Israeli first responders said rocket fire from Lebanon killed one person on Sunday close to Israel’s northern border, according to a report from AFP. The individual was pronounced dead after a strike on their vehicle. Local firefighters said flames had engulfed two vehicles after a “direct hit”.
Voting is under way in France in the second round of local elections – seenas a bellwether for next year’s presidential race – with cities including Paris and Marseille in the balance and both the radical left and far right hoping for gains. Most of France’s 35,000-odd communes elected their councils in the first round last Sunday, but in municipalities where the contest is tighter, including most large urban areas, the second round will be decisive, with electoral alliances playing a key role. Analysts say that while local elections are often decided at least partly on local issues, they can hold important lessons for national ballots. “They create momentum, provide a boost and establish a narrative,” said Frédéric Dabi of the polling institute Ifop. Besides indicating voter sentiment before the 2027 vote – which the far-right National Rally (RN) sees as its best chance yet of seizing power, with Emmanuel Macron due to step down – the local elections can suggest which tactical alliances may be struck nationally. One of the tightest races is in the French capital, where city hall has been held by the Socialist party (PS) since 2001 and the centre-left candidate Emmanuel Grégoire topped the first round with 38%, ahead of the conservative Rachida Dati on 25.5%. Three others qualified for the second round. However, a moderate rightwinger, Pierre-Yves Bournazel, has since merged his list with Dati’s, while the far right’s Sarah Knafo has withdrawn – potentially uniting the capital’s rightwing vote. On the left, Grégoire has refused to join forces with Sophia Chikirou of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s radical-left France Unbowed (LFI), which much of the mainstream left has refused to team up with over claims of extremism, antisemitism and violence. The centre-left candidate therefore faces a three-way race that, if he wins, will comfort the mainstream left’s reluctance to work with LFI – or if he loses, will be hailed by the right as proof of the potential of a broader rightwing alliance. The dynamic is very different in Marseille, France’s second-largest city, where the far-right National Rally (RN) candidate, Franck Allisio, finished barely one percentage point behind the outgoing centre-left mayor, Benoît Payan, in the first round. Like Grégoire in Paris, Payan ruled out an alliance with LFI – but its candidate, Sébastien Delogu, withdrew, saying the RN must be kept out at all costs. And a conservative candidate, despite RN calls for her to stand down, has stayed in the race. The RN, the largest single party in the French parliament, also has high hopes in Toulon and the Riviera city of Nice, where its ally Éric Ciotti, running as a joint candidate for his own breakaway conservative party and the RN, is the frontrunner. Bruno Retailleau, the national leader of the main conservative party, Les Républicains (LR), has refused to back the outgoing centre-right mayor of Nice against Ciotti, potentially clearing the way for a conservative and far-right electoral alliance next year. In some cities, the radical left is seen as the force to resist, with the PS merging its list with Macron’s centrists in Strasbourg to fight off an LFI threat, and the Socialists uniting with the Greens in Lille to try to block the radical-left party. But elsewhere, local alliances between the mainstream and radical left could have successes in cities such as Avignon, Brest, Nantes and Toulouse, France’s fourth-largest city, while LFI could win the northern city of Roubaix under its own steam. A final key race to watch is in the port city of Le Havre, where the mayor, the former prime minister Édouard Philippe, is well placed to keep his job – and may become a leading presidential contender against the RN’s Jordan Bardella or Marine Le Pen. Polling stations are due to open at 8am local time and will close in the major cities at 8pm, with results expected in the course of the evening.
