The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has been barred from running for president in 2027 after a court found her guilty of a vast system of embezzlement of European parliament funds and banned her from running for public office with immediate effect.

The decision was a political earthquake for Le Pen, the leader of the far-right anti-immigration National Rally (RN) party, who had hoped to mount a fourth campaign to become president.

Le Pen, 56, said before the verdict that that any immediate ban on running for election would be like a “political death sentence” and that judges had “the power of life or death over our movement”.

Judges handed Le Pen a five-year ban on running for public office with the added provision that it will take immediate effect and will apply despite the fact that she is appealing against the verdict.

Le Pen, who left the court before the hearing had finished, was also sentenced to four years in prison with two years suspended and the other two to be served outside jail with an electronic bracelet. She was handed a €100,000 (£84,000) fine. Neither the prison penalty nor fine will be applied until her appeals are exhausted.

There was no immediate comment from Le Pen on the ruling. Her right-hand man, RN president Jordan Bardella, said: “Today it is not only Marine Le Pen who was unjustly condemned: It was French democracy that was killed”.

“It’s a blow to democracy,” Le Pen’s lawyer, Rodolphe Bosselut, told reporters outside her party’s Paris headquarters. Laurent Jacobelli, a RN lawmaker and party spokesman, said Le Pen was in a “fighting mood”.

Le Pen and 24 party members, including nine former members of the European parliament and their 12 parliamentary assistants, were found guilty of a vast scheme over many years to embezzle European parliament funds, by using money earmarked for European parliament assistants to instead pay party workers in France.

The so-called fake jobs system covered parliamentary assistant contracts between 2004 and 2016, and was unprecedented in scale and duration, causing losses of €4.5m to European taxpayer funds. Assistants paid by the European parliament must work directly on Strasbourg parliamentary matters, which the judges found had not been the case.

Le Pen will be able to retain her current post as member of the French parliament for Pas-de-Calais, but will not be able to stand again in a future parliamentary election for the duration of her ban on running for office.

Le Pen has run for French president three times, twice making the final run-off against Emmanuel Macron. Her National Rally party emerged as the single largest party in parliament after the 2024 snap parliamentary elections. She had believed she had her greatest chance of winning the Élysée in 2027 on a platform against immigration.

Addressing the trial last month, Le Pen said she was innocent: “I have absolutely no sense of having committed the slightest irregularity, or the slightest illegal act.”

The party will now have to decide who would take her place in the next French presidential race. Jordan Bardella, 29, the young party president, a member of the European parliament, is popular among voters but is seen as having little experience.

Stock markets across the world fell heavily on Monday after Donald Trump suggested that new tariffs he is expected to announce this week would hit “all countries”.

Shares fell across Asia-Pacific markets and in Europe after the US president crushed hopes that “reciprocal tariffs” expected on Wednesday would only target countries that have the largest trade imbalances with the US.

Trump told reporters on Air Force One: “You’d start with all countries. Essentially all of the countries that we’re talking about.”

Those tariffs on imports into the US are due to be announced on Wednesday, which has been labelled “Liberation Day” by Trump.

On Monday, the threat of a deepening trade war spooked investors. In Toyko, Japan’s Nikkei index lost 4% and South Korea’s Kospi fell 3%.

The wave of selling swept into European markets as well – the UK’s FTSE 100 fell 1.3% to a two-week low, and Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC both lost 2%.

“A selling wave is sweeping across global markets,” said Jochen Stanzl, the chief market analyst at CMC Markets. “The tariffs imposed by the US government and the fear of new announcements as early as Wednesday are creating a bleak atmosphere on trading floors worldwide.”

Traders in New York are bracing for losses when Wall Street opens. The S&P 500 index is on track to fall about 1%, according to the futures market.

Gold hit a record high of $3,128 (£2,416) per ounce, as investors rushed into safe-haven assets before Trump’s latest tariffs.

Economists fear that adding tariffs on imported goods will push up US inflation as importers pass on costs to customers, and also hurt confidence. Data last Friday showed consumer sentiment across America had fallen sharply this month, to its lowest level since 2022, knocking shares in New York.

Goldman Sachs has now raised its estimate for the probability of a US recession during the next 12 months to 35%, up from 20% previously, and warned that this would typically lead to further losses on Wall Street.

