Far-right leader tells supporters she is victim of ‘witch hunt’, while radical left says RN’s mask has slipped

• What is Marine Le Pen guilty of in National Rally embezzlement case?

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has told supporters in Paris she would fight “a political, not a judicial ruling” that could bar her from the next presidential election, as a rival rally denounced an “existential threat” to the rule of law after her conviction for embezzling public funds.

“This decision has trampled on everything I hold most dear: my people, my country and my honour,” the figurehead of the far-right National Rally (RN) told a crowd of flag-waving supporters as the country’s three main political movements staged events in the Paris.

The Russian has broken a record some believed would never be passed. But, like the man whose mark he bettered, he has received scrutiny away from the rink

“He’s definitely a very, very, very good player,” the Washington Capitals’ director of amateur scouting, Ross Mahoney, told reporters on the night of the NHL entry draft in June 2004. He was talking about Alex Ovechkin, who the team picked first overall that night. “How good will he be?” Mahoney asked. “Time will tell.” Now, nearly 21 years later, time has had its say. On Sunday afternoon in a game against the New York Islanders, Ovechkin scored his 895th goal, passing Wayne Gretzky’s all-time NHL scoring record, a tally that had stood since 29 March 1999 and that few believed would ever be broken.

Had things been slightly different in 2004, we might have been having this conversation a year ago. The NHL season after Ovechkin’s draft – the 2004-05 campaign – never happened, replaced instead by a long dispute between the league and the players’ union. Ovechkin bided his time in Russia, where he played 37 games with Dynamo Moscow. Finally, in autumn of 2005, he stepped on to NHL ice for Washington and, as Mahoney – and everyone else – expected by that time, he proved immediately to be a very good player. Ovechkin scored two goals in his first game, the first of an eventual 52 on the season (alongside 54 assists).

• Slovenian takes title in style after 19km solo attack
• Lotte Kopecky makes history and adds to previous wins

Tadej Pogacar denied Mathieu van der Poel a record fourth Tour of Flanders title when the Slovenian won the second Monument of the season in Belgium for the second time in his career on Sunday.

The 26-year-old Pogacar, who skipped the 2024 edition to focus on a Giro d’Italia-Tour de France double, had won the Tour of Flanders in 2023. Second in the 268.9-km race, which started in Markt in Bruges and concluded in Minderbroedersstraat in Oudenaarde, was the Dane, Mads Pedersen with Belgium-born Van der Poel coming third to complete the podium. Home heros Wout Van Aert and Jasper Stuyven rounded up the top five.

Blunt and tame, the 196th Manchester derby was a curio that failed to ignite despite the cross-town rivalry, conjuring memories of the last goalless affair of this sort here, in December 2020, before an empty Old Trafford, owing to Covid.

This edition can be rated slightly better yet, towards the close of play, when the substitute Joshua Zirkzee swung a boot at Patrick Dorgu’s cross and connected cleanly, the crowd perhaps sensed Ederson would save because a stalemate seemed so inevitable.

• Last 16: Toulouse 38-15 Sale
• Stricken army captain was dangling 30 metres up

It is rare that Toulouse do not live up to the pre-match theatrics but it is not every day that a paratrooper attempting to land on the pitch gets snagged on the stadium roof and suspended in midair for half an hour. As it was, the paratrooper in question was rescued by the fire brigade before Toulouse dug in to beat a dogged Sale side, finishing with a flourish to send their supporters home happy.

Ultimately, the Sharks’ defeat caps a thoroughly miserable weekend for the Premiership clubs and for the first time since 2019 there will be just one representative – Northampton – in the last eight. As far as England’s British & Irish Lions hopefuls are concerned, it has not been a great weekend either and Andy Farrell will anxiously await news of Tom Curry’s suspected wrist injury which forced the flanker off during the first half here.

Russia’s military threat and the junta’s war in Myanmar have undermined the international treaty against them

Eleven years ago, members of the Ottawa treaty banning the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of antipersonnel mines agreed a deadline for completing their obligations: 2025.

