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French far-right leader Marine Le Pen goes on trial on Monday for allegedly embezzling EU funds, in a politically charged case that could lead to fines and a ban from elected office.

Prosecutors accuse the three-time presidential candidate and former member of the European parliament of misusing EU funds to pay staff hired in Brussels for work they were doing for the party in France.

Also on trial are 24 others, including elected officials and staffers, as well as Le Pen’s far-right party itself.

They allegedly siphoned off roughly €3.2mn from 2004 to 2016 at a time when their party, then called Front National, was cash-strapped, according to Patrick Maisonneuve, the lawyer for the EU parliament at the trial.

If proven true, such practices would fall foul of rules that govern how MEPs can spend money allocated to them to cover their expenses.

Le Pen and the other defendants have said they committed no wrongdoing. The founder of the party, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who is Marine Le Pen’s father and a former member of the EU assembly for 25 years, was also supposed to stand trial, but judges decided the 96-year-old was too frail.

If convicted, judges could impose a prison sentence on Marine Le Pen of up to 10 years, €1mn in fines and a maximum ban on holding elected office of five years.

Such a verdict would cause political shockwaves in France, as her party, now rebranded as Rassemblement National, has emerged as a powerful force in the fractured French parliament following snap elections this summer.

The vote was called by President Emmanuel Macron after RN scooped up the largest share of the vote in elections for the EU parliament in June. Le Pen is expected to run for president again in 2027 when Macron’s second and final term ends.

With opposition parties threatening no-confidence votes against the fragile new government led by Prime Minister Michel Barnier, RN has emerged as a kingmaker since its votes would be needed for such a motion to pass.

Police and prosecutors in France began investigating the alleged fraud in 2014 after the EU parliament submitted evidence that Le Pen’s party was misusing funds.

To secure a conviction, prosecutors will have to prove that Le Pen and other defendants intentionally redirected their staff in Brussels to pursue tasks that were not related to their EU parliamentary work.

Maisonneuve, the lawyer for the EU parliament, said officials in Brussels initially noticed that “a large majority of the assistants” on RN’s organisational chart appeared to be based in France and not doing work in the EU assembly.

“We had an obligation to notify the French authorities to ensure that EU taxpayers’ money was not being misused,” he said.

Le Pen has called the charges “deeply unfair” and vowed that the trial would not disrupt RN’s work. Asked by La Tribune newspaper in early September if she feared a verdict that would bar her from elected office, she said she believed that she and her co-defendants would be cleared. “I am very sure of our innocence,” she said.

Several French political parties have been accused of similar crimes involving EU parliamentary assistants.

One of Macron’s allies, the centrist politician François Bayrou, was cleared earlier this year but his MoDem party was declared guilty of misappropriating EU funds. In 2018, an investigation was opened into the far-left party France Unbowed, but no charges have been filed.

“It can be difficult to draw a line between work done for the MEP and work done for the party,” said Francis Teitgen, the lawyer who represented the MoDem party in a similar trial.

“Compared to the case involving the Modem, which is very pro-Europe, the atmosphere of the RN one will be different since they are Eurosceptics.”

He eliminated text that would have allowed California’s attorney general to sue AI companies for negligent safety practices before a catastrophic event has occurred, along with plans to establish a division within the California Department of Technology that would have provided oversight and enforcement.

Compared to the original language of the bill, what landed on the governor’s desk was substantially weaker, according to Gary Marcus, a scientist, entrepreneur and author of Taming Silicon Valley, a book highly critical of generative AI. “The bill was watered down,” Marcus said, adding he feels its value was primarily symbolic, and that Newsom’s decision signaled to Silicon Valley that it can “cause enormous chaos, and probably nobody’s going to make them fix it.”

As with other measures before Newsom, the governor had a month to consider whether to sign SB 1047 or veto it, and during that time, his office was lobbied heavily by industry insiders on both sides, as well as local Congressional representatives and Hollywood celebrities.

“I don’t have the technical capacity to to perfectly predict how [SB 1047] would have affected the AI industry,” said Thad Kousser, a Political science professor at UC San Diego. “Many people in Sacramento don’t have that ability. Maybe they just decided to err on the side of caution, thinking, ‘Wow, there’s so many industry voices saying this particular bill is dangerous and could have a chilling effect.’ Not really knowing 100%, maybe the safer step is just vetoing,” Kousser said.

Wiener said the governor’s office did not engage with his office as the bill made its way through the state assembly and senate. “I personally met with some of the most vocal opponents of the bill, with the Andreessen Horowitz firm, with several of the Stanford professors who were opposing the bill, with the large tech companies that were opposing the bill. I also met with individuals and businesses that had constructive criticism of the bill. And we made significant changes to the bill in response to those constructive critiques.”

