For the mayor of Paris, the city's journey to next year's Olympic Games included an epiphany born of brutality: the slaughter of 17 people by gunmen acting in the names of al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.
Anne Hidalgo says the 2015 attacks at a provocative satirical newspaper and a kosher Parisian supermarket were “truly fundamental" in steering her to the idea of bringing the Games back to the French capital for the first time since 1924. With the country outraged and hurting from the bloodshed, she saw the Olympics as an opportunity for France to rebound and heal.
