The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has been barred from running for president in 2027 after a court found her guilty of a vast system of embezzlement of European parliament funds and banned her from running for public office with immediate effect.

The decision was a political earthquake for Le Pen, the leader of the far-right anti-immigration National Rally (RN) party, who had hoped to mount a fourth campaign to become president.

The RN, the single largest party in the French parliament, reacted with fury, calling the sentence a travesty and an attack on democracy, backed by some politicians on the traditional right.

The party’s president, Jordan Bardella, 29, who could be seen as a replacement presidential candidate despite his relative inexperience, said: “Today it is not only Marine Le Pen who was unjustly condemned: it was French democracy that was killed.”

Judges handed Le Pen, 56, a five-year ban on running for public office with the added provision that it will take immediate effect and will apply despite the fact that she is appealing against the verdict.

Le Pen, who left the court before the hearing had finished, was also sentenced to four years in prison with two years suspended and the other two to be served outside jail with an electronic bracelet. She was handed a €100,000 (£84,000) fine. Neither the prison penalty nor fine will be applied until her appeals are exhausted, a process that could take years.

In the front row of the court, Le Pen showed no immediate reaction when the judge declared her guilty. But she grew more agitated and shook her head in disagreement as the judge said her party had illegally used European funds for its own benefit.

At one point, Le Pen whispered: “Incredible”. She then abruptly left without warning, before her sentence had been handed down.

Louis Aliot, the RN vice-president and mayor of Perpignan, who was also found guilty, said Le Pen’s sentence was an “intrusion” into the electoral process which would “leave an indelible stain on the history of our democracy”.

Le Pen’s lawyer, Rodolphe Bosselut said: “It’s a blow to democracy.” Laurent Jacobelli, an RN lawmaker and party spokesperson, said Le Pen was in a “fighting mood”.

Le Pen’s niece, Marion Maréchal, also accused the court’s judges of “thinking about themselves as above the … people” and claimed that Le Pen had only been condemned because she was “leading our side on the path to victory.”

The French Socialist party said in a statement that the “independence of the justice system and the rule of law” must be respected by all. But Laurent Wauquiez, of the traditional right Les Républicains party, said it was a “very heavy and exceptional sentence” that was “not very healthy in democracy”.

François-Xavier Bellamy, a member of the European parliament for Les Républicains, said: “Whatever you think of the RN and this case, today is a dark day for French democracy.”

International politicians on the populist right criticised the sentence, including the Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders. In an apparent display of solidarity, the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, declared: “I am Marine.”

Le Pen and 24 party members, including nine former members of the European parliament and their 12 parliamentary assistants, were found guilty of a vast scheme over many years to embezzle European parliament funds, by using money earmarked for European parliament assistants to instead pay party workers in France.

The so-called fake jobs system covered parliamentary assistant contracts between 2004 and 2016, and was unprecedented in scale and duration, causing losses of €4.5m to European taxpayer funds. Assistants paid by the European parliament must work directly on Strasbourg parliamentary matters, which the judges found had not been the case.

Le Pen will be able to retain her current post as member of the French parliament for Pas-de-Calais, but will not be able to stand again in a future parliamentary election for the duration of her ban on running for office.

Le Pen has run for French president three times, twice making the final run-off against Emmanuel Macron. She had believed she had her greatest chance of winning the Élysée in 2027 on a platform against immigration.

Addressing the trial last month, Le Pen said she was innocent: “I have absolutely no sense of having committed the slightest irregularity, or the slightest illegal act.”

The party will now have to decide who would take her place in the next French presidential race. Bardella, a member of the European parliament, is popular among voters but is seen as having little experience.

Fifteen Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers, including at least one United Nations employee, were killed by Israeli forces “one by one” and buried in a mass grave eight days ago in southern Gaza, the UN has said.

According to the UN humanitarian affairs office (Ocha), the Palestinian Red Crescent (PRCS) and civil defence workers were on a mission to rescue colleagues who had been shot at earlier in the day, when their clearly marked vehicles came under heavy Israeli fire in Rafah city’s Tel al-Sultan district. A Red Crescent official in Gaza said that there was evidence of at least one person being detained and killed, as the body of one of the dead had been found with his hands tied.

The shootings happened on 23 March, one day into the renewed Israeli offensive in the area close to the Egyptian border. Another Red Crescent worker on the mission is reported missing.

Jonathan Whittall, the head of Ocha in Palestine, said in a video statement: “Seven days ago, civil defence and PRCS ambulances arrived at the scene. One by one, they were hit, they were struck. Their bodies were gathered and buried in this mass grave.”

“We’re digging them out in their uniforms, with their gloves on. They were here to save lives. Instead, they ended up in a mass grave,” Whittall said. “These ambulances have been buried in the sand. There’s a UN vehicle here, buried in the sand. A bulldozer – Israeli forces bulldozer – has buried them.”

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, said that one of its employees was among the dead found in Rafah.

