The French president, Emmanuel Macron, appears to have ditched his centrist allies after two more high-profile government ministers resigned after a month in office. The ministers who quit were from the MoDem party, which rallied to Macron during his presidential campaign but is now at the centre of a parliamentary jobs investigation.

It brought the number of ministers to leave the Macron administration to four in just 48 hours. Days after a second-round legislative vote that gave Macron a clear majority in the lower house of parliament – even without the support of the centrist MoDem party – justice minister François Bayrou, the MoDem president, announced he was standing down. Minutes later, Marielle de Sarnez, minister for European affairs and another MoDem representative, announced she would also go. A government spokesman, Christophe Castaner, said their departure “simplified the situation”. Macron has pledged to clean up politics, while MoDem is caught up in an investigation into the misuse of European funds.(guardian)…[+]

King Salman of Saudi Arabia has ousted his nephew as crown prince and replaced him with his son, Mohammed bin Salman, confirming the 31-year-old as heir and consolidating the kingdom’s move to reassert its influence as a regional power. The move was announced by royal decree just after midnight, stunning the Saudi establishment, which has seen Bin Salman’s profile soar over the past three years but regarded the role of the former crown prince, Mohammed bin Nayef, a veteran security tsar, as secure.

The upheaval follows a dizzying series of moves from the usually cautious kingdom, which in recent weeks has seen it recalibrate relations with Washington and open a diplomatic offensive against Qatar, led by Bin Salman’s office, while pressing ahead with a war in Yemen and an ambitious economic and cultural overhaul at home. Bin Salman has been central to the changes, which have helped his profile and powers grow rapidly under the tutelage of an 81-year-old monarch who has given him an almost free hand across most aspects of society.

By contrast, Bin Nayef, a former interior minister and intelligence chief, and more traditional US ally, had been increasingly marginalised and the decree removed him from all his positions. He had played little role in the reform programme and was given little face time with Donald Trump during the US president’s visit to Riyadh in May, which is widely seen to have precipitated the change in succession.(guardian)…[+]

Police in Manchester and London registered surges in anti-Muslim hate crime in the immediate aftermaths of the Manchester Arena bombing and the London Bridge attack. The number of Islamophobic attacks in Manchester went up fivefold in the week after the concert bombing, with 139 incidents reported to Tell Mama, the group recording Islamophobic crimes, compared to 25 incidents the previous week.Police chiefs said there had also been a short-term spike in London before this week’s Finsbury Park mosque attack – although precise data is not yet available.

Police forces around the country have stepped up protection for Muslim communities in the wake of the Finsbury Park attack, with the home secretary, Amber Rudd, pledging that the extra resource will remain in place “for as long as it is needed”.

In one case, Naveed Yasin, a trauma and orthopaedic surgeon who helped save the lives of people injured in the Manchester attack, was racially abused and labelled a “terrorist” on his way to work at Salford Royal hospital. Other incidents around the country included one involving a woman from Southampton whose veil was ripped from her head, and another involving a man struck with a glass bottle.(guardian)…[+]

Australia has suspended air combat missions over Syria after Russia threatened that it would treat any plane from the US-led coalition flying west of the Euphrates river as a potential target. Russia said it was responding to US planes shooting down a Syrian air force jet on Sunday. The US said its planes had acted to defend US-backed forces seeking to capture Raqqa, the Islamic State (Isis) stronghold in north-east Syria. “As a precautionary measure, Australian defence force strike operations into Syria have temporarily ceased,” the Australian Department of Defence said on Tuesday. Australia has six fighter jets based in the United Arab Emirates that strike targets in Syria and Iraq.

A spokesman for the Department of Defence told the ABC that the situation would be monitored and sorties over Iraq would continue. “Australian defence force personnel are closely monitoring the air situation in Syria and a decision on the resumption of ADF air operations in Syria will be made in due course,” he said.The UK Ministry of Defence said it would continue its operations against Isis as part of the US-led coalition in Syria.(guardian)…[+]

Firefighters battling the huge Portuguese wildfire that has killed at least 64 people and injured more than 150 hope to bring the blaze under control within the next 24 hours, the country’s civil protection authorities said on Tuesday. More than 1,100 firefighters and nine water-dropping aircraft are still tackling the country’s worst ever forest fire, which is thought to have started after lightning struck a tree in the central municipality of Pedrógão Grande on Saturday. “The situation is quite a lot better,” operational commander Vítor Vaz Pinto told the Lusa news agency. “By tonight or Wednesday morning, the fire will be under control.”He added, however, that progress would depend on the wind and the temperature, which was expected to reach 43C (109F) on Tuesday.As Portugal waits to emerge from three days of national mourning, questions are being asked about why the death toll has been so high in a country that suffers wildfires on an annual basis.(guardian)…[+]

