France began voting in the first round of parliamentary elections on Sunday, with a resurgent and newly unified left seeking to thwart President Emmanuel Macron's plans for reform. Elections for the 577 seats in the lower house National Assembly are a two-round process, with the shape of the new parliament becoming clear only after the second round on June 19. The ballots provide a crucial coda to April's presidential election, when Macron won a second term and pledged a transformative new era after a first mandate dominated by protests, the coronavirus pandemic and Russia's war against Ukraine. Video: AFP Polls opened at 8am (0600 GMT) in mainland France, after voters in overseas territories cast ballots earlier in the weekend. After a dismal performance in April, the French left has united in a coalition for what its leader Jean-Luc Melenchon dubs "the third round" of the presidential elections. Opinion polls show the president's centrist alliance, Ensemble (Together), and Melenchon's NUPES coalition of hard left, Socialists, Communists and Greens neck-and-neck in the popular vote. But France's constituency-based parliamentary system and the two-round election means that the...