French language

The Grand Duchess Charlotte Bridge (Luxembourgish: Groussherzogin-Charlotte-Bréck, French: Pont Grande-Duchesse Charlotte, German: Großherzogin-Charlotte-Brücke) is a road bridge in Luxembourg City, in southern Luxembourg. It carries the N51 across the Alzette, connecting Avenue John F. Kennedy, in Kirchberg, to Boulevard Robert Schuman, in Limpertsberg. The bridge is also known as the Red Bridge (Luxembourgish: Rout Bréck, German: Rote Brücke, French: Pont Rouge) on account of its distinctive red paintwork. It is the main route connecting the city centre, Ville Haute, to Kirchberg, the site of the city's European Union institutions.

Luxembourg's 100 communes (Luxembourgish: Gemengen [ɡəˈmæŋən]; French: communes; German: Gemeinden) conform to LAU Level 2 and are the country's lowest administrative divisions.

Communes rank below cantons in Luxembourg's hierarchy of administrative subdivisions. Communes are often re-arranged, being merged or divided as demanded by demographic change over time. Unlike the cantons, which have remained unchanged since their creation, the identity of the communes has not become ingrained within the geographical sensations of the average Luxembourger. The cantons are responsible for the ceremonial, administrative, and statistical aspects of government, while the communes provide local government services.

Mayotte (/maɪˈɒt/ my-OT; French: Mayotte, [majɔt] ; Shimaore: Maore, IPA: [maˈore]; Kibushi: Maori, IPA: [maˈori]), officially the Department of Mayotte (French: Département de Mayotte), is an overseas department and region and single territorial collectivity of France. It is one of the overseas departments of France as well as one of the 18 regions of France, with the same status as the departments of Metropolitan France. It is an outermost region of the European Union and, as an overseas department of France, part of the eurozone.

Mayotte is located in the northern part of the Mozambique Channel in the western Indian Ocean off the coast of Southeastern Africa, between the northwestern part of the island of Madagascar and northeastern Mozambique on the continent. Mayotte consists of a main island, Grande-Terre (or Maore), a smaller island, Petite-Terre (or Pamanzi), as well as several islets around these two. Mayotte's land area is 374 square kilometres (144 sq mi) and, with its 320,901 people according to January 2024 official estimates, is very densely populated at 858 inhabitants per km (2,228 per sq mi). The biggest city and prefecture is Mamoudzou on the larger Grande-Terre. The Dzaoudzi–Pamandzi International Airport is located on the neighbouring smaller island of Petite-Terre. The territory is also known as Maore, the native name of its main island.

The Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World; French: La Liberté éclairant le monde) is a colossal neoclassical sculpture of a robed and crowned female on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, within New York City. The copper-clad statue, a gift to the United States from the people of France, was designed by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, and its metal framework built by Gustave Eiffel. The statue was dedicated on October 28, 1886.

The statue is a figure of a classically draped woman, likely inspired by the Roman goddess of liberty, Libertas. In a contrapposto pose, she holds a torch above her head with her right hand, and in her left hand carries a tabula ansata inscribed JULY IV MDCCLXXVI (July 4, 1776, in Roman numerals), the date of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. With her left foot she steps on a broken chain and shackle, commemorating the national abolition of slavery following the American Civil War. After its dedication, the statue became an icon of freedom and of the United States, seen as a symbol of welcome to immigrants arriving by sea.

A county is a type of officially recognized geographical division within a modern country, federal state, or province. Counties are defined in diverse ways, but they are typically current or former official administrative divisions within systems of local government, and in this sense counties are similar to shires, and typically larger than municipalities. Various non-English terms can be translated as "county" or "shire" in other languages, and in English new terms with less historical connection have been invented such as "council area" and "local government district". On the other hand, in older English-speaking countries the word can still refer to traditional historical regions such as some of those which exist in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. The term is also sometimes used for districts with specific non-governmental purposes such as courts, or land registration.

Historically the concept of a geographical administrative "county" is European (from French: comté, Latin: comitatus), and represented the territorial limits of the jurisdiction of a medieval count, or a viscount (French: vîcomte, Latin: vicecomes) supposedly standing in the place of a count. However, there were no such counts in medieval England, and when the French-speaking Normans took control of England after 1066 they transplanted the French and medieval Latin terms to describe the pre-existing Anglo Saxon shires, but they did not establish any system placing the administration of shires under the control of high-level nobles. Instead, although there were exceptions, the officers responsible for administrative functions, such as tax collection, or the mustering of soldiers, were sheriffs, theoretically assigned by the central government, and controlled directly by the monarch.

The Organization of American States (OAS or OEA; Spanish: Organización de los Estados Americanos; Portuguese: Organização dos Estados Americanos; French: Organisation des États américains) is an international organization founded on 30 April 1948 to promote cooperation among its member states within the Americas.

Headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States, the OAS is a "multilateral regional body focused on human rights, electoral oversight, social and economic development, and security in the Western Hemisphere", according to the Council on Foreign Relations. As of November 2023, 32 states in the Americas are OAS members.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO /ˈneɪtoʊ/ NAY-toh; French: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique Nord, OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 32 member states—30 in Europe and 2 in North America. Founded in the aftermath of World War II, NATO was established with the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949. The organization serves as a system of collective security, whereby its independent member states agree to mutual defence in response to an attack by any outside party. This is enshrined in Article 5 of the treaty, which states that an armed attack against one member shall be considered an attack against them all.

Throughout the Cold War, NATO's primary purpose was to deter and counter the threat posed by the Soviet Union and its satellite states, which formed the rival Warsaw Pact in 1955. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the alliance adapted, conducting its first major military interventions in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992–1995) and Yugoslavia (1999). Article 5 was invoked for the first and only time after the September 11 attacks, leading to the deployment of NATO troops to Afghanistan as part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). The alliance has since been involved in a range of roles, including training in Iraq, intervention in Libya in 2011, and countering piracy.

The Europe of Sovereign Nations Group (ESN; French: L'Europe des Nations Souveraines, ENS; German: Europa der Souveränen Nationen) is a far-right political group in the European Parliament, formed on 10 July 2024 as the smallest group ahead of the 10th European Parliament. Its members previously belonged to the Identity and Democracy group, the European Conservatives and Reformists Group or were non-attached.

A letter of credence (French: Lettre de créance, [lɛtʁ də kʁeɑ̃s]) is a formal diplomatic letter that designates a diplomat as ambassador to another sovereign state. Commonly known as diplomatic credentials, the letter is addressed from one head of state to another, asking them to give credence (French: créance) to the ambassador's claim of speaking for their country. The letter is presented personally by the ambassador-designate to the receiving head of state in a formal ceremony, marking the beginning of the ambassadorship.

Letters of credence are traditionally written in French, the lingua franca of diplomacy. However, they may also be written in the official language of the sending state.

The Monetary Convention of 23 December 1865 was a unified system of coinage that provided a degree of monetary integration among several European countries, initially Belgium, France, Italy and Switzerland, at a time when the circulation of banknotes in these countries remained relatively marginal. In early 1866, it started being referred to in the British press as the Latin Monetary Union, with intent to make clear that the United Kingdom would not join, and has been generally referred to under that name (French: union latine) and the acronym LMU since then. A number of countries minted coins according to the LMU standard even though they did not formally join the LMU.

The LMU has been viewed as a forerunner of late-20th-century European monetary union but cannot be directly compared with it, not least since the LMU did not rely on any common institutions. Unlike the Scandinavian Monetary Union established a few years later, the Latin Monetary Union remained limited to coinage and never extended to paper money. That made the LMU increasingly less relevant, and it was quietly disbanded in 1926.