in Paris courtroom Marine Le Pen has arrived in court wearing a light-coloured suit, flanked by her lawyers. The public seats are full of key figures from the National Rally party, in court for the first time to support Le Pen, including the MPs Laure Lavalette and Jean-Philippe Tanguy.
A woman suspected of carrying out last week’s bomb attack in Monaco that seriously injured a Ukraine-born business tycoon has been found shot dead near Kyiv, in the latest twist in a case that has shaken the wealthy Mediterranean principality. Ukrainian prosecutors said on Tuesday the woman had been found with a gunshot wound to the head and that two men had been arrested in connection with the case, including an officer with Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (HUR) and a former law enforcement officer. On Friday, Interpol issued a red notice for 39-year-old Anastasiia Berezovska, a Ukrainian national who speaks German. The notice – a request to law enforcement agencies worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a suspect pending extradition – said Berezovska was wanted by Monaco on charges of attempted murder, placing an explosive device in a public place with criminal intent and criminal conspiracy. Prosecutors said in a statement that Berezovska received cryptocurrency payments from the two men who were later arrested, leading investigators to treat them as “individuals potentially involved in the attempted murder in Monaco”. They added that the serving HUR officer was “acting on his own initiative” and did not inform his superiors about his contacts with Berezovska. Prosecutors also released footage showing a blood-stained “torture chamber”, containing hammers and other equipment, which they said was discovered during searches of the two men’s properties. The Guardian could not independently verify the prosecutors’ account. But the affair could prove politically costly for Kyiv. Any evidence linking members of Ukraine’s intelligence services to a bombing on European soil would be deeply damaging, coming as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived at a Nato summit on Tuesday seeking to shore up western support while Russia continued its deadly bombardment of Ukrainian cities. Prince Albert II of Monaco previously condemned the bombing as “an odious act” and said all the principality’s security services had been mobilised. The victims have not been officially identified, but police and judicial sources told French media they were Vadym Iermolaiev, 58, a businessman originally from Ukraine who now holds Cypriot citizenship, his girlfriend and their son. Iermolaiev and his partner were taken to hospital with serious injuries, while the child sustained minor injuries. French prosecutors allege Berezovska, who had been living in Germany, disguised herself as a man before placing an explosive device in the entrance hall of the family’s apartment building in Monaco. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Iermolaiev had been living in Monaco as part of a group of wealthy Ukrainian businessmen and politicians that independent Ukrainian media labelled the “Monaco battalion”. Ukraine imposed sanctions on Iermolaiev in 2023, alleging he had maintained business links with Russian entities operating in Ukrainian territories occupied by Moscow, including Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014. Monaco’s deputy prosecutor said last week that the suspected attacker fled the principality on foot into neighbouring France before travelling by car to Germany via several European countries, including Italy. Ukraine has carried out numerous lethal operations involving explosive devices against senior Russian military officers and Kremlin-backed Ukrainian officials inside Russia, but there is no established precedent for such attacks on European territory. Last week, German prosecutors accused Ukrainian “state authorities” of ordering the 2022 explosives attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines linking Russia with Europe.
