A left-wing alliance is projected to win the most seats in the French parliament after tactical voting in Sunday’s second round election thwarted Marine Le Pen’s far-right party, but France may be left in limbo after no party won an absolute majority.

In a surprise result, the New Popular Front (NFP) – a cluster of five parties ranging from the far-left France Unbowed party to the more moderate Socialists and the Ecologists – was projected to win between 171 and 187 seats in the National Assembly, making it the largest party, but falling short of the 289 seats required to form an absolute majority.

President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Ensemble alliance, which had slumped to a dismal third in the first round of voting last Sunday, has since recovered strongly and is projected to win between 152 and 163 seats. Despite leading after the first round of votes, the far-right National Rally (RN) was projected to win between 134 and 152 seats.

The RN’s strong showing in the first round stirred fears that France could be on the cusp of electing its first far-right government since the collaborationist Vichy regime of World War II. But Sunday’s projection comes as a huge upset and shows French voters’ overwhelming desire to keep the far right from gaining power – even at the cost of political gridlock, with no party projected to reach a majority.

After the first round, an unprecedented number of seats – over 300 – went to a three-way runoff between Ensemble, the NFP and the RN. By Tuesday, more than 200 centrist and left-wing candidates withdrew from the second round, in a bid to avoid splitting the vote.

Cheers rang out on the streets of Paris as the projection was published. Speaking to a crowd of his ecstatic supporters at Stalingrad square, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the firebrand leader of France Unbowed, said the results came as a “huge relief for the overwhelming majority of people in our country.”

“Our people have clearly rejected the worst-case scenario,” Mélenchon said. “A magnificent surge of civic mobilization has taken hold!”

Gabriel Attal, Macron’s protege, announced he would resign as prime minister Monday morning. He seemed to take a swipe at Macron’s decision to call the snap vote, saying he “didn’t choose” for France’s parliament to be dissolved.

Elsewhere in Paris, the buoyant atmosphere at a RN campaign event in Bois de Vincennes took a nosedive an hour before the polls closed. After the projection was announced, Jordan Bardella, the party’s 28-year-old leader, said France had been thrown into “uncertainty and instability.”

Handpicked as leader by Marine Le Pen in an effort to purge the party of its racist and antisemitic roots, Bardella had taken the party closer to the gates of power than ever before. Visibly disappointed by the results, he slammed the NFP as an “alliance of dishonor.”

“As from tomorrow, our deputies will take up their places to make sure we counter the migration policies and other policies of the far left. We will not enter into any kind of coalition or compromise, we will be the side of the French people,” he said.

A hastily-assembled coalition

In a brief statement, the Elysee said Macron is awaiting the full results of all 577 constituencies “before taking the necessary decisions.”

“In his role as guarantor of our institutions, the president will ensure that the sovereign choice of the French people is respected,” it said.

After parliamentary elections, the French president appoints a prime minister from the party that won the most votes. Ordinarily, this means a candidate from the president’s own party. However, if Sunday’s projection is confirmed, Macron faces the prospect of having to appoint a figure from the left-wing coalition, in a rare arrangement known as a “cohabitation.”

Speaking to supporters at Stalingrad square, Mélenchon said Macron “has the duty to call the New Popular Front to govern.”

But it is not clear from which party within the coalition that Macron will appoint a prime minister. France Unbowed was projected to win up to 75 seats, which would make it the largest single party within the NFP, ahead of the Socialists with as many as 65 seats.

But Macron and his allies had repeatedly stressed that they would refuse to enter into coalition with Mélenchon. Speaking after last Sunday’s first round, outgoing Prime Minister Gabriel Attal – Macron’s protege, said France Unbowed was preventing the formation of a “credible alternative” to the far right.

The NFP formed less than a month ago, after Macron called the snap vote following his party’s disastrous loss to the RN in last month’s European Parliament election.

The capacious – and potentially fractious – coalition chose its name in an attempt to resurrect the original Popular Front that blocked the far right from gaining power in 1936. If Sunday’s projection is confirmed, the NFP will have achieved this aim.

It campaigned on a platform to raise the minimum monthly wage to 1,600 euros (more than $1,700), to cap the price of essential foods, electricity, fuel and gas, and to scrap Macron’s deeply unpopular pension reform, which raised the French retirement age – already one of the lowest in the Western world – from 62 to 64.

A mess of Macron’s making?

Sunday’s vote represents a victory for the French “cordon sanitaire,” the principle that left-wing and centrist parties must unite to block the far right from taking office.

But the RN’s success should not be underestimated. In the 2017 elections, when Macron swept to power, the RN won just eight seats. In 2022, it surged to 89 seats. In Sunday’s vote, it is projected to win as many as 152 seats.