“The historical equity market recession playbook implies a roughly 25% S&P 500 drawdown from the recent market peak. If followed, this pattern would suggest a further 17% drawdown from today’s price to a trough level of roughly 4,600,” Goldman analysts told clients.

The Swiss bank UBS has cut its forecasts for where the S&P 500 index of US stocks will end the year, from 6,600 points to 6,400.

However, Mark Haefele, the chief investment officer at UBS Global Wealth Management, added: “This also means that there is still meaningful upside for broad US equities by year-end, in our view.”

Trade war fears have hurt markets during March, a month in which Trump announced new 25% tariffs on auto imports. An index of global stocks produced by MSCI has fallen by 4.5% this month, with one day to go, its worst monthly performance since September 2022.

The US dollar has also had its worst month in more than two years, having dropped by 3.5% against a basket of other currencies during March.

Over the weekend, Trump said he “couldn’t care less” if US carmakers raised their prices because of the new tariffs.

Stephen Innes, a managing partner at SPI Asset Management, said money managers worldwide were “de-risking” portfolios or simply sitting on their hands.

“Investors aren’t just reacting to the initial auto tariff volley and the unknowns around reciprocal tariffs – the real jitters stem from the potential second-order effects of a drawn-out trade war: slower global growth, crimped capex [capital expenditure], and waning consumer confidence. The unknown tariff rubric is simply applying the angst,” Innes said.

A woman trapped beneath the remains of a hotel building for nearly 60 hours after a devastating earthquake struck Myanmar was pulled alive from the rubble on Monday, officials said, in a rare moment of hope for rescue teams scrambling to find survivors.

Rescuers, many of them unequipped volunteers, have spent days trying to free people from buildings collapsed following Friday’s huge earthquake, which killed more than 1,700 people in the country and at least 18 in neighbouring Thailand.

It’s feared the true scale of the damage is yet to emerge.

In the early hours of Monday there was a brief moment of relief, when rescue workers carried a woman from the rubble of the Great Wall Hotel in Mandalay after a five-hour operation, according to the Chinese embassy in Myanmar. China is among several countries that have sent aid and personnel to assist in rescue efforts.

A video showed onlookers clapping as the woman was carried away on a stretcher. She was reported to be in a stable condition, the embassy said.

Across central Myanmar rescue teams have scrambled to free people from beneath countless collapsed buildings. Homes, religious sites, schools, universities, hotels and hospitals have all been damaged or destroyed.

On Sunday, workers rushing to find survivors at an apartment complex in Mandalay, freed a pregnant woman who had been trapped for two days, amputating her leg in order to free her. However she was pronounced dead shortly afterwards. Many more are feared trapped beneath the 12 storey building complex.

Rescue efforts also continued in the Thai capital Bangkok, where 76 workers are believed to be trapped under a 30-storey tower that collapsed while under construction.

Across central Myanmar, emergency teams have been hampered by a lack of equipment, with some rescuers using their bare hands to search for the missing. Power and communication outages, damaged roads and bridges have also complicated their work.

The US Geological Service’s predictive modelling estimated Myanmar’s death toll could top 10,000 and losses could exceed the country’s annual economic output.

Foreign assistance began to arrive over the weekend, following a rare request by Myanmar’s isolated junta for international help. China and Russia, two allies of the junta, have sent aid and personnel, while India, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore have also sent assistance.

The US has also pledged $2m in aid “through Myanmar-based humanitarian assistance organisations”. It said in a statement that an emergency response team from USAid is going to Myanmar.

The earthquake struck just as many humanitarian agencies were cutting back projects in Myanmar following Trump’s cuts to USAid.

The country was already in crisis before the disaster, due to a spiralling conflict triggered when the military seized power in a coup in 2021. The junta is facing an armed resistance to its rule, formed of civilians who took up arms to fight for the return of democracy, and ethnic armed organisations that have long fought for independence.

It has lost swathes of territory, and responded with relentless airstrikes, which continued even after the devastating quake, including in Sagaing, close to the epicentre.

Rights groups have said aid must go through community based groups or the National Unity Government, which was founded by elected law makers and activists to oppose the coup.

“The junta is notorious for weaponizing aid, and even launched airstrikes shortly after the quake. Sending aid to the junta will only make things worse,” said Debbie Stothard, the founder of Altsean-Burma, a network of human rights organisations in south-east Asia.

The Red Cross federation voiced outrage on Sunday after eight medical colleagues were killed while on duty in the Gaza Strip.

