China anchored one of its two “monster” coast guard ships inside the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ) last week in what a Philippine official called an act of “intimidation” in the ongoing territorial dispute between Beijing and Manila in the South China Sea.

Philippine Coast Guard spokesperson Jay Tarriela said the China Coast Guard vessel CCG-5901 anchored near Sabina Shoal in the Spratly Islands, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) northwest of the Philippine island of Palawan on July 3, well within Manila’s 230-mile EEZ.

Displacing 12,000 tons and with a length of 541 feet, CCG-5901 is three times the size of the United States Coast Guard’s main patrol vessels, the National Security Cutters – leading many observers to refer to the Chinese vessel as “The Monster.”

While at Sabina Shoal, the Chinese ship anchored within 800 yards of one of the Philippine Coast Guard’s newest and biggest ships previously deployed to the area, Tarriela said in a post on X.

CCG-5901 is more than five times the size of the Philippine ship, the BRP Teresa Magbanua.

“It’s an intimidation on the part of the China Coast Guard,” Tarriela said during a forum on Saturday, according to a Reuters report.

But he said the Philippines would not back down on its South China Sea claims.

“We’re not going to pull out, and we’re not going to be intimidated,” Tarriela added.

When asked the Philippine claims during a regular press briefing Monday, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied the area in question was part of the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

“China’s military and police ships patrolling and enforcing the law in the waters near Xianbin Jiao are in compliance with China’s domestic law and international law,” spokesperson Lin Jian said, using the Chinese term for the Sabina Shoal.

China claims “indisputable sovereignty” over almost all of the South China Sea, and most of the islands and sandbars within it, including many features that are hundreds of miles from mainland China. Multiple governments, including Manila, hold competing claims.

In 2016, an international tribunal in The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines in a landmark dispute, which concluded that China has no legal basis to claim historic rights to the bulk of the South China Sea.

But Beijing has ignored the ruling. Instead it has increasingly pushed its maritime territorial claims, with China Coast Guard ships – reinforced by militia boats – involved in multiple clashes over the past year that have damaged Philippine ships and seen Filipino sailors injured by water cannon.

A clash near Second Thomas Shoal in June saw Chinese coast guard officers brandishing an axe and other bladed or pointed tools at Filipino soldiers and slashing their rubber boat. A Filipino soldier lost a thumb during the confrontation.

CCG-5901 wasn’t involved in that incident but has been prowling areas of the Philippines’ EEZ since, according to Ray Powell, a South China Sea expert and director of SeaLight at the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford University.

“Immediately following the dramatic standoff at Second Thomas Shoal … The Monster toured nearly every Philippine outpost and key feature in the South China Sea,” Powell said.

Powell and other analysts say intimidation is one of the main jobs of the CCG-5901, which is larger than any regular coast guard ship in the world (a specialty US Coast Guard icebreaker is bigger) and even outsizes US Navy destroyers.

The Arleigh Burke-class destroyers displace 9,700 tons or less and are about 35 feet shorter than CCG-5901.

The US Coast Guard’s National Security Cutters, displace 4,500 tons, a third of the size of CCG-5901.

In a firepower comparison, CCG-5901 also betters the US cutters, with two main 76.2-millimeters guns compared to one main 57-millimeter gun on the US ships.

“Its massive size enables it to intimidate its neighbors while avoiding the escalatory implications of sending a gray-hulled military vessel,” Powell said, referring to navy ships.

Coast guards, known as white-hulled vessels because of their color, are usually assigned to law enforcement and search-and-rescue operations. In most countries, they are not normally expected to participate in military operations.

The US Coast Guard, for instance, is part of the US Department of Homeland Security, not the Defense Department, although US Coast Guard vessels can come under US Navy control in certain scenarios.

The China Coast Guard is part of the country’s People’s Armed Police, which is under the command of the Central Military Commission.

Analysts say that’s a key difference between the two coast guard agencies.

“It is not really intended to carry out traditional coast guard missions, but is primarily used as a central element in China’s paramilitary maritime force,” Powell said of “The Monster.”

Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center, said CCG-5901’s size and crew enable it to be a central command ship for a larger operation.

He noted that a Chinese navy aircraft carrier was also operating near the Philippines in recent weeks and that the combination of the two is a coordinated effort to demonstrate overwhelming Chinese naval power to Manila.

China has both the world’s largest navy, in terms of sheer ship numbers, as well as the world’s largest coast guard.

Collin Koh, research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said “The Monster” shows the Chinese military’s ability for “escalation dominance,” adding that the vessel the Philippines had previously sent to Sabina Shoal, the Teresa Magbanua, was one of its best.

The China Coast Guard “doesn’t want to be outdone thus this monster came along to show who’s got a bigger set of muscles,” Koh said.

A month ago, the New Popular Front (NFP) did not exist. Now, it has won the most seats in the French parliament and could provide France with its next prime minister.

The left-wing coalition chose its name in an attempt to resurrect the original Popular Front that blocked the far right from gaining power in 1936. Official results released early Monday show the NFP has done so again — winning 182 seats in the National Assembly, making it the largest bloc but short of an absolute majority, according to the French Interior Ministry.