While the risk of a far-right government has been avoided for now, these elections have plunged France into political uncertainty. Macron called the election three years earlier than necessary, just minutes after his party was trounced by the far right in the EU election.

Although EU election results need have no bearing on domestic politics, Macron said he could not ignore the message sent to him by voters and wanted to clarify the situation.

But Sunday’s results look set to further muddy the French political picture. Unable to call a new election for at least another year, and with three years left on his presidential term, Macron looks set to preside over an unruly parliament, as problems mount at home and abroad.

Édouard Philippe, France’s former prime minister and an ally of Macron, said Macron’s gamble had further complicated the situation.

“The truth is that none of the political blocs in the assembly has a majority on its own to govern. The dissolution of the assembly, which was intended as a clarification, has instead led to great vagueness,” he said Sunday evening.

“The central political forces therefore have a responsibility to stay. They must, without compromise, promote the creation of an agreement that will stabilize the political situation.”

They are young and passionate about protecting Cambodia’s rich and ecologically fragile environment.

Their peaceful green campaigns have been championed by climate activist Greta Thunberg and in 2015, they successfully fought against a plan for a hydroelectric dam they claim would have damaged a pristine rainforest valley.

But this week, the Southeast Asian nation sentenced 10 activists from the group Mother Nature Cambodia to up to six years in prison each on charges of conspiring against the state.

The government says the group encourages social unrest, but to their supporters, the ruling is just the latest in a pattern of attacks on climate activists in the wider region.

“We demand that our friends in Mother Nature Cambodia, and all political prisoners, be released immediately,” said Fridays for Future, the youth-led global climate strike movement founded by Thunberg, in a statement.

Exiled opposition leader Mu Sochua said the group had tried to highlight environmental issues that “threaten Cambodia’s fragile environment” and claimed, “they would be heroes in any free country.”

Cambodia, a kingdom of nearly 17 million people that is rich in natural resources, faces pressing threats to its environment, including deforestation from illegal logging and agricultural expansion, water pollution affecting inland and coastal areas, and a surge in plastic waste.

The country maintains about 46% forest cover and is home to 2,300 plant species and 14 endangered animals, according to the United States Agency for International Development. “Deforestation and wildlife crimes continue to threaten Cambodia’s forests and biodiversity,” USAID says on its website.

Critics and environmental groups say those threats have heightened under the nearly four-decade-long rule of strongman Hun Sen – who has quashed dissent and jailed opponents in recent years, forcing many to flee overseas.

Though his eldest son, Hun Manet, succeeded him as prime minister last year, Hun Sen is still widely seen as the ruling party’s center of power.

“Like what we are seeing with dictators in other countries, Cambodia is becoming more repressed,” said Alejandro Gonzalez-Davidson, a Spaniard who co-founded Mother Nature Cambodia over a decade ago, alongside local Cambodian activists.

Climate activism in the country is at a “rougher, grassroots level,” he added, with the conversation centering more on “extremely rich and powerful tycoons and corrupt government officials trying to exploit and privatize,” the environment.

“This is Cambodia now – logging, poaching, mineral extraction, turning lakes into land and destroying rivers, as well as exporting massive amounts of sands. There are systems in place where (officials) exploit the environment for profit and our group has been doing as much as we can to stop these unethical projects and protect the environment – and that is why we are a threat in the regime’s eyes.”

Outside the court ahead of Tuesday’s ruling, a government spokesperson denied that the charges against the activists were politically motivated.

“The government has never taken action against those who criticize. We only take action against those who commit crimes,” spokesperson Pen Bona told Reuters.

Award-winning campaigners

Founded in 2012, Mother Nature Cambodia has campaigned against environmental destruction and exposed alleged corruption in state management of precious mineral resources, and their savvy use of social media has resonated with young Cambodians.

In 2023, the group was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, often called the “alternative Nobel Prize.”

“Mother Nature Cambodia is a group of fearless young activists fighting for environmental rights and democracy in the face of repression by the Cambodian regime,” the jury said in a speech at the time, describing them as “a powerful voice for environmental preservation and democracy in Cambodia.”

Several activists were unable to receive the award in person as Cambodian courts denied their requests to travel to Sweden to collect the prize.

“They have successfully helped local communities stop environmental violations,” Right Livelihood’s executive director Ole von Uexkuell said last year. “Through innovative and often humorous protests, their activism defends nature and livelihoods while upholding communities’ voices against corrupt and damaging products.”

The group has strongly leveraged social media, saying it helps get their message across to young supporters. They have more than 450,000 followers on Facebook, the most widely used social platform in the country.

But it’s on TikTok that their videos really make an impression on young Cambodian users like Run Bunry, a high-school student from the capital Phnom Penh and his friends. “They are positive and lighthearted and also teach us a lot about the environment,” he said.

