Final polls show four leading presidential candidates so close that any two could go through to runoff in two weeks’ time.

In Nice, Oscar Lopez has found voters seemingly willing to forgive François Fillon his judicial problems. Laura Lili, 27, said the entire campaign was ridiculous – “All they did was attack each other, nobody spoke about their programmmes – but in the end, she opted for the conservative candidate.

Fillon’s promise to support French businesses won her over. “Nowadays everything is made overseas,” she said. “All we have are big franchises while French stores shut down. We’re going to hit a crisis.” And while immigration was a serious concern, Fillon’s promise to stay in the EU was key: “It’s our strength,” she says. As far as the Penelopegate affair, she says “he screwed it up. But everyone’s done that. He’s the best of all of them, for the future of France.”(guardian)…[+]

German police have arrested a 28-year-old German-Russian national on suspicion of having carried out the explosives attack on the Borussia Dortmund football team in order to collapse the club’s share price so he could profit from stock market speculation.

Sergej W was arrested by special operation officers on his way to work at 6am on Friday. On the day of the attack, 11 April, he had bought a put option on Borussia Dortmund’s shares, giving him the right to sell the shares for a specified price at a predetermined date. Had the explosives killed a member of the team and the club’s share price dropped, the value of his put option – an option to sell assets at an agreed price on or before a particular date – would have increased significantly.

According to German media reports, Sergej W bought 15,000 put warrants for €78,000(£65,300) and could have gained up to €3.9m as a result of a large drop in Dortmund’s shares.(guardian)…[+]

Police in France have searched a property believed to be the home of a known terror suspect who shot dead one police officer and seriously wounded two more in an attack two days before voting begins in an already tense presidential election.

The gunman stepped from a car and opened fire on a police van with an automatic rifle outside a Marks & Spencer store on the Champs Élysées in central Paris at about 9pm on Thursday.

The attacker, a 39-year-old man widely named as Karim Cheurfi, was known to French security services. Media reported he had served nearly 15 years in prison after being convicted of three attempted murders, two against police officers, and was released on parole in 2015.

The attacker was shot dead by police in the van while trying to flee the scene on foot. A statement from the Isis propaganda agency, Amaq, said the attack was carried out by an “Islamic State fighter”.(theguardian)…[+]

A hundred refugees and migrants crammed into a small dinghy that started taking in water in the Mediterranean endured an agonising 30-hour wait before they were rescued, a maritime log passed to the Guardian has revealed.

The incident happened over the Easter weekend, the unofficial start of the “sailing season”, which sees increased numbers of people attempting the crossing from Africa to Europe as the weather improves. Twenty children and 10 women, one of them pregnant, were among the passengers on the overcrowded dinghy.

The log was passed to the Guardian by Watch The Med’s Alarmphone network, an NGO which passes distress calls from migrant boats to the Italian coastguard so that a rescue can be coordinated. It details the passengers’ rising panic as more and more time passes without a rescue ship arriving.

Watch The Med was first alerted to the fact that the rubber boat was in trouble at 7.19am on Saturday morning, when it immediately alerted the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Rome, providing a satellite phone number and the GPS position so that the stranded people could be rescued.(theguardian)…[+]

Donald Trump set the stage for a global fight over steel on Thursday, announcing an investigation into whether cheap imports are a threat to national security. At an Oval Office ceremony, surrounded by US steel executives, Trump signed an executive order calling for the commerce department to assess effects of steel imports on US defense at a time when he has ordered a military buildup“Steel is critical to both our economy and our military. This is not an area where we can afford to become dependent on foreign countries,” Trump said in what he dubbed a “historic day for American steel”.The president said he had promised to take action on behalf of American workers, which was “one of the primary reasons I’m sitting here today as president”.(goal)…[+]

Russia’s supreme court has banned the Jehovah’s Witnesses from operating in the country, accepting a request from the justice ministry that the religious organization be considered an extremist group.The court ordered the closure of the group’s Russia headquarters and its 395 local chapters, as well as the seizure of its property.The Interfax news agency on Thursday quoted justice ministry attorney Svetlana Borisova in court as saying that the Jehovah’s Witnesses “pose a threat to the rights of the citizens, public order and public security”.Borisova also said Jehovah’s Witnesses’ opposition to blood transfusions violates Russian healthcare laws.(guardian)…[+]

Argentina believes Brexit might cost Britain the support of European allies for its control of the Falkland Islands and is watching developments closely, the Argentinian foreign minister said in Brussels.

