French vote in most unpredictable contest in generations

By THOMAS ADAMSON
PARIS — Amid heightened security, French voters began casting ballots for their next president Sunday in a first-round poll that could help determine the future of Europe and serve as a litmus test for the spread of populism around the world.
More than 50,000 police and gendarmes were deployed to protect 66,000 polling stations for the election, which comes just three days after a deadly attack on Paris’s famed Champs-Elysees Avenue in which a police officer and a g