Iran has radically overhauled its social media strategy in an all-out information war launched by the country’s Islamic rulers in response to US and Israeli military attacks. Cyber experts say Iranian foreign influence operations have gone into overdrive as part of an “asymmetric” campaign designed to complement its military retaliation and intensify moral pressure on the US and Israel into curtailing their war efforts. It has meant flooding platforms such as X, Instagram and Bluesky with targeted postings calculated to exploit the war’s unpopularity in the US, including among supporters of Donald Trump. Previous multi-pronged communications aimed at fomenting support for causes such as Scottish independence and Irish unification have been jettisoned in favour of a single-issue message that has included AI-generated videos and memes mocking Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister. Some AI generated footage has faked successful strikes on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, bomb damage supposedly inflicted on buildings in Tel Aviv, and Israeli soldiers supposedly crying in fear over Iranian retaliation. The Iranian campaign has been sufficiently effective to draw complaints from Trump, who accused Iran of using AI as a “disinformation weapon”. The intensified onslaught has come as the regime imposed a near-total internet blackout in Iran while threatening punishments against anyone using satellite internet connections, such as Starlink. Government agents have also reportedly tried to intimidate Iranians living abroad against posting online messages against the regime or in favor the US-Israeli war effort. Expatriate Iranians report receiving phone calls or online warnings that their citizenship will be revoked or family members in Iran harmed unless they stop posting. Analysts believe the cyber effort has become a central component of the regime’s survival strategy, along with military retaliation against US and allied targets, and closure of the strait of Hormuz. “It’s absolutely asymmetric warfare,” said Darren Linvill, co-director of the Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub in South Carolina and author of a study into Iran’s tactics. “The use of artificial intelligence is impressive, and it’s at a rate that I don’t think anybody’s seen before to the same extent or in the same way. “Iran is using every advantage they had. They had been preparing for this conflict for almost 50 years, and this was part of what they prepared for. They understand the media ecosystem.” The Clemson study found that Iranian social media efforts previously aimed at exploiting political discord in the UK and US were immediately redirected after the American-Israeli military strikes began on 28 February. Superficially-authentic troll accounts hitherto focused exclusively on Scottish or Irish politics, or criticising Keir Starmer or the Royal family, instead denounced the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the lethal strike on a school in the Iranian city of Minab that killed up to 175 people, mostly school girls. The troll accounts, as well as those in the US with Latino identities that primarily posted against Trump’s anti-migration agenda, have since been suspended. They have been replaced by content placed by Iranian proxies and embassies, which experts say is sometimes so effective that it is re-posted numerous times, compounding popular misgivings over an already, deeply unpopular war. “All their normal operations have been completely upended in order to focus on the war,” said Linvill. “They are very focused on the existential threat that is the ongoing war with Israel and the United States. “There were accounts run by the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] pretending to be Scottish and Irish and talking about Scottish and Irish politics one day and then exclusively focused the war in Iran and unabashed Iranian propaganda the next. “To use those same assets to suddenly talk about how the supreme leader is a martyr seems a little inauthentic from a voice that’s supposedly a 20-year-old girl in county Cork.” A key part of the goal appears to be to harness criticism of the war among Trump’s increasingly disenchanted from Maga (make America great again) allies. Press TV, Iranian state television’s English language satellite channel, posted four clips from Tucker Carlson’s interview with Joe Kent, who resigned this week as the Trump administration’s counterterrorism adviser, on its social media account within one hour on Thursday. Iranian propaganda operators would have seized on Kent’s assertion – voiced in his resignation letter and in his interview with Carlson – that Israel led the US into the war, said Alex Goldenberg, an expert on online threats and foreign influence campaigns. “A core part of the Iranian information model is identifying fault lines in American political debate and amplifying them,” he said. “For years, that meant platforming fringe movements on the left with demonstrable sympathies toward adversarial regimes. What’s significant now is is that Iranian state media has found new and growing supply of content on the right, where rhetoric questioning Israeli influence over American foreign policy is trafficking in overt antisemitism. “Iran doesn’t need to create that content. It simply presents itself.”
