To⁠day marks six years since the Beirut Port explosion killed at least 235 people, obliterated a third of the capital, and set off one of the longest-running judicial sagas in Lebanese history. The investigation has lurched forward — but "forward" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

• Judge Tarek Bitar concluded his investigations on Mar⁠ch 30 and referred the file to the Public Prosecutor at the Court of Cassation, where it now sits with Judge Mohammad Saab for review — covering roughly 70 interrogation records and thousands of pages.
• A new Public Prosecutor, Judge Ahmad Rami al-Hajj, has since been appointed, but no major accountability developments have followed — families describe the pace as unchanged.
• 70 arrest warrants remain unexecuted; victims' family representative William Noun says the two pressing demands are completing the review and actually carrying out those warrants.
• A new 70-minute documentary produced by L'Orient-Le Jour, drawing on confidential documents and investigations by OCCRP, Human Rights Watch, and Al Jadeed, reconstructs the full seven-year timeline — from the ship Rhosus to the blast.

What to watch: Judge Saab faces no legal deadline to complete his review, meaning the file could stall again — and the families say they will not accept that.

We've reported before on the scale of destruction in South Lebanon — but now there are precise figures, drawn from satellite imagery analyzed by Israeli researchers themselves, arriving just as Lebanon heads into a new round of negotiations in Rome.

• An analysis of Planet Labs satellite imagery, conducted by Adi Ben-Nun of Hebrew University for Israeli Channel 12, found approximately 18,000 buildings destroyed across 19 villages — representing 74 percent of their total structures.
• Five villages — Marwahin, Muhaibib, Maroun al-Ras, Blida, and Odaisseh — recorded destruction rates of 99 percent or more; Muhaibib and Marwahin hit 100 percent.
• Israeli Security Minister Israel Katz previously acknowledged the army destroyed all buildings in 24 Lebanese villages, estimating between 15,000 and 20,000 homes destroyed — numbers that now align with independent satellite analysis.
• The data arrives on the eve of the seventh round of Lebanese-Israeli negotiations in Rome, giving the Lebanese delegation quantified, satellite-backed documentation of the destruction.

Zooming out: When the party doing the destroying and the party seeking accountability arrive at roughly the same numbers, the argument shifts from whether the destruction happened to what happens next.

The Maronite Patriarchate — Lebanon's most influential Christian institution and a key pillar of the country's sectarian architecture — is navigating two sensitive pressures at once: quiet Vatican signals about a leadership change, and a broader reckoning with its own relevance.

• Sources familiar with Bkerke's internal atmosphere say the Vatican has implicit wishes for Patriarch Al-al-al-Rahi's resignation but has not raised them directly — and that no imminent step is expected, with any transition potentially delayed by a year or two.
• Critics within church circles point to Bkerke's limited presence at national milestones and the political calculations of some close associates as reasons the push for change is growing.
• On expanded decentralization — a hot-button demand from many Christian political parties — the Patriarchate is described as no longer rejecting the idea, provided national unity and the constitutional formula are preserved.

Why it matters: Who leads Bkerke shapes Christian political positioning on everything from weapons to federalism, and the succession question — even when unresolved — is already shifting the calculations of every major party watching it.

Iran and Oman are in the final stages of an agreement to reorganize navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which roughly a fifth of global oil consumption once flowed. The deal would redistribute ship movements between Iranian and Omani waters — but Tehran says it won't take effect as long as the U.S. maintains its blockade and military strikes.

• Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi announced talks with Oman had reached their "final stages," with the framework centering on new shipping routes, bilateral management of the strait, and a voluntary fee mechanism allowing Iran to collect contributions from shipping companies for navigational services.
• Tehran rejected an Oman-backed Gulf proposal for broader regional management modeled on the Strait of Malacca, insisting on a bilateral split with Oman, each controlling their own waters.
• A senior Iranian official told Reuters that Iran seeks to manage the entire entry route and part of the exit route — meaning the anticipated deal redistributes control rather than returning to the pre-war system.
• Iran's government confirmed it is not currently in talks with the U.S., and that any implementation remains linked to the broader political confrontation with Washington.

What to watch: The Iranian-Omani technical framework is taking shape, but whether ships actually use it depends on negotiations between Tehran and Washington that both sides currently say aren't happening.

A Russian influence campaign is flooding German social media with fake videos falsely accusing local election candidates of murder, sex scandals, and corruption — ahead of four German state elections in Sep⁠tember. More than 180 fabricated posts have been identified so far, and the operation is escalating.

• DW Fact Check identified the campaign as Operation Matryoshka, linked by the OSINT group Gnida Project to Storm-1516, a unit reportedly controlled by Russia's military intelligence agency, the GRU.
• Candidates from the CDU, SPD, Greens, Left Party, and FDP have been targeted — but notably, neither the far-right AfD nor the left-wing BSW appear in the fake posts.
• The operation runs only on weekdays, uses cloned logos from major German outlets including ARD and Spiegel TV, and some posts have reached over 100,000 views.
• Experts say the campaign's actual impact appears limited so far, with genuine engagement — comments and shares — remaining relatively low despite the high view counts.

The bigger picture: Operation Matryoshka has previously targeted Germany's federal election, elections in Moldova and Armenia, and the Paris Olympics — making German state races its latest, and most granular, front.

Myanmar's detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi, 81, met with a Red Cross official this⁠ week — one of the only confirmed outside contacts since the military ousted her government in Feb⁠ruary 2021 and sentenced her to 27 years in prison on charges her allies call politically motivated.

• Myanmar's military-backed government released four photographs of the meeting with ICRC resident representative Arnaud de Baecque in Naypyitaw, offering a rare visual confirmation that she is alive.
• Two of the photos show Suu Kyi cutting a pink birthday cake inscribed "Happy Birthday Aunty Suu," suggesting they were taken around her Jun⁠e birthday — though the exact date could not be independently verified.
• Her sentence was commuted by one-sixth as part of a prisoner amnesty in late Apr⁠il, and she was moved from prison to house arrest — but outside access has remained tightly restricted.

Zooming out: With ASEAN's May⁠ request for a special envoy visit already rejected, the ICRC meeting is the closest the international community has come to an independent welfare check on Suu Kyi in years.