Islamic state leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in his first purported speech in nearly a year, has called on followers to persevere, according to a statement posted on the group’s media outlet.

"For the Mujahideen (holy warriors) the scale of victory or defeat is not dependant on a city or town being stolen or subject to that who has aerial superiority, intercontinental missiles or smart bombs," Baghdadi said in a recording posted on his al-Furqan media group.

Reuters was unable to verify whether the voice on the recording was Baghdadi’s.

Islamic State, which until last year controlled large areas in Syria and Iraq, has since been driven into the desert following successive defeats in separate offensives in both countries.

Baghdadi, who declared himself ruler of all Muslims in 2014 after capturing Iraq’s main northern city Mosul, is now believed to be hiding in the Iraqi-Syrian border region after losing all the cities and towns of his self-proclaimed caliphate.

The secretive Islamic State leader has frequently been reported killed or wounded since leading his fighters on a sweep through northern Iraq. His whereabouts are not known but Wednesday’s message appears to suggest he is still alive.

One of his sons was reported to have been killed in the city of Homs in Syria, the group’s news channel reported earlier this year.

Baghdadi’s last message came in the form of an undated 46-minute audio recording, released via the al-Furqan organisation in September, where he urged followers across the world to wage attacks against the West and to keep fighting in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere. 

Outside a McDonald’s in Latina, Italy, the city’s teens are clutching cigarettes and milkshakes while engrossed in a passionate debate about identity.

The discussion taking place under the golden arches that are perhaps the most recognisable symbol of globalisation is about whether or not a local park named after Mussolini should no longer bear the name of Italy’s wartime fascist leader.

This is Europe’s lost generation, weighed down by endemic youth unemployment. Now, after a decade of austerity and stagnation, some are reawakening the ghosts of their fascist forefathers as they search for meaning and occupation in an age of economic disruption.

A new wave of citizens are questioning whether,…

Donald Trump is to spend at least 40 days campaigning across America for the mid-term elections – more than either Barack Obama or George W Bush did while in office. 

The US president has tasked his aides with getting him out of Washington DC and in front of voters as much as possible in the run-up to the November election. 

Mr Trump’s 40 days on the road between August 1 to November 6 will make him the “most aggressive campaigner in recent presidential history”, according to a person familiar with his thinking. 

Mr Bush, the former Republican president, spent 33 days travelling in each of his two mid-term election campaigns while Mr Obama spent 36 and around 22 days in each. 

The campaign blitz is the clearest sign yet that Mr Trump believes his personal charisma and record in office can help swing races in favour of the Republican Party. 

However it comes with political risks, leaving the US president more politically vulnerable should the widely anticipated ‘blue wave’ of Democratic support come to pass at the ballot box.

The mid-terms, which take place two years after every presidential election, see votes for all House of Representatives seats and a third of Senate seats, as well as  races for statewide governors. 

Sources close to the US president spelled out their mid-terms strategy on Tuesday and made clear Mr Trump’s determination to hit the campaign trail. 

“The president’s objective this fall is to get more support in Congress so that he can keep winning on behalf of the American people. This means an ambitious campaign schedule unlike any previous president in recent history,” a source familiar with his thinking said. 

Mr Trump will hold at least eight rallies and 16 fund-raisers in up to 15 US states in the coming weeks, according to a source. 

North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Nevada, Kentucky and Tennessee are all expected to be visited, with other states likely to be added. 

Sources said that Mr Trump believes he can turn out the unusual coalition of supporters, which included traditional Democrat voters, that swept him into the White House in 2016. 

They also said the US president was helping secure a record number of donations for his party and defended his strategy of holding rallies, saying it would drive up new voters. 

The sources defined what success would look like for Mr Trump: Adding seats in the Senate, where Republicans hold 51 seats and Democrats 49; holding the Republican majority in the House of Representatives; and doing well in governor races. 

However they warned that the president was fighting against “history”, noting that opposition parties have gained seats in every mid-term election since the US civil war except for two: 1934 and 2002.

The French are up in arms again over fast food, but instead of tearing down a McDonald’s, this time they are fighting to save one from closing.

The land of haute cuisine is no stranger to protests against malbouffe, or “junk food”. But Marseille residents are now waging a legal and political battle to keep a McDonald’s outlet that has become a “centre of community life” and a much-needed job provider.

Marseille’s conservative mayor, Jean-Claude Gaudin, and its Socialist senator, Samia Ghali, have joined the campaign. If McDonald’s goes ahead with a plan to close its branch in Saint-Barthélémy, a north Marseille neighbourhood plagued by gang violence, drug trafficking and high unemployment, the senator has vowed to “oppose its presence throughout Marseille”.

With a staff of 77, the McDonald’s restaurant is the second-biggest private-sector employer in Saint-Barthélémy, which has an unemployment rate of 30 per cent — more than triple the national average. 

