Paris trial’s outcome will determine whether leader of far-right National Rally can run for French presidency in 2027

The French far-right party leader Marine Le Pen will face a fresh trial on appeal on Tuesday over the embezzlement of European parliament funds in a case that will determine whether or not she can run in the 2027 presidential election.

Le Pen, 57, who leads the far-right, anti-immigration National Rally (RN) , was considered to be a contender for next year’s election until she was barred from running for public office last March after being found guilty of an extensive and long-running fake jobs scam.

As the writer turns 80, his masterful adaptation of the French novel is being revived at the National Theatre. It highlights his lifelong interest in political power play

I once dubbed Christopher Hampton, who celebrates his 80th birthday this month, “the quiet man of British theatre”. By that I meant that he was less prone to expressing his views in opinion pieces than contemporaries such as David Hare and David Edgar. The term also implied that his plays possessed a less idiosyncratic style than the work of, say, Harold Pinter or Tom Stoppard. But I suspect that Hampton’s regard for the classical virtues of objectivity, lucidity and irony means that his work will prove as durable as anyone’s.

He is also, as I have seen, a man of considerable private passion. One incident in particular is branded on my memory. In November 1990 I was one of a group, including the director David Leveaux and set designer Bob Crowley, despatched by the British Council to Cairo to give a number of talks ahead of a visit by the National Theatre. We were privileged to be given a private night-time tour of the pyramids and were enjoying a quiet drink in the neighbouring hotel in Giza when in burst Hampton, who had just arrived from London. “Have you heard the news?” he cried. “Mrs Thatcher has been attacked in the Commons by Geoffrey Howe and it looks as if she’s in trouble.”

Despite internet blackout, a small number of Iranians are risking their lives to share messages as protests continue

For most of Iran, the internet was shut off on Thursday afternoon – the most severe blackout the country has seen in years of internet shutdowns, coming after days of escalating anti-government protests.

For a very small sliver of the country, it is still possible to get photos and videos to the outside world, and even to make calls. The Telegram channel Vahid Online on Monday posted photos of dead bodies lying next to a street in Kahrizak, on the southern outskirts of Tehran; on Sunday, it shared a video of Iranians chanting “death to Khamenei” at a funeral.

Paris trial’s outcome will determine whether leader of far-right National Rally can run for French presidency in 2027

The French far-right party leader Marine Le Pen will face a fresh trial on appeal on Tuesday over the embezzlement of European parliament funds in a case that will determine whether or not she can run in the 2027 presidential election.

Le Pen, 57, who leads the far-right, anti-immigration National Rally (RN) , was considered to be a contender for next year’s election until she was barred from running for public office last March after being found guilty of an extensive and long-running fake jobs scam.

As the writer turns 80, his masterful adaptation of the French novel is being revived at the National Theatre. It highlights his lifelong interest in political power play

I once dubbed Christopher Hampton, who celebrates his 80th birthday this month, “the quiet man of British theatre”. By that I meant that he was less prone to expressing his views in opinion pieces than contemporaries such as David Hare and David Edgar. The term also implied that his plays possessed a less idiosyncratic style than the work of, say, Harold Pinter or Tom Stoppard. But I suspect that Hampton’s regard for the classical virtues of objectivity, lucidity and irony means that his work will prove as durable as anyone’s.

He is also, as I have seen, a man of considerable private passion. One incident in particular is branded on my memory. In November 1990 I was one of a group, including the director David Leveaux and set designer Bob Crowley, despatched by the British Council to Cairo to give a number of talks ahead of a visit by the National Theatre. We were privileged to be given a private night-time tour of the pyramids and were enjoying a quiet drink in the neighbouring hotel in Giza when in burst Hampton, who had just arrived from London. “Have you heard the news?” he cried. “Mrs Thatcher has been attacked in the Commons by Geoffrey Howe and it looks as if she’s in trouble.”

Despite internet blackout, a small number of Iranians are risking their lives to share messages as protests continue

For most of Iran, the internet was shut off on Thursday afternoon – the most severe blackout the country has seen in years of internet shutdowns, coming after days of escalating anti-government protests.

For a very small sliver of the country, it is still possible to get photos and videos to the outside world, and even to make calls. The Telegram channel Vahid Online on Monday posted photos of dead bodies lying next to a street in Kahrizak, on the southern outskirts of Tehran; on Sunday, it shared a video of Iranians chanting “death to Khamenei” at a funeral.

It is the most essential thing we do - yet many of us arguably breathe badly. The author of Breath explains how that can be changed

In the last stages of writing his book, Breath, James Nestor was stressed. “Which was ironic when writing a book about breathing patterns and mellowing out,” he says. The book was late; he’d spent his advance and was haemorrhaging even more money on extra research that was taking him off in new, potentially interesting, directions – was it really necessary, he wondered, to go to Paris to look at old skulls buried in catacombs beneath the city? (It was.)

Then a couple of months before the book’s May 2020 publication date, the Covid pandemic hit, and Nestor was advised to wait it out. He couldn’t afford to. “One of the main motivations for releasing it at that time was to get that [on-publication] advance,” he says. “But I’ll be honest, I didn’t want to release it. I said: ‘How are you going to promote a book that can’t be sold in stores, that I can’t tour for?’” He expected, he says, “absolutely zero to happen”.

A deadly fungus has already wiped out 90 species and threatens 500 more but Anthony Waddle is hoping gene replacement could be their salvation

Standing ankle-deep in water between two bare cottonwood trees on a hot spring day, eight-year-old Anthony Waddle was in his element. His attention was entirely absorbed by the attempt to net tadpoles swimming in a reservoir in the vast Mojave desert.

It was “one of the perfect moments in my childhood”, he says.

It is the most essential thing we do - yet many of us arguably breathe badly. The author of Breath explains how that can be changed

In the last stages of writing his book, Breath, James Nestor was stressed. “Which was ironic when writing a book about breathing patterns and mellowing out,” he says. The book was late; he’d spent his advance and was haemorrhaging even more money on extra research that was taking him off in new, potentially interesting, directions – was it really necessary, he wondered, to go to Paris to look at old skulls buried in catacombs beneath the city? (It was.)

Then a couple of months before the book’s May 2020 publication date, the Covid pandemic hit, and Nestor was advised to wait it out. He couldn’t afford to. “One of the main motivations for releasing it at that time was to get that [on-publication] advance,” he says. “But I’ll be honest, I didn’t want to release it. I said: ‘How are you going to promote a book that can’t be sold in stores, that I can’t tour for?’” He expected, he says, “absolutely zero to happen”.