Indonesia’s military has recovered the body of an American pilot who was shot dead by rebels in the restive eastern region of Papua, it said on Friday after a separatist group said the attack was a “message” to the US and Indonesian governments. A low-level battle for independence from Indonesia has long raged in the resource-rich western half of Papua, where attacks by independence fighters have grown deadlier and more frequent as they have procured better weaponry. Sebby Sambom, a spokesperson for the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB), an armed separatist group, said on Thursday that their troops shot dead American pilot Nicholas F. Gosselin and set his plane on fire after it landed in the Yahukimo region of Highland Papua province.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/07/03/asia/indonesia-papua-rebels-american-pilot-intl-hnk
The main suspect in a bomb attack that wounded a Ukrainian tycoon on Monday in Monaco is a Ukrainian woman who disguised herself as a man, local authorities say. Named as 39-year-old Anastasiia Berezovska in an Interpol Red Notice, she last resided in Germany and has a tattoo, possibly of a snake, running down her right arm from her shoulder to elbow. After the attack, the suspect fled to neighboring France, then drove to Italy in a German-registered car that had been rented for the operation, prosecutors added.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/07/03/europe/monaco-bomb-woman-suspect-intl
An international police operation spanning seven countries has uncovered highly organized networks of offenders who drug and rape their partners and use online chat groups to aid and encourage their “horrifying” assaults, authorities said on Thursday. In most cases, the victims are women who are sedated before being raped and sexually assaulted, Europol and Britian’s National Crime Agency (NCA) said. The online groups provide a haven for predominantly male perpetrators to coordinate assaults, share information as well as post videos and photos of the abuse, they said. German and British crime agencies, with the help of law enforcement from the United States, Brazil, Canada, France, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Spain, have launched a joint operation to tackle the “evolving threat,” Britian’s NCA said in a statement Thursday.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/07/03/europe/online-drug-rape-investigations-intl-hnk
A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here. The United States is celebrating a jubilee: July Fourth is the 250th anniversary, or semiquincentennial, of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the foundational document for Western democracy. Donald Trump, more than any president in the centuries since then, challenges some of the basic ideas of the document, which was written as list of complaints against the king of England.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/07/03/politics/america-250-july-4-national-mall-trump-analysis
Four months after he was killed at the outset of the US-Israeli war on Iran, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is being memorialized in a weeklong funeral spectacle stretching across five cities in two countries, with millions of mourners expected to attend. Despite a costly war against two of the world’s strongest militaries and decades of crushing economic hardship, Tehran is sparing no expense to send off Khamenei in a grand ceremony shrouded in religious symbolism that overlaps with the 250th US Independence Day celebrations. Authorities say they’ve launched one of the largest logistical efforts in the Islamic Republic’s history, mobilizing government employees, universities, labor unions, firefighters, soldiers, aid workers and even religious “mourning groups” to organize the funeral and manage the millions of “pilgrims” expected to travel to cities and holy sites across Iran and Iraq to bid the ayatollah farewell. Authorities in neighboring Iraq, where Shiite Muslims are a majority, say millions of mourners are expected to pay respects.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/07/03/middleeast/iran-leader-funeral-trump-intl