Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was found guilty of illegal campaign financing over his failed 2012 re-election bid by a Paris court on Thursday.
It was the second guilty verdict this year for Sarkozy, who led France from 2007 to 2012 and retains influence among conservatives despite falling from grace over his legal woes.
The court was yet to say what sentence he would receive.
Prosecutors were seeking a one-year prison sentence, half of it suspended, for the 66-year old former president. He is in any case unlikely to go to jail immediately as he would be expected to appeal the sentence.
His conservative party, the prosecutors said, spent nearly double the 22.5 million euros (currently $19.2 million) allowed under electoral law on extravagant campaign rallies and then hired a friendly public relations agency to hide the cost.
Sarkozy has denied wrongdoing. He told the court in June that he had not been involved in the logistics of his campaign for a second term as president nor in how money was spent during the election run-up.
Israeli forces killed 35 Palestinians in aerial and ground bombardments across the Gaza Strip on Thursday and battled in close combat with Hamas in areas of the southern city of Rafah, health officials and Hamas media said.
Iran's late President Ebrahim Raisi is set to be buried in the holy city of Mashhad on Thursday evening, four days after he was killed in a helicopter crash along with foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and six other people.
A Russian missile attack on Ukraine's northeastern city of Kharkiv killed at least six people and wounded at least 11 on Thursday, local authorities said.
A furious China launched "punishment" drills around Taiwan on Thursday in what it said was a response to "separatist acts", sending up heavily armed warplanes and staging mock attacks as state media denounced newly inaugurated President Lai Ching-te.
Nine people have died and around 50 were injured after a structure collapsed at a campaign event for the Citizens' Movement party in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo Leon.
Dubai Duty Free executive vice chairman and CEO, Colm McLoughlin, announced that he will be stepping down from his role after 55 years in the travel retail industry and 41 years of leadership at Dubai Duty Free. Colm joined the Business Breakfast to reflect on his epic career.
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