“The body of our colleague killed in Rafah was retrieved yesterday, together with the aid workers from [the Palestinian Red Crescent] – all of them discarded in shallow graves – a profound violation of human dignity,” Lazzarini wrote in a social media post.

Israel’s military said its “initial assessment” of the incident found that its troops had opened fire on several vehicles “advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights or emergency signals”.

It added that the movement of the vehicle had not been coordinated with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in advance, and that the area was an “active combat zone”. The Red Crescent said the Tel al-Sultan district had been considered safe, and movement there was normal, “requiring no coordination”.

The IDF also claimed to have killed nine militants from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The IDF has been approached for further comment on the reports the paramedics and rescue workers were buried in a mass grave at the scene of the shooting. It did not make clear whether it was alleging the militants it claimed to have killed had been in the Red Crescent ambulances, or had been killed in an airstrike on Rafah earlier in the night.

According to the Red Crescent, an ambulance was dispatched to pick up the casualties from the airstrike in the early hours of 23 March and called for a support ambulance. The first ambulance arrived at hospital safely but contact was lost with the support ambulance at 3.30am. An initial report from the scene said it had been shot at and the two paramedics inside had been killed.

A convoy of five vehicles, including ambulances, civil defence trucks and two cars from the health ministry were sent to retrieve the bodies. That convoy then came under fire, and the Red Crescent said most of the dead were from that attack. Eight of the dead were from the Red Crescent, six from civil defence and one was a UN employee.

Dr Bashar Murad, the Red Crescent’s director of health programmes, said one of the paramedics in the convoy was on a call to his colleagues at the ambulance station when the attack took place.

“He informed us that he was injured and requested assistance, and that another person was also injured,” Murad said. “A few minutes later, during the call, we heard the sound of Israeli soldiers arriving at the location, speaking in Hebrew. The conversation was about gathering the team, with statements like: ‘Gather them at the wall and bring some restraints to tie them.’ This indicated that a large number of the medical staff were still alive.”

The Palestinian Red Crescent president, Younis al-Khatib, said the IDF had impeded the collection of the bodies for several days. The IDF said it had facilitated the evacuation of bodies as soon as “operational circumstances” allowed.

“The bodies were recovered with difficulty as they were buried in the sand, with some showing signs of decomposition,” the Red Crescent said.

Their burial had been put off pending autopsies, Murad said.

“What is certain and very clear is that they were shot in the upper parts of their bodies, then gathered in a hole one on top of another, with sand thrown over them and buried,” he said. He said the body of one of the victims was recovered from the grave with his hands still tied. The claim could not be independently confirmed.

Whittall described the mission to recover the bodies as fraught.

“While travelling to the area on the fifth day we encountered hundreds of civilians fleeing under gunfire,” Whittall said. “We witnessed a woman shot in the back of the head. When a young man tried to retrieve her, he too was shot. We were able to recover her body using our UN vehicle.”

“It’s absolute horror what has happened here,” he added. “This should never happen. healthcare workers should never be a target.”

Jens Laerke, an Ocha spokesperson in Geneva, said: “The available information indicates that the first team was killed by Israeli forces on 23 March, and that other emergency and aid crews were struck one after another over several hours as they searched for their missing colleagues.

“They were buried under the sand, alongside their wrecked emergency vehicles – clearly marked ambulances, a fire truck and a UN car.”

The Red Crescent named the employees killed on 23 March as Mustafa Khafaja, Ezzedine Shaat, Saleh Muammar, Rifaat Radwan, Mohammed Bahloul, Ashraf Abu Labda, Mohammed Hilieh, and Raed Al-Sharif. The incident was the single most deadly attack on Red Cross or Red Crescent workers anywhere since 2017, the IFRC said.

“I am heartbroken. These dedicated ambulance workers were responding to wounded people. They were humanitarians,” said the IFRC secretary general, Jagan Chapagain.

“They wore emblems that should have protected them; their ambulances were clearly marked,” he added.

According to the United Nations, at least 1,060 healthcare workers have been killed in the 18 months since Israel launched its offensive in Gaza. That began after Hamas fighters stormed communities in southern Israel on 7 October 2023, killing 1,200 people. The global body is reducing its international staff in Gaza by a third owing to staff safety concerns.

Stock markets across the world fell heavily on Monday after Donald Trump suggested that new tariffs he is expected to announce this week would hit “all countries”.

Shares fell across Asia-Pacific markets, in Europe and in the US after the US president crushed hopes that “reciprocal tariffs” expected on Wednesday would target only countries that have the largest trade imbalances with the US.

Trump told reporters on Air Force One: “You’d start with all countries. Essentially all of the countries that we’re talking about.”

Those tariffs on imports into the US are due to be announced on Wednesday, which has been labelled “Liberation Day” by Trump.

On Monday, the threat of a deepening trade war spooked investors. In Toyko, Japan’s Nikkei index lost 4% and South Korea’s Kospi fell 3%.

The wave of selling swept into European markets as well – the UK’s FