This handout picture from NASA shows Earth as it dips beyond the lunar horizon, as seen from the Orion spacecraft that is shuttling Artemis II astronauts on a historic mission around the Moon

Pivotal by-elections in Canada on Monday look set to give Prime Minister Mark Carney a majority in parliament, boosting his party as it moves to overhaul an economy threatened by the United States.

Carney's Liberals won the most seats in elections a year ago, but fell just short of a majority.

Canadians are voting in three districts on Monday -- two Toronto areas seen as Liberal strongholds to fill vacated seats, and a Quebec district expected to be nail-biter between the Liberal and the separatist candidate from the Bloc Quebecois.

If the Liberals hold the two Toronto seats, as expected, they'll take full control of parliament.

Carney has improved his party's fortunes by sticking firmly to a message focused on President Donald Trump, arguing the US leader has upended the world order and Canada needs to take bold action in response.

Carney has announced massive increases in military spending -- insisting Canada can no longer rely on Washington for security -- and has traveled the globe seeking new trade deals in Asia and Europe.

Liberal poll numbers are higher than they were a year ago, and the party has pulled off a stunning set of defections from the opposition benches -- poaching four Conservatives and one left-wing New Democratic lawmaker into the Liberal caucus.

"Members of parliament have switched sides to join our team," Carney told a gathering of Liberals on Saturday.

"They understand how important the stakes are. They are convinced that together, we can do better," he said, insisting "this is not the time for politics as usual."

- 'Historic moment' -

Canadians have been shaken by Trump's return to power.

The president's tariffs in key sectors have forced job losses in Canada and slowed growth, even if the majority of bilateral trade remains tariff free.

Trump has threatened to annex Canada and mocked Carney and former prime minister Justin Trudeau as the "governor" of a US state.

For University of Ottawa political scientist Genevieve Tellier, Carney has built momentum by "emphasizing the historic moment we are living through."

"We've rarely seen popularity ratings this high one year after coming to power," she told AFP, saying Carney was working to build "a broad national coalition" to respond to the unprecedented geopolitical moment.

In the Quebec district of Terrebonne where voting was underway Monday, Ramon Ponce, a 72-year-old retiree, told AFP the results could "somewhat strengthen" Carney's government in the ongoing friction with Trump. 

- Affordability pressure -

While the Liberals remain a political juggernaut, some see hints of vulnerability starting to emerge.

The Angus Reid Institute found last month that "concerns over the high cost of living are higher than they have been in recent memory for lower-income Canadians."

Grocery prices are up more than 20 percent since 2022 and unemployment is at 6.7 percent.

Opposition parties are arguing Carney's soaring rhetoric about economic transformation has failed to make lives more affordable for Canadians.

Some voters agree.

"He talks a good game but nothing ever changes," David Gilhooly, a voter in Toronto told AFP last week.

Polls close at 8:30 pm (0030 GMT Tuesday) and results should be available within hours.

bur-bs/msp

A Norwegian man has been effectively cured of HIV after receiving a stem cell transplant from his brother, doctors announced on Monday. 

The patient's brother happened to carry a rare, virus-blocking genetic mutation.

The 63-year-old man, dubbed the "Oslo patient", is the latest in around 10 people worldwide who have gone into long-term remission from HIV after receiving a transplant to treat unrelated blood cancer.

The high-risk procedure normally requires a donor to have a specific mutation of their CCR5 gene, which blocks HIV from entering the body's cells. 

Only around one percent of people in northern Europe have the necessary mutation.

The Oslo patient, who had been living with HIV since 2006, was diagnosed with a fatal blood cancer called myelodysplastic syndrome in 2017.

His doctors searched for a donor who would help treat both. When they couldn't find one, they chose the man's elder brother.

However, on the day of the transplant in 2020, the doctors were stunned to discover that the brother carried the CCR5 mutation. 