One video, highlighting an investigation into the alleged illegal export of rare silica sand, showed three members buried up to their heads in sand and was shared more than 1,000 times. Another viral video taken along a beach in the coastal city Sihanoukville showed the extent of alleged illegal construction by hotels and casinos on the shore.

“Follower numbers have grown especially in the last five years and a lot of our old content regularly resurfaces on TikTok and goes viral,” said founding member Gonzalez-Davidson, who was expelled from Cambodia in 2015 after the group’s successful campaign to stop a Chinese-funded hydropower dam from being built over the Areng Valley, an area of pristine rainforest in southwest Cambodia.

Members of the group say they have faced increasing threats, harassment and criminal charges for years.

Under scorching heat on Tuesday, members of the group – dressed in white and accompanied by a crowd of supporters – staged a mock funeral procession in the streets leading to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court.

But peaceful scenes descended into chaos after the sentencing was announced.

Video footage showed activists Mother Nature Cambodia activists Ly Chandaravuth, Long Kunthea, Thun Ratha, Phuon Keoraksmey and Yim Leanghy surrounded by dozens of armed police officers and dragged away into waiting cars, bound for prisons across the country.

Arrest warrants have been issued for five other members of the group, including Gonzalez-Davidson, who was sentenced to eight years in prison Tuesday on the conspiracy charge and insulting Cambodia’s king.

“The increasing use by Cambodian authorities of lèse majesté and other articles of Cambodia’s criminal code to penalise the exercise of human rights is deeply worrying,” United Nations Human Rights spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan said in a statement following the ruling.

Gonzalez-Davidson, however, said the ruling would backfire against the authorities and inspire a new cohort of environmental campaigners.

“This week, a new generation of Cambodian activists was born – one that did not exist back in 2012,” he said.

“Many young Cambodians are very engaged in the next steps and public campaigning must continue. There have been (arrests and jailings) before and each time, we come out stronger.

“They won’t break our spirits. We are not going to be shut down.”

At least seven people have died and several are feared trapped after a building in the western Indian state of Gujarat collapsed on Saturday, according to police and rescue officials.

The five-story building collapsed on Saturday afternoon in the city of Surat, Babulal Yadav from the National Disaster Response Force told reporters on Sunday.

Rescue operations resumed Sunday as teams tried to clear the debris following the collapse, the city’s Deputy Police Commissioner Rajesh Parmar said, adding it’s unclear how many people were still trapped.

He said one woman was rescued after a 12-hour operation on Saturday.

A cause has yet to be determined.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated

It was an attack that sent shockwaves through a country long considered a pioneer in LGBTQ rights. In the early hours of May 6, four lesbian women were set on fire in Argentina. Only one of them survived.

It happened at a boarding house in the Barracas neighborhood of Buenos Aires, where Pamela Fabiana Cobas, Mercedes Roxana Figueroa, Andrea Amarante and Sofía Castro Riglo were sharing a room. Witnesses say a man broke in and threw an incendiary device that set the women on fire.

Pamela died soon after. Her partner Roxana died days later of organ failure. Andrea died on May 12 in a hospital.

Local LGBTQ rights advocates condemned the attack as a hate crime and lesbicide, saying the women were targeted because of their sexual identity. Police have arrested a 62-year-old man who lived in the building but, according to Conder, aren’t currently treating the incident as a hate crime as they say the motive is still unclear.

For Argentina’s LGBTQ groups – many of whom are planning to commemorate the four women with a rally this weekend – the attack represents an extreme manifestation of what they consider a growing wave of hostility against them. Those they blame most for this rising intolerance are the people in power. Chief among them, they say, is the country’s new far-right leader Javier Milei.

“Things changed with the new government of Javier Milei,” said Maria Rachid, head of the Institute Against Discrimination of the Ombudsman’s Office in Buenos Aires, and a board member and founder of the Argentine LGBT Federation (FALGBT).

“Since the beginning of the new government, there are national government officials expressing themselves in a discriminatory manner and those hate speeches before our communities from places with so much power, of course, what they do is generate – actually legitimize – and endorse these discriminatory positions that are then expressed with violence and discrimination in everyday life,” Rachid said.

Milei under fire

When Milei ran for president in 2023, he and his party were accused of making offensive remarks against LGBTQ communities which were deemed hate speech by multiple groups, including Argentina’s National Observatory of LGBTQ Hate Crimes.

In a YouTube interview ahead of the November election, Milei insisted that he does not oppose same-sex marriage, but in that same interview, he went on to compare homosexuality to having sex with animals.

“What do I care what your sexual preference is? If you want to be with an elephant, and you have the consent of that elephant, that’s a problem between you and the elephant,” he said, angering LGBTQ communities, who called the comments dehumanizing.

In late October, then-congresswoman-elect Diana Mondino, who would later become Milei’s foreign minister, told an interviewer that she supports marriage equality in theory, but at the same time, compared it to having lice.

