French far-right leader Le Pen seeks to leverage unrest in presidential campaign kick-off

Marine Le Pen, France's far-right candidate in the next national election to succeed President Emmanuel Macron in six months, was to give her first campaign speech on Sunday, a day after protests sweeping the country again flared into violence. Le Pen – the frontrunner according to surveys – is seen to be benefiting in the polls from the convulsions France has been going through for weeks, punctuated by mass rallies and violent clashes on Saturday and a week earlier. More than 400,000 people marched in major French cities on Saturday to protest against the rising cost of living, with clashes erupting after groups of masked protesters broke away from the demonstrations. Police made more than 1,300 arrests and Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez blamed much of the violence on "ultra-left" extremists. Le Pen launches presidential campaign in Orleans To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Cover image: © France 24 01:53 Similar nationwide protests a week earlier also descended into u...