Donald Trump has given Iran 48 hours to reopen the strait of Hormuz to shipping or face the destruction of its energy infrastructure, as Tehran launched its most destructive attack yet on Israel. The ultimatum, made just a day after the US president said he was considering “winding down” military operations after three weeks of war, came as the key oil passage remained effectively closed and thousands more US Marines headed to the Middle East. Trump wrote on Truth Social that the US would “hit and obliterate” Iranian power plants – “starting with the biggest one first” – if Tehran did not fully reopen the strait within 48 hours, or 23:44 GMT on Monday according to the time of his post. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said Tehran had imposed restrictions only on vessels from countries involved in attacks against Iran, and would assist others that stayed out of the conflict. In response to Trump’s threat, Iran’s army said it will target energy and desalination infrastructure “belonging to the US and the regime in the region,” according to the Fars news agency. Trump’s ultimatum came hours after two Iranian missiles struck southern Israel, injuring more than 100 people in the most destructive attack since the war began. The Israel prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, vowed to retaliate “on all fronts”. The strikes, which slipped through Israel’s missile defence systems, tore open the facades of residential buildings and carved craters into the ground. First responders said 84 people were injured in the town of Arad, 10 of them seriously. Hours earlier, 33 were wounded in nearby Dimona, where AFPTV footage showed a large hole gouged into the ground next to piles of rubble and twisted metal. Dimona hosts a facility widely believed to be the site of the Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal, although Israel has never admitted to possessing nuclear weapons. The Israeli army told Agence France-Presse there had been a “direct missile hit on a building” in Dimona, with casualties reported at multiple sites, including a 10-year-old boy in serious condition with shrapnel wounds. Netanyahu vowed to continue striking Iran. Hours later, the Israeli military said its forces had launched a wave of strikes on Tehran. Iran said the targeting of Dimona was retaliation for Israeli strikes on its Natanz nuclear facility, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) saying forces also targeted other southern Israeli towns as well as military sites in Kuwait and the UAE. After the Natanz attack, the UN nuclear watchdog chief, Rafael Grossi, reiterated his call for “military restraint to avoid any risk of a nuclear accident”. The Natanz facility hosts underground centrifuges used to enrich uranium for Iran’s disputed nuclear programme; it sustained damage in the June 2025 war. The Israeli military denied it was behind the Natanz strike, but said it had struck a facility at a Tehran university that it claimed was being used to develop nuclear weapon components for Iran’s ballistic missile programme. The United Arab Emirates said on Saturday it faced aerial attacks after Iran warned it against allowing strikes from its territory on disputed islands near the strait of Hormuz. Iran has choked the vital waterway, which carries a fifth of global crude oil trade in peacetime. The standoff has sent crude oil prices soaring, with North Sea Brent crude now trading above $105 a barrel, as long-term consequences for the global economy become an acute concern. A joint statement from the leaders of several countries – including the UK, France, Italy, Germany, South Korea, Australia, the UAE and Bahrain – condemned the “de facto closure of the strait of Hormuz by Iranian forces”. “We express our readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait,” they said. Trump has slammed Nato allies as “cowards” and urged them to secure the strait. On Sunday, Japan said it could consider deploying its military for minesweeping in the strait of Hormuz, if a ceasefire is reached. The foreign minister, Toshimitsu Motegi, said: “If there were to be a complete ceasefire, hypothetically speaking, then things like minesweeping could come up. “This is purely hypothetical, but if a ceasefire were established and naval mines were creating an obstacle, then I think that would be something to consider,” Motegi said on Japanese TV. Japan’s military actions are limited under its postwar pacifist constitution, but 2015 security legislation allows Japan to use its self-defence forces overseas if an attack, including on a close security partner, threatens Japan’s survival and no other means are available to address it. Japan gets about 90% of its oil shipments via the strait, which Tehran has largely closed during the war, now in its fourth week With Reuters and Agence France-Presse