The ambitious timeline reflected the immense progress made since the pact was signed in 1997. Back then, 25,000 people were killed or injured each year by landmines; by 2013, that number had fallen to 3,300. Tens of millions of mines have been destroyed, and by last year, 164 countries had committed themselves to the agreement.

Lawsuit would be first of its kind against police officers, police chiefs and government departments

More than 100 relatives of people who have died after contact with the police in the UK since 1971 have joined plans for a class action lawsuit in pursuit of compensation and justice.

The plan for group legal action was announced at the People’s Tribunal on Police Killings, a two-day event in which bereaved families presented evidence to a panel of international experts on how their relatives died and the long-term impact this has had on them.

Government officials and contractors long controlled spy operations. Now the likes of Musk and Bezos are in control

Just days before Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, Blue Origin, the space company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, launched its New Glenn rocket, named for John Glenn, the Mercury astronaut who was the first American to orbit the Earth. Around 2am on 16 January, the 30-story rocket powered by seven engines blasted off into the Florida night from Cape Canaveral’s historic launch complex 36, which first served as a Nasa launch site in 1962.

The flight’s end was marred by a failure to bring the booster rocket back for further use, but the successful launch and orbit still marked a watershed moment for Blue Origin in its bid to compete with SpaceX, the company owned by Elon Musk, for dominance over American spy satellite operations. During the Trump administration, it is likely that both companies will play significant roles in placing spy satellites into Earth orbit, which could mean that the United States intelligence community will be beholden to both Bezos and Musk to handle the single most complex and expensive endeavor in modern espionage.

• Win over Sevilla closes gap to Real Madrid and Barcelona
• Gladbach’s teenage goalkeeper’s clean sheet streak ends

Pablo Barrios scored deep in added time to give Atlético Madrid a much-needed 2-1 La Liga win at Sevilla on Sunday that ended their month-long six-game winless run in all competitions.

Eliminated from the Champions League in the round of 16 on penalties by old rivals Real Madrid and knocked out of the Copa del Rey in the semi-finals by Barcelona, Atlético kept their slim hopes of claiming the league title alive after the leaders, Barça, and Real both dropped points on Saturday.

Energoatom CEO, Petro Kotin, says ‘major problems’ need to be overcome before it can safely generate power

It would be unsafe for Russia to restart the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and would take Ukraine up to two years in peacetime if it regained control, the chief executive of the company that runs the vast six-reactor site has said.

Petro Kotin, chief executive of Energoatom, said in an interview there were “major problems” to overcome – including insufficient cooling water, personnel and incoming electricity supply – before it could start generating power again safely.

The US president’s sweeping, unprecedented tariffs on countries around the world are threatening to reshape the global economy – so, what exactly happens next?

On Thursday evening, towards the end of a long week at a textiles factory on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City, Nguyen Thi Dieu and her husband were watching the news. More than 8,700 miles away, US president Donald Trump was announcing sweeping, unprecedented tariffs on every country around the world. Nowhere was safe, even the uninhabited Heard Island and McDonald Islands off the western coast of Australia that, for some unexplained reason, were hit with a 10% tariff.

His announcement launched a fierce global trade war and triggered a global market meltdown, including on Trump’s own cherished Wall Street, where hundreds of billions of dollars of stock values evaporated.

• Premier League latest, 4.30pm BST at Old Trafford
• Live scoreboard | Read Football Daily | Email Niall

Fun fact: at least one Manchester club has finished in the top three in every Premier League season but one – 2015-16, when Leicester, Arsenal and Tottenham were on the podium. City have work to do to keep that record alive this season.

Here’s Pep Guardiola on Kevin De Bruyne: “Of course there’s emotion, one decade here, but I’m pretty sure he’ll be focused on what he needs to do.” On Omar Marmoush: “He has done well, his numbers, movement off the ball and getting in behind.” And on Nico O’Reilly: “Nico is young, he has to improve but he has great physicality and is strong at set pieces.”

Phone footage contradicts IDF claims vehicles were not using emergency lights when troops opened fire

Israel’s military has backtracked on its account of the killing of 15 Palestinian medics in Gaza last month after footage contradicted its claims that their vehicles did not have emergency signals on when Israeli troops opened fire.