McDonald’s has won hearts and minds by hiring school dropouts and local youths desperate for work after serving prison terms. Many now fear losing their jobs.

The area’s bakery, butcher’s shop and hairdresser have already closed. Salim Grabsi, a member of a residents’ association, said: “There’s nothing left in areas like this and McDonald’s is a centre of community life, a place where families can sit down and relax with their kids.”

Annick Villanueva, a retired teacher, said: “My neighbours bring their grandchildren every week.”

Staff at the branch are challenging the legality of the plan to sell the outlet, owned jointly by a local franchise-holder and McDonald’s France. Kamel Guemari, the assistant manager, said the buyer’s proposal to convert it into an Asian restaurant “is nothing but a smokescreen dreamed up to allow McDonald’s to close without redundancy payouts.”

The franchise-holder, Jean-Pierre Brochiero, says the branch makes a loss. Staff obtained a court order last week suspending the sale on the grounds that he had failed to comply with a legal obligation to consult employees. The court is to rule on the case tomorrow (on Monday).  

The radical French farmer, José Bové, made international headlines by bulldozing a McDonald’s in a protest against punitive US taxes on Roquefort cheese and other French dairy products nearly 20 years ago. Since then, the American fast food chain has become a huge success story in France, which is now one of its most profitable markets. 

Nevertheless, McDonald’s continues to raise Gallic hackles. A court is to rule later this month on whether a McDonald’s can open on the Île d’Oléron, a major tourist destination off the coast of western France. A petition to keep McDonald’s out of the island has gathered more than 81,000 signatures. The local mayor says a McDonald’s would cause traffic jams on an island that is “not about mass consumption.”

An explosive account from a senior official of Donald Trump’s administration  has claimed the cabinet were so worried by the president’s erratic, impulsive behaviour they discussed using the 25th amendment to remove him from power. 

Published in the New York Times, the anonymous op-ed reveals that senior figures considered deploying the extreme measure to oust the president.

The 25th amendment is designed to be used in the case of an incapacitated commander-in-chief.

It is not the first time during his presidency that the amendment has been mentioned in relation to Mr Trump. 

In August last year the president’s freewheeling campaign speech in Phoenix – during which he rounded on the media, attacked…

Belgian police have charged one of the country’s leading football TV presenters with armed robbery after a major police probe into burglaries and drug dealing.

Stephane Pauwels hosts French-speaking Belgian coverage of the Champions League, as well as a show on the country’s leading private broadcaster RTL-TVI called “Storms of Life”.

He is suspected of “armed robbery with a firearm, at night, as part of a gang”, the federal prosecutor’s office said.

Mr Pauwels, who has also hosted football shows on French television, was arrested in connection to a  “home invasion” in the affluent town of Lasne, which is to the south of Brussels. Mr Pauwels, 50, was arrested in Mons, in the French-speaking region of Wallonia, on Tuesday. On Wednesday he was charged by a judge and granted conditional bail. The 2017 attack involved three men armed with a pistol, screwdriver and knife.

Belgium’s Le Soir reported that the victim of the robbery was in a relationship with an ex-girlfriend of Mr Pauwels.

RTL Belgium, the broadcaster’s parent company, announced that the host was suspended with immediate effect. “The management of RTL Belgium strongly hopes that clarity can be brought as quickly as possible to this affair,” it said.

The arrest was part of a probe into a string of robberies believed to be linked to organised crime that has led to 12 arrests. Belgian media reported that Mr Pauwels was arrested after a map of a London home was found at the house of a Belgian professional boxer called Farid Hakimi, who was jailed in November 2017.

The map connected Hakimi to another man, suspected of acting as a middle man between Hakimi and Mr Pauwels.  “Explicit” texts regarding the case from Mr Pauwels were reportedly found on the middle man’s phone. 

Mr Pauwels’ lawyers released a statement on Thursday, which branded the charge not even “a hypothesis” of an investigation and said the TV host would prove his innocence.

He had a string of roles at Belgian and French football clubs before becoming a TV star. He is credited with discovering Demba Ba, the Senegalese former Chelsea striker best known for scoring the goal that effectively ended Liverpool’s title challenge in 2014.

A Swedish nationalist party with neo-Nazi roots made major gains in elections on Sunday, robbing the mainstream centrist parties of a majority and pushing the country towards a hung parliament. 

Sweden Democrats, which has blamed a recent surge in rapes, sex attacks and riots on immigrants, is set to secure 18 per cent of the vote.

The ruling centre-left Social Democrats were in the lead with 28 per cent of the votes, down from 31 per cent in the 2014 election and its lowest score in decades. 

Meanwhile the centre-right Moderates scored just 19 per cent. 

Stefan Lofven, the Swedish prime minister, will have heaved a sigh of relief at the result for the nationalist Sweden Democrats, which according…