But the hastily assembled coalition comprises disparate political parties that have not always played nice. And it has campaigned on a platform of high public spending that has spooked financial markets and could tip France into economic chaos.

So, what is the NFP, what does it stand for, and who are its key players?

Who are the NFP?

The NFP is made up of several parties: the far-left France Unbowed party; the more moderate Socialist Party; the green Ecologist party; the French Communist Party; the center-left Place Publique, and other small parties.

It formed just days after President Emmanuel Macron called a snap parliamentary election, in the wake of his centrist party’s embarrassing defeat to Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) party in last month’s European Parliament election.

“Following his side’s defeat at the European elections, Emmanuel Macron has opted for a gamble at a time when the far right is at its most powerful, running the risk of seeing it come to power for the first time since Vichy,” Socialist leader Olivier Faure said last month, referring to the French government that collaborated with Nazi occupiers during World War II.

“Only a united left can stand in its way,” he said.

Who’s in charge of the NFP?

It’s hard to say. Each party celebrated the results at their own headquarters and separate campaign events, rather than together. Going into the second round, it was not clear who the coalition would nominate to be its prime minister.

Its most prominent – and divisive – figure is Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a 72-year-old populist firebrand and longtime leader of the France Unbowed party.

France Unbowed is the largest single party within the coalition, winning 74 seats in Sunday’s vote ahead of the Socialists on 59 seats.

With France now facing a hung parliament it remains unclear who the next prime minister will be. Figures in Macron’s Ensemble party have repeatedly said they would refuse to work with France Unbowed, saying it is just as extreme – and therefore as unfit to govern – as the RN.

Announcing his intention to resign Monday as prime minister, Gabriel Attal said, in an apparent swipe to France Unbowed: “No absolute majority can be led by the extremes. We owe it to the French spirit, so deeply attached to the Republic and its values.”

Mélenchon’s three presidential campaigns have been beset by accusations of antisemitism. In a recent survey of French Jewish voters by Ifop, 57% said they would leave France if Mélenchon’s party were to govern.

A more acceptable face of the coalition could be the Socialist Faure, or Raphaël Glucksmann, the moderate leader of Place Publique and a member of the European Parliament.

What are the NFP’s policies?

On foreign policy, the NFP has pledged to “immediately recognize” a Palestinian state, and will push for Israel and Hamas to cease fire in Gaza.

The NFP campaigned on an expansive economic platform, promising to raise the minimum monthly wage to 1,600 euros (more than $1,700) and to cap the price of essential foods, electricity, fuel and gas.

It also pledged to scrap Macron’s pension reform, a deeply unpopular policy that raised the French retirement age – one of the lowest in the Western world – from 62 to 64.

While these pledges have proved popular, they have been made at a time when France could be heading for a period of austerity.

France is running one of the highest deficits in the Eurozone and now risks falling foul of the European Commission’s new fiscal rules, which were suspended to help countries recover from the Covid-19 pandemic and energy crisis.

Since Macron called the election, financial markets have taken fright – first at the prospect of an extremist government, then at the economic policies of the hard left and right, with the RN also promising an expansive fiscal program.

Because the NFP did not win enough seats to form an absolute majority, it will have to enter into another coalition – likely with Ensemble, which may try to dilute some of its more radical spending policies – in order to pass laws. This process is likely to be frustrating, as several parties – straddling huge ideological divides – try to find common ground.

A fashion major from a vocational high school in rural China has amazed the nation by outshining elite students in a global math contest – but the teenager’s underdog story has now been mired by controversy.

Jiang Ping, born in a poor village in eastern China’s Jiangsu province, ranked 12th out of 802 shortlisted competitors – mostly from prestigious institutions such as Harvard, Oxford, and MIT – in first-round results released on June 13 by DAMO Academy, the organizer of the Alibaba Global Mathematics Competition.

Launched in 2018 by Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba, the free online contest is open to math enthusiasts worldwide, though Chinese math majors typically dominate the top places. This year’s top 85 finishers will win prizes from $2,000 to $30,000.

Jiang’s high placement – in the first of the contest’s two rounds – was a remarkable achievement for a student from one of the country’s vocational schools, which suffer deep-seated social prejudices and whose graduates occupy the lowest rungs of China’s educational hierarchy.

Her success initially garnered nationwide acclaim, with multiple Chinese state media outlets jumping on the story and a deluge of online commentary buoyed by seeing a vocational student do so well in an international math competition.

But doubts about the 17-year-old’s math skills have gained momentum online since the end of last month, ahead of the release next month of results from the much more challenging second round. The organizing committee has yet to address them.

Suspicions cast

Jiang’s gift for math came to the fore in junior high, where her scores far outstripped those of her peers, state-run news agency Xinhua reported. She was later trained by math teacher Wang Runqiu at Lianshu Secondary Vocational School, where she studies fashion design.

