At last, a “King’s Speech” that the king himself might have written, at least in its bridge-building, planet-saving passages.

On Wednesday, King Charles III formally opened Britain’s Parliament, presenting the priorities of Britain’s new Labour government, a center-left legislative agenda that chimes with some of his own cherished projects, from curbing climate change to cultivating close ties with the European Union.

It was a stark contrast to last year, when Charles presented the agenda of the Conservative government, which included plans to expand oil and gas drilling in the North Sea. Critics said that was at odds with Britain’s “net zero” emissions goals; the Labour government has promised to end new oil and gas exploration.

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Until the last ballot box came in from a nearby suburb, Fabrice Barusseau bit his nails: Would he or his far-right opponent be sitting in the French Parliament in Paris?

It didn’t look good. This sun-dappled district of white stone and vineyards in France’s southwest, the historical home of centrist voters, seemed to be swinging sharply right like the rest of the country. In the first round of France’s legislative elections, on June 30, the candidate for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally received over 40 percent of the votes cast. Mr. Barusseau, 54, a socialist candidate, got barely more than 28 percent.

In the second-round voting, just a week later on July 7, even toward evening, “it was extremely tense,” said Mayor Françoise Mesnard of Saint-Jean-d’Angély. “The carrots seemed to be cooked.”

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The village was a placid place until the local priest, disoriented by the war in Ukraine, succumbed to Satan, according to the retired teacher in northern Moldova. Before that, people got on well and attended Sunday services at the same Russian Orthodox Church.

Now, said Tamara Gheorghies, the teacher, “they don’t even say hello to each other.” The reason, at least in her telling, is simple: a decision by the village priest to sever his allegiance to Patriarch Kirill in Moscow, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The Moscow Patriarch has for decades commanded the loyalty of Orthodox Christians across the former Soviet Union. But in March, the village priest joined a rival ecclesiastical hierarchy based in neighboring Romania, a member of the European Union.

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Attacks claimed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria this year are on the rise and on track to double last year’s count, the Pentagon said on Tuesday, indicating a resurgence of the terrorist group a decade after it wrought destruction and death across the region.

The group, also known as ISIS, took responsibility for 153 attacks in Iraq and Syria in the first half of this year, according to a report by the military’s Central Command, despite continued operations targeting the organization’s operatives by a U.S.-led coalition and partner forces in both countries. In all of last year, ISIS claimed 121 attacks in Iraq and Syria, a defense official said.

The group, a Sunni Muslim organization that traces its roots to Al Qaeda, exploited the power vacuum that emerged after Syria’s civil war broke out to conquer large areas. Notorious for kidnappings, sexual enslavement and public executions, ISIS took its largest prize when it seized Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, before being beaten back in 2014.

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