The world’s largest humanitarian network said in a statement: “The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies [IFRC] is outraged at the deaths of eight medics from PRCS [Palestine Red Crescent Society], killed on duty in Gaza.”

The IFRC said the bodies were retrieved after “seven days of silence” and of having access denied to the area of Rafah where they were last seen. It said it was the single most deadly attack on its colleagues anywhere in the world since 2017.

Israel’s military admitted on Saturday it had fired on ambulances in the Gaza Strip after identifying them as “suspicious vehicles”, with Hamas condemning it as a war crime.

“I am heartbroken,” IFRC secretary general Jagan Chapagain said in a statement. “These dedicated ambulance workers were responding to wounded people. They were humanitarians. They wore emblems that should have protected them; their ambulances were clearly marked. They should have returned to their families; they did not.”

The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said earlier on Sunday it had recovered the bodies of the medics, killed a week ago, and that they were found along with those of six members of Gaza’s civil defence agency and one UN agency employee. One Red Crescent ambulance officer remains missing.

On Saturday, the IDF said in a statement to Agence France-Presse that Israeli troops had “opened fire toward Hamas vehicles and eliminated several Hamas terrorists”.

“A few minutes afterward, additional vehicles advanced suspiciously toward the troops … The troops responded by firing toward the suspicious vehicles, eliminating a number of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists.”

It added that “after an initial inquiry, it was determined that some of the suspicious vehicles … were ambulances and fire trucks”, and condemned what it claimed was “the repeated use” by “terrorist organisations in the Gaza Strip of ambulances for terrorist purposes”.

The incident occurred in Rafah city’s Tel al-Sultan neighbourhood just days into a renewed Israeli offensive in the area close to the Egyptian border. The military resumed its wider bombardments of Gaza on 18 March, breaking a ceasefire that had lasted almost two months.

Chapagain stressed that under international humanitarian law, civilians, humanitarians and health services must be protected. “Instead of another call on all parties to protect and respect humanitarians and civilians, I pose a question: when will this stop? All parties must stop the killing,” he said.

The number of PRCS volunteers and staff killed since the war between Israel and Hamas began in October 2023 is now 30, the global federation said.

With Agence France-Presse

Five people died and another four were seriously injured after an explosion on Monday at a coalmine in Spain’s northern region of Asturias, officials have said.

Two other workers at the Cerredo mine in Degaña, about 450km (280 miles) north-west of Madrid, were unharmed in the incident, local emergency services said.

Officials had earlier said two people were missing but they now believe everyone has been accounted for.

While the cause of the explosion has not been confirmed, emergency services said they had been alerted to an “incident” involving “a problem with a machine”.

Local media said the machine had exploded.

The injured were taken to hospitals in nearby cities, two of them by helicopter. They had suffered burns and, in one case, a head injury.

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, sent his “sincere condolences” to the families of the victims and wished a “speedy recovery” to the injured, in a message posted on X.

The head of the regional government of Asturias, Adrián Barbón, declared there would be two days of mourning “as a sign of respect for the deceased”.

Mining has for centuries been a major industry in Asturias, a densely forested mountainous region.

In 1995, 14 people died after an explosion at a mine in Asturias near the town of Mieres.

Elon Musk gave out $1m checks on Sunday to two Wisconsin voters, declaring them spokespeople for his political group, ahead of a Wisconsin supreme court election that the tech billionaire cast as critical to Donald Trump’s agenda and “the future of civilization”.

“It’s a super big deal,” he told a roughly 2,000-person crowd in Green Bay on Sunday night, taking the stage in a yellow cheesehead hat. “I’m not phoning it in. I’m here in person.”

Musk and groups he supports have spent more than $20m to help conservative favourite Brad Schimel in Tuesday’s race, which will determine the ideological makeup of a court likely to decide key issues in a perennial battleground state. Musk has increasingly become the center of the contest, with liberal favourite Susan Crawford and her allies protesting Musk and what they say is the influence he wants to have on the court.

“I think this will be important for the future of civilization,” he said. “It’s that’s significant.”

He noted that the state high court may well take up redistricting of congressional districts, which could ultimately affect which party controls the US House.

“And if the [Wisconsin] supreme court is able to redraw the districts, they will gerrymander the district and deprive Wisconsin of two seats on the Republican side,” Musk claimed. “Then they will try to stop all the government reforms we are getting done for you, the American people.”