"We had no idea... That was amazing," doctor Anders Eivind Myhre of the Oslo University Hospital told AFP. 

- 'Winning the lottery twice' -

The patient said "it was like winning the lottery twice", added Myhre, who was also the lead author of a study describing the case in Nature Microbiology.

Two years after the transplant, the patient stopped taking the anti-retroviral drugs which had been reducing the level of HIV in his body.

The researchers found no trace of the virus in samples of the man's blood, gut and bone marrow.

"For all practical purposes, we are quite certain that he is cured," Myhre said.

Now the Oslo patient, whose name was not revealed, is "having a great time" and has more energy than he knows what to do with, Myhre said.

The painful and potentially dangerous transplant procedure is for people who have both HIV and deadly blood cancer so is not a feasible option for the millions of people living with the virus across the world.

However, researchers believe that studying these rare cases will reveal more about how HIV works in the hope of finding a cure for all patients.

- 'No longer a patient' -

The Oslo patient is the first person to receive a transplant from a family member.

The patient's immune system had been "completely replaced" by the donor's, sqaid study co-author Marius Troseid of the University of Oslo.

It was the first time this had been observed in a cured patient's bone marrow and gut, he told AFP.

Even before the researchers found out the brother had a CCR5 mutation, they had some hope that the Oslo patient's HIV could be cured.

That is because in 2024 it was revealed that the so-called "next Berlin patient" entered long-term remission despite receiving a transplant that did not have two copies of the mutated gene.

The original Berlin patient, Timothy Ray Brown, was the first person declared cured of HIV back in 2008. Patients in London, New York, Geneva, Duesseldorf and elsewhere followed.

Given the Oslo patient's robust health, Troseid suggested that his nickname was no longer suitable.

"The Oslo patient is perhaps no longer a patient. At least he doesn't feel like it," Troseid said.

dl/gil

A French court Monday handed a suspended one-year jail sentence to a teacher for bullying an 11-year-old pupil who killed herself in 2019, in a rare such verdict in the country. 

The 63-year-old defendant, a secondary school teacher of French in the Val-d'Oise region north of Paris, had initially been acquitted last year, but was given a suspended sentence on appeal for the harassment of Evaelle, who was found hanged in her bedroom in 2019.

The woman, named only as Mrs B., was also banned from teaching ever again.

Evaelle's parents welcomed the judgment, saying it "lifted the veil on the abuse suffered by children at the hands of their teachers".

Prosecutors, who had called for a suspended 18-month sentence, said that the teacher had "crossed the line, humiliating, belittling and stigmatising -- not all pupils, but certain pupils who are carefully selected".

Mrs B., who was absent from the sentencing, had previously denied behaving in a hostile manner.

But during the investigation, a number of Evaelle's fellow pupils had said that the teacher frequently targeted the 11-year-old, with one child saying she "often shouted at her".  

cbr/spm/ah/sbk

US lawmakers were facing the extraordinary prospect Monday that as many as four members of the House of Representatives could be expelled within days, in an eruption of scandal that has rattled both parties and thrown the chamber into turmoil.

At the center of the storm is Democrat Eric Swalwell of California, who abruptly suspended his campaign for state governor at the weekend after multiple women accused him of sexual assault or misconduct. 

But lawmakers are also zeroing in on separate controversies involving Texas Republican Tony Gonzales and two Florida lawmakers -- Democrat Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick and Republican Cory Mills -- in what would be an unprecedented burst of disciplinary action.

Expulsion from the House requires a two-thirds majority, a threshold so high that Congress has wielded the sanction only in the gravest cases, removing just six members in its 237-year history.

Swalwell's troubles escalated rapidly over the weekend as reports in the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN detailed allegations from four women, including a former staff member who said he sexually assaulted her twice while she was too intoxicated to consent. 

Swalwell has apologized for what he called "mistakes in judgment" while insisting the accusations are false. 

His decision to end his gubernatorial bid did little to calm the uproar in Washington, where calls for him to resign from the House have spread across party lines.