A decade after he suffered life-changing injuries in the terrorist attacks that hit Brussels airport and a metro station, Walter Benjamin has been having sleepless nights. Not only because of the hellish time he lived through on 22 March 2016. Last year, he says, his monthly pension was drastically cut to recoup “overpaid” survivors’ compensation. Benjamin, now 56, was standing three metres away from the second attacker at Zaventem airport when the bomb detonated. Three suicide bombers killed 32 people that day and left more than 320 people with the kinds of injuries doctors usually find in war zones. One moment Benjamin was standing in the check-in area preparing to catch a flight to Tel Aviv. The next, he was thrown in the air and found himself lying on the ground in a pool of blood, among the dead and maimed. He lost his right leg and had 17 operations to save the left. His doctor told him it would take him three or four years to walk again. But three months after the attack, he was standing up and starting exercises, he says, “because I didn’t want to be a burden on society … I didn’t want my daughter [then 16 years old] to have a father she would have to support.” Physically, he is doing OK, he says. He walks 30-40 minutes every day on a treadmill to keep up his strength and morale. But he cannot leave the house without medication: “Sometimes I can be in the street or anywhere and I have a panic attack. It comes very fast.” He is prone to depression. Despite all his efforts to rebuild his life, he is also battling administrative problems. Last July he was informed he had received too much state compensation: his monthly pension, awarded to him as a victim of a terrorist attack, was cut by 70%, he says. According to his calculation, his pension income will fall by between €130,000 (£112,000) and €150,000 (£130,000). He describes the shortfall as a debt he fears will fall to his next of kin. “It was a shock,” he says. “Because I have never hidden anything that I have received. And if I die, the debt is there for my daughter. It’s not right. It is a psychological shock. I don’t understand why we are being made to live like this.” “This is not money I pay to my broker,” he says with grim irony, detailing the extra costs he bears, such as more expensive air tickets and taxis to accommodate life with a prosthetic limb; psychological support; and extra help when he cannot walk as a result of injuries caused by the prosthesis. A spokesperson for the Belgian federal pensions service said any reduction in compensation would be applied to future pension payments and there would never be a debt recovery claim on an individual or their next of kin. The terrorist victims’ support group, Life for Brussels, says Benjamin is not alone. “Many victims are living in utter despair,” it said in a statement last week, published before events this weekend to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the attacks. “The state is demanding reimbursement of sums paid out over the years, plunging families into unjustifiable hardship.” The situation has arisen because under a Belgian law passed in 2017, victims are not entitled to be compensated twice for their trauma. Survivors of terrorist acts are entitled to receive a pension, which is subject to deductions if they have received other payments, such as social security or insurance payments. Survivors had the possibility to claim compensation under insurance carried by Brussels airport and the Brussels transport operator, STIB. Life for Brussels argues that the authorities are making incorrect deductions based on a questionable understanding of the law and failing to respect a principle of non-retroactive deductions. Aurélie Cardon, a communications specialist, was on her way to work on 22 March 2016 when she was injured in the attack at Maelbeek metro station in the city’s EU quarter. Although she was in the carriage where the bomb went off, “I was very lucky,” she says. “I was sitting down and the blast wave passed above me.” She was left with injuries, including back pain and damage to her ear drums. For a long time she experienced fear and panic when on public transport or in other crowded spaces, which have eased with treatment. She was awarded a lifelong pension of €126 a month – or so she thought. A year ago, she says, her pension was abruptly stopped without explanation. Then, last December, she received a bill saying she owed the government €1,500. “What bothers me most – more than the reimbursement – was that this whole story was behind me, because it was 10 years ago,” she says. “But with this letter it all came flooding back. It’s like this story will never end.” In a statement published on the same day that survivors gave testimony to journalists, the Belgian pensions department issued an apology. “The pensions service pays compensation pensions to approximately 700 victims of terrorism. As these pensions are considered ‘residual compensation’, the law requires the pensions service to take into account other compensation payments and deduct them from the compensation pension,” it said. The statement said that in 14 cases, “unfortunately” money had been “incorrectly recovered”, while 43 people had “received a potentially confusing letter”. The department said those people who had been wrongly docked money would be reimbursed, while no “retroactive adjustment” would be made for the other 43. It added: “The pensions service regrets how events have unfolded and presents its sincere apologies to victims. We are aware that our administrative actions have caused additional suffering.” Benjamin says he has not received a letter. “The big scandal is, for 10 years there is no follow-up from the state about what happened to us,” he says, arguing for a system where there would be routine checks on survivors’ health or other problems. The statement was good news, says Cardon, who confirmed she received a letter last week informing her that the demand for reimbursement was an error. But her fight is not over, she says. She continues to press for the reinstatement of her full pension, without deductions. Understandably, it’s a subject she would rather put behind her. “To always be talking about the attacks, to be thinking about the attacks, to make the calculations, it’s not nice … I would like to move forward.”
