Read the daily news to learn English

Paris court clears way for Marine Le Pen presidential election run but under conditions she rejects - Europe live

Nato on Tuesday said core defence spending by Europe and Canada rose 11% in 2026, as Donald Trump pressures allies to make good on a vow to ramp up budgets. The latest figures were released as leaders from the 32-nation alliance come face-to-face with Trump at the summit in Ankara. Nato estimated that spending by Europe and Canada in 2026 would hit $634bn from $571bn in 2025, still well off US expenditure on its military. The increase was down on a roughly 19% uptick from 2024 to 2025. As you know, Trump is demanding that allies pick up their pace on fulfilling a pledge to reach 5% of GDP on broader security-related spending by 2035. Nato said that already this year five countries – including Poland and the Baltic states – were hitting that target. But there were some countries that were lagging well behind – with Slovenia at the back of the pack with core defence spending at just 1.61%.

Marine Le Pen’s presidential bid hangs in balance as court orders electronic tag

The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s 2027 presidential bid is hanging in the balance as she was sentenced to wear an electronic ankle tag after being found guilty of embezzling European parliament funds. The Paris court of appeal upheld Le Pen’s ⁠conviction ⁠but shortened her ban ⁠on running for elected office, potentially reopening a narrow path for the far-right leader ‌to stand ‌in the 2027 presidential race. However, ‌the court also handed Le Pen a three-year jail term, with two years suspended and one year spent under house arrest in which she must wear an electronic ankle tag for monitoring. This could make a presidential campaign politically ⁠and logistically difficult. Le Pen, who heads the anti-immigration the National Rally (RN) party, has previously suggested she would not run if she were handed an adjusted custodial sentence in which her movements were restricted or she had to wear an electronic tag. “If I’m allowed to be a candidate but am effectively prevented from campaigning freely, then you understand that wouldn’t be possible,” Le Pen said in an interview last week. Le Pen, who is a member of parliament for the Pas-de-Calais, was in talks at her party headquarters on Tuesday afternoon on whether she could run for president, and whether she should lodge a further appeal with France’s highest court. Her decision to run could depend on the exact restrictions of an electronic tag. Le Pen has said if she cannot go out at night to meet voters at rallies, it would be hard to campaign. The first step for a person ordered to wear an electronic tag is generally a meeting with a special judge, which can take place within weeks or months. The judge will ask about the person’s work schedule in order to establish when they can leave their home wearing a tag and what time they must return home in the evening and at weekends. Le Pen could request a reduction in the length of the sentence to six months. The far-right figurehead was expected to make her first comments on the verdict on French television news on Tuesday night. The Paris court decided that Le Pen, 57, had played a central role in orchestrating a fake-jobs scam of unprecedented size and duration to embezzle European parliament funds and funnel the money into paying her party in Paris between 2004 and 2016. Le Pen’s ban on running for public office was shortened to 15 months – which she has already served – with the remaining 30 months suspended. She was also given a €100,000 (£85,000) fine. Jordan Bardella, 30, who as party president already handles the day-to-day running of the RN, had been on standby as a potential replacement presidential candidate if Le Pen was unable to run. Patrick Maisonneuve, a lawyer for the European parliament, said outside court that the appeal judges had been clear on politicians’ duty of integrity. He said: “If [Marine Le Pen] does not lodge a further appeal, that means she accepts that she is definitively guilty of embezzlement. Can you run for France’s highest office, the presidency, when you have been found guilty of embezzling public funds? That is a political responsibility.” The leftwing MP François Ruffin said: “The very fact that it even crosses our minds that Marine Le Pen might campaign while wearing ‌an electronic tag is a sign that corruption is accepted in our country.” Manon Aubry, of the radical left La France Insoumise, said: “The RN entered politics with the slogan ‘heads held high, hands clean’. They are leaving it with ‘heads bowed, hands dirty’.” Le Pen had been considered one of the top contenders for the 2027 presidency until last March when, after a first trial, she was barred from running for election for five years with immediate effect. She appealed against last year’s verdict and a fresh trial at Paris’s court of appeal was held this year. State prosecutors summing up the case said Le Pen had been at the centre of a “thought-out”, “centralised” and almost “industrial” system to embezzle European parliament funds. They told the court that taxpayer money allocated to members of the European parliament to pay their assistants based in Strasbourg or Brussels was siphoned off by the party from 2004 to 2016 to pay its own workers in France, in violation of the parliament’s rules. The staff in France had no connection to work undertaken at the European parliament, prosecutors said. The loss to European funds was estimated at €4.8m (£4.2m). The party, then called Front National, made substantial savings through the system, the prosecutors said. The system was well documented in email exchanges and party papers. Le Pen had hoped to run for president for a fourth time next spring when Emmanuel Macron’s two terms in office end. She has twice lost to Macron in the final run-off, in 2017 and in 2022, when she increased her score to more than 41%. Le Pen had said before Tuesday’s verdict that if necessary she would support Bardella, her protege, with “energy, confidence and conviction”, adding: “We never give up.”