Republican Anna Paulina Luna said she was filing a motion to expel Swalwell, and support for votes to oust all four beginning as early as this week has come from an ideologically wide group of lawmakers. 

Gonzales is under mounting pressure after acknowledging an affair with a former aide who later died by self-immolation. House Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republican leaders had already urged him not to seek reelection.

- 'Despicable' -

"These allegations are despicable and they demean the integrity of Congress," Florida Republican Byron Donalds told NBC, adding that both Swalwell and Gonzales "need to go home." 

The Swalwell and Gonzales cases in particular have fed talk on Capitol Hill of a politically symmetrical purge: one Democrat for one Republican, or perhaps two from each party. 

"Gonzales and Swalwell exploited their staffers' ideals and commitment to public service as a vulnerability. These staffers work incredibly hard and instead of being treated with respect, they were preyed upon," Democratic New Mexico Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernandez said.

"These women have suffered enough. Now we must act to protect them and make sure there is accountability. Reps. Gonzales and Swalwell are not fit to serve. They must resign. If they do not, I will vote to expel them."

Cherfilus-McCormick is already facing a sanctions hearing after an Ethics Committee subpanel found she committed 25 violations tied to campaign finance and related conduct, and she is also due to face a federal criminal trial next year. 

Gonzales is also being examined by the Ethics Committee, a bipartisan but notoriously slow-moving body that handles misconduct cases in the House.

Mills, meanwhile, is under investigation over allegations ranging from sexual misconduct and domestic violence to campaign finance and gift violations, all of which he denies. 

Many lawmakers remain skeptical however that the chamber will act as soon as this week -- especially on Swalwell, whose case has only just surfaced and has not yet gone through the usual internal process. 

The House is already operating with an exceptionally thin Republican majority, and any vacancies would trigger special elections whose timing would depend on state governors. 

Swalwell's fall has added a second layer of political shock because he was one of the leading Democratic contenders in California's governor's race. 

ft/msp

The market was packed, like it was every Saturday, when the Nigerian air force jets screamed overhead. 

Soon after, swathes of trading stalls at a market in Jilli, a small town in Nigeria's northeastern Yobe state, were reduced to ash, with incinerated bodies lying in the rubble, a video from the scene shared with AFP shows.

Survivors, human rights groups and local officials say it is yet another massacre of civilians by the Nigerian air force.

The Nigerian military said it targeted a "logistics hub" located "near the abandoned village of Jilli", on the Borno-Yobe state border, targeting militants from Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP).

But according to a conflict monitoring report prepared by the UN and seen by AFP, the strikes hit the Jilli market and "mistakenly killed at least 56 people," with local chief Lawan Zanna Nur saying that the dead and injured together numbered "around 200".

"I don't know if there were jihadists at the market. We are just ordinary people," Mala Garba, 42, told AFP from a hospital in Borno state capital Maiduguri while recovering from bullet wounds.

He was among the 46 victims from the town an AFP reporter saw at the hospital, some heavily bandaged, others with IV drips attached.

The governor of Borno state, the epicentre of Nigeria's 17-year-long jihadist insurgency, said the government shut the market down five years ago. 

But Yusuf Bagana, a tailor who survived the strike, said it was operating normally.

He told AFP he "didn't know" about any closure orders and "was just focusing on my daily activities" before the bombing knocked him unconscious.

The "airstrike hit the entire Jilli town," said Garba. "All of us were living in the town. There was no warning."

- Living under, among jihadists -

During the peak of Nigeria's insurgency, about a decade ago when ISWAP forerunner-turned-rival Boko Haram controlled swathes of territory, "some elders knew there were Boko Haram and informants around," Garba said. 

More recently, he said, in 2023 the army conducted house-to-house searches in the village and arrested two people. But there had not been any major security incidents since then, he added.

A security source told AFP that jihadists "control" and collect taxes from the market.