The military said initially it opened fire because the vehicles were “advancing suspiciously” on nearby troops without headlights or emergency signals. An Israeli military official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations late on Saturday, said that account was “mistaken”.

The almost seven-minute video, which the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said on Saturday was recovered from the phone of Rifat Radwan, one of the men killed, appears to have been filmed from inside a moving vehicle. It shows a red fire engine and clearly marked ambulances driving at night, using headlights and flashing emergency lights.

• Quarter-final: Warrington 20-12 St Helens
• Wolves to play Leigh Leopards in semi-final

Warrington Wolves edged a pulsating Challenge Cup quarter-final with St Helens to set up a semi-final showdown with Leigh Leopards next month.

Two of the cup’s most successful clubs met on a sun-drenched afternoon in Warrington, in a contest that was level at half-time and which ebbed and flowed for most of the match. But in the end, it was Sam Burgess’s side who came through a thrilling tie with the England captain, George Williams, scoring the decisive try with 10 minutes remaining.

Emergency crews deploy helicopters to douse flames as blaze reaches Loch Doon after change in wind direction

Emergency services are continuing to battle a wildfire that started in Galloway, south of Scotland, and has spread north into East Ayrshire, forcing the evacuation of walkers and wild campers.

The blaze started in the Newton Stewart area on Friday, then spread northwards over the weekend after a change in wind direction to reach Loch Doon. Residents living nearby were advised to keep windows and doors closed and police told people to avoid the area.

The annual award for aspiring cartoonists – which now boasts its own evening event – offers the chance to be published in the Observer and win £1,000, with past winners landing book and film deals

This year, we have decided to launch the annual Faber/Observer/Comica graphic short story prize with an event as well as an announcement: an evening that will hopefully be highly enjoyable for anyone who has followed the progress of the award, as well as helpful to those who might be thinking of entering this time around. On 9 April, then, come along to the Bindery in Hatton Garden, London, where a panel will discuss graphic novels in general and our prize in particular – tickets are still available. On stage will be last year’s brilliant judges, Luke Healy and Posy Simmonds, as well as Lesley Imgart, who won the 2024 prize for her charming, funny comic Witch Way?. The event will be chaired by me, and I hope to see you there.

But back to the details of 2025. As ever, the winner of the prize will receive a cheque for £1,000 and his or her work will appear in the New Review in print and online (the award for the runner-up is £250, and their story will also be published online). Perhaps the bigger thing, however, is that both will know that their work was admired by our two guest judges: Aimée de Jongh, whose graphic adaptation of William Golding’s classic Lord of the Flies was published to such acclaim last year; and Jonathan Coe, whose wonderful novels include What a Carve Up!, The Rotters’ Club and The Proof of My Innocence. This is the 18th year of the prize, and we’re so happy to have them.

To book tickets for Celebrating the Graphic Novel at the Bindery, London EC1, click here

That Liverpool will be deserved Premier League title winners but far from infallible has been obvious for some time. No need to panic just yet after defeat by the Thames. Collecting silverware while requiring further growth and repair can be taken as a positive sign.

An often-rampant Fulham, enjoying their football perhaps because any pressures are now lifted, with the brilliant Alex Iwobi turning on the style, reminded top-tier English football is full of quality, that laurels can never be rested on. For Arne Slot, the first half – and much of the second – at Craven Cottage was a case study of what needs to improve, and such is the ruthlessness of successful dynasties, who will need to be replaced.

Enzo Maresca’s calculated gamble did not come off. Chelsea’s head coach turned into the Tinkerman, benching Cole Palmer, Pedro Neto and Nicolas Jackson in an attempt to keep his best forwards fresh for the run-in, but his side’s hopes of qualifying for the Champions League were dented by their failure to summon any attacking inspiration before it was too late.

In fairness a point against motivated opponents may not prove to be the worst result in the final reckoning. Even so Chelsea have not won on the road since December and victory here would have tightened their grip on fourth place. The sense that this was a missed opportunity lingered, even if a punchy and resolute Brentford had chances to end an eight-match winless run at home.

