National Rally party is predicted to win the largest number of seats in France's National Assembly

After Marine Le Pen's National Rally walloped Emmanuel Macron in the first round of voting in the French elections, there is a real chance France could be governed by a hard-Right party for the first time since the Second World War.

Then, France's collaborationist Vichy regime claimed authority over the country in an armistice deal with Nazi Germany.

Ms Le Pen has spent more than a decade trying to detoxify her National Rally party and turning it from a movement that once celebrated Nazi collaboration to a genuine electoral force.

On Sunday evening, the National Rally was seen winning around 34 per cent of the vote, according to early exit polls from Ipsos, Ifop, OpinionWay and Elabe.

Although the final result will depend on days of horse-trading before next week's run-off, it's evident her message is resonating with voters.

The French president has been using his powers to make last-minute appointments, according to the former leader of the National Rally party

French President Emmanuel Macron is undertaking a last-minute reshuffling in government agencies in order to prevent National Rally leader Jordan Bardella from governing as he wishes, former party leader Marine Le Pen believes. The RN is widely expected to gain a plurality in this Sunday's runoff.

RN and its allies secured the lead in the first round of the snap parliamentary election last week, while projections in the French media anticipate the party ultimately winning between 230 and 280 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly.

"It's a kind of administrative coup d'état," Le Pen told France Inter radio on Tuesday, commenting on press reports that claimed Macron was rushing to appoint senior civil servants, including to top EU jobs.

Over the past days, Macron reportedly appointed several top officials, including the military governor of Paris, the new chief of the General Staff of the French Air Force, the new director of the EU at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and three ambassadors. He also proposed in Brussels last week reappointing Thierry Breton as France's European commissioner.

Washington and London will do anything to conceal their crimes, the Pink Floyd co-founder has claimed

Years of "vicious persecution" of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange show that Washington will go to any lengths to escape justice for its crimes, former Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters has told RT in an exclusive interview, aired on Monday.

His words came as Assange struck a deal with Washington and pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to obtain and disseminate national defense information at a US court in Saipan. He was then sentenced to five years - time he has already served in London's Belmarsh maximum security prison - and then set free and allowed to return to his native Australia.

The issue before the Supreme Court stemmed from Special Counsel Jack Smith's election interference case against former President Trump

The Supreme Court ruled Monday in Trump v. United States that a former president has substantial immunity from prosecution for official acts committed while in office, but not for unofficial acts.

In a 6-3 decision, the Court sent the matter back down to a lower court, as the justices did not apply the ruling to whether or not former President Trump is immune from prosecution regarding actions related to efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The YAF previously conducted four significant military operations Monday, targeting ships belonging to the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Israeli occupation, achieving direct hits.

The spokesman for the Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF), Brigadier General Yahya Saree, announced on Tuesday that YAF conducted a joint operation with the Iraqi Islamic Resistance, targeting a vital target in Haifa with cruise missiles.

Saree explained that the operation was carried out using several cruise missiles, stressing its success.

He reiterated that joint operations with the Iraqi Islamic Resistance will continue, in support of the Palestinian people until the aggression on the Gaza Strip stops and the siege is lifted.

It is noteworthy that the YAF announced Monday that they conducted four significant military operations targeting ships belonging to the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Israeli occupation, achieving direct hits.

Julian Assange spent seven years in self-exile in London's Ecuadorian Embassy avoiding arrest, and five more in prison, for publishing classified documents on WikiLeaks.

Julian Assange is a free man, and one of the most contentious press freedom controversies in living memory may finally be coming to a close.

The WikiLeaks founder reached a plea deal with the Department of Justice on Monday after spending five years in an English prison fighting extradition to the United States. Federal officials sought to charge Assange with conspiracy to obtain and disclose national security information under the Espionage Act of 1917.

The Israeli military says it is in urgent need of thousands of more forces, as the regime is facing increasing challenges almost nine months into its genocidal war in the Gaza Strip.

Minister of military affairs Yoav Gallant said in a statement on Monday that the military "needs 10,000 more soldiers immediately."

Gallant said the military can recruit 4,800 soldiers from ultra-Orthodox men.

Last week, Israel's Supreme Court unanimously ruled that ultra-Orthodox Jews must be subject to the military draft, after decades of being exempted from military service.

Many people will remember the Covid policy response as a nightmare involving: reduced access to medical treatment, businesses closures, disrupted schooling and fear generated by Government brainwashing. After the event, it is always worth doing a 'cui bono' (who benefits) exercise to identify who benefited, especially since the hopeless mainstream media have largely failed to do this.

Counterintuitively, the über-wealthy owners of 0.1% of wealth in the United States, increased their net worth by a staggering $6.4 trillion over the 2022-2023 pandemic period. With their net worth growing from $12.1 trillion to $18.5 trillion, a pretty cool $20 million per head for approximately 300,000 people. This outcome is counterintuitive since the lockdowns temporarily wrecked the economy and had a significant negative impact on Government debt, which ballooned due to staggering budget deficits. All things being equal, you would expect stock markets to move lower under these circumstances.

In the Alice-in-Wonderland world of extreme money printing though the stock market exploded and the benefit from this explosion accrued primarily to the über-wealthy, who hold most of the financial assets. Regular folk without significant financial assets tended to get left with the rough end of the stick in the form of elevated inflation. We covered the link between money printing and financial asset values in a previous note ('Where did the money go?'), the chart below shows that money printing (red), moves in almost exactly the same way as the size of the wealth owned by the wealthiest 0.1% (blue). Both axes are in trillion (millions of millions).

President Biden is struggling to contain mounting dissent from Democratic members of Congress that has culminated in a call for him to withdraw as the party's nominee.

Why it matters: Biden's campaign has attempted to quash concerns about the president's political strength and fitness for office by casting doubters as overwrought, but that strategy now appears to be backfiring.

• "Some of us don't want to wake up on Nov. 6 kicking ourselves because we had all of these red flags and warnings and we couldn't muster the courage to do something about it," said one House Democrat.

The Deputy Director of Germany's foreign intelligence, Uli Diyal, met recently with Hezbollah's Deputy Secretary-General Naim Qassem, Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported on 2 July.

The meeting was the second between the two since the start of this year.

According to Al-Akhbar, Diyal visited Beirut on Saturday and met with Qassem, returning to Berlin the following day without meeting with other Lebanese officials.

"The atmosphere of the meeting was positive," sources told Al-Akhbar.