Wang, a three-time finalist in the contest, helped Jiang to teach herself advanced math over the past two years, according to Xinhua.

Since Jiang’s top-20 finish in the first round was announced, a related hashtag topped searches on X-like platform Weibo, amassing more than 650 million views so far. In her hometown, her image beamed from television screens at local malls.

Jiang finished the final round on June 22, and the results will be released in August.

However, just a day after the final, Richard Xu from Harvard Business School, who placed 190th in the first round, announced on China’s Quora-type site Zhihu that he, along with 38 other contestants, had filed a joint letter to the organizing committee asking for an independent investigation into Jiang and Wang’s answer sheets from the qualifying round.

The letter cites “evidence” of alleged fraud, including a theory of “collaborative cheating” headed by Wang, who came 125th.

Four days before the final round, Yin Wotao, a member of the organizing committee, had defended Jiang in a soon-deleted response to a skeptic on X.

“Some math amateurs have indeed placed well in the qualifying rounds in past years,” given the moderate difficulty and generous 48-hour time limit, Yin argued.

Blocked from accessing Yin’s short-lived comments by Chinese internet restrictions, users posted on the Lianshui county government’s website, demanding an official investigation into Jiang and Wang.

On June 27, the local government confirmed what until that point had been an online rumor that Jiang scored only 83 out of 150 in a school math exam held after the qualifying round. The next day, it provided a formulaic response to further related queries, saying “the investigation is underway.”

Soon after, all the posts relating to Jiang were taken down and there’s been no update since.

Social stigma for vocational students

Among the cacophony of commentary, some suspect the harsh public scrutiny of Jiang is rooted in social prejudice against vocational students.

These students make up the bottom 40% in China’s senior high school entrance exam, or “zhongkao.” They do not qualify to enter regular high schools, where students cram for “gaokao,” China’s notoriously daunting college entrance exam.

In a society where poor academic performance is often equated with moral failings, “lazy bones,” “small-timers,” and “delinquents” have become bywords for the cohort who perform poorly on the zhongkao at 15 and are generally resigned to toil in factories for the rest of their lives.

This represents a stark reversal from the 1980s and 90s when vocational schooling was respected as a sought-after path to “iron rice bowls,” a popular term for secure jobs, amid the country’s urgent need for technical workers. However, the boom soon died down as higher education expanded in 1999.

As China races to meet its ambitious “Made in China 2025” goal to become “a world manufacturing power,” Beijing has been strengthening vocational education in recent years. But structural discrimination in China’s schools, universities and workplaces means society still favors academic degrees over trades.

Another ‘disappeared Einstein’?

In an interview with The Beijing News, a Communist Party-owned newspaper, Jiang said she wanted to go college and that her dream school was Zhejiang University, a top academy in the e-commerce hub Hangzhou. But that could still be difficult despite her apparent maths proficiency.

Jiang’s mentor Wang told the state-run Xinhua Daily that due to restrictions on major choices for future vocational education, she can only apply to three colleges in Jiangsu province, with her best option being a second-tier public university.

“China selects and categorizes talents way too early and too rigidly. This has greatly limited individuals’ future options and paths,” said Zhao, citing Germany and Finland as better examples of dual-track schooling with greater flexibility for students to shift between vocational and academic tracks.

Beijing’s attempt to emulate those European nations by encouraging resource exchanges between the two types of schools over the past decade has met a lukewarm response from high schools busy coaching students to score higher in the “gaokao” university entrance exam.

According to Zhao, Jiang is already “a lucky rarity if she’s truly gifted in math.” But he warned she may become a “disappeared Einstein” – one of the many buried talents in China’s education system.

The jury is still out, with second-round results due next month.

Jiang considers math her “Plan B,” prioritizing fashion design for future study, according to The Beijing News.

Zhao said working in a factory is a “reasonable choice” for the 17-year-old village girl, who as a vocational student has limited options for higher education.

“After all, she has a mouth to feed,” he said.

“I threw my live grenade at their feet” is how French President Emmanuel Macron reportedly saw his call for snap elections after a stinging far-right victory in June’s European elections.

It was an explosive gamble and the final results took the country by surprise: France’s left-wing alliance coming in first with 182 seats and the far-right trailing in third place – a shocking reversal of last Sunday’s first-round results.

On Place de la Republique in Paris news of the projected results was met with rapturous applause and fireworks as people embraced one another, breathing a collective sigh of relief: in their eyes, France had been pulled back from the brink.

Turnout on Sunday was the highest in a parliamentary election for more than 20 years as French citizens took to the ballot box to make their feelings known: they did not want the far-right to govern.

However, with the left falling short of the 289 seats needed for a majority and with a weakened president, the national assembly is expected to be more fractured than ever.

What’s certain is that France is set to enter a prolonged period of instability as three opposing blocs with competing ideas and agendas try to form coalition or find themselves stuck in a state of paralysis.

Visibly disappointed, the far-right National Rally (RN) leader Jordan Bardella argued that his party’s defeat was only made possible by the tactical voting orchestrated by Macron and the left-wing NFP coalition that decided to withdraw 200 candidates from the race this week in an effort to block the far right.