Pictures released by the military showed trucks and motorcycles allegedly belonging to jihadists amid what appeared to be a crowded market -- with one of the photos even labelled "market". Photos then show the site destroyed by strikes.

The Nigerian air force said it is investigating reports of civilian casualties.

When civilians are killed by the military, they are often accused of "harbouring" jihadists, said Isa Sanusi, country director at Amnesty International Nigeria -- an accusation that is often impossible to distinguish from simply living under jihadist control, as many Nigerians do across swathes of the northeastern countryside held by the militants.

Lieutenant Colonel Sani Uba, spokesman for operations in the northeast, said that the strikes followed "sustained intelligence" and "a rigorous and professional targeting process". 

The military also said the strike hit targets that were affiliated with the killing of a Nigerian brigadier general last week, the second killing of a high-ranking officer in five months.

But Sanusi, who spoke to local residents and shared the video of the scorched market with AFP, said that militants simply being present did not justify the high civilian death toll.

"If the market is entirely run by insurgents, that is a different story," he told AFP. "But if the allegation is that insurgents used the market, that makes their claim very baseless."

- US says not involved -

The United States, which has sent troops to the country to train the Nigerian military, including in target selection, was "not involved in the planning, intelligence sharing, or execution of this operation," a US Africa Command spokesperson told AFP.

Over the years, Nigerian airstrikes have repeatedly killed civilians, with Human Rights Watch warning after a deadly strike in January that "such deaths have become a recurring feature".

Issa Mammane, another man recovering in Maiduguri hospital, told AFP that "five members of my family were killed" in the strikes.

Across Borno state, the violence has continued.

On Sunday, about 150 kilometres away from Jilli, ISWAP militants struck the garrison town of Monguno, near Lake Chad. 

Ten soldiers, including a colonel, were killed, two anti-jihadist militia sources told AFP.

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(The Center Square) – Sales of existing homes fell 3.6% in March as prices rose, prompting the National Association of Realtors to lower its annual sales forecast due to rising mortgage rates.

"Mortgage rates have been rising, and that has led us to trim our home sales outlook for the year," said Lawrence Yun, chief economist at NAR.

The U.S. real estate market continues to face rising prices, low inventory and declining sales. New data from the National Association of Realtors shows how higher mortgage rates and cautious consumer sentiment are dampening activity, forcing experts to revise their expectations for the year ahead.

The national group reduced its forecast for existing home sales in 2026 to a 4% increase, down from the 14% increase it had predicted late last year. The forecast for new-home sales is now flat, down from the previously projected 5% gain. The median home price forecast remains unchanged, with prices still projected to rise 4% in 2026.

President Donald Trump's administration has been working to lower mortgage rates and push down prices to make housing more affordable. However, a housing shortage could make those goals more challenging. In January, the president pushed the Treasury Department to buy $200 billion in mortgage bonds to lower interest rates.

The average 30-year fixed rate mortgage in March was 6.18%, up from 6.05% in February and down from 6.65% one year ago, according to Freddie Mac.

In March, existing home sales declined to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.98 million, a 3.6% drop from the prior month and 1% below last year, according to NAR.

"March home sales remained sluggish and below last year's pace," Yun said. "Lower consumer confidence and softer job growth continue to hold back buyers."

The median sales price for existing homes rose 1.4% from a year ago to $408,800 in March, marking the 33rd consecutive month of annual price increases.

Housing inventory remains tight, though total inventory grew 3% from February and 2.3% from March 2025 to 1.36 million units. This equals a 4.1-month supply of unsold homes, up from 3.8 months last month and 4 months a year ago. Median time on market was 41 days, down from 47 in February but up from 36 last March. Cash sales were 27%, down from 31% last month but above 26% last March.

"Inventory remains a major constraint on the market," Yun said. "The inventory-to-sales ratio, or supply-to-demand ratio, is below historical norms. An additional 300,000 to 500,000 homes for sale would help bring the market closer to normal conditions and allow consumers to make purchase decisions without feeling rushed."