“As a liberal, I’m in favor of each person’s life project. It is much broader than marriage equality. Let me exaggerate: If you prefer not to bathe and be full of lice and it is your choice, that’s it. Don’t complain later if there is someone who doesn’t like that you have lice,” she said.

After taking office in December, Milei took steps that critics say weakened protections for LGBTQ groups. He banned the use of gender-inclusive language in government; replaced the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity with a less powerful undersecretariat within the Ministry of Human Capital; and effectively closed the national anti-discrimination agency, saying the Ministry of Justice would absorb its functions.

Milei’s administration argued that some of those moves were part of his plan to cut public spending in response to the country’s economic hardships. But critics say his actions have normalized a culture of discrimination toward LGBTQ groups, and in the most extreme cases, have led to violent attacks such as the deadly May 6 arson.

“(Attacks) always happened. That’s the reality. But they increased more in this current government due to the hate speeches constantly maintained on television, including hate speeches that our president Javier Milei exerts,” said Jesi Hernández, a lesbian and communication member of Lesbianxs Autoconvocadxs por la masacre de Barracas (Self-convened Lesbians for the Barracas massacre).

“Today it was Pamela, Roxana, Andrea and Sofía. And tomorrow it can be me.”

Rise in hate crimes

In 2023, an annual report by the National Observatory of LGBTQ Hate Crimes recorded 133 crimes in which the victims’ sexual orientation, identity and/or gender expression were used as a pretext for the attacks. Those numbers rose from 2022 and 2021, when 129 and 120 crimes were recorded, respectively.

Rachid points out that the observatory’s numbers only represent attacks that have been officially recorded, and that the real figures are likely much higher.

Hernández, meanwhile, notes that daily life for many people has been impacted in ways not shown by statistics alone. Some now fear they could be targeted next.

“The truth is that now, sleeping peacefully in your bed is a privilege,” Hernández said, referencing the May 6 attack, “because you don’t know if you have a neighbor who will throw something at you or come in. Sleeping is now a privilege for us.”

Shortly after the May 6 killings, the presidential spokesperson Manuel Adorni condemned the attack but dismissed the notion that it was motivated by hatred toward the sexual orientation of the victims.

“I don’t like to define it as an attack on a certain group,” Adorni said at a press conference. “There are many women and men who are suffering violence and these are things that cannot continue to happen.”

Progressives condemned his remarks, insisting that the government should regard lesbicide as a hate crime.

Adorni responded on social media with a picture of a Spanish dictionary that said lesbicide is not a registered word.

Progress in Argentina

Argentina was once a progressive pioneer in Latin America.

In 2010, it became the first country in the region to legalize same-sex marriage. In 2021, it also became the first to allow nonbinary people to mark their gender as “X” on national identity documents.

LGBTQ activists fear these historic gains are now being undermined – and potentially threatened – by the current government. But they also take comfort in surveys that suggest anti-LGBTQ views are the minority in Argentina.

According to a public opinion survey conducted in May by the University of San Andrés, some 72% of respondents said they are in favor of marriage equality, 70% said they support policies that protect transgender people from discrimination, 75% said they do not consider that transsexuality is a disease that should be treated medically, and 79% said that comprehensive sexuality education in schools is a positive thing.

The recent attacks have galvanized activists to fight for new policies and actions that would further protect LGBTQ rights.

He also said that to reduce attacks on LGBTQ communities, their voices and demands should be amplified in more societal sectors.

To that end, Hernández encouraged LGBTQ groups to push back against hate speech, telling those communities: “They are not insane, they are not sick, they are not people with lice. Quite the opposite. I would tell them that they are a disruptive person, that they are breaking out of the molds of ‘normality.’ And that they are very brave … and that they are whatever they want to be, despite all this.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has authorized his negotiators to enter into detailed negotiations to try and broker a ceasefire and hostage release deal with Hamas, an Israeli official and a source familiar with the negotiations said.

The decision signals that Israel and Hamas are entering a new phase of negotiations that could produce a final deal within a matter of weeks, if successful. Israel and Hamas on Thursday both appeared inclined to underplay the latest developments in written statements, with people involved in the talks expressing cautious optimism.

For months, Israel and Hamas have engaged in mediated negotiations focused on trying to reach a framework agreement, intentionally leaving key details — such as the identity of Palestinian prisoners to be released in exchange for hostages —  aside as they worked to hammer out a framework.

The breakthrough in the talks came earlier this week after the United States proposed new language for two key clauses (8 and 14) focused on the scope and sequencing of negotiations set to take place during the first phase of the agreement in order to unlock the second phase of the deal. Hamas broadly agreed with the new language, unlocking detailed negotiations following Netanyahu’s approval.