On Celebheights.com, thousands of users measure the statures of the rich and famous. The methods are scientific and the debates are fiery

As someone brushing up on 6’3”, height is one physical insecurity I’ve never agonised over. Instead, it’s a source of frustration as I crunch my legs into airplane seats and wait for them to go numb.

Only after discovering Celebheights.com did I truly understand the depth of feeling – both excitement and rage – that height can inspire.

Some of the country’s most loved native species, including the koala and the hairy-nosed wombat, are on the brink. Is this their last chance at survival?

• Explore the series – Last chance: the extinction crisis being ignored this election
• Get Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as an email

Most parliamentarians might be surprised to learn it, but Australians care about nature. Late last year, the not-for-profit Biodiversity Council commissioned a survey of 3,500 Australians – three times the size of the oft-cited Newspoll and representative of the entire population – to gauge what they thought about the environment. The results tell a striking story at odds with the prevailing political and media debate.

A vast majority of people – 96% – said more action was needed to look after Australia’s natural environment. Nearly two-thirds were between moderately and extremely concerned about the loss of plants and animals around where they live.

Get Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as an email

When the world’s oldest woman passed away at 117, much was made of her three yoghurts a day diet. But what role does yoghurt actually play in longevity?

Supercentenarians – humans who live beyond 110 years of age – are objects of great fascination in our death-fearing culture. Interviews with them inevitably demand to know that one simple ingredient that is the secret to their extraordinary longevity; was it a shot of whisky before bedtime, maintaining good friendships, a happy marriage or always having a pet?

In the case of Spain’s Maria Branyas Morera – who was the world’s oldest person until she died at the very ripe old age of 117 last year – one possible answer to that question was yoghurt.

After I was hit by a car, Sophia seemed to understand that I needed the safety of someone being right there at eye level

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

I could see the car and knew I was going to hit it. People ask: did your life flash before your eyes? It didn’t. The only thing I remember thinking was: “oh well”. In an instant all those things I’d been worrying about until that point didn’t matter, because I was about to die. Oh well!

There was nothing I could do. I was on my motorbike on a dark and rainy night in rush hour traffic when a car pulled across into my lane without looking. I couldn’t avoid hitting it, I couldn’t break, I was going to hit the car and I was going to die.

How does Gina Rinehart, like her father before her, use wealth and power to influence politics? Rinehart’s first major foray into the political spotlight was successfully lobbying against Labor’s mining super profit tax during the early 2010s. But what did she learn from Lang Hancock, who campaigned to overturn the iron ore export embargo in the 1950s, setting the foundation for their family fortune?

• Listen to all the episodes of Gina at theguardian.com/gina

​Contains excerpts from Interview with Lang Hancock by Lady Mary Fairfax obtained from the State Library of Western Australia, reproduced with the permission of the Library Board of Western Australia and the copyright holder WIN.

It may be that Southampton pick up the two points they need to surpass Derby’s 2007-08 tally of 11 so as not to be ranked the worst team in Premier League history, but no side has ever previously been relegated with seven games of the season remaining. In that sense, and that alone, this was a historic afternoon, a new high in abjection. A facile win, though, did not bring a huge amount of joy for Tottenham.

It’s remarkable just how bad a team in Southampton’s position can become, how beaten-down players become unable to perform even the simplest functions. Like their 5-0 win at St Mary’s in December, the game that led to Russell Martin being dismissed, there was a sense that it was almost too straightforward to be meaningful. Yes, the knife cut through the butter; that doesn’t make it a good knife.

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

Malian singer-songwrier and guitarist who had international success in a duo with his wife Mariam

One of the most extraordinary success stories in the history of African music began in 1978 in the south of the Malian capital, Bamako, in the Institut des Jeunes Aveugles, a school for young blind people. It was there that Amadou Bagayoko and Mariam Doumbia began to make music together. Over two decades later, by now married and known as Amadou & Mariam, “the blind duo of Mali” (as they were once billed) became an award-winning commercial triumph, headlining at festivals and concerts around the world.

