French far-right leader, Le Pen, banned from politics for five years

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This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Jackie Leonard and at 13 hours GMT on Monday the 31st of March

these are our main stories. The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has been found guilty of embezzlement and blocked from running in the next French election.
Some people are still being pulled alive from buildings in Myanmar three days after the earthquake. National mourning's been declared, but the military authorities are continuing to wage war.
And Asian stock markets have fallen over fears of a global trade war ahead of President Trump's expected unveiling of a wave of additional tariffs. Also in this podcast, here in the UK, an international meeting on tackling illegal migration.
We want to work with you and with everyone who is as determined as we are to end the misery and evil of people smuggling. Let's begin in France.
When the French far-right leader Marine Le Pen was accused of embezzling EU parliamentary funds for her party national rally, she said if convicted, it would be her political death. Well, now she's been found guilty and handed a four-year prison sentence to suspended.
She probably won't serve time behind bars and instead will wear an electronic tag. More crucially, she's been banned from running for political office for five years, making her ineligible for the 2027 presidential election.
Our correspondent Hugh Schofield was outside the court in Paris. We now have, after a very, very tense couple of hours, we have a definitive verdict and sentence on Marine Le Pen.
And that sentence is the worst she could possibly have hoped for. In other words, a five-year period of ineligibility to be carried out straight away, regardless of whether or not she appeals.
And this is the key point in all of this. I think everyone, even she herself, expected to be convicted on the charges, but the key question was what she would be sentenced to.
And there was a phrase, a legal phrase, which was at the heart of this, which in French is execution provisoire. If those words were uttered by the president of the court, the judge, it would mean that this period of ineligibility would kick in straight away.
She uttered those words. The period is five years.
And what that means is that Marine Le Pen cannot run in the next election in 2027. Barring some legal twist of which I am completely unaware and I'm not sure anyone can think of one, she can't run in 2027.
She's favourite to run in those elections, favourite in the sense that she's by far the most popular single candidate in the first round of those elections. It would be her fourth attempt to get the presidency, and at this fourth attempt she would have the most high chances of winning it because the situation has been working in her in her favour.
And now at a stroke, a judge, the judicial system has said you can't run. So what does this do to the political picture in France? Our Europe editor is Paul Moss.
There is one person who many think will be taken off the reserve bench to take her place as a candidate, and that is Jordan Bardel, just 29 years old. He is actually the leader of the National Rally Party.
He's considered very charismatic, a good speaker. But there are question marks about whether someone who's just 29 years old really has the experience to take on the role of being a presidential candidate and indeed to become the president of France.
One thing I should mention, though, is that last year, Jordan Bardell was seen as taking a bit of a swipe at Marine Le Pen when he said it was a bare minimum for a politician that they should not have a criminal record. Some of his allies then accused him of behaving like a Judas.
Now, today, Mr. Bardell has dutifully condemned the verdict of the court.
He said French democracy had been killed. However, he is an ambitious man, and there are some who will think that underneath that stern condemnation, there is a chance that Mr.
Jordan Bardel today is grinning from ear to ear. Well, Mr.
Bardel has not been the only one to react to this news. Tell us about what's been going on, what people are saying both inside and outside France.
Well, inside France, you know, obviously the other far right figures are furious. I should mention Eric Zemmour from the Reconquest Party who also said it wasn't for judges to decide who people vote for.
There are plenty of people who are not political allies of Marine Le Pen, but who are uneasy about the idea of her not being able to stand. I mean, it's interesting that Eric Chiotty from the centre-right politician said the destiny of our nation has been confiscated by an outrageous judicial cabal.
People are uneasy about what's happening. Outside France, I think there has been a lot of interest in this, partly because there are political allies of Marine Le Pen who are angry.
But more importantly, this verdict will strike a chord in many countries. You have people, politicians in many places, for example, the United States, who claim that what they say is the will of the people is being stopped by the courts.
So you have people like here in Spain, the Santiago Abascal, the head of the Vox party, very similar to Le Pen's party. They will not succeed, he says, in silencing the voice of the people.
Matteo Salvini of the right-wing league party in Italy. The judgments of the court has been taken over the judgments of the people.
That was Paul Moss. And as we record this podcast, we have just heard that Marine Le Pen's lawyer says she will appeal.
Relief teams are grappling with a growing humanitarian crisis in Myanmar following Friday's massive earthquake. The World Health Organization says two dozen hospitals have been destroyed or damaged.
Myanmar's military rulers now say that more than 2,000 people are known to have died.