The median age for a first-time home buyer recently hit 40, a record high, according to a November 2025 report from the National Association of Realtors.

A 21-year-old man scrolls through Snapchat ads on his phone promoting nitrous oxide, a sedative gas increasingly used by young people in France to get high.

"Honestly, in France it's way too easy to get hold of," he said. 

The young man, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity due to stigma surrounding drug use, said he "got hooked" on the colourless and odourless substance commonly known as laughing gas when he tried it in 2021.

"I was doing it every day, every evening," he said in Bron, just outside the southeastern city of Lyon.

"After two or three years of using, I told myself I needed to get help, because of the after-effects."

The Lyon resident, who has complained of muscle weakness, is a patient at the Hospices Civils de Lyon (HCL), one of France's leading university hospitals.

The hospital is home to France's pioneering teleconsultation programme which is helping healthcare providers to better understand and treat the gas's toxic effects.

Nitrous oxide is used for pain relief in dentistry and medicine, as well as in catering.

In recent years, misuse of the inexpensive gas has become widespread in France among teenagers and young adults, who often use it as a party drug and inhale it via balloons filled from metal canisters.

A 2021 law prohibits the sale of laughing gas to minors, but it is still legal in France for individual adults to buy the gas. 

- 'Complicated to drive' -

Recreational use produces feelings of euphoria, relaxation and dissociation from reality.

But long-term misuse can cause damage to the nervous system, impair cognitive functions, and lead to problems with balance and reflexes. 

Apart from life-threatening health problems, the gas has caused fatal traffic accidents in France in recent years.

Reports of intoxication tripled between 2022 and 2023, according to the interior ministry.

Now the government has launched an awareness campaign, and Interior Minister Laurent Nunez advocates criminalising the inappropriate consumption of the gas, which would be punishable by one year in prison and a fine of 3,750 euros.

Doctors at HCL treat former and current users who might be experiencing long-term cognitive and other effects.

One of the users said she sought treatment when she began to worry about experiencing pins and needles in her legs and arms.

"It's becoming very complicated, even just to drive. When it hits me, the tingling -- it hurts a lot," said the 23-year-old woman, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. 

After having been hospitalised for her pain, she went for a follow-up appointment at the HCL.

The woman said the treatment -- including with B12 vitamin -- was helping.

"I remember more things -- the B12 really helps me a lot," she said.

Since the service was launched in November 2024, addiction specialist Christophe Riou has conducted 150 telemedicine consultations and 60 in-person consultations with patients aged 15 to 31.

The service aims to take care of patients as soon as possible after their first symptoms appear, with doctors paying particular attention to pinprick sensations, loss of balance and muscle weakness.

"We're trying to bring patients together under a single care pathway. That makes it easier to understand and coordinate care," Riou said, a nitrous oxide cylinder sitting on his desk.

- 'Eternal regret' - 

He said doctors were learning more about the neurological effects of the misuse of the gas, particularly leg paralysis.

"We are also beginning to see that this neurotoxic effect acts at the level of the brain," he said, adding this helped explain changes in behaviour, even outside episodes of acute use.

Riou also said that introducing legal consequences for the consumption of the gas may encourage users to seek treatment.

"This may help people realise that it poses a problem, and this could in turn encourage them to seek care," he said.

Citing test results of the heavy users, Yara Malaeb, a neuropsychology trainee, said such patients show memory and attention difficulties.

"These are young people who, for their age, are not functioning normally," she said.

The 23-year-old woman patient called nitrous oxide "the worst drug ever".

"I really wish I could tell young people not to do this. But the problem is, they already know," she added.

The 21-year-old man said inhaling laughing gas made him noticeably weaker, particularly in his legs, and he struggled to keep his balance while walking.