Though the RN didn’t do as well as expected, it is still a victory for French far-right doyenne Marine Le Pen with her party getting more votes with each passing election. 8 in 2017, 89 in 2022, 143 in 2024 – the latter with the help of allies.

For the left-wing NFP alliance, it is going to have a tough time speaking with one voice. The last time it formed a bloc under the name of Nupes, in 2022, it fell apart because of personal differences as well as policy.

The bloc brings together five different parties. Far-left France Unbowed and the Communist party has joined with the center-left parties, the socialists and the greens to form a New Popular Front. Now the challenge is no longer whether the left can unite against the far right, but rather can the different groups work together to agree first on who might be prime minister from their camp – and then on the policies they might pursue?

How instability might impact internationally

With such a divided parliament there is no hope for major structural reforms at a domestic level, the best the leftists can hope for are ad hoc alliances to vote through individual pieces of legislation.

It’s equally hard to imagine how the current constellation would allow France to play an important role regarding Ukraine. Macron in the past has vowed to continue supporting Ukraine militarily while Le Pen has said her party would prevent Kyiv using French-supplied long-range weapons to strike inside Russia and would oppose sending French troops.

The left has remained relatively quiet on Ukraine – different parties from the coalition have slightly different stances – France Unbowed is against what it calls “escalation” with Russia.

Macron’s central bloc seems to have held up quite well, winning 163 seats. Even though it lost roughly 100 MPs, it’s a much better result than what the polls were suggesting, although we will see a shift in power from the Elysée to the National Assembly.

Macron’s gamble may have prevented the far right from coming to power, but it could yet plunge the country into chaos. And with no parliamentary elections scheduled for another year, France is in for anuncertain time with the eyes of the world firmly on Paris as it prepares to welcome the Olympics in three weeks’ time.

A left-wing alliance is projected to win the most seats in the French parliament after tactical voting in Sunday’s second round election thwarted Marine Le Pen’s far-right party, but France may be left in limbo after no party won an absolute majority.

In a surprise result, the New Popular Front (NFP) – a cluster of five parties ranging from the far-left France Unbowed party to the more moderate Socialists and the Ecologists – was projected to win between 171 and 187 seats in the National Assembly, making it the largest party, but falling short of the 289 seats required to form an absolute majority.

President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Ensemble alliance, which had slumped to a dismal third in the first round of voting last Sunday, has since recovered strongly and is projected to win between 152 and 163 seats. Despite leading after the first round of votes, the far-right National Rally (RN) was projected to win between 134 and 152 seats.

The RN’s strong showing in the first round stirred fears that France could be on the cusp of electing its first far-right government since the collaborationist Vichy regime of World War II. But Sunday’s projection comes as a huge upset and shows French voters’ overwhelming desire to keep the far right from gaining power – even at the cost of political gridlock, with no party projected to reach a majority.

After the first round, an unprecedented number of seats – over 300 – went to a three-way runoff between Ensemble, the NFP and the RN. By Tuesday, more than 200 centrist and left-wing candidates withdrew from the second round, in a bid to avoid splitting the vote.

Cheers rang out on the streets of Paris as the projection was published. Speaking to a crowd of his ecstatic supporters at Stalingrad square, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the firebrand leader of France Unbowed, said the results came as a “huge relief for the overwhelming majority of people in our country.”

“Our people have clearly rejected the worst-case scenario,” Mélenchon said. “A magnificent surge of civic mobilization has taken hold!”

Gabriel Attal, Macron’s protege, announced he would resign as prime minister Monday morning. He seemed to take a swipe at Macron’s decision to call the snap vote, saying he “didn’t choose” for France’s parliament to be dissolved.

Elsewhere in Paris, the buoyant atmosphere at a RN campaign event in Bois de Vincennes took a nosedive an hour before the polls closed. After the projection was announced, Jordan Bardella, the party’s 28-year-old leader, said France had been thrown into “uncertainty and instability.”

Handpicked as leader by Marine Le Pen in an effort to purge the party of its racist and antisemitic roots, Bardella had taken the party closer to the gates of power than ever before. Visibly disappointed by the results, he slammed the NFP as an “alliance of dishonor.”

“As from tomorrow, our deputies will take up their places to make sure we counter the migration policies and other policies of the far left. We will not enter into any kind of coalition or compromise, we will be the side of the French people,” he said.

A hastily-assembled coalition

In a brief statement, the Elysee said Macron is awaiting the full results of all 577 constituencies “before taking the necessary decisions.”

“In his role as guarantor of our institutions, the president will ensure that the sovereign choice of the French people is respected,” it said.

After parliamentary elections, the French president appoints a prime minister from the party that won the most votes. Ordinarily, this means a candidate from the president’s own party. However, if Sunday’s projection is confirmed, Macron faces the prospect of having to appoint a figure from the left-wing coalition, in a rare arrangement known as a “cohabitation.”

Speaking to supporters at Stalingrad square, Mélenchon said Macron “has the duty to call the New Popular Front to govern.”