The final figure is expected to be much higher. Aid efforts have been hampered by damage to roads, bridges and railways.
There are power blackouts and unreliable communication services. Foreign aid and rescue teams are now starting to arrive, with a Chinese team pulling four people alive from the rubble in Mandalay on Monday.
Alexander Mathieu, who is the regional director for Asia-Pacific for the International Federation of the Red Cross, says survivors of the earthquake are living in desperate conditions. It's pretty dire at the moment because people are having to live on the streets.
There are aftershocks, so people are outside. It's extremely hot.
It was plus 36 at 10pm last night. So you can get a sense of it.
There's no power. So even the water is not being pumped.
So there's very little clean water to drink. And of course, people are traumatised.
So it is an extremely difficult time for the people in the earthquake affected areas of Myanmar at the moment. Our correspondent Rebecca Henschke told us more about the rescue efforts in Myanmar.
As we're hearing, it's fairly patchy and slow is really the key situation. I mean, over the weekend, we just kept hearing from relief and rescue workers that they didn't have the heavy lifting equipment that's needed to try and lift this rubble and get people out alive.
And now this sort of golden window after an earthquake of finding people alive is rapidly closing. We are seeing now teams, Malaysian teams, Chinese teams, they are still finding people alive.
But my colleague from BBC Burmese did reach a preschool in just the outskirts of Mandalay, and that has completely collapsed. And he found out that mothers turned up at that preschool, you know, soon after the quake, calling out their children's names.
There was some kind of rescue work taking place with people with their bare hands, but that finished on Friday. So there is no relief work happening there at a preschool.
It's just a really bleak picture there. And we're still learning about the sheer scale of the destruction, aren't we? We are.
And there is no doubt that that death toll will rise. It's been extremely challenging to get a clear picture.
But as teams can move on the ground more, my colleagues from BBC Burmese, we're just finding hundreds of people still missing under the rubble. And this is in vast areas.
So the death toll will certainly rise. And meanwhile, the conflict in Myanmar is still continuing.
That's right. The Myanmar military has continued to carry out ground attacks.
I've had confirmation from the rebel groups in the Sagai region, the worst affected region. They've carried out heavy mortar attacks against the rebels, they told me.
They've also carried out airstrikes. So this is at a time, as we've talked about, that people are in desperate need of rescue work.
Yet the military, in the face of calls from the United Nations, from Singapore, to carry out an immediate ceasefire and focus on humanitarian aid, they are continuing this war to suppress opposition, suppress this pro-democracy uprising. And I've read that it could be weeks, months even before it's properly understood just how much damage has been done and rebuilding can begin even.
And yet it's only a matter of weeks before the monsoon's expected to start, isn't it? Well, yeah, that will make things much more difficult. And we're hearing from people who are now sleeping out on the streets, they're heading into their fourth night out on the streets, that they don't have fresh drinking water.
And also the other issue is that there is just so many deceased people, dead bodies, that crematorians are working overtime, but there's concern about the spread of disease. That was Rebecca Henschke.
Well, the families of those still trapped under a collapsed building in Bangkok spent another night anxiously waiting for news. Eighteen people are known to have died there since the unfinished tower block came tumbling down on Friday.
More than 70 others who have been working at the site are thought to be buried under the rubble. Our correspondent Anna Foster joined rescue teams working overnight at the scene.
It's two o'clock in the morning now and even though there are far fewer people here than there are during the daytime. You can hear the sounds of

those rescue workers who are staying here throughout the night. You can just hear in the background

people are getting something to eat. This is sort of a food stall that's been set up.
There's a big

box of cherries. There are two big red containers of ice where people are getting cold water.