How heatwaves became a culture war flashpoint | Letters

I agree with George Monbiot that newspaper articles dismissing concern about today’s increasingly hot weather with fond memories of the 1976 heatwave are unhelpful (When the right denies the true danger of heatwaves, ask yourself this: whose children’s lives is it willing to risk?, 1 July). While many rightwing writers remember “just getting on with things and enjoying the sun” during their childhood, what they neglect to mention is that data shows up to 26,364 deaths were recorded between 23 June and 8 July 1976 – 3,676 more than the previous five‑year average for the same dates. The way that deaths increase during heatwaves, as we have seen repeatedly during the 21st century, is no coincidence. Temperature extremes exacerbate chronic conditions, including cardiovascular, respiratory and cerebrovascular diseases, mental health and diabetes-related conditions. The heat is a particular danger not just to children but also to elderly people, especially those living alone, and is an additional burden on pregnant women too. Climate change is no longer simply a possible occurrence in the future that isn’t our problem. We are seeing it now. Scientific evidence shows quite clearly how human activity such as burning fossil fuels has made heatwaves more frequent and more intense, meaning Britain’s population truly needs to be better educated and prepared for summer. Emilie McRae Trowbridge, Wiltshire • George Monbiot rarely misses a trick, but in highlighting how parts of our media play down the effects of heat stress on vulnerable people, he fails to join the dots. Of course, the usual suspect newspapers will have fun arguing that we have all become wimps when faced with hot weather. After all, to acknowledge the reality of unprecedented heat means recognising the frighteningly rapid way that climate change is taking hold and the ever-greater urgency of doing something about it – and that would never do. Adrian Phillips Cheltenham, Gloucestershire • Heat is dangerous. I lived for 55 years in the California desert. I once locked my car keys inside my house and had to walk 15 minutes back to work. It was about 43C and by the time I reached my office, I was feeling faint and my colleagues had to revive me with fluids and wet compresses. I felt unwell for the rest of the day. I have the utmost sympathy for agricultural workers, gardeners, construction workers and others who are often required to work in temperatures above 30C. They shouldn’t have to, nor should children and teachers have to work in hot classrooms. Rosemary A Fletcher-Jones New Milton, Hampshire • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

What does the court ruling mean for Marine Le Pen’s presidential chances?