But it is not clear from which party within the coalition that Macron will appoint a prime minister. France Unbowed was projected to win up to 75 seats, which would make it the largest single party within the NFP, ahead of the Socialists with as many as 65 seats.

But Macron and his allies had repeatedly stressed that they would refuse to enter into coalition with Mélenchon. Speaking after last Sunday’s first round, outgoing Prime Minister Gabriel Attal – Macron’s protege, said France Unbowed was preventing the formation of a “credible alternative” to the far right.

The NFP formed less than a month ago, after Macron called the snap vote following his party’s disastrous loss to the RN in last month’s European Parliament election.

The capacious – and potentially fractious – coalition chose its name in an attempt to resurrect the original Popular Front that blocked the far right from gaining power in 1936. If Sunday’s projection is confirmed, the NFP will have achieved this aim.

It campaigned on a platform to raise the minimum monthly wage to 1,600 euros (more than $1,700), to cap the price of essential foods, electricity, fuel and gas, and to scrap Macron’s deeply unpopular pension reform, which raised the French retirement age – already one of the lowest in the Western world – from 62 to 64.

A mess of Macron’s making?

Sunday’s vote represents a victory for the French “cordon sanitaire,” the principle that left-wing and centrist parties must unite to block the far right from taking office.

But the RN’s success should not be underestimated. In the 2017 elections, when Macron swept to power, the RN won just eight seats. In 2022, it surged to 89 seats. In Sunday’s vote, it is projected to win as many as 152 seats.

While the risk of a far-right government has been avoided for now, these elections have plunged France into political uncertainty. Macron called the election three years earlier than necessary, just minutes after his party was trounced by the far right in the EU election.

Although EU election results need have no bearing on domestic politics, Macron said he could not ignore the message sent to him by voters and wanted to clarify the situation.

But Sunday’s results look set to further muddy the French political picture. Unable to call a new election for at least another year, and with three years left on his presidential term, Macron looks set to preside over an unruly parliament, as problems mount at home and abroad.

Édouard Philippe, France’s former prime minister and an ally of Macron, said Macron’s gamble had further complicated the situation.

“The truth is that none of the political blocs in the assembly has a majority on its own to govern. The dissolution of the assembly, which was intended as a clarification, has instead led to great vagueness,” he said Sunday evening.

“The central political forces therefore have a responsibility to stay. They must, without compromise, promote the creation of an agreement that will stabilize the political situation.”

Voters are heading to the polls across France to vote in the second round of a snap election called by President Emmanuel Macron, who risks losing swaths of his centrist allies in parliament and being forced to see out the remaining three years of his presidential term in an awkward partnership with the far right.

After taking the lead in the first round of voting last Sunday, the far-right National Rally (RN) – led by the 28-year-old Jordan Bardella under the watchful eye of party doyenne Marine Le Pen – is closer to power than ever before.

The RN, whose once-taboo brand of anti-immigrant politics has been given a fresh and more acceptable face by Bardella, won 33% of the popular vote in the first round. The newly-formed left-wing coalition, the New Popular Front (NFP), came second with 28%, while Macron’s Ensemble alliance trailed in a distant third with 21%.

But the prospect of a far-right government – which would be France’s first since the collaborationist Vichy regime during World War II – has spurred Ensemble and the NFP into action. After a week of political bargaining, hundreds of candidates stood down in particular seats to try to deny the RN an absolute majority.

Voting began at 8 a.m. local time (2 a.m. ET), as France began the process of electing the 577 members of its National Assembly, in which 289 seats are needed for a party to hold an absolute majority. In the outgoing parliament, Macron’s alliance had only 250 seats, and so needed support from other parties to pass laws.

Only those who win more than 12.5% of the votes of registered votes in the first round can stand in the second, meaning it is often fought between two candidates. But this time a record number of seats – more than 300 – produced a three-way run-off, in a measure of France’s polarization. In an attempt not to split the anti-far right vote, more than 200 candidates from Macron’s alliance and the NFP agreed to stand down in the second round.

While RN’s strong showing in the first round means it could more than triple the 88 seats it had in the outgoing parliament, it is not clear if it will be able to reach an absolute majority. Although it is customary for the president to appoint a prime minister from the largest party, Bardella has repeatedly said he will refuse to form a minority government.

In that case, Macron might have to search for a prime minister on the hard left or, to form a technocratic government, somewhere else entirely.

Whatever the result of Sunday’s vote, France seems set to endure a period of political chaos, with Macron unable to call another parliamentary election for at least a year.

The campaign has already been marred with violence. Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said Friday that 51 candidates and campaigners had been assaulted on the campaign trail, leading to some being hospitalized.

The vote is being held three years earlier than necessary. France was not due to hold parliamentary elections until 2027, but Macron called the snap vote – the first time a French leader has done so since 1997 – after his party was trounced by the RN at last month’s European Parliament elections.

Although the European election results need have no bearing on domestic politics, Macron said he could not ignore the message sent to him by voters and wanted to clarify the situation.