As you walk around the corner here that's when you start to see what was a building site just

Thank you. big red containers of ice where people are getting cold water.
As you walk around the corner here,

that's when you start to see what was a building site just a few days ago and is now marked out by these great spotlights

that illuminate this whole area.

And then that great pile of rubble that rises up into the middle of it.

This building was actually at its full height,

it was almost completed at the point at which it collapsed and even the rubble is probably five, six stories high with the crane still hanging motionless over the top of it. This is painstaking work because even though that monolithic pile of grey concrete looks very solid, in actual fact, inside, it's very, very delicately balanced.
And what they're hoping is that there are certain voids and areas inside there that people are still surviving in. And then just over here, inside one of the big tents, this group, they're wearing bright blue polo shirts and black vests with forensic police on the back.
We're just wondering how the work is going, how your search is going. Just met the man already dead, already died.
Inside? Yes, inside. How many hours have you been here? We have worked six hours and changed another team going to come.
How are you finding this? This must be very hard for you. Yeah, of course.
It's quite hard. Even at night here now, it's warm and it's humid and that's the sound of a big fan that you can hear spinning and trying to blow a little bit of cool air to the people who are working here there's this striking whiteboard with numbers on it and this is where they've labeled out in columns how many people they're looking for how many people are still unaccounted for, how many people have died.
There's a big group of rescue workers just passing us now, and they are wheeling. They're wheeling somebody on a trolley.
Actually, it looks like another rescue worker. These people have been working incredibly hard for many hours now.
It's obviously going to take its toll, particularly given the heat and the conditions that they're working in. There's another group of rescue workers just coming out dressed in red, and they're carrying a big purple, it's like a rigid stretcher.
Obviously they're waiting for survivors, but it's being carried out empty once again. This is like a shift change.
There's different teams coming in, going out all the time. But you see that particular mood when they leave this site and they're wheeling out their equipment and they're bringing out the stretchers and they're empty because that search is still going on.
Anna Foster in Bangkok. The UK government is hosting a two-day summit on tackling illegal migration.
Over 40 countries, including China and the US, have representatives attending, as well as social media companies Meta, X and TikTok. The Labour government has emphasised the need for international cooperation and has struck deals with Germany and Iraq.
But despite this, the number of people reaching the UK in small boats is currently higher than at the same point in 2024. Speaking at the opening of the summit was the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer.
We must pull every lever available, securing our borders, getting a grip on illegal migration and delivering our plan for change. We want to work with you and with everyone who is as determined as we are to end the misery and evil of people smuggling.
Because together we will save lives. We will secure our borders.
We will smash the gangs that undermine our security and deliver the fairness for the working people that we serve. Our UK political correspondent Rob Watson told us more about the meeting and its significance.
I think the significance Jackie is it shows what a major problem both source, transit and destination countries consider irregular or illegal migration to be. But I think it's important to remember, Jackie, that while this is the largest such gathering of its kind, there have been recent EU and G7 summits that focused on this issue.
So I think it's probably wise to see it as a continuation of a process rather than some kind of radical departure. And as to the point of the two days, it's for agencies, police, ministers to sort of swap notes on how best to deal with it.
And what sorts of plans are under discussion? So in the nutshell, two things, really more cooperation, international cooperation in two areas. So first of all, just trying to get messages out to source countries where migrants come from, don't do it, don't leave.
And secondly, more cooperation on fighting the gangs of criminal smugglers who take people from one place to another. But it's worth again pointing out, these are just not easy, Jackie.
I mean, the UN has pointed out two main problems that an awful lot of countries, they just don't have the kind of technical legal capacity to cooperate. And secondly, that there's just an awful lot of mistrust between agencies and countries on cooperating on such a sensitive issue.
So people sort of know what to do, but getting it done, it's been called for before, it ain't easy. So there are agencies, there are countries there.
What are the social media companies doing there? So the reason they're there is, you know, that's how the criminal gangs do an awful lot of their advertising, both in terms of getting people to think, yeah, it would be a good idea to try and leave my country. And oh, yeah, and I can do it via this particular route.
So it's saying to the social media companies, please don't make the job of criminal gangs any easier. And just finally, and just briefly, for the UK government, isn't part of the problem of irregular migration that it's increased since the UK left the EU? Very briefly, yes.
I mean, slightly less briefly, absolutely. The UK is not a member of the EU.