A unanimous state supreme court on Sunday refused to hear a last-minute attempt by the state’s Democratic attorney general to stop Musk from handing over the checks to two voters, a ruling that came just minutes before the planned start of the rally.

Two lower courts had already rejected the legal challenge by Democrat Josh Kaul, who argues that Musk’s offer violates a state law. “Wisconsin law prohibits offering anything of value to induce anyone to vote,” Kaul argued in his filing. “Yet, Elon Musk did just that.”

But the state supreme court, which is now controlled four-to-three by liberal justices, declined to take the case as an original action. The court gave no rationale for its decision. All four liberal justices have endorsed Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, the Democratic-backed candidate.

Kaul had no immediate comment on the court’s order.

Musk’s attorneys argued in filings with the court that Musk was exercising his free speech rights with the giveaways and any attempt to restrict that would violate both the Wisconsin and US constitutions.

The payments are “intended to generate a grassroots movement in opposition to activist judges, not to expressly advocate for or against any candidate,” Musk’s attorneys argued in court filings.

Musk’s political action committee used a nearly identical tactic before the presidential election last year, offering to pay $1m a day to voters in Wisconsin and six other battleground states who signed a petition supporting the First and Second amendments. A judge in Pennsylvania said prosecutors failed to show the effort was an illegal lottery and allowed it to continue through Election Day.

Musk’s attorneys, about four hours before the rally was to begin, asked that two liberal justices who have campaigned for Crawford – Jill Karofsky and Rebecca Dallet – recuse themselves from the case. His attorneys argued their work for Crawford creates “the spectre of inappropriate bias.” If they did recuse, that would leave the court with a three-two conservative majority.

Both justices rejected the request and said they would spell out their reasons why at a later date.

One of the court’s conservative justices has endorsed Schimel, who wore a “Make America Great Again” hat while campaigning Sunday.

Schimel said in a national television interview that he does not control “any of the spending from any outside group, whether it’s Elon Musk or anyone else” and that all Trump asked was whether he would “reject activist judges” and follow the law.

“That’s exactly what I’ve committed to anybody, whether it’s President Trump, Elon Musk or any donors and donors or supporters or voters in Wisconsin. That’s my commitment,” Schimel told Fox News Sunday.

The contest has shattered national spending records for a judicial election, with more than $81m in spending.

It comes as Wisconsin’s highest court is expected to rule on abortion rights, congressional redistricting, union power and voting rules that could affect the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election in the state.

Halle Berry has said she now believes her historic Oscars in 2002, for Monster’s Ball, was an anomaly, and that fellow black female actors should therefore stop “coveting” Academy Awards.

Berry, now 58, is the only black woman to have won the leading actress Oscar in the awards’ nearly 100 year history. Cynthia Erivo’s nomination for Wicked earlier this year marks the first time a woman of colour has been nominated for the leading actress Oscar more than once (she was previously nominated for Harriet). Only 15 black women have ever been in contention for the prize.

Speaking on upcoming documentary Number One on the Call Sheet, Berry said that the 23 years since her victory have “forced me to ask myself, did it matter? Did it really change anything for women of colour? For my sisters? For our journey?”

Berry adds that she felt the tide would turn in 2021, when both Andra Day and Viola Davis were nominated, for The United States vs. Billie Holiday and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom respectively.

“I felt 100% sure that this was the year one of them was gonna walk away with this award,” she says, adding: “For equally different and beautiful reasons, they both deserved it, and I thought for sure.”

However, both women losing out to Frances McDormand for Nomadland made Berry reconsider, she said.

“The system is not really designed for us, and so we have to stop coveting that which is not for us. Because at the end of the day, it’s ‘How do we touch the lives of people?’ and that fundamentally is what art is for.”

The documentary also features Taraji P Henson and Whoopi Goldberg expressing amazement over the dearth of leading actress winners – and nominees.

“Wait a minute, none of us were good enough?” Goldberg asks. “Nobody? In all of these people, nobody? … What are we missing here? This is a conversation people have every year.”

Goldberg won the best supporting actress Oscar in 1990 for Ghost; some 11 black women have now been given that award.

“I don’t think the industry really sees us as leads, you know?” says Henson in the documentary. “They give us supporting [actress awards] like they give out candy canes. That just – I don’t know what to do with that. Because what are you saying to me?”