As the multipurpose, multinational funeral of Iran’s former supreme leader Ali Khamenei moved to the Jamkaran mosque in the holy city of Qom, and then to Najaf in Iraq, Iran’s leadership was weighing the mandate it had been given by the millions who have taken to the streets of Tehran over the past three days. Some hailed the moment as a referendum from the streets showing support for the clerical establishment, and called for the strategy of confrontation with the west to be intensified. Others said it was more about a wider national pride that was conditional on demands for change and an end to the war being met. Overall, government sources believe they have successfully managed to organise mass shows of support, without disorder or signs of coercive manipulation that the western media – permitted into Iran for the occasion along with social media influencers – had been unable to ignore. The same appeared to be true in Qom, where Khamenei’s body had been flown in by helicopter and the Jamkaran mosque reached capacity seven hours before morning prayers started. The prayer was read in a choking voice by Ayatollah Javadi Amoli, a leading Iranian conservative philosopher. *** An inevitable numbers game has begun over the turnout at the funeral. Estimates for the Tehran leg vary from 350,000 to 35 million, confirming humanity’s tendency to see what it wants to see. The Financial Times, to the pleasure of the government, reported that as many as 12 million people attended. But at a minimum the support in Tehran bore comparison to the funeral of Iran’s first supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, in 1989, when between 5 and 7 million people from a population of 53 million took to the streets. Undoubtedly, successive false turns, economic travails and political repression during Khamenei’s 36-year rule damaged the regime’s support base. But it would be off the mark to treat those in the procession as bots in human form or the urban poor in need of a free sandwich. Many were highly educated and wanted to show their opposition to what they regarded as the extrajudicial killing of their leader, regardless of their broader views of the regime. Mohammad Ali Kadivar, an associate professor of international relations at Boston College, a research university in Massachusetts, said the funeral could be best understood as what he termed “a major episode of state-led mobilisation”. He said: “Since 1979, state-led mobilisation has been one of the central pillars of the regime’s power. The state has built a dense infrastructure through mosques, the Basij, schools, universities, workplaces, state media, veterans’ organisations and war commemoration networks. These institutions help the government organise public participation and project images of popular support at critical moments. “Infrastructure is only one part of the story. The Islamic republic also has a real social base. This base is not a majority of Iranian society, and Iran remains deeply divided, but it is large, organised, ideologically committed and consistently open to mobilisation. Funerals, commemorations and wartime gatherings make that support visible. They show that the regime’s presence in the streets is not simply imposed from above; it also draws on constituencies that support the system and see themselves as defending the revolution, the state and the country against external threat.” Reza Nasri, a lawyer close to the Iranian government, said the images were not of a broken people and they confirmed that the US had “never understood what it was dealing with” when it went to war with Iran. “This was one of the largest human gatherings on Earth,” he said. “It’s a civilisation expressing itself in full, with all its grief, its pride and its cohesion. These are millions who chose, freely and defiantly, to pour into the streets to mourn their leader on their own terms.” He said the Trump administration’s strategy “did not radicalise them against their government. It did not hollow them out. It did not manufacture the desperation Washington needed. Four decades of sanctions, two wars in the region, maximum pressure, currency warfare, and a secretary of defence openly threatening boots on the ground, and this is what it produced: a people more visibly unified than almost any nation on Earth can claim to be.” Pursuing a similar theme, Hossein Rouyvaran, a professor of political science at Tehran University, said: “The biggest problem of the west is all their theories are materialistic, but what happens in Tehran is beyond mundane materialism. Millions come to Tehran and sleep in the streets, and that suggests there is a connection between the leader and the people that is not materialistic.” He said the war had changed the social contract. Far from cementing divisions, “those who had been in opposition before are now under the Iranian flag”. *** Some aspects of the canonisation of Khamenei have teetered on the absurd. The justice minister, Amin Hossein Rahimi, for instance, said the judiciary had laid the groundwork for Iranians to file lawsuits and complaints with court lawyers in domestic and international forums over “mental and psychological harm resulting from the loss of the leader”. More seriously, Rouyvaran said the marches would legitimise the government and give it a freer negotiating hand with the US. But the government has its fractures, and with so much yet to be negotiated, including the ceasefire in Lebanon, the governorship of the strait of Hormuz and the monitoring of Iran’s civil nuclear programme, it is possible the advocates of confrontation will gain the upper hand. Activity around the strait over the past 48 hours, including gunfire aimed at Qatari LNG tankers, suggests Iran is not fully relaxing its grip on the strategic waterway. The foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi – seen riding helmetless on a motorbike to the funeral procession – knows he also has to ride a political tiger in the form of demands for revenge ringing in the streets. Responding to Donald Trump’s familiar threats to annihilate Iran in an afternoon, Araghchi acknowledged the importance of the crowd. “Millions of proud Iranians rallied in unity to honour Grand Ayatollah Khamenei and his legacy,” he said. “Neither them nor our brave armed forces are moved by any threats. Paragraph 13 of the memorandum of understanding is clear: negotiations on final deal will not commence if threats continue. Honour your signature.” Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, a retired assistant professor in the faculty of law and political science at Tehran University, expressed concern over “the stage-managing efforts by state TV to seek revenge and reject negotiation and peace”. He added: “If they’re coordinated and part of a psychological warfare strategy, that’s good, but if they’re a deliberate project by extremists to drag the country into war and render negotiations ineffective, stop them, as they’re targeting the very foundation of the country.” Hesamoddin Ashna, an adviser to the reformist former president Hassan Rouhani, said: “If we cherish that national presence [then] we [should] consider the united and diverse nation as the holder of power, and employ justice and rationality to witness the resurgence of Iran once again.” Some argued that if the funeral was a true affirmation of national cohesion, the past presidents Mohammad Khatami, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Rouhani would not have been excluded from the ceremonies. Another absentee was Ali Asghar Hijazi, the deputy chief of Khamenei’s office and one of the officials closest to him for three decades. It is said that after the bombing of Khamenei’s residence, he was one of those opposed to the elevation of Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, as his successor on the grounds that, according to Khamenei’s will, his children did not have the right to enter politics. All that can be said for now is that the battle for the soul of Iran, subterranean and in the streets, is entering a new phase.