It can no longer return migrants back to the European Union countries. And it's not part of the EU law enforcement agencies like Europol anymore.
Rob Watson. A British explorer has become the first woman to cross Canada's freezing Baffin Island solo.
Camilla Hempelman-Adams, who's 32, completed the 240 kilometre trek a day faster than expected. Anissa Kadri has more.
Camilla Hempelman-Adams faced temperatures as low as minus 40 Celsius as she trekked across Canada's largest island in 13 days. She covered the distance on foot and by ski while pulling a sledge and described

it as tough but incredible. No surprise then that her feet are sore but she's no stranger to breaking

records previously becoming the youngest British female to ski to the North Pole aged 15. Her father

the adventurer Sir David Hempelman Adams met her at the finish. She says she hopes to inspire other

women and highlight the impact of climate change on the region.

Anissa Kadri.

Still to come, Germany's top general says the country needs

some form of conscription to defend itself.

We are threatened by Russia, we are threatened by Putin

and we have to step up, we have to do more to deter any enemy. Give your kids a summer full of fun and learning.
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The Israeli authorities blocked aid deliveries to the territory four weeks ago after Hamas refused to accept changes to the original ceasefire agreement. Kazem Abu Khalaf is the spokesperson for the UN Children's Agency in Jerusalem,

UNICEF, and he in the Gaza Strip. The only thing that is taking place since the 2nd of March is the resumption of the hostilities.
You're talking about no less than 800, probably 860 people killed, including 300 children. Even workers, aid workers are not even spared.
The latest screening showed that 29,000 children, it was revealed that out of them, you're talking about no less than 750 acute malnutrition, and 85 of them have severe acute malnutrition. So it's really, really difficult.
People simply don't know where to go, where to take their children. I mean, the top priority for parents is to protect children.
This depends so much on luck. Wherever they go, they feel that they are not safe.
They look in the eyes of the children. When they look in their parents, their eyes themselves talk.
The children, through their eyes, they tell their parents, we know you cannot protect us. We know that, but we forgive you for it.
Without even having to talk, there really is no place safe in the Gaza Strip. It's not an exaggeration when we say that.
I cannot even talk enough of the importance of the resumption of the ceasefire. Kazem Abu Khalaf.
Now, as you may have heard in our earlier podcast, the US President Donald Trump has seemingly lost his patience with Russia's leader Vladimir Putin. In an interview with the US broadcaster NBC, President Trump said he was very angry with Mr Putin for attacking the credibility of the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, and he threatened to impose tariffs on countries that import Russian oil if Moscow doesn't agree to a ceasefire soon.
Our Russia editor Steve Rosenberg has been watching in Moscow. Early on today, no reaction.
I would imagine that's going to come. And I don't expect it's going to be, we're sort of quaking in our boots because traditionally Vladimir Putin doesn't really react well to threats and ultimatums.
But what I did see this morning in one of the Russian newspapers, quite interesting actually, one of the leading pro-Kremlin papers today sort of points the finger back at President Trump and accuses the US president of not fulfilling his, quote, obligations that he took upon himself to stop Ukraine striking Russian energy infrastructure. And the newspaper, Moskovsky, Kamsa Moritz, reaches this conclusion that, quote, all agreements on the level of Trump are only worth a few pennies on market day.
Moscow is prepared to make a deal with the US president as the leader of the free world, the undisputed boss of NATO and the lord and master of Kiev. But right now, the leader is not leading, the boss is not bossing and the lord is not directing his vassal.
Now, that's quite rare criticism of Donald Trump in the Russian state media. Normally, he gets a pretty positive press here.
And there's a warning at the end of the article that, quote, if the diplomats cannot move the peace process forward, the military will do the talking. Putin has made his move.
Now we wait for Trump's. Now, the White House may well consider that with his latest comments critical of Moscow, Donald Trump has made his move and is waiting for Vladimir Putin's next move.
But I understand there have been talks with the US on other joint projects. So relations haven't broken down, have they? They certainly haven't broken down.
I mean, another newspaper, Vestia, was reporting this morning that the US and Russia are already holding discussions on economic cooperation in the area of rare metals, for example.