In the run-up to a referendum in Italy on a government quest to overhaul the judiciary, a campaign flyer circulated online quoting Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister, taking aim at judges and feminists. “Judges block the deportations of rapists. Where are the feminists? Vote yes – there will not be another opportunity,” it read. The flyer, posted on the Facebook page of Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, a party with neofascist roots, was subsequently removed. But its tone has defined a campaign dominated by inflammatory rhetoric rather than meaningful debate. At a demonstration against the proposals, Chiara Antonini, from Rome, said: “It is shameful of Meloni to use such threatening language and to intervene on sensitive issues such as the protection of women, especially given the hypocrisy after the government backtracked on a law that would have defined sex without consent as rape. The government just seems to have it in for the judiciary.” After more than three years in power, Meloni is leading one of the most stable governments in the history of the Italian republic and burnishing her image abroad. Now she is putting that hard-won credibility to the test with this high-stakes referendum on Sunday and Monday. Italy’s electorate will vote yes or no to approving amendments to the country’s post-fascism constitution that would shake up the organisation of the justice system. But what is in essence a ballot on a technical and complex change has morphed into a de facto confidence vote on Meloni’s government before a general election in 2027. Mattia Diletti, a politics professor at Sapienza University in Rome, said: “It has become a political referendum and is a power issue for her. It is essentially a choice between Giorgia Meloni or the judges.” A victory for the yes campaign would usher in changes to how judges and prosecutors are recruited and governed, including separating their career paths, establishing two governing councils selected by lottery and creating a court to handle disciplinary matters. Meloni says the changes are essential for impartiality, in particular to weed out what she calls the leftwing political “factions” ruling the judiciary. Opponents claim they will weaken the power and independence of judges and prosecutors, making them more vulnerable to government control in a manner akin to Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. Opinion polls before the blackout period began pointed to a close race in which the no camp, supported by a significant proportion of the opposition, had gained an edge as the debate intensified. At the end of the campaign, Meloni upped her messaging by accusing judges of undermining her policies to crack down on crime and irregular immigration. She said rejecting the changes would put public safety at risk because it would mean “more immigrants, rapists, paedophiles and drug dealers being freed”. Speaking at a theatre in Milan last week, she said if the ballot failed “we will find ourselves with even more negligent judges and even more surreal sentences”. Carlo Nordio, the justice minister, caused a furore after referring to the judiciary’s supreme council as a “para-mafia system”. His chief of staff, Giusi Bartolozzi, likened the judiciary to a “firing squad” that needed to be eliminated. Justice has long been a thorny issue in Italy, where the spectre of Silvio Berlusconi, the late former prime minister who faced dozens of criminal trials, looms large. Forza Italia, the party founded by Berlusconi, is a partner in Meloni’s ruling coalition. Marina Berlusconi, his daughter, said: “A win for yes wouldn’t just be my father’s [victory].” But Luigi Li Gotti, a criminal lawyer, believes the objective is to come down especially hard on public prosecutors, whom Berlusconi depicted as “the cancer of our democracy”, which could make them more reluctant to investigate high-profile corruption cases and organised crime. Li Gotti, who served as a justice undersecretary in Romano Prodi’s centre-left government, came under fire from Meloni last year for filing a legal complaint against her after Italy released and repatriated a Libyan general wanted for alleged war crimes by the international criminal court. He said the government wanted to change the constitution to “weaken prosecutors and indirectly influence” investigations. Meloni claimed the changes would make Italy’s notoriously sluggish justice system more efficient. “But the goal has nothing to do with improving efficiency,” Li Gotti said. Antonella Attardo, a civil judge in Milan, said that behind the political vitriol was an important vote on significant changes “on which none of us voters have a clue”. “The fear is very much about what will come afterwards,” she said, citing a law change mooted by Antonio Tajani, Italy’s deputy prime minister, that would make police forces more accountable to their relevant government ministries, weakening the power prosecutors have to coordinate an investigation. “This would mean that the executive decides which investigations are going to be done and how,” Attardo said. “The fear is that investigations on corruption or on those close to political or economic power would be silenced.” Micol Parati, a lawyer from Crema in Lombardy who attended a demonstration in Rome in support of the proposals, said: “Nowhere is it written that the judiciary would become slaves of the executive if the referendum wins.” Li Gotti expressed concern that success for Meloni would strengthen her resolve to push forward with other controversial constitutional changes, such as a directly elected prime minister. Meloni is riding high in popularity surveys, which is unusual for Italian leaders this long into an administration. If the referendum goes her way, she will prioritise an electoral law that could give her coalition a comfortable win in the general election, which is due next year. Diletti said: “If she loses, it will be upsetting because it will be much harder for her to prepare for the elections.” In the days before the ballot, Meloni turned to an irreverent podcast hosted by a rapper in an attempt to sway younger voters. “The vote is not about Meloni, it is about justice,” she said. Matteo Bruno, a master’s student in Rome, was unconvinced. “I’m going home to Catania specifically to vote because this is a constitutional reform that might have important consequences for the future of our democracy,” he said.