Some have argued that, with the possibility of the RN winning both the presidency and the parliament in 2027, Macron was keen to expose it to government beforehand, in the hope that it would lose its appeal once in office. If the RN refuses to form a minority government, Macron’s gamble could backfire.

An RN-led government would have huge implications for France and the rest of Europe. Its spending plans – which include cutting value-added tax on electricity, fuel and other energy products – have alarmed financial markets and could put France on a collision course with Brussels’ restrictive spending laws.

On the continental stage, an RN-led government would further Europe’s rightward shift, at a time when the center is trying to remain united on issues like support for Ukraine, migration and climate change.

Standing between the RN and an absolute majority is the NFP, comprising more radical figures like Jean-Luc Melenchon, a three-time presidential candidate and leader of the France Unbowed party, as well as moderate leaders like Place Publique’s Raphael Gluckmann.

While Macron’s Ensemble allies said they will do everything in their power to stop the RN coming to power, it has refused to collaborate with or endorse candidates from France Unbowed. Gabriel Attal, Macron’s protege and the outgoing prime minister, has vowed never to enter into alliance with Melenchon.

Polls will close at 8 p.m. local time (2 p.m. ET) Sunday, with the full results expected early Monday.

An Israeli airstrike in Gaza City killed a senior official in the Hamas-run government Sunday, according to the organization.

Hamas said that Ehab al-Ghussein, the Deputy Minister of Labor, was among four people killed by an Israeli airstrike on the Holy Family School in Gaza City.

“Civil Defense crews in Gaza Governorate were able to retrieve four martyrs and a number of injured individuals after Israeli occupation aircraft targeted the ‘Holy Family’ school, which houses a large number of displaced persons west of Gaza City,” the Civil Defense Directorate said.

Al-Ghussein was 45 and had been the Deputy Minister of Labor in Gaza since 2020, as well as the Head of the Emergency Committee for the Civil Service of the Northern Gaza Strip.

In May, his sister Muna Jamal and wife Amani Sakeek were killed in an Israeli airstrike, according to reports at the time.

The Israeli military has said it carried out strikes in the area, saying it targeted “a complex inside of which terrorists were operating and hiding in the area of a school building in Gaza City.” It’s not clear whether the strikes were those in which a senior Hamas official was killed.

It added that “numerous steps were taken in order to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise aerial surveillance and additional intelligence.”

The strike took place at UNRWA’s Al-Jaouni school in al-Nuseirat camp in central Gaza on Saturday. The school was sheltering displaced people, according to the health ministry.

They are young and passionate about protecting Cambodia’s rich and ecologically fragile environment.

Their peaceful green campaigns have been championed by climate activist Greta Thunberg and in 2015, they successfully fought against a plan for a hydroelectric dam they claim would have damaged a pristine rainforest valley.

But this week, the Southeast Asian nation sentenced 10 activists from the group Mother Nature Cambodia to up to six years in prison each on charges of conspiring against the state.

The government says the group encourages social unrest, but to their supporters, the ruling is just the latest in a pattern of attacks on climate activists in the wider region.

“We demand that our friends in Mother Nature Cambodia, and all political prisoners, be released immediately,” said Fridays for Future, the youth-led global climate strike movement founded by Thunberg, in a statement.

Exiled opposition leader Mu Sochua said the group had tried to highlight environmental issues that “threaten Cambodia’s fragile environment” and claimed, “they would be heroes in any free country.”

Cambodia, a kingdom of nearly 17 million people that is rich in natural resources, faces pressing threats to its environment, including deforestation from illegal logging and agricultural expansion, water pollution affecting inland and coastal areas, and a surge in plastic waste.

The country maintains about 46% forest cover and is home to 2,300 plant species and 14 endangered animals, according to the United States Agency for International Development. “Deforestation and wildlife crimes continue to threaten Cambodia’s forests and biodiversity,” USAID says on its website.

Critics and environmental groups say those threats have heightened under the nearly four-decade-long rule of strongman Hun Sen – who has quashed dissent and jailed opponents in recent years, forcing many to flee overseas.

Though his eldest son, Hun Manet, succeeded him as prime minister last year, Hun Sen is still widely seen as the ruling party’s center of power.

“Like what we are seeing with dictators in other countries, Cambodia is becoming more repressed,” said Alejandro Gonzalez-Davidson, a Spaniard who co-founded Mother Nature Cambodia over a decade ago, alongside local Cambodian activists.

Climate activism in the country is at a “rougher, grassroots level,” he added, with the conversation centering more on “extremely rich and powerful tycoons and corrupt government officials trying to exploit and privatize,” the environment.

“This is Cambodia now – logging, poaching, mineral extraction, turning lakes into land and destroying rivers, as well as exporting massive amounts of sands. There are systems in place where (officials) exploit the environment for profit and our group has been doing as much as we can to stop these unethical projects and protect the environment – and that is why we are a threat in the regime’s eyes.”

Outside the court ahead of Tuesday’s ruling, a government spokesperson denied that the charges against the activists were politically motivated.

