow. He took office facing five criminal trials, including corruption, subornation of perjury and illegal fund transfers to North Korea, which were all frozen once he became president.
His Democratic Party then went further by pushing a special counsel that could cancel the charges against him outright — a move Lee declined to endorse or oppose publicly.
To Shin, the silence was strategic. Lee’s side, he said, “will try to get the charges dropped,” likely using the special counsel “to pursue cancellation of the cases against him.”
The push drew public backlash and many analysts read the local-election result as a warning from voters wary of a governing party clearing its own leader.
“This may be President Lee’s Achilles’ heel,” said Park. “I suspect he himself feels a real burden over it.”
For Lee Hyun-woo, the principle is simple: “Serving well and being remembered as a great president, and paying for crimes committed in the past, are entirely separate matters.”
ABC News’ Hakyung Kate Lee contributed to this report.
Smoke rises from Dahieh as the Israeli Army bombs the area after issuing a forced evacuation order in Beirut, Lebanon, on March 5, 2026. (Photo by Houssam Shbaro/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(BEIRUT) — Intense bombardments continue to hit the Dahiyeh suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, as Israel says it is targeting Hezbollah in a wave of attacks that began midnight local time Friday.
At least 217 people have been killed and 798 others have been wounded in Israeli attacks on Lebanon that began early Monday, the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health said Thursday.
The Israel Defense Forces said it struck Hezbollah command centers and multi-story structures in Beirut overnight. An ABC News crew on the ground observed nearly two dozen missile strikes hitting Dahiyeh alone.
A number of buildings were seen collapsing in this wave of strikes on Friday as the death toll continues to rise, an ABC News team in Lebanon observed.
The IDF said it attacked more than 500 targets in Lebanon, killing more than 70 Hezbollah members, IDF spokesperson Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said at a briefing on Friday.
“Hezbollah and the Iranian regime are one. They continue to destroy the state of Lebanon and harm the lives of Lebanese residents,” he said.
Hezbollah responded with several rockets headed south toward Israel overnight, an ABC News team in Lebanon observed.
The latest wave of strikes followed a warning by the IDF to anyone south of the Litani River in Lebanon to evacuate. The IDF warned everyone living in Dahiyeh on Thursday afternoon to evacuate the neighborhood ahead of pending military strikes.
Hundreds of thousands of people were forced to flee Dahiyeh, according to Lebanese officials.
Overnight, families who fled the neighborhood were seen lighting fires for warmth. Some had tents while others were forced to sleep on the streets with blankets, ABC News observed.
The Lebanese government is actively engaging with intermediaries, including the French and the American ambassador, to try and put pressure on the Israeli government to stop the bombardments, according to Lebanese officials.
Israeli forces have said that they are stepping up their military campaign against Hezbollah infrastructure and leadership in Dahiyeh.
Ahead of the attack on Iran, Israel launched strikes against targets in Baalbek, east Lebanon, in February, saying it killed “several” members of Hezbollah’s missile unit in three different locations.
This week’s strikes were the first time Israel struck Beirut, in central Lebanon, since June 2025.
The Israeli military warned Tuesday that Hezbollah “will pay a heavy price” after the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group fired rockets into northern Israel overnight Monday into Tuesday.
Immediately after the rocket fire, the IDF “launched a large-scale attack against Hezbollah terrorist targets throughout Lebanon, including Beirut,” according to Defrin.
“We attacked dozens of the organization’s headquarters and launch sites,” Defrin said. “We attacked senior commanders. Some of the last surviving senior veterans of this organization. We are currently examining the results of the attack.”
Defrin noted that “forces are deployed along the border in front and are prepared to continue the defense and attack as long as they require.”
A man with extinguisher extinguishes a fire on car in the city center after Russian aerial attack on May 5, 2026 in Kramatorsk, Ukraine. (Photo by Oleksandr Magula/Suspilne Ukraine/JSC “UA:PBC”/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)
(LONDON) — Russia’s Defense Ministry reported a major Ukrainian drone attack overnight into Thursday morning, with Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin reporting that dozens of Ukrainian craft were intercepted while flying toward the capital.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Telegram that its forces intercepted at least 427 Ukrainian drones and through Thursday morning. Moscow only publishes the number of Ukrainian drones and other projectiles it claims to have intercepted.
Sobyanin said that as of Thursday afternoon, at least 41 drones were shot down while flying toward the capital. Emergency responders, he said in posts to Telegram, were responding to several sites where falling drone debris was reported.
Ukraine’s air force said that Russia also continued its long-range attacks overnight. The air force said on Telegram that Moscow launched 102 drones into the country overnight, of which 92 were intercepted or suppressed. Eight drones impacted across six locations, the air force said.
Ukraine’s State Emergency Services said that at least four people were injured by Russian strikes in the southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region, one other person was injured by a Russian attack in the northeastern Sumy region and seven people — among them two children — were injured in Kharkiv.
Cross-border attacks have continued despite both Kyiv and Moscow announcing their own rival temporary ceasefires.
Russian President Vladimir Putin this week announced a unilateral truce on May 8 and May 9 to coincide with annual “Victory Day” celebrations, which mark the anniversary of the end of the Second World War.
Zelenskyy then said Ukraine would observe its own 24-hour ceasefire beginning at midnight on May 5. Russia did not partake in the truce, continuing missile and drone strikes across Ukraine as well as frontline activities.
Zelenskyy said in a Wednesday statement, “We can confirm that the Russian side has derailed the ceasefire regime,” adding that Kyiv would decide on possible subsequent actions.
“Ukraine clearly stated that it would act in kind, taking into account Russia’s persistent appeals through the media and social networks asking for a ceasefire during the Moscow parade,” Zelenskyy said, referring to the planned military event in Moscow’s Red Square on May 9.
Russia’s Defense Ministry warned that it would “launch a retaliatory, massive missile strike on the center of Kyiv” if Ukraine attacked the Victory Day celebrations.
On Thursday, Zelenskyy again criticized Moscow’s continued attacks. “Russia continues killing people while being completely irrationally concerned only about a few hours of silence in one part of Moscow,” he said in a statement, referring to the May 9 celebrations.
“Ukraine will act fairly — day by day. We proposed silence beginning at midnight on May 6. Yesterday and today, this regime has been violated by Russia,” Zelenskyy added.
“In a mirror response and in reply to Russian strikes, our long-range sanctions will follow; in response to Russia’s readiness to move toward diplomacy, we will move along the path of diplomacy,” he added.