Amadou, who has died aged 70, played the electric guitar, sang with Mariam, and wrote or co-wrote many of their songs. They had enjoyed a lengthy, sometimes difficult career together when their lives were transformed by a collaboration with the French-Spanish globally-influenced pop star Manu Chao. He heard one of their songs on the car radio while driving through Paris, and offered not just to produce their next album but to co-write and sing on some of the tracks, adding his slinky, rhythmic style to the duo’s rousing blend of African R&B. The result, Dimanche à Bamako (2004) introduced the duo to a new global audience, selling half a million copies worldwide and reaching No 2 in France.

Alberto Lovo Rojas fled violence in his home country. Now, he fears Trump-backed deportation

It finally happened while he was waiting to get his hair cut.

Alberto Lovo Rojas, an asylum seeker from Nicaragua, had been feeling uneasy for weeks, worried that immigration officials would arrest him any moment. But he had pushed the worry aside as irrational – after all, he had a permit to legally work in the US, and he had been using an app to check in monthly with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).

A wildlife crossing across the 101 freeway will connect two parts of the Santa Monica mountains for animals

Above the whirring of 300,000 cars each day on Los Angeles’s 101 freeway, an ambitious project is taking shape. The Wallis Annenberg wildlife crossing is the largest wildlife bridge in the world at 210ft long and 174ft wide, and this week it’s had help taking shape: soil.

“This is the soul of the project,” says Beth Pratt, the regional executive director, California, at the National Wildlife Federation, who has worked on making the crossing become a reality over the last 13 years. She says she’s seen many milestones, like the 26m pounds of concrete poured to create the structure, but this one is special.

Even if he’s convicted, a jury might decide on a lesser punishment for Luigi Mangione in the trial’s penalty phase

It was a decision that everyone expected to come. But it still had all the drama of a made-for-television legal show: would the government seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, the man accused of murdering a top health insurance executive on a Manhattan street?

The answer came last week: yes.

According to a new survey, over half of millennials work more than one job. It’s what they have to do in today’s economy

Americans are barely staying ahead of inflation. So how are they dealing with this issue? By working more.

That’s one of the biggest takeaways from a new study by Academized, an outsourcing platform that connects writers and students. According to the report, more than half of millennials – who make up the largest percentage of workers in this country – are working more than one job to make extra money. What’s even more eye-raising is that nearly a quarter (24%) of those workers have three jobs and a third (33%) have four or more income-earning opportunities outside their full-time work.

US health and human services department confirmed death but insisted the exact cause is under investigation

A second child with measles has died in Texas amid a steadily growing outbreak that has infected nearly 500 people in that state alone.

The US health and human services department confirmed the death to NBC late Saturday, though the agency insisted exactly why the child died remained under investigation. On Sunday, a spokesperson for the UMC Health System in Lubbock, Texas, said that the child had been hospitalized before dying and was “receiving treatment for complications of measles” – which is easily preventable through vaccination.

Internal investigation cleared the national security adviser Mike Waltz, but the mistake was months in the making

Donald Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz included a journalist in the Signal group chat about plans for US strikes in Yemen after he mistakenly saved his number months before under the contact of someone else he intended to add, according to three people briefed on the matter.

The mistake was one of several missteps that came to light in the White House’s internal investigation, which showed a series of compounding slips that started during the 2024 campaign and went unnoticed until Waltz created the group chat last month.

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts

Why do sunglasses make you look cool? Allen Bollands, by email

Post your answers (and new questions) below or send them to nq@theguardian.com. A selection will be published next Sunday.

The older you are, the more likely it is that a fall, a knock or just gravity will break bones that have been weakened by osteoporosis. But there are ways to protect yourself – and the earlier you start, the better

I’ve broken just one bone in my 61 years – my fibula, the smaller of the two that connect your knee to your ankle. I was skiing, I caught my left foot on some ice and the rest of my body just rotated around it until something snapped. Yeah, ouch. I made a full recovery, but I’d rather not break anything else. I definitely don’t want to become so frail that just sneezing or coughing might fracture a rib, or gravity alone could crack my spine.

