Marine Le Pen walked out of a Paris appeals court on Tuesday with her embezzlement conviction fully upheld -- and a sentence that includes a year under an electronic tag. * RT's headline: "French court clears Marine Le Pen to run for president." Clears! Like airport security. No conviction in sight. No tag. No mention of the EU money her party was found guilty of embezzling. * What the court actually did: confirmed her guilt, trimmed the sentence, and recalculated her ineligibility so that it's already been served. The practical effect is real -- she can run in 2027. The legal label is also real: still guilty. * Now compare the honest versions. Euronews: the court "clears way" for her bid "but with ankle tag." The BBC: she can run "but would have to wear a tag for a year." CNN: she'll run "despite losing court appeal." Everyone else found room for the "but." RT wrote the only headline where the sentence ends before the conviction begins. * Why would a Kremlin broadcaster sand the edges off a French politician's fraud conviction? Well, Le Pen's party is the closest thing Moscow has to a rooting interest in French politics -- her party, the National Front back then and National Rally today, famously took a 9-million-euro loan from a Russian bank in 2014. Old friends get generous headlines. * To be fair to the facts: Le Pen says she'll appeal to France's highest court, argues that suspends the tag, and declared "Tonight, I am a candidate." All true, all quotable. None of it means "cleared." * There is a version of this story where a court clears Marine Le Pen. It's the version where the conviction doesn't exist. RT went ahead and reported live from that universe.