A Paris court has delivered a ruling on Marine Le Pen’s appeal against her conviction for embezzlement of public funds that could in principle allow France’s far-right figurehead to run in next year’s presidential election. Here is a look at the ruling, the case that led up to it – and what the court’s decision means for the race to succeed Emmanuel Macron as French president. What did the court decide? The appeal court upheld a lower court’s verdict from March 2025 that found Le Pen guilty of misusing EU funds. However, it reduced the length of both parts of the original sentence – a ban on holding public office and a part-suspended jail term. The appeal court handed the three-time presidential candidate, who has transformed her far-right National Rally (RN) from an extreme fringe group to the largest single party in the French parliament, a 45-month ban from office, of which 30 months were suspended. Finding her guilty of misuse of European public funds in her capacity as an MEP and the then president of the RN, it also ruled that Le Pen, 57, must serve a three-year jail term, with two suspended and the third spent under house arrest with an electronic ankle tag. In March 2025, the lower court had sentenced Le Pen to a five-year ban from holding public office, with immediate effect, and a four-year prison term, with two years suspended – in effect putting her fourth run for France’s presidency on hold until an appeal was heard. What was the case about? Along with 23 former MEPs, assistants and accountants, as well as the National Rally as a party, Le Pen was accused of running a system that used money meant for employing European parliamentary assistants to pay staff working for the party in France. The defendants were suspected of having embezzled €4.4m between 2004 and 2016, at first under Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine’s father, and, after 2011, under her. A personal secretary and a bodyguard were among employees declared as parliamentary assistants. “Marine Le Pen asserted herself with authority and determination within the framework established by her father,” the lower court ruled, playing a “central role” in “optimising” a system designed to “save [the party] money thanks to the European parliament”. Le Pen claimed her party was the victim of a “witch-hunt” and, with 10 others, appealed, denying during her second trial that her party had any kind of system aimed at embezzling EU money, and saying it had acted in “complete good faith”. Prominent nationalist figures such as Viktor Orbàn in Hungary and Matteo Salvini in Italy denounced the lower court verdict as a “violation of democratic norms”, while Donald Trump called it a “very big deal”, comparing it to his own legal battles in the US. What does the appeal court decision mean for Le Pen? The appeal court said after its decision that it had aimed to “assess the penalty in light of any infringement of the right to stand for election”, arguing that “voters’ freedom of choice – a prerequisite for the expression of the democratic vote – must be a consideration”. That is exactly what it did: by in effect reducing her ineligibility for office to 15 months (45 months in total, with 30 months suspended), it ensured she could, in principle, run for the presidency, since the 15 months began with the lower court verdict in March last year. However, by ordering her to wear an electronic bracelet for a year, it has made it very difficult, politically and practically, for her to do so – although the exact terms of house arrest and electronic tagging must be decided by a different judge in the coming weeks. In principle, an order of “house arrest under electronic monitoring” implies leaving home only during fixed, pre-agreed hours in order to go to fixed, pre-agreed destinations. Occasional exceptions can be requested but are by no means certain to be granted. What might she decide - and what could it mean for the elections? Le Pen has repeatedly said she would not run for the presidency if obliged to wear an electronic ankle tag, saying it would be impossible to campaign effectively with her movements curtailed. However, the period for which an ankle tag must be worn can be reduced. Anyone who has been “deprived of their liberty” is entitled, with good conduct and after presenting the right guarantees, to request their sentence be cut by up to six months for every year. If Le Pen went down that route, it would mean starting her campaign very late, however, and if the request were rejected it could damage the chances of her anointed lieutenant, 30-year-old Jordan Bardella, who would then run in her place. She is expected to announce her decision in an interview on French television on Tuesday evening. If she does stand aside, it will at least be in the knowledge that some recent polls have suggested Bardella is even more popular than her. Polls suggest the RN candidate, whether Le Pen or Bardella, would comfortably win the first round, due on 18 April. Forecasts for the runoff are divided, with some polls suggesting a centrist candidate, the former prime minister Édouard Philippe, could emerge victorious.

French prosecutors investigate racist abuse of Kylian Mbappé by Paraguayan senator