Visiting the EU capital for trade talks on Thursday, Susana Malcorra stressed it was too soon to say whether Britain quitting the bloc might soften EU backing for London against an 18th-century claim to the South Atlantic islands that Buenos Aires has maintained despite losing a brief war there in 1982. “The European Union, through its agreements, is connected very closely and strongly to the United Kingdom,” Malcorra told reporters when asked if Brexit could have an impact on the Falklands dispute, on which the 16-month-old administration of President Mauricio Macri has taken a more conciliatory approach. “It could be that things change there. But I think it is still quite early. Brexit is just starting and there are many issues. We are following it carefully.(the guardian)…[+]

A Qatari plane sent to collect 26 kidnapped members of Doha’s ruling family has remained in Baghdad for a fourth day, as a regional deal that ties their release to the evacuation of four besieged Syrian towns resumed earlier this week. The jet, which Iraqi officials suspect was carrying millions of dollars, arrived on Saturday ahead of the group’s expected release, which was later stalled by the bombing the same day of a convoy carrying residents of two Shia towns in northern Syria, Fua and Kefraya, whose fate had been central to the plan.The suicide attack killed 126 people and wounded nearly 300 more in one of the most lethal strikes of the Syrian war, further complicating 16 months of negotiations that were underwritten by Iran and Qatar and involved four of the region’s most powerful militias.Qatari officials arrived in the Iraqi capital on Saturday with large bags they refused to allow to be searched. Senior Iraqi officials said they believed the bags to be carrying millions of dollars in ransom money, to be paid to the Iraqi militia holding the royals, Keta’eb Hezbollah, and two Syrian groups who had agreed to secure the Shia leg of the swap, the al-Qaida inspired Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham.(The guardian)…[+]

Security has been stepped up around political rallies and meetings in France amid heightened fears of a terror attack with just four days of campaigning until the first round of the fiercely contested presidential election.

The five main candidates have vowed to continue campaigning as it emerged that France’s police and intelligence agencies spent several weeks tracking the two men arrested on Tuesday and suspected of plotting an “imminent and violent attack” in the run-up to Sunday’s vote.

Officials say they are still investigating the men’s possible targets, but claim they were seeking to “have an impact in this [electoral] period” and had amassed an arsenal of weapons and bomb-making equipment, including 3kg of homemade explosive found in the flat where they were staying.It was reported on Wednesday that Paris’ anti-terror court had opened a preliminary investigation into suspect Mahiedine Merabet, 29, on 5 April, after receiving a tip-off from British intelligence that he had tried to make contact with Islamic State (Isis) in order to send them a video expressing his support for the terrorist group.(the guardian)…[+]

Venezuela braced for an outbreak of political violence on Wednesday as hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators flooded on to the streets of Caracas for what the opposition billed the “mother of all marches” against the government. Tensions – which have built up over several weeks of bloody protests – were ratcheted up after a student died having been shot in the head near a clash between pro- and anti-government groups. Fears of bloodshed were stoked after President Nicolás Maduro put troops on the streets, supplied guns to sympathetic civil militias and called for a simultaneous rally of his supporters against what he said was a United States-backed coup.

State TV images showed thousands of red-shirted government loyalists on the rival march “to defend the homeland”. But their numbers were far exceeded by the vast throng that gathered in the Baruta district to express their anger and frustration at an administration that has led the country with the planet’s biggest oil supplies into the world’s deepest economic recession.(the guardian)…[+]