Mossad Director David Barnea, who has led Israel’s negotiating team, is set to lead the negotiating delegation for the new round of detailed talks, an Israeli source familiar with the talks said.

Talks are expected to be held in Doha, Qatar, starting as early as Friday, according to a senior Biden administration official.

The Mossad director is expected to meet with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani for discussions aiming to bring the parties closer to a deal in Gaza, according to a source with knowledge of the talks.

Those negotiations are expected to last two to three weeks, the Israeli source said, to resolve issues such as the identities of Palestinian prisoners to be released, the exact ratio of prisoners to hostages and the technical sequencing of the releases.

“We are also waiting for a positive response from the Israeli side, which will initiate negotiations into details of the deal,” Naim added. “We have no information about any delegation visiting Cairo.”

Netanyahu spoke Thursday with US President Joe Biden to discuss the progress in the negotiations and the Israeli Cabinet was set to meet Thursday evening.

The call focused on the details of the hostage and ceasefire deal, the senior Biden administration official said, adding that there seems to be a “pretty significant opening” for the hostage deal to be agreed upon by all the involved groups.

When asked if the administration believes that Netanyahu is playing politics and could try to sabotage the deal, the official said that the deal is structured in a way that “fully protects Israel’s interests.”

The official added that Biden will have the opportunity to talk about the deal with other world leaders next week during the NATO summit, which will be held in Washington, DC.

Hezbollah said that it fired more than 200 missiles at Israeli military sites in retaliation for the killing of one of its senior commanders in southern Lebanon.

Muhammed Neamah Naser, a commander in Hezbollah’s Aziz Unit, was “eliminated” on Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said, blaming him for directing terror attacks both before and after Hamas’ October 7 attacks from Gaza

The IDF described him as a counterpart of Sami Taleb Abdullah, another Hezbollah commander whose killing last month also triggered a wave of retaliatory strikes.

“Together, they served as two of the most significant Hezbollah terrorists in southern Lebanon,” the IDF said.

In response to the killing, Hezbollah on Thursday said it had launched “more than 200 missiles of various types” at Israeli targets.

The Israeli military said that it intercepted some of those Hezbollah missiles, as well as drones. Some fires broke out as a result of falling shrapnel.

In response to those strikes, the IDF said their fighter jets have struck Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon overnight Wednesday into Thursday. The IDF said they struck a military structure and three “terrorist infrastructure sites.” Hezbollah said Thursday that one of its fighters had been killed.

Naser is the latest Hezbollah commander to be killed in hostilities that flared along the Israel-Lebanon border since the October 7 attacks.

Israeli fire services said Thursday that they are working on multiple “extensive fires” in the north of the country “as a result of the heavy shelling from Lebanon.”

More than 10 fires broke out in the area of the Upper Galilee and the Golan Heights, the Israel Fire and Rescue North District said in a statement, “with some of them creating very extensive fires in challenging terrain.”

Over 40 firefighting teams and 10 aircraft were working in the region on five major incidents, the statement said.

Cross-border fire between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah has been an almost daily occurrence since the war in Gaza began. But it has been gradually intensifying, raising fears it could escalate into a full-blown conflict.

Hezbollah is one of the most powerful paramilitary forces in the Middle East, boasting of tens of thousands of fighters and a vast missile arsenal. The group has said its current round of fighting with Israel is to support Palestinians in Gaza.

Israeli attacks in Lebanon have killed more than 300 Hezbollah fighters and some 90 civilians, according to Reuters tallies. Meanwhile, Israel says fire from Lebanon has killed 18 soldiers and 10 civilians.

Eugenia Yosef contributed to this report.

Concerns are growing about political violence ahead of high-stakes parliamentary elections in France after a series of lawmakers were attacked on the campaign trail this week.

French government spokesperson Prisca Thevenot and her team came under attack while canvassing on Wednesday night, the latest in a string of violent incidents involving French lawmakers contesting Sunday’s parliamentary elections.

Her team isn’t the only one. National Rally politician Marie Dauchy, who is running in the southeastern constituency of Savoie, opted to suspend her campaign after she said was physically assaulted while campaigning at a market.

In Cherbourg, a center-right candidate from The Republicans party, Nicolas Conquer, made a formal complaint after he claimed he was assaulted by left-wing campaigners on Monday.

Politicians have repeatedly warned that a far-right victory could provoke huge protests in the streets with President Emmanuel Macron going so far as to say “civil war” may break out if the extreme left or right wins by a large margin in Sunday’s runoff vote.

Thevenot, a candidate for reelection from Macron’s Renaissance party, was in her constituency in the Parisian suburbs with members of her team when the group came under attack after attempting to stop a group of youths from defacing posters.

Providing an account of the incident to French newspaper Le Parisien, the minister said that although she was not harmed in the attack, her deputy and a member of her campaign team were taken to a hospital after sustaining injuries.