Prosecutors in France have opened an investigation into the racist attack on Kylian Mbappé by a Paraguayan senator, with officials weighing whether to demand that the senator be charged with aggravated public insult or incitement to hatred or violence. The Paris prosecutor’s office told the Guardian on Tuesday it had launched the inquiry after the French Football Federation (FFF) filed a complaint with the national unit for combating online hate. After Paraguay’s bruising loss to France at the World Cup on Saturday, Celeste Amarilla, a senator from Paraguay’s Liberal Radical party, posted a torrent of racial abuse against Mbappé on social media. In remarks described by the FFF as “utterly abhorrent and unacceptable”, Amarilla mocked the France captain, whose penalty sent France into the quarter-finals. Amarilla described Mbappé as a “colonised Cameroonian, desperately trying to ⁠pass himself off as French” and as a “brute who had not learned to write”. Paraguay’s players should have ‌slapped him after the ‌match, she added. Mbappé responded soon after. “Madame Celeste Amarilla, you are a despicable woman and unworthy of your position. You do not represent Paraguay, that country which has sweated passion and honour throughout the competition,” he wrote on social media. Her tirade was a distraction from the tremendous accomplishment of Paraguay at the World Cup, he added. “Through your recklessness and your ‌brazen racism, the entire world has already forgotten the journey and the historic effort that your players accomplished during this World Cup, making way ‌for an incompetent woman who gives the worst possible image of her country.” In a statement on Tuesday, the Paris prosecutor’s office noted “the remarks were allegedly made because of the victim’s actual or perceived origin, ethnicity, nationality, race, or religion”. The offences were punishable by up to one year of imprisonment and a €45,000 ($51,000) fine, it added. As her racist attack made headlines around the world, Amarilla posted an open letter in French and Spanish to Mbappé on social media. She sought to lay blame with Mbappé for her remarks, citing her anger at his behaviour during the match and comments about France ditching their “tuxedos” to play “dirty football” against Paraguay. She said she regretted mistreating Mbappé with “the same insults” she had received as a mixed-race person and said she had deleted her post. But she used nearly half of the letter to criticise Mbappé’s response, demanding an apology from the player, accusing him of gender-based violence in how he had spoken about her and threatening legal action if he did not retract his comments. “Who are you to call me indignant or despicable when you don’t even know me?” she asked. The government of Paraguay sought to distance itself from her remarks, describing them as “contrary to the values and principles that inspire peaceful coexistence and respect for human dignity that our country promotes”. The senator’s comments “in no way” represented the position of the Paraguayan government or the Paraguayan people, it added. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, was among the many who voiced support for the captain. “Another goal for Kylian Mbappé. Against racism this time,” he said on social media. “All my support. When words smear, our values respond: dignity, respect, fraternity.” Macron’s office said the president of Paraguay, Santiago Peña, had written to him to express ⁠support and condemn the remarks. France’s assistant coach, Guy Stephan, told reporters he had yet to speak with Mbappé about the racist abuse. However, he was unequivocal in his condemnation of the senator’s attack: “In three words: it’s disgraceful, vile, outrageous.”