Like broken hips and wrists, these are all possibilities with the bone disease osteoporosis. In Britain alone, an estimated 3.5 million people live with porous and fragile bones – and one in two women and one in five men over 50 will have a fracture as a result, according to the Royal Osteoporosis Society (ROS). The older you are, the more likely you are to be affected.

As his attackers are jailed for eight years, Kashti speaks about resilience, recovery after being targeted in attack

As he lay on the floor of a remote Welsh cottage, having been battered by a gang of masked kidnappers and handcuffed to a radiator pipe, musician and record producer Itay Kashti was heartbroken to imagine he would never see his family again.

“I thought: ‘This is it. I’m going to die and this is the end of my story.’ I felt it was the final scene from a movie. I was thinking about my children.”

For many of us, the United States means music, progress, hope. Whatever their president does, plenty of Americans continue to believe in those too

It seems as inevitable as the economic chaos let loose by Donald Trump’s mad avalanche of tariffs: a precipitous drop in the number of tourists visiting the US, which is now forecast to be even worse than initially feared. In February, overseas travel to the country was down by 5% compared with the previous year – and, now, reputable forecasters are predicting a drop of nearly twice that size.

We all know why. Trump’s hostile words about Canada and Mexico have hit the US’s top two markets for tourism. Finnish, German and Danish transgender and non-binary people have been advised by their governments to contact a US diplomatic mission before travelling there. Note also a trickle of reports about outsiders falling foul of the cruel stringency apparently now gripping the American authorities: a 28-year-old woman from north Wales held for 19 days in a detention centre and escorted on to her plane home in chains; the French scientist who was summarily denied entry into the US after his phone was found to contain messages criticising the president. Those stories intensify the Trump administration’s general air of brutality and belligerence, which also brings familiar fears to the surface: of guns, politicised thuggery and a country in a frighteningly volatile state. The result is the sudden understanding of the US as somewhere that may be best unvisited – which, for millions of people, brings on a very painful pang of loss.

The blue-and-purple hoop is supposedly there to answer questions that arise in chats, but it’s a slippery slope from providing bus times to annihilating the human race

There are five stages of grief, but only two stages of discovering the little Meta AI circle on your WhatsApp screen. Fear, then fury.

When I first saw the small blue-and-purple hoop last week, I was terrified that it meant I was now livestreaming my life to the entire metaverse, something I presumed I had agreed to when accepting but (of course) not reading the terms and conditions. As the saying goes, if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.

Book highlights performer’s wartime contribution and how she used her fame to provide cover and promote equal rights

She was, according to US wartime counter-intelligence officer Lt Paul Jensen, “our No 1 contact in French Morocco”, supporting the allied mission “at great risk to her own life – and I mean that literally. We would have been quite helpless without her.”

The British intelligence agent Donald Darling had her down as an especially “cherished agent of [Charles] de Gaulle’s government”. Well aware of her importance, the UK foreign intelligence service MI6 called her “the pet lady agent” of the Free French.

Considering everyone is a protagonist in their own narrative brought clarity for Will Storr

For nearly 20 years, I’ve been researching and writing about the human brain as a storyteller. My work has unalterably changed the way I see the human world in general, and myself in particular. It has helped me understand everything from political hatred and religions to cults to the nature of identity and suicidal thought. It has even made sense of my own lifelong struggle with making friends.

Our evolution into Homo narrans, the storytelling animal, is the secret of our success. Like other animals, humans exist in a realm of survival in which we seek sustenance, safety and procreation. But, uniquely, we also live in a second realm, a story world that’s made out of the collective imagination. The human brain has evolved to remix reality and turn it into a narrative. We are made to feel like the underdog heroes of our own lives, surrounded by allies and enemies, pursuing meaningful goals and striving towards imagined happy endings. We have a voice in our head that authors a constantly unfolding autobiography of who we are and what we’re doing. We experience, and remember, the events of our lives in three-act episodes of crisis, struggle, resolution. We think in stories, we talk in stories, we believe in stories, we are stories.