"It's no fun," he said, adding misuse of the drug can destroy a life. "It's a fleeting pleasure for eternal regret."

vid-mla-as/ah/giv

A UK teenager's 2024 frenzied stabbing spree in northwest England which killed three young girls and sparked nationwide anti-immigration riots was "foreseeable and avoidable", a public inquiry concluded Monday.

The attack on a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, which seriously wounded 10 others, including eight children, could have been prevented if the killer's parents and various agencies had acted sooner over his "escalating behaviour", it found.

Axel Rudakubana was jailed last year for a minimum of 52 years for the July 2024 attack, which triggered a wave of shock and revulsion in the UK as well as the worst mass disorder seen on the streets in decades.

Taylor Swift fans Alice Da Silva Aguiar, aged nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, were killed in the attack.

Viral misinformation that Rudakubana was a Muslim asylum seeker contributed to a week of anti-immigration riots in more than a dozen English and Northern Irish towns and cities.

The public inquiry, led by retired judge Adrian Fulford and which last year held nine weeks of hearings, identified failures by Rudakubana's parents and agencies including in health, education and the police.

The teenager's parents were at fault for not reporting his behaviour and other issues to authorities, while the public bodies failed to manage the risk he represented, according to its 776-page report.

It was "highly likely" the attack would not have occurred had they acted.

"History simply would have taken a different course," Fulford said as he published the report, which made 67 recommendations.

- 'Harrowing' -

The probe found five major areas of "systemic failure", including that Rudakubana's worsening conduct was "wrongly attributed to his autism spectrum disorder".

That led to "inaction and a failure to address dangerous behaviours", the report concluded. 

Meanwhile, there was a lack of oversight of his online activity, which would have "provided the clearest indications of his violent preoccupations", it found.

The report also criticised his parents for, among other things, permitting knives and weapons to be delivered to the home and failing to report crucial information in the days leading up to the attack.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the report "truly harrowing and profoundly disturbing" and said he was "determined to make the fundamental changes needed to keep the public safe". 

Solicitor Nicola Ryan-Donnelly, whose firm Fletchers represents 22 of the children affected by the attack, urged individuals and agencies to "take action now". 

jj/jkb/sbk

Iran's judiciary said Monday authorities had released the assets of the captain of Iranian women's football team which had been seized after she made and then withdrew an asylum claim in Australia last month.

Zahra Ghanbari was among a group of six players and one backroom staff member who sought asylum in Australia in March after playing in the Women's Asian Cup at the start of the Israeli-US war against the Islamic republic.

Five of them, including Ghanbari, later changed their minds and returned home along with the rest of the team and were given a hero's welcome at a special ceremony in central Tehran on March 19.

"The assets of Zahra Ghanbari, a footballer for the Iranian women's national team, which had been seized, were released by court decision," Mizan said. 

It added that the move was taken after "a declaration of innocence following her change in behaviour."

The announcement came two days after Iranian media published a list of people they called "traitors" whose assets had been frozen by court order following the outbreak of the war with Israel and the United States on February 28.

Ghanbari's name appeared on the list, although it was not immediately clear when the decision to freeze her assets had been taken. 

Rights groups have repeatedly accused Iranian authorities of pressuring athletes who compete abroad by threatening relatives or seizing property if they defect or make statements against the Islamic republic.

In this case, campaigners accused Tehran of pressuring the women's families, including summoning their parents for interrogations by intelligence agents. Iranian authorities however alleged that Australia sought to force the athletes to defect.

The team had drawn criticism from hardliners in Iran after failing to sing the national anthem of the Islamic republic before their first match. They sang the anthem in later matches and it featured prominently in the welcome ceremony in Tehran.

The controversy, against the background of the war, erupted with the Iranian men's team due to play in the World Cup in the United States in June.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino told AFP last month in Turkey on the sidelines of an international friendly being played by Iran that "Iran will be at the World Cup" and play its group matches as scheduled in the US.