Record wildfires in Europe show failure to adapt carries a mounting cost

When storm after storm battered the Mediterranean at the start of the year, drowning fields and sending water spurting from plug sockets, few people were fretting about fires. But just four months later, the murky brown floods that swamped towns and fouled homes across western Europe have given way to angry red blazes and choking black smoke. Rampant wildfires burned 28,000 hectares (69,160 acres) in France and 50,000 hectares in Spain as of 1 July, more than double the average for that time of year, and more land has been charred by bigger fires in the week since. Scientists have found the record-breaking heat that scorched Europe in June would have been “virtually impossible” if the climate had not been warped by burning fossil fuels, with daytime highs 10 times more likely than just two decades ago, and night-time lows 100 times more likely. Now, they are wondering if the early rains, too, contributed to the fires. “If a period of active vegetation growth is followed by a period of drought and heat, vegetation becomes stressed and transforms into flammable wildfire fuel,” said Julia Miller, a climate scientist at the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF, and lead author of a recent study on compounding wildfire risks. In Spain, the hot start to the summer was preceded by a rain-heavy winter and spring that helped plants grow. In much of the country, surface soil moisture was above the seasonal average from March to May, data from Copernicus shows, as well as unusually high river flow driven by an “exceptionally wet winter” in the Iberian peninsula. But when a freak heatwave hit western Europe in late May, followed by an even more punishing one at the end of June, the extra vegetation dried up fast. Scientists have cited the combination of a wet spring and hot summer as a factor in Spain’s record-breaking wildfire season last year, finding that high vegetation water content – which at first reduced fire potential – was lost during long heatwaves, leaving behind an extensive fuel surplus. “In most parts of Europe, there is enough vegetation to burn,” said Miller. “The critical question is when that vegetation becomes dry enough to burn.” Climate breakdown can worsen weather extremes in unexpected ways. Long periods of dry weather can make torrential downpours more likely to result in flash floods, as water runs off hard soils instead of soaking into it, while hot weather lets heavy rain pack more punch as warm air can hold more moisture. Wet conditions in March and April were not universal – France and western Spain had dry springs after winter downpours – but firefighters are still troubled by the amount of fuel that can burn when heatwaves hit. Southern Europe has suffered from increasingly overgrown vegetation as its rural villages have hollowed out, with young people moving to cities for work and abandoning farmland. Last year, the European Academies Science Advisory Council criticised EU fire policies for a disproportionate focus on suppressing blazes after they had broken out, instead of avoiding the conditions that let fires run wild. They called for greater efforts to stop the planet from heating and better landscape planning to manage land. “Climate itself cannot provoke fires if there is no plant fuel, so fuel availability driven by absence of land management is a critical factor underlying extreme fires,” said Fernando Pulido Díaz, a fire prevention scientist at the University of Extremadura, and co-author of the report. “The issue has been debated in many forums, but there is a general lack of practical implementation beyond pilot projects led by local communities.” Europe is increasingly paying the costs of a hotter world it has failed to prepare for. On Tuesday, the European parliament voted to release €120.55m (£103m) from its solidarity fund to help Spain recover from destructive heatwaves and wildfires last year, with a further €23.55m approved for Romania and Cyprus. The European Commission, which scrambled firefighters and water-bearing planes to help France and Portugal on Monday, said it had deployed a record number of firefighters to combat wildfires this year. Fossil fuel pollution and the destruction of nature has heated Europe about twice as fast as the global average. In February, the EU’s science advisers warned that efforts to adapt to a hotter planet were insufficient, incremental and often coming too late. They recommended preparing for 3C of global heating even as they urged greater efforts to meet the 1.5C target of the Paris climate agreement. “I see wildfires breaking records in Europe almost every year,” said Miller. “Wildfire preparedness and management is becoming increasingly important, but at the same time, we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to address the root cause of the emerging wildfire crisis.”

Italian businessman questioned over bombing at investigative reporter’s home

Italian prosecutors have placed a businessman and former journalist under investigation for allegedly masterminding a bomb attack at the home of Sigfrido Ranucci, a prominent investigative reporter. Valter Lavitola was supposedly friends with Ranucci, the host of Report, an investigative programme aired by the state broadcaster, Rai, and is being investigated on suspicion of trying to cause mass murder. The development comes after police last week arrested four people – allegedly commissioned by Lavitola – on suspicion of carrying out the attack last October. A rudimentary but powerful bomb was detonated outside Ranucci’s home in a town close to Rome, almost destroying a car belonging to him and another owned by his daughter. Nobody was injured in the blast, which occurred shortly after Ranucci, who for years has been under police protection owing to threats made against him, had returned home at night. Ranucci expressed shock over Lavitola’s alleged involvement, describing him as “a true friend” with whom he had almost daily contact. Investigators are yet to establish a motive for the attack, but Lavitola is alleged to have instructed someone to identify people to plant the bomb, allegedly paying them several thousand euros. The pair became friends in 2019 after Ranucci conducted a journalistic investigation into Lavitola, who in the past has been embroiled in several legal proceedings, including one resulting in a conviction for extorting the late former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. He said he had “never hidden” his friendship with Lavitola, today a businessman who owns a restaurant in Rome where Ranucci regularly eats, and that their last contact was when police were searching his home. “He was agitated,” Ranucci told Corriere della Sera. “I was also very surprised by this turn of events in the investigation.” After the bomb attack, Ranucci said he had received so many threats that it would be difficult to trace who was behind it but that what happened was “a worrying new level” because it occurred “right in front of my home”. Bullets were also found outside his home in 2024. Ranucci’s investigations for Report focus on alleged crime and corruption. The show often targets government ministers, some of whom in turn have sued Report, and Ranucci has been a high-profile critic of alleged political interference in Rai by Giorgia Meloni’s far-right administration. Ranucci has also written a book about the Italian mafia and in 2021 described how a former prisoner told him that mobsters “had given the order to kill” him after the book was published, but the hit “was stopped”.