Four people have been taken in for questioning regarding the incident, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin told French television station France 2 on Thursday morning.

Thevenot has vowed to continue campaigning, saying in a post on X on Thursday that “violence is never the answer.”

Politicians from across the political divide came out quickly to condemn the attack and send a strong warning regarding election-related violence.

Jordan Bardella, the leader of the far-right National Rally (RN) party, sent his “complete support” to Thevenot following the attack, calling for “calm and appeasement.”

Acknowledging that violence has been linked to both the far-right and far-left camps, Bardella vowed, if appointed, to be a prime minister who “re-establishes order” in France.

Incumbent Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who is fighting to retain his seat, also denounced the attack on Wednesday, saying “violence and intimidation have no place” in France’s democracy.

An additional 30,000 police officers and gendarmes will be deployed across France on Sunday night in the event of public disorder, Darmanin said Thursday.

Darmanin said the beefed-up policing would ensure that neither the far right or far left “profit from the results” and succeed in inciting violence.

RN, the party of far-right doyenne Marine Le Pen, led the first round of France’s parliamentary elections on Sunday, taking it closer to the gates of power than ever before.

After an unusually high turnout, the RN bloc clinched 33.15% of the vote, while the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) coalition came second with 27.99% and Macron’s Ensemble alliance slumped to a dismal third with 20.76%, according to final results published by the Interior Ministry on Monday.

While the RN appears on track to win the most seats in the National Assembly, it may fall short of the 289 seats required for an absolute majority, suggesting France may be heading for a hung parliament and more political uncertainty.

Correction: A previous version of this story gave the wrong location for where the candidate made the complaint. It was Cherbourg.

Jordan Bardella’s rise to the peak of French politics has been so swift he is still asked about his teenage years spent playing “Call of Duty.” Next week, at the age of just 28, he could become France’s prime minister – and Europe’s youngest for more than 200 years.

He’s the fresh face of an old party that has striven to make itself new. Handpicked as leader by National Rally (RN) doyenne Marine Le Pen in an effort to purge the far-right party of its racist and antisemitic roots, Bardella has taken it closer to the gates of power than ever before. On Sunday, the RN smashed President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance in the first round of a snap parliamentary election.

Whether the RN forms a government and Bardella becomes prime minister after the July 7 runoff is not clear. Despite the surge in support for the RN, France’s left and centrist parties have called on their supporters to vote tactically to deny the far right an absolute majority in the 577-seat National Assembly. This week, more than 200 parliamentary candidates from Macron’s alliance and the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) stepped down in a bid to avoid splitting the vote in the second round.

But as Paris wraps a week of political bargaining, one thing is clear: France – and the rest of Europe – must reckon with the prospect of a far-right French government, headed by a popular but untested leader. So, who is Bardella, and what might his party do in power?

The only child of Italian immigrants, Bardella was brought up in Seine-Saint-Denis, a working-class suburb of Paris. He joined the RN at 16, and later began a geography degree at the prestigious Sorbonne university, before dropping out to climb the party ranks.

He did so briskly. After becoming party spokesperson, he became the RN’s lead candidate for the 2019 European Parliament election at the age of just 23. In 2022, after Le Pen narrowly lost the presidential election to Macron, he succeeded her as party leader, leapfrogging the party’s long standing vice-president and Le Pen’s former partner, Louis Aliot.

Freed from the day-to-day management of the party, but almost certain to run again for the presidency in 2027, Le Pen has been able to freshen the RN’s image and untether it from its reputation. Le Pen began her yearslong effort to detoxify the RN by ousting her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen – a convicted Holocaust denier – from the party he founded, and later changing its name.

The appointment and subsequent rise of Bardella may represent the completion of her mission to bring the party into the modern age. For many older voters, the prospect of a far-right government – reminiscent of the collaborationist Vichy regime during World War II – remains terrifying. But among young people, not weighed down by this historical baggage, the party has proved hugely popular.

While the RN’s messaging has remained similar, the messenger has changed entirely. Suave, composed, unflappable, a child of the screen generation, Bardella has built up a huge TikTok following, where young voters can watch him tasting wine and doing shots. Even a video of him eating a bon-bon has been viewed 7.5 million times.

In just two years, Bardella has helped to give the RN an acceptable – and potentially electable – face. Whereas Macron’s Ensemble alliance has sought to distance itself from the president’s image, the RN’s election manifesto is filled with splashy portraits of the prime minister-in-waiting.

Fantasy promises?

But campaigning and governing require different skills. If he becomes prime minister, Bardella will face the problem common to parties that make the leap from protest vote to credible governing force: How, after making extravagant promises as they rail against the mainstream, to avoid disappointing people once in office?