Just two of the Iranian women's footballers remained in Australia and have been training with the club Brisbane Roar.

bur-mz-sjw/ser

A French court on Monday fined the cement group Lafarge over $1.3 million and sentenced its former boss to six years in prison for paying protection money to the Islamic State group and other jihadists to maintain its business in war-torn Syria.

The ruling follows a 2022 case in the United States in which the French firm pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support to US-designated "terrorist" organisations and agreed to pay a $778 million fine, the first time a company had faced the charge.

The Paris court found that Lafarge -- now part of the Swiss conglomerate Holcim -- paid nearly 5.6 million euros ($6.5 million) in 2013 and 2014 via its subsidiary Lafarge Cement Syria (LCS) to jihadist groups and intermediaries to keep its plant operating in northern Syria.

It ruled that Lafarge must pay the maximum fine of 1.125 million euros ($1.31 million) sought by prosecutors during the trial. 

It also sentenced the company's former CEO Bruno Lafont to six years in prison for financing "terrorism", which a judge ordered him to start serving immediately -- even though a lawyer confirmed that Lafont would appeal the ruling.

"This method of financing terrorist organisations, and primarily IS, was essential in enabling the terrorist organisation to gain control of Syria's natural resources, allowing it to finance terrorist acts within the region and those planned abroad, particularly in Europe," said the presiding judge, Isabelle Prevost-Desprez.

The company established a "genuine commercial partnership with IS", she added, saying the amount paid to jihadist organisations -- which was "never disclosed" -- contributed to the "extreme gravity of the offences".

Lafarge had finished building a $680 million factory in Jalabiya in 2010, just before Syria's civil war erupted in March the following year amid opposition to then-president Bashar al-Assad's brutal repression of anti-government protests.

IS jihadists seized large swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq in 2014, declaring a cross-border "caliphate" and implementing their brutal interpretation of Islamic law.

While other multinational companies left Syria in 2012, Lafarge evacuated only its expatriate employees and left its Syrian staff in place until September 2014, when IS jihadists seized control of the factory.

In 2013 and 2014, Lafarge paid intermediaries to access raw materials from the Islamic State organisation and other groups and to allow free movement for the company's trucks and employees.

It paid jihadists including the Islamic State group and Syria's then Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra.

- 'Single aim: profit' -

The defendants included the company, five former members of operational and security staff, and two Syrian intermediaries.

The court found all eight former employees guilty of financing "terrorist" organisations and issued sentences ranging from 18 months to seven years behind bars.

Firas Tlass, a Syrian ex-member of staff who made the payments to the jihadist groups, was sentenced in absentia to seven years in jail.

Former deputy managing director Christian Herrault was handed five years in jail.

Herrault had argued that the decision to keep the factory open was made out of concern for local staff.

"We could have washed our hands of it and walked away, but what would have happened to the factory's employees?" he said.

Prosecutors said 69-year-old Lafont "gave clear instructions" to keep the plant operation, a decision they called "staggering in its cynicism".

The French national counterterrorism prosecutor's office (PNAT) said in its closing argument in December that Lafarge was guilty of funding "terrorist" organisations with "a single aim: profit".

- Second case ongoing -

Holcim, which took over Lafarge in 2015, has said it had no knowledge of the Syria dealings.

A second case, concerning allegations of complicity in crimes against humanity, is ongoing.

Kurdish-led Syrian fighters, backed by US airstrikes, defeated the IS "caliphate" in 2019.

An inquiry was opened in France in 2017 after several media reports and two legal complaints in 2016, one from the finance ministry for the alleged breaching of an economic sanction and another from non-governmental groups and 11 former Lafarge Syria staff members over alleged "funding of terrorism".

In the US case, the Justice Department said Lafarge sought the Islamic State group's help to squeeze out competitors, operating an effective "revenue sharing agreement" with them.

Lafont, who was chief executive from 2007 to 2015, at the time denounced the inquiry as "biased".

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