Explosions rocked Damascus near the hotel where French president Emmanuel Macron was staying on Tuesday, wounding at least 18 people, Syrian authorities said. Macron was in the presidential palace for a meeting with Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa when two Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) detonated near the Four Seasons Hotel, where Macron was reported to be staying. The Four Seasons hosts UN staff and foreign diplomats and is one of the most well-guarded facilities in the Syrian capital. The explosions did not interrupt Macron’s visit, Syrian state media said, publishing pictures of the French and Syrian presidents embracing in the presidential palace. But the explosions were a setback for Syria’s new rulers, who have sought to project an image of stability and have sought to attract foreign investors since the toppling of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in December 2024. Macron is the first major western leader to visit Syria since Assad was forced out, and his meeting with Sharaa in Damascus was viewed as a major recognition of Sharaa. Sharaa and his ministers have worked hard to distance themselves from their pasts as Islamist fighters in Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which grew out of al-Qaida. France has been one of the most supportive western governments of Sharaa’s rule, pushing the US to drop sanctions on Syria and playing a key role in mediating between Syria and Israel. Macron is accompanied with an economic delegation, including Jacques Saadé, the head of shipping conglomerate CMA CGM who has Syrian origins. The French president is expected to sign memorandums of understandings with Syria in an aim to boost investor confidence in the war-battered country which is struggling to lift itself out of economic malaise. A video of one of the explosions on Tuesday showed Syrian police officers standing around what appeared to be a trash bin before the bin suddenly exploded – wounding four officers. The Syrian interior ministry said that another IED was placed in a parked car, and that 18 people were wounded in total, with no deaths currently recorded. The interior ministry said an investigation was taking place to determine who was responsible for the attack. The explosions came just days after an IED was placed in a busy cafe near the Justice Palace in Damascus, killing at least 10 people and wounding more than 20. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Syria has recently struggled with attacks from various armed groups, including Islamic State and groups linked to the former Assad regime. Damascus had largely been spared from violence up until this week, even as other areas of the country saw kidnappings and assassinations as the new government tried to assert itself. Besides security, the economic malaise created by 14 years of war and crushing sanctions is the main challenge facing postwar Syria. Around 90% of people in Syria live in poverty and the country’s infrastructure is in desperate needs of repairs as a result of the war. Basic services such as electricity are inconsistent in parts of the country, including the capital city Damascus.