This blog is closing now but we’re continuing our live coverage of the US-Israel war on Iran in a new live blog here, including a recap of the latest key developments. Thanks for reading.
Ukrainian and US negotiators trying to secure a peace settlement of Russia’s invasion opened their latest round of talks in Florida on Saturday, with more discussions planned through the weekend. Russian representatives did not attend the meeting. “We continued discussing key issues and the next steps within the negotiation track,” the chief Ukrainian negotiator, Rustem Umerov, posted on X. Russian and Ukrainian negotiators met at two sets of US-brokered talks in the United Arab Emirates this year and a round in Geneva last month. Moscow and Kyiv agreed on prisoner exchanges, but no breakthroughs were achieved. The White House described the latest meeting as “constructive”, with discussions “focused on narrowing and resolving remaining items to move closer to a comprehensive peace agreement”. Russian attacks killed four people in south-eastern Ukraine and left much of the northern region of Chernihiv without power on Saturday, officials said. Zaporizhzhia governor, Ivan Fedorov, said the morning attack on the city killed a man and a woman, and injured six others, including two children. In the adjacent Dnipropetrovsk region, officials said two people died in an area south-east of the main regional centre, Dnipro. Five people were injured in attacks at multiple places. In his nightly video address, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said power had been cut to parts of Chernihiv region, where efforts were under way to fix damage after a drone strike on an energy facility. Power and water supplies have also been cut to parts of Kyiv. Ukrainian forces shelled a public building in Russia’s border region of Belgorod on Saturday, killing four people, the regional governor said. Vyacheslav Gladkov, writing on Telegram, said the attack hit a “social site” in the village of Smorodino, without giving further details. The bodies of two women were pulled from under rubble, he said. Belgorod has come under frequent Ukrainian attack during the four-year war. Authorities in nearly a dozen Russian regions in recent weeks cited various excuses to prevent demonstrations against internet censorship and the blocking of the popular messaging app Telegram. In most cases, they succeeded. Mindful of a crackdown on dissent since the invasion of Ukraine, activists decided not to risk holding unauthorised rallies, even if they weren’t about the war. Some went to court to challenge government refusals to authorise pickets, while others scaled them back to smaller indoor gatherings. Tens of thousands of Czechs filled a large plain in Prague to rally against the government of the billionaire prime minister, Andrej Babi, on Saturday, slamming it for “arrogance of power”. The Million Moments for Democracy movement organising the protest has criticised the government for “playing down” threats from Russia invading Ukraine. Protesters, some carrying Ukrainian flags, criticised its refusal to provide military aid to Ukraine. Babis leads a three-party nationalist cabinet comprising his catch-all ANO party, the far-right SPD and the rightwing Eurosceptic Motorists. “[The government] is doing everything to drag us towards Russia and, together with Hungary and Slovakia, to dent the EU,” Marek Perutka, a conservationist carrying a Ukrainian flag told Agence France-Presse.