Russia has said it will target any plane from the US-led coalition flying west of the Euphrates river in Syria after the US military shot down a Syrian air force jet on Sunday. Russia’s defence ministry said the US had given it no warning, and that as a consequence it was also suspending coordination over “deconfliction zones” that were created to prevent incidents involving US and Russian jets engaged in operations in Syria.

According to the Pentagon the Syrian jet in question had dropped bombs near US partner forces involved in the fight to wrest Raqqa from Islamic State (Isis) control. It was the first such US attack on a Syrian air force plane since Syria’s civil war began six years ago. In Russia’s first response to the incident early on Monday, the deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said: “This strike has to be seen as a continuation of America’s line to disregard the norms of international law.(guardian)…[+]

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, will announce a new cabinet within days after his start-up centrist political movement swept to a commanding majority in parliamentary elections on a promise of renovating the country’s politics.

Government spokesman Christophe Castaner told RTL radio that the prime minister, Édouard Philippe, would resign during the day as required after a parliamentary poll and be reappointed at the head of the new government “over the next few days”. Macron’s La République En Marche (La REM) party, which did not exist 16 months ago, won 350 of the 577 seats in the lower house with its centre-right ally, MoDem, securing the majority needed to push through far-reaching economic and social reforms.(guardian)…[+]

Theresa May has promised extra police resources to protect mosques in the run-up to Eid following an incident which saw a van plough into people near an Islamic centre in north London. Speaking outside Downing Street after the attack, which police were treating as terrorism, the prime minister said more must be done to crack down on anti-Islam extremism, and praised London’s multicultural community.

May later visited the Finsbury Park mosque, a few hundred metres from the scene of the attack. She was pictured sitting down with local community leaders to discuss the response to the attack. Such incidents, and attacks over recent months by jihadist attackers at Westminster and London Bridge, all challenged the UK’s fundamental freedoms in areas such as speech and worship, May said. “This morning we have seen a sickening attempt to destroy those freedoms, and to break those bonds of citizenship that define our United Kingdom,” she said.(guardian)…[+]

A member of Donald Trump’s legal team has denied the president’s own assertion that he is under investigation for obstruction of justice. Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, appeared across the major political talk shows on Sunday. Speaking on CBS’s Face the Nation, he said: “The fact of the matter is the president has not been and is not under investigation.” On NBC’s Meet the Press, he said: “He’s not afraid of the investigation – there is no investigation. There is not an investigation of the president of the United States, period.”

Sekulow’s comments directly contradicted Trump’s own tweet this week, in which he appeared to refer to deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein when he wrote: “I’m being investigated for firing the FBI director by the man who told me to fire the FBI director. Witch hunt!” Sekulow sought to brush aside the president’s words. Trump, he said, was merely responding to an anonymously sourced Washington Post report that said special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into links between Trump aides and Russia had expanded to look at Trump’s firing of FBI director James Comey.

Sekulow added: “The president issued that tweet on social media because of the report in the Washington Post from five anonymous sources none of which, of course, anyone knows about, alleging that the president was under investigation in this purported expanded probe.(guardian)…[+]

At least 60 people have been killed in huge forest fires in central Portugal, many dying in their cars as they tried to flee the flames. Portugal’s prime minister, António Costa, described the blazes – which have injured dozens more people – as “the greatest tragedy we have seen in recent years in terms of forest fires”, and warned the death toll could rise. Three days of national mourning were declared.Several hundred firefighters and 160 vehicles were dispatched late on Saturday to tackle the fire, which broke out in the municipality of Pedrógão Grande before spreading fast.

Spain dispatched two water-bombing planes on Sunday morning to aid the Portuguese fire service, while France sent three aircraft. The Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, promised to provide any assistance necessary, tweeting: “Stunned by the tragedy in Pedrógão Grande. The Portuguese people can depend on our solidarity, support and affection.” The Iberian peninsular is sweltering under a severe heatwave, with temperatures exceeding 40C (104F) in some regions. About 60 forest fires took hold across Portugal on Saturday night, with 1,700 firefighters battling to put them out.(guardian)…[+]