More than half of parents struggle to find accessible holiday clubs for their disabled children, hitting family finances and forcing many to quit work altogether, according to a survey by a leading charity. A “stark postcode lottery” dictates who is able to secure a place for their child, according to the national disability charity Sense, which found an estimated 60,000 disabled children are living in areas of England with no holiday club provision for them. The charity sent a series of freedom of information (FOI) requests to every local authority in England last year. Of the 114 who responded, 11 (10%) offered zero holiday club provision, leaving 61,415 youngsters and their families scrambling for help. In total, 57% of the 1,000 parents who took part in the survey said it was difficult to get a place in a holiday club. One in three (32%) said the situation meant they were financially worse off, of those a third (32%) had to reduce their working hours to look after their child, and almost a fifth (16%) had to leave employment. The poll found the struggle to find cover during the holidays also affects wellbeing in parents, with a third (34%) experiencing poor mental health. Melissa Mould, 44, and her husband Andrew Mould, 42, from Merton, south-west London, both work in TV production and are parents to six-year-old twins, Frankie and Otis, and two-year-old Remy. Frankie has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair full-time. His mother said it was more difficult and expensive for him to attend holiday clubs, compared with his non-disabled twin. “The logistics of organising summer holiday childcare are so complicated when you have a disabled child – it exhausts me mentally,” she said. “There are endless holiday club options for Otis. For Frankie, there is nothing obvious that he can go to, even though we would be happy to send him to most types of clubs. “I work part-time and we’re lucky that my mum lives close to the school and helps out. I know many families don’t have that support and I can completely see how people end up giving up work, because it’s just not financially viable once you factor in the extra costs.” Natalie Thompson, 39, from Birmingham, works part-time as a freelance HR adviser and is a single parent to Azuriah, aged eight, who is autistic, non-verbal and has global development delay. She said the long summer school holidays cause her financial and emotional anxiety. “There are so few holiday clubs that can meet my son Azuriah’s needs because he requires one-on-one support to keep him safe and happy. “So I’m with him throughout the holidays, from first thing in the morning until last thing at night, nearly every day. “I can’t work full-time because of my caring responsibilities and during the school holidays I can only work very limited hours. That hugely limits my employment options and affects us financially. “The way school holiday care works for disabled children with complex needs like Azuriah is absolute madness. There should be a national framework, so disabled children get the support they need wherever they live – not this postcode lottery.” Harriet Edwards, director of influencing at Sense, said: “Every child deserves the chance to spend the summer with friends, learning new skills and having fun. Yet too many disabled children are missing out simply because accessible holiday clubs aren’t available where they live.” A spokesperson for the Local Government Association, the national membership body for councils in England, said: “Councils recognise the shortage of holiday childcare options for children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send). “We want to continue to work with government to ensure children get the support they need in the Send reforms, which must ensure those needs are met out of school as well as during term-time.”
Authorities in Liberia have charged five suspects over one of the largest drug seizures in the country’s history, after police found more than 200kg of cocaine falsely declared as Maggi seasoning cubes. The shipment, with an estimated value of $19m (£14.2m), was discovered at the international airport in Monrovia on 8 June, but the suspects were not named until a press briefing at the weekend. “This was a serious transnational cocaine trafficking operation using Liberia’s aviation and logistics system as a channel for organised crime,” said Insp Gen Gregory Coleman late on Saturday. He added that his team had found evidence linking the shipment to a similar one processed in May. News of the drug bust caused uproar in Liberia, and prompted President Joseph Boakai to order a combined investigation by the police and national anti-drug agency. “Liberia will not be used as a safe haven, transit point, warehouse, financial centre or operational base by criminal networks engaged in narcotics trafficking,” he said at the time. But the delay in naming the suspects caused a row in parliament, where Coleman was summoned to a special senate hearing, and fed public speculation that the investigation was being tampered with to protect powerful Liberian citizens. On Saturday, Coleman announced that his team had found evidence suggesting the complicity of the logistics company that handled the shipment. He then named the suspects who are being charged for the transportation, possession and illicit trafficking of controlled substances and criminal conspiracy. The key suspect, the operations manager of the firm, is now in custody in Monrovia. Coleman said arrest warrants would be issued in collaboration with Interpol for the others who remain at large. Another suspect, believed to be attending an event in China at the time of the bust, has not been back to the country. Prosecutors also released the Dutch phone number of one UK-based suspect and his house address with a Birmingham postcode. The bust has reinforced reports that west Africa, a region with porous land and sea borders, has become a major staging post for the movement of narcotics between South America and Europe. In October 2022, authorities intercepted a shipping container at Monrovia seaport with 520kg of cocaine valued at $100m (£74.86m). One of the suspects named on Saturday was reportedly released from prison after being arrested in connection with another drug-related case in 2024. In neighbouring Sierra Leone, one of Europe’s most wanted drug dealers has taken refuge since at least 2022 in the country’s capital, Freetown, and is in a serious relationship with the president’s daughter, a Guardian investigation showed in February 2025. In May, Spanish police working with US and Dutch officials confiscated 45 tonnes of cocaine worth €812m (£694m) in what a Madrid court said was Europe’s largest-ever cocaine bust. Authorities said the Comoros-flagged cargo vessel, which was raided near the Canary Islands, had left Freetown with Libya as its official destination. Another drug shipment out of Freetown was also seized en route to Spain in February.