Those changes were not enough for many critics, including Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren of San Jose, who wrote, “Any AI risk framework should be based on empirical data and fit for purpose. I also believe this is an issue that should be handled at the federal level. Congress and the Administration are both moving on AI governance. I look forward to working with the Governor as we move forward.”

Lofgren is the ranking member of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, which has in recent weeks moved nine bills forward, but all face an uncertain future in the House of Representatives. Nothing addressing the scope and scale of SB 1047 has passed out of any committee. But Lina Khan of the Federal Trade Commission has said that federal regulators are keen to use existing laws to go after bad behavior in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.

Unlike the European Union and Colorado, both of which passed comprehensive laws, California lawmakers have largely focused on discrete bills addressing specific issues with generative AI. Governor Newsom signed 17 of these bills this year, as he noted in his veto message, and California is among a host of states taking steps to regulate generative AI.

Given the inertia in Washington D.C., most political analysts see the state level as the only hope for aggressive regulation of technology.

In the race for the White House this year, both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have sought the support of Silicon Valley’s most powerful players. Newsom’s presidential ambitions are presumably on hold for the foreseeable future, but given the national profile of SB 1047, some have wondered if he might be loath to make enemies among those profiting from the rise of generative artificial intelligence.

“I think, like any good politician who’s ascended to the heights Gavin Newsom has, you’ve got to be thinking about ‘How will I be judged today, tomorrow, in 5 or 10 years,” said Professor Kousser. “That forward thinking has guided his decisions on many bills throughout his governorship. He’s been on the right side of history in many of the strong policy stands he has taken, as mayor and as governor — and he’s hoping that’ll be on the right side of history on this one.”

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Rescuers are still searching for survivors after heavy rain and wind from tropical storm Helene devastated south-eastern US, leaving more than 60 people dead, destroying homes and causing power outages for millions.

Helene tore through Georgia and the Carolinas over the weekend after making landfall as a category 4 hurricane on Thursday, causing widespread flood damage.

The US government’s Federal Emergency Management Agency is co-ordinating a rescue and clean-up effort involving 3,200 personnel across six states where a state of emergency was declared.

As of Sunday afternoon, at least 66 deaths had been recorded due to the storm across five states, according to the Associated Press. The storm, which has weakened from its peak strength of 140mph winds, is expected to dissipate by Monday.

The worst-hit state was South Carolina, where at least 25 people were killed — the highest death toll from a storm in the state since Hurricane Hugo in 1989 — following the worst flooding in a century. *

US President Joe Biden has declared major disasters for North Carolina and Florida, unlocking federal assistance programmes for the affected areas. Biden also approved emergency disaster declarations in Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, South Carolina and Tennessee, allowing federal resources to begin flowing to those states too.

North Carolina governor Roy Cooper posted on social media platform X on Sunday that the western part of the state “has been hit hard and we are working together rapidly to save lives, surge assistance and begin a difficult recovery”.

The US National Weather Service office in South Carolina said the storm was “the worst event in our office’s history”.

“We are devastated by the horrific flooding and widespread wind damage that was caused by Hurricane Helene across our forecast area,” it added.

Many people were left stranded or without shelter across the region, according to officials. About 2.7mn households were without power throughout the south-east, down 40 per cent from a peak of 4.6mn on Friday, according to the energy department.

The storm could result in up to $34bn in losses from property damage and reduced economic output, according to Moody’s. Forecaster AccuWeather’s preliminary damage estimate was higher at between $95bn and $110bn, suggesting Helene might be one of the most destructive storms in US history.

“If you drew a line from Hilton Head [South Carolina] to Charlotte [North Carolina], everything west of it is pretty well wiped out”, US senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told CNN on Sunday.

There were record storm surge levels in the Big Bend area of Florida, with up to 15 feet of storm surge in one county, Fema administrator Deanne Criswell told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. There was flooding and landslides in North Carolina, with search and rescue missions still under way.

This is “historic flooding up in North Carolina, especially [the] western part” of the state, Criswell said.

A “staggering amount of water” brought devastation, with almost 31 inches of rain falling in some parts of North Carolina, said National Weather Service director Ken Graham on Sunday.

Parts of the state were still under flash flood warnings with potential dam failures possible. More thunderstorms were expected in North Carolina, though not anticipated to bring heavy rainfall, Graham added, and the state could expect dry conditions after Tuesday. Flooding could also occur in West Virginia and West Virginia as the system moves north.

More than 2,000 people were in shelters in the south-east, according to Jennifer Pipa, vice-president of disaster response at the American Red Cross. 

Criswell said that climate change was leading to much more water damage from hurricanes than in the past, when damage was mainly from wind.

“This storm took a while to develop, but once it did, it developed and intensified very rapidly, and that’s because of the warm waters in the Gulf and so [climate change] creating more storms that are reaching this major category level than we’ve seen in the past”, she said.

*This story has been amended to clarify that South Carolina, not North Carolina, was worst-affected