Despite its freshened image, its decades-old philosophy remains the same: Immigrants threaten France’s social fabric. The RN is committed to abolishing the birthright to citizenship for children of foreigners born on French soil, and to discriminate in favor of French citizens in welfare and public employment.

But on other things in its 21-page manifesto, the RN is more vague. Detailing how it intends to “preserve French civilization,” it says it will enact “specific legislation targeting Islamist ideologies,” without elaborating, and that it will “experiment with the creation of a voluntary national heritage service.”

But already, the RN has begun to temper some of its more extreme nativist positions. After initially advocating to ban dual-citizenship, Bardella softened this stance, but maintained that “the most strategic positions” within government will be reserved for French citizens.

“Can you imagine Franco-Russians working at the Ministry of the Armed Forces today?” he said ahead of the first round.

But the party has not yet provided a definition of “strategic positions.” Could, for instance, the Spanish-born Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo remain in post, or would she have to renounce her Spanish citizenship?

Mocking the vagueness of the RN’s pledges, Jean-Luc Mélenchon – the far-left leader of the France Unbowed party, which belongs to the New Popular Front coalition – has asked: “What does Mr. Bardella want? We don’t know. He says nothing. He’s a good-looking guy, but what’s his program? Throwing immigrants into the sea.”

Critics have said Bardella’s chronic absence from key votes while he was a member of the European Parliament, and his lack of grasp of policy details, make him unfit to govern. In a recent debate with Gabriel Attal, the outgoing French prime minister and Macron’s protege, Bardella confessed, with a smirk, to not having read the text of a bill he had voted against.

On the economy, the RN has pledged to slash value-added tax on electricity, fuel and other energy products from 20% to 5.5% and suspend it entirely for scores of basic necessities.

While this may be appealing to voters, it has alarmed both Brussels and the financial markets. France is running one of the highest deficits in the eurozone and now risks falling foul of the European Commission’s new fiscal rules, which had been suspended to help countries recover from the Covid-19 pandemic and energy crisis. French government spending could soon be brutally constrained by Brussels, despite the lavish promises of the RN.

If the RN falls short of the 289 seats required for an absolute majority, Bardella might choose not to govern. In bullish speeches before the first-round vote, he ruled out leading a minority government, which would require the support of allied parties to pass laws. While France might escape a far-right government for now, it faces the growing prospect of Le Pen becoming president in 2027, and then calling parliamentary elections to see Bardella installed as prime minister.

The Meloni model?

Since 2022, formerly fringe nativist parties hoping to govern have found a model to follow. After the technocratic government led by Mario Draghi collapsed in Italy, triggering a snap election, Giorgia Meloni became Italian prime minister, becoming the country’s most far-right leader since Benito Mussolini.

Before she took office, Rome’s allies thought a hard-right Italian government could compromise Western unity on support for Ukraine, pointing to Matteo Salvini, Meloni’s deputy prime minister and a longtime admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin who used to don T-shirts emblazoned with his image.

But Meloni’s premiership has proven more moderate than many feared at the outset. While she has pursued hard-right policies domestically – seeking to limit abortion, surrogacy and even removing lesbian mothers’ names from their children’s birth certificates – she has largely toed a mainstream line on foreign policy issues.

Might the RN adopt this bifurcated strategy?

The RN is notoriously euroskeptic, but talk of a “Frexit” has cooled – perhaps because Britain’s departure from the European Union proved an act of serious economic self-harm, and perhaps because hard-right leaders – like Hungary’s Viktor Orban – have shown it is easier to weaken the bloc from the inside than from without.

With that aim, the RN has promised to cut funding to the EU by up to 3 billion euros ($3.2 billion), partly to fund tax cuts at home. But, with EU budgets agreed on a seven-year basis and the current one running until 2027, the RN cannot legally renege on France’s spending commitments.

Bardella has also ruled out sending French troops to Ukraine – an idea floated by Macron – and said he would not allow Kyiv to use French military equipment to strike targets inside Russia.

But a Bardella premiership could tip France into a constitutional crisis. While the National Assembly is responsible for passing domestic laws and the prime minister controls the budget, the president determines the country’s foreign, Europe and defense policy. When the prime minister and president belong to different parties – in a rare arrangement known as “cohabitation” – things can grind to a halt.

With Macron set to see out his term, which finishes in 2027, the line between domestic and foreign issues may become blurred. If Macron pursues a foreign policy that requires parliament to pass large spending bills, it is not clear whose preferences would prevail: his or Bardella’s.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Thursday urged regional leaders to resist “external interference” at a gathering of a Eurasian security bloc touted by Beijing and Moscow as a counterbalance to Western power.

Addressing the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)’s annual leaders’ summit in Kazakhstan, Xi called on member states to “consolidate the power of unity” in the face of “the real challenge of interference and division.”

“We should work together to resist external interference … and firmly grasp our own future and destiny, as well as regional peace and development, in our own hands,” Xi was quoted as saying by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.

