Marine Le Pen

A peaceful resolution of New Caledonia’s quest for independence may have been sacrificed to shore up votes for Emmanuel Macron’s party in a snap election.

French Front National party leader Marine Le Pen is among the latest prominent figures to be swept up in the Panama Papers scandal.

A week after finishing in first place in the first round of the French regional elections, leading in six regions, the National Front finds itself in control of none.

The National Front, a far-right French political party with financial backing from Moscow, won the first round of France’s regional elections, taking the lead in six of France’s 13 regions and reaping 28 percent of the overall vote.

French voters are casting ballots Sunday for regional leaders in an unusually tense security climate, expected to favor conservative and far right candidates and strike a new blow against the governing Socialists.

Marine Le Pen, the French far-right presidential candidate, said she would not support President Nicolas Sarkozy in his tight bid for reelection, delivering a crushing blow to the president in the last week of the race.

Official results in the first round of French presidential elections on Sunday don’t bode well for incumbent Nicholas Sarkozy. Socialist candidate François Hollande narrowly beat the president with 28.6 percent of the vote compared to Sarkozy’s 27.1 percent.