Some American companies, according to this article, have already expressed interest in doing deals with the Russians.

And we've got to be very cautious because we've seen before that what Donald Trump says one day can change dramatically and diametrically the next. And that makes it, I think, difficult to analyse in real time what is happening with the Trump administration.
It's difficult for us. And it's also difficult, I think, for the Kremlin.
President Trump did say he's angry with Vladimir Putin. He did say he was disappointed with what the Kremlin leader has been saying.
But he also issued that warning to Volodymyr Zelensky, saying that the Ukrainian president would have big, big problems if he tries to back out of a critical minerals deal. That was Steve Rosenberg in Moscow.
Stock markets in Asia fell on Monday morning ahead of President Trump's planned announcement of another wave of tariffs. Business leaders around the world are nervously waiting for what Mr.
Trump has called Liberation Day this coming Wednesday. But for company leaders trying to plan their firm's future, the unpredictable nature of America's trade policy is a real challenge.
Maura Fogarty is our business presenter in Singapore. You know, I wouldn't want to be an attorney, a tax attorney, or dealing with tariffs or dealing with anything like that right now, because you're being kept very busy and kept up late at night, every single day, not only because of the different comments coming out from the White House, but because of the uncertainty as to exactly which tariffs are kicking in on which days and everything.
But Liberation Day is on Wednesday. That's what we know so far.
And what we did hear over the weekend from President Trump is that he said that the tariffs that he will be announcing in the next couple of days will apply to all countries. The reason why this is significant is because in the last couple of weeks, there have been some hints that perhaps not all countries would face these tariffs or that the U.S.
government would only focus on countries with large trade imbalances. The U.K.'s Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, has kind of given optimistic signals that perhaps a deal could be worked out for the U.K.
in terms of these tariffs. But the latest comments from President Trump is that indeed it will be on all countries.
The other thing he said that's quite interesting is that in an interview with U.S. broadcaster NBC News, he said that he couldn't care less whether auto companies raise prices for consumers or not.
Now, what's interesting is that the auto tariffs that he has also announced will kick in as well. And that will raise the taxes on all car imports by quite a lot if their components or the cars were made outside of the United States.
Just to add here that after that interview went to air, a White House spokesperson did call up NBC News to say he was referring to foreign automakers and that if they raise prices, he couldn't care less because he wants to encourage people to buy U.S. cars.
Maura Fogarty, our business presenter in Singapore. Germany's top general has told the BBC that the country needs to return to some form of conscription if Germany is to be able to defend itself properly.
General Karsten Breuer said that the threat of Russian aggression beyond Ukraine was real and Germany needs to abandon its historic aversion

to military strength and adjust to a new reality. Our correspondent Sarah Rainsford reports from Munster Military Base.
A German tank churns up the earth as it thunders into position on a training base. Then inside, the soldiers get ready to load their shells.
For years, this country's armed forces have been chronically underfunded, but German troops could soon have new weapons to train and to fight with. Parliament here has just cleared the way for a massive injection of cash, because Germany believes the threat of Russian aggression goes beyond Ukraine's borders.
I'm General Breuer, I'm the chief of defence in Germany. When I met the country's top general, he warned that Russia could attack NATO territory in as little as four years.
We are threatened by Russia, we are threatened by Putin, and we have to do whatever is needed to do to deter. And by building up a strong defence line, then you deter best.
How much money and how much time do you need in order to feel that Germany is defended against the threat that you've described? So it's not about how much time I need. It's much more about how much time Putin gives us to be prepared.
And the sooner we are prepared, the better it is.