“The government has never taken action against those who criticize. We only take action against those who commit crimes,” spokesperson Pen Bona told Reuters.

Award-winning campaigners

Founded in 2012, Mother Nature Cambodia has campaigned against environmental destruction and exposed alleged corruption in state management of precious mineral resources, and their savvy use of social media has resonated with young Cambodians.

In 2023, the group was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, often called the “alternative Nobel Prize.”

“Mother Nature Cambodia is a group of fearless young activists fighting for environmental rights and democracy in the face of repression by the Cambodian regime,” the jury said in a speech at the time, describing them as “a powerful voice for environmental preservation and democracy in Cambodia.”

Several activists were unable to receive the award in person as Cambodian courts denied their requests to travel to Sweden to collect the prize.

“They have successfully helped local communities stop environmental violations,” Right Livelihood’s executive director Ole von Uexkuell said last year. “Through innovative and often humorous protests, their activism defends nature and livelihoods while upholding communities’ voices against corrupt and damaging products.”

The group has strongly leveraged social media, saying it helps get their message across to young supporters. They have more than 450,000 followers on Facebook, the most widely used social platform in the country.

But it’s on TikTok that their videos really make an impression on young Cambodian users like Run Bunry, a high-school student from the capital Phnom Penh and his friends. “They are positive and lighthearted and also teach us a lot about the environment,” he said.

One video, highlighting an investigation into the alleged illegal export of rare silica sand, showed three members buried up to their heads in sand and was shared more than 1,000 times. Another viral video taken along a beach in the coastal city Sihanoukville showed the extent of alleged illegal construction by hotels and casinos on the shore.

“Follower numbers have grown especially in the last five years and a lot of our old content regularly resurfaces on TikTok and goes viral,” said founding member Gonzalez-Davidson, who was expelled from Cambodia in 2015 after the group’s successful campaign to stop a Chinese-funded hydropower dam from being built over the Areng Valley, an area of pristine rainforest in southwest Cambodia.

Members of the group say they have faced increasing threats, harassment and criminal charges for years.

Under scorching heat on Tuesday, members of the group – dressed in white and accompanied by a crowd of supporters – staged a mock funeral procession in the streets leading to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court.

But peaceful scenes descended into chaos after the sentencing was announced.

Video footage showed activists Mother Nature Cambodia activists Ly Chandaravuth, Long Kunthea, Thun Ratha, Phuon Keoraksmey and Yim Leanghy surrounded by dozens of armed police officers and dragged away into waiting cars, bound for prisons across the country.

Arrest warrants have been issued for five other members of the group, including Gonzalez-Davidson, who was sentenced to eight years in prison Tuesday on the conspiracy charge and insulting Cambodia’s king.

“The increasing use by Cambodian authorities of lèse majesté and other articles of Cambodia’s criminal code to penalise the exercise of human rights is deeply worrying,” United Nations Human Rights spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan said in a statement following the ruling.

Gonzalez-Davidson, however, said the ruling would backfire against the authorities and inspire a new cohort of environmental campaigners.

“This week, a new generation of Cambodian activists was born – one that did not exist back in 2012,” he said.

“Many young Cambodians are very engaged in the next steps and public campaigning must continue. There have been (arrests and jailings) before and each time, we come out stronger.

“They won’t break our spirits. We are not going to be shut down.”

At least seven people have died and several are feared trapped after a building in the western Indian state of Gujarat collapsed on Saturday, according to police and rescue officials.

The five-story building collapsed on Saturday afternoon in the city of Surat, Babulal Yadav from the National Disaster Response Force told reporters on Sunday.

Rescue operations resumed Sunday as teams tried to clear the debris following the collapse, the city’s Deputy Police Commissioner Rajesh Parmar said, adding it’s unclear how many people were still trapped.

He said one woman was rescued after a 12-hour operation on Saturday.

A cause has yet to be determined.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated

It was an attack that sent shockwaves through a country long considered a pioneer in LGBTQ rights. In the early hours of May 6, four lesbian women were set on fire in Argentina. Only one of them survived.

It happened at a boarding house in the Barracas neighborhood of Buenos Aires, where Pamela Fabiana Cobas, Mercedes Roxana Figueroa, Andrea Amarante and Sofía Castro Riglo were sharing a room. Witnesses say a man broke in and threw an incendiary device that set the women on fire.

Pamela died soon after. Her partner Roxana died days later of organ failure. Andrea died on May 12 in a hospital.

Local LGBTQ rights advocates condemned the attack as a hate crime and lesbicide, saying the women were targeted because of their sexual identity. Police have arrested a 62-year-old man who lived in the building but, according to Conder, aren’t currently treating the incident as a hate crime as they say the motive is still unclear.

For Argentina’s LGBTQ groups – many of whom are planning to commemorate the four women with a rally this weekend – the attack represents an extreme manifestation of what they consider a growing wave of hostility against them. Those they blame most for this rising intolerance are the people in power. Chief among them, they say, is the country’s new far-right leader Javier Milei.