The 10-member bloc must handle internal differences with peace, seek common ground, and resolve difficulties in cooperation, Xi added.

Founded in 2001 by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to combat terrorism and promote border security, the SCO has grown in recent years as Beijing and Moscow drive a transformation of the bloc from a regional security club with a focus on Central Asia to a geopolitical counterweight to Western institutions led by the United States and its allies.

On Thursday, Belarus, a staunch Russian ally that helped Moscow launch its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, became the latest authoritarian state to join the SCO, after Iran became a full member last year. The bloc underwent its first expansion in 2017 to welcome India and Pakistan.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was notably absent from this year’s event, further adding to the perception of the SCO’s anti-Western orientation.

At the summit, Xi warned against what he called “the real threat of Cold War mentality” and called on member states to “uphold our security baseline.”

He also urged countries to safeguard the right to development in the face of the “real risks of small yards with high fences,” referring to a strategy adopted by the US to restrict key technologies from China.

The Chinese leader stressed the need to jointly promote scientific and technological innovation, and to maintain the stability and smoothness of industrial and supply chains.

China-Russia alignment

On the eve of the summit, Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin – the two leaders driving the SCO’s expansion – met on the sidelines and hailed their countries’ deepening alignment.

In opening remarks ahead of their bilateral meeting, Putin said Russia-China relations are going through “the best period in their history” and should be considered a “stabilizing” force for the world.

“Russian-Chinese cooperation in global affairs serves as a main stabilizing factor on the international stage, and we continue to further enhance it,” Putin told Xi on Wednesday.

The Russian president also underscored Moscow and Beijing’s roles “at the cradle” of the SCO’s founding and noted its rapid expansion in recent years.

“As the number of participants grew … the SCO also gained a bigger role as one of the key pillars of a just multipolar world order,” Putin said.

The meeting marks the two leaders’ second face-to-face talks in just two months following Putin’s visit to Beijing in May and comes shortly after the Russian president struck a landmark defense pact with North Korea.

Much to the consternation of the US and Europe, China and Russia have deepened their political, economic and military ties since Putin and Xi declared a “no limits” partnership in February 2022 when the Russian leader visited Beijing, weeks before his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

China has surpassed the European Union to become Russia’s top trade partner, offering a crucial lifeline to its heavily sanctioned economy. The two nuclear-armed neighbors have also continued to hold joint military exercises, including with Iran.

Meanwhile, the US has accused China of providing Russia with dual-use goods that bolster the warring nation’s military industrial complex as it attacks Ukraine, which Beijing denies.

In his opening remarks Wednesday, Xi told Putin that China and Russia should “keep upholding the original aspiration” of their “lasting friendship” in the face of “an international situation fraught with turbulence and changes.”

Xi also hailed the “unique value” in China-Russia relations, urging the two countries to make new efforts to safeguard their “legitimate rights and interests” and “the basic norms governing international relations.”

“China and Russia should continue to strengthen comprehensive strategic coordination, oppose external interference and jointly safeguard regional tranquility and stability,” Xi said, according to a readout from China’s Foreign Ministry.

This story has been updated with additional information.

British voters are heading to the polls Thursday for a crucial general election that is being seen as a referendum on 14 years of Conservative rule.

The snap vote, called by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, is being held months earlier than necessary and caught much of his party by surprise.

The opposition Labour party suffered its worst defeat since 1935 in the last general election, but has since rebuilt itself under the leadership of Keir Starmer.

Thursday’s vote follows a six-week campaign in which all major parties have scoured the country in search of votes. Much of the debate has revolved around the economy, the cost of living, the state of Britain’s public services, and tax and immigration.

Largely absent from the debate, however, has been Britain’s relationship with the European Union, which it left in 2020 after a referendum four years earlier.

Britain has had three Conservative prime ministers since the last general election in 2019, which Boris Johnson won by a landslide.

But after much of the country and his party soured on Johnson, Conservative party members voted in 2022 to replace him with Liz Truss, who became the shortest-serving prime minister in British history. Conservative Members of Parliament (MPs) then voted to replace her with Sunak.

During the campaign, Nigel Farage – one of the most prominent champions of Brexit – announced his return to frontline politics to lead the nascent hard-right Reform UK party.

Sunak, Starmer, Farage and the heads of all other major parties are expected to make appearances at their own local polling stations throughout the day.

Around 46.5 million Brits are eligible to vote in the election. They are casting their ballots in 650 separate constituencies across the nations of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, with 326 seats required for a party to form a majority government.

News outlets are barred from reporting anything that could influence voters while polls are opened. An exit poll from British broadcasters will project the seat totals are soon as polls shut at 10 p.m. local time (5 p.m. ET), and counting will take place throughout the night and into Friday morning.