General Breuer says the threat isn't only conventional warfare.

Russia's hybrid attacks on Europe already range from cyber to sabotage.

Then there's its continuing militarisation.

Russia is putting more and more weapon systems on the production line. And all this as Donald Trump shatters old assumptions that the United States will ride to Europe's defense.
It comes all together and out of this you see it's a real threat. As Germans we thought that the only way of trying to make up for the atrocities that we committed in World War II was by making sure that this would never happen again.
This is a country where history has left a huge imprint. But war in Ukraine has shifted the thinking here.
Back in Berlin, near a war memorial, I spoke to Charlotte and Ludwig. We have to fight for what is right and what we stand for.
I really desire to one day be pacifist again, but right now I have to be a realist. And that means supporting the action to rebuild and reinstall the German military.
There are a lot of Germans who still feel a little bit strange about the big investments in our military, but I think considering the things that have happened in the last couple of years, there is no other real option. Germany needs soldiers as well as weapons, though.
And at the country's only drop-in recruitment centre, they get just a handful of callers each day. The old plan was to boost troop numbers by 20,000.
General Breuer says they need five times that. We won't get this 100,000 soldiers, this additional 100,000 soldiers,

without having one or the other model of conscription.

Some form of conscription is necessary for Germany to defend itself.

Absolutely.

That debate has only just started.

But at the training base in Münster, and from the general's words, the pivot in German thinking is already clear. A country that once insisted on engaging with Russia and on dialogue, is now rushing to play catch-up on defence.
That was Sarah Rainsford. Now, can a 32nd rocket flight be seen as a success? Well, the first

orbital rocket launched from continental Europe crashed shortly after blast-off in Norway,

but the German start-up behind it says it was still progress. The launch was a closely watched

test for the continent's bid to build a new space economy. Stephanie Zacherson has this report.
Against the backdrop of Andaya Island, snow-covered peaks and the Norwegian Sea, spectrum blasted off into the sky. But after only a few seconds, smoke could be seen from the sides of the 28-metre rocket and it started tilting.
Onlookers gathered on the Arctic island, watched as the rocket, less than 40 seconds into its journey, fell back down to earth and crashed into the water, creating a huge cloud of fire and smoke.

The German startup Isar Aerospace had described the launch as an initial test of the operation and its rockets and had downplayed expectations. Aerospace engineer Juliana Metzler is the mission manager.
Being on this mission today, being on the pad right in front of me is already a huge success for us. And especially in today's geopolitical climate, I think this is about much more than just a rocket launch.
This was the first blast off of an orbital launch vehicle from the European continent, excluding Russia, and Europe's first financed almost exclusively by the private sector. Orbital vehicles need a remarkable speed to successfully orbit Earth, making them a complex and expensive challenge.
Several nations, including Sweden and the UK, have said they want a share of a growing market for commercial space missions as European actors try to catch up with US companies such as Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin. Here's astrophysicist Dr Maggie Liu.
We saw that with the Russian war, the Soyu rockets were cut off. We weren't able to access them anymore.
So geopolitically, it really makes sense for Europe to have their own launches. Right now, like the small satellite area is booming, like lots of people want to launch things like internet satellites.
So this is really important for that. On Norway's Andaya, Isar Aerospace said their test launch, despite its short length, had produced extensive data that its team could learn from, and that they would be back on the launch pad as soon as possible with launch vehicles for the second and third flight already in production.
Stephanie Zacherson. And that's it from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later.
If you would like to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, do please send us an email. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.
You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Just use the hashtag

Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by Volodymyr Muzetska.
The producer was Tracy

Gordon. Our editor is Karen Martin.
I'm Jackie Leonard. And until next time, goodbye.
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