“Things changed with the new government of Javier Milei,” said Maria Rachid, head of the Institute Against Discrimination of the Ombudsman’s Office in Buenos Aires, and a board member and founder of the Argentine LGBT Federation (FALGBT).

“Since the beginning of the new government, there are national government officials expressing themselves in a discriminatory manner and those hate speeches before our communities from places with so much power, of course, what they do is generate – actually legitimize – and endorse these discriminatory positions that are then expressed with violence and discrimination in everyday life,” Rachid said.

Milei under fire

When Milei ran for president in 2023, he and his party were accused of making offensive remarks against LGBTQ communities which were deemed hate speech by multiple groups, including Argentina’s National Observatory of LGBTQ Hate Crimes.

In a YouTube interview ahead of the November election, Milei insisted that he does not oppose same-sex marriage, but in that same interview, he went on to compare homosexuality to having sex with animals.

“What do I care what your sexual preference is? If you want to be with an elephant, and you have the consent of that elephant, that’s a problem between you and the elephant,” he said, angering LGBTQ communities, who called the comments dehumanizing.

In late October, then-congresswoman-elect Diana Mondino, who would later become Milei’s foreign minister, told an interviewer that she supports marriage equality in theory, but at the same time, compared it to having lice.

“As a liberal, I’m in favor of each person’s life project. It is much broader than marriage equality. Let me exaggerate: If you prefer not to bathe and be full of lice and it is your choice, that’s it. Don’t complain later if there is someone who doesn’t like that you have lice,” she said.

After taking office in December, Milei took steps that critics say weakened protections for LGBTQ groups. He banned the use of gender-inclusive language in government; replaced the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity with a less powerful undersecretariat within the Ministry of Human Capital; and effectively closed the national anti-discrimination agency, saying the Ministry of Justice would absorb its functions.

Milei’s administration argued that some of those moves were part of his plan to cut public spending in response to the country’s economic hardships. But critics say his actions have normalized a culture of discrimination toward LGBTQ groups, and in the most extreme cases, have led to violent attacks such as the deadly May 6 arson.

“(Attacks) always happened. That’s the reality. But they increased more in this current government due to the hate speeches constantly maintained on television, including hate speeches that our president Javier Milei exerts,” said Jesi Hernández, a lesbian and communication member of Lesbianxs Autoconvocadxs por la masacre de Barracas (Self-convened Lesbians for the Barracas massacre).

“Today it was Pamela, Roxana, Andrea and Sofía. And tomorrow it can be me.”

Rise in hate crimes

In 2023, an annual report by the National Observatory of LGBTQ Hate Crimes recorded 133 crimes in which the victims’ sexual orientation, identity and/or gender expression were used as a pretext for the attacks. Those numbers rose from 2022 and 2021, when 129 and 120 crimes were recorded, respectively.

Rachid points out that the observatory’s numbers only represent attacks that have been officially recorded, and that the real figures are likely much higher.

Hernández, meanwhile, notes that daily life for many people has been impacted in ways not shown by statistics alone. Some now fear they could be targeted next.

“The truth is that now, sleeping peacefully in your bed is a privilege,” Hernández said, referencing the May 6 attack, “because you don’t know if you have a neighbor who will throw something at you or come in. Sleeping is now a privilege for us.”

Shortly after the May 6 killings, the presidential spokesperson Manuel Adorni condemned the attack but dismissed the notion that it was motivated by hatred toward the sexual orientation of the victims.

“I don’t like to define it as an attack on a certain group,” Adorni said at a press conference. “There are many women and men who are suffering violence and these are things that cannot continue to happen.”

Progressives condemned his remarks, insisting that the government should regard lesbicide as a hate crime.

Adorni responded on social media with a picture of a Spanish dictionary that said lesbicide is not a registered word.

Progress in Argentina

Argentina was once a progressive pioneer in Latin America.

In 2010, it became the first country in the region to legalize same-sex marriage. In 2021, it also became the first to allow nonbinary people to mark their gender as “X” on national identity documents.

LGBTQ activists fear these historic gains are now being undermined – and potentially threatened – by the current government. But they also take comfort in surveys that suggest anti-LGBTQ views are the minority in Argentina.

According to a public opinion survey conducted in May by the University of San Andrés, some 72% of respondents said they are in favor of marriage equality, 70% said they support policies that protect transgender people from discrimination, 75% said they do not consider that transsexuality is a disease that should be treated medically, and 79% said that comprehensive sexuality education in schools is a positive thing.

The recent attacks have galvanized activists to fight for new policies and actions that would further protect LGBTQ rights.

He also said that to reduce attacks on LGBTQ communities, their voices and demands should be amplified in more societal sectors.

To that end, Hernández encouraged LGBTQ groups to push back against hate speech, telling those communities: “They are not insane, they are not sick, they are not people with lice. Quite the opposite. I would tell them that they are a disruptive person, that they are breaking out of the molds of ‘normality.’ And that they are very brave … and that they are whatever they want to be, despite all this.”