China’s decision to conduct a missile test in the Pacific at short-notice has prompted swift condemnation from leaders including the US, Australia and New Zealand, who have accused Beijing of “destabilising” the region. The test was carried out on Monday, with the missile reportedly flying thousands of kilometres across the Pacific in what China described as a “routine” military exercise. China has urged foreign nations to not “over-interpret” the test, but it has set alarm bells ringing among leaders and experts. Why has China’s missile test in the Pacific proven controversial? Countries like the US and Australia, that have traditionally held sway in the region, have become increasingly concerned about China’s push for influence in the Pacific, along with China’s desire to expand its military and nuclear capabilities. Monday’s missile test marked Beijing’s second publicly acknowledged long-range missile launch into the Pacific in less than two years, after an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test in September 2024, which also drew regional criticism. Regional neighbours believe they were given insufficient notice and information about the test and is unclear if the US was notified. “China is a good friend of Solomon Islands, but this is not something a friend does,” said Matthew Wale, the prime minister of the Solomon Islands, a country that for years has been one of China’s closest partners in the South Pacific. But leaders and experts have also expressed alarm over China’s military and nuclear buildup and a lack of transparency over its intentions. The demonstration was likely designed to “compel the US to treat China as a more equal partner”, said Tong Zhao, a senior fellow at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “This very high-profile test is really lifting the curtain on a potential new era of massive nuclear submarine expansion”, said Zhao, adding that when its technology catches up to the US, China could “severely undermine” America’s military security in the Asia Pacific. Lyle Morris, a senior fellow at the centre for China analysis at the Asia society policy institute, said China was “sending a pretty clear signal” to the US and Taiwan that it “means business”. The test itself was less of a problem than China’s opacity over its nuclear program, Morris said. “We, the US, have been putting pressure on China to agree to an arms control agreement, more transparency behind their nuclear program. They’re not giving that to us, so it’s definitely going to ratchet up the tension.” What has China said? A Chinese navy statement said a nuclear submarine launched a “strategic missile carrying a training simulation warhead” on Monday, adding it had “accurately [landed] in the designated sea area”. China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning, according to a translated version of remarks posted on an official government website, hoped countries would “not over-interpret it”. The test was “a routine part of China’s annual military training, in accordance with international law and practice, and is not directed against any specific country or target”, Ning said. “Relevant countries were notified in advance, and it complies with international law and practice. The launch activity was conducted safely, systematically, and professionally throughout.” What do we know about the missile and where it landed? China’s defence ministry did not confirm whether an ICBM was used in Monday’s test. But Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert, told the Chinese state-run tabloid Global Times that the missile was likely a JL-3 submarine-launched ballistic missile, first formally unveiled during Beijing’s September 2025 military parade. Its range likely exceeds 10,000 kilometres, making it an IBCM, the report said. Su Tzu-yun, director at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defence and Security Research, said unlike the older JL-2, the JL-3 would allow Chinese submarines to threaten targets in the central United States without leaving waters off China’s coast. “The launch reflected Beijing’s shift from maintaining a minimum nuclear deterrent to developing a more coercive nuclear posture capable of influencing other countries’ strategic decisions,” Su said, drawing comparisons with how Russia’s nuclear arsenal has shaped Nato’s response to the war in Ukraine. Joseph Wu, secretary-general of Taiwan’s national security council, posted on social media a map purporting to show the missile’s path travelling south-east of China, going over the Philippines and passing Micronesia and Palau, landing south of Nauru. Is the timing of the test significant? Some observers have noted that the test came just hours after Australia and Fiji signed a major defence alliance, committing each country to come to the other’s aid in the event of an attack. The so-called Ocean of Peace alliance, which is open to other countries to join in the future, is part of Australia’s efforts to deepen ties in the Pacific and push back at Beijing’s attempts to expand its influence. Su, meanwhile, said that the timing of the test may also have been intended to send a signal to Nato, whose summit in Turkey began on 7 July. But others say the timing of the test is largely irrelevant. “These tests are usually organised months in advance and require a whole lot of things to fall into place,” said David Capie, the director of the centre of strategic studies at Victoria University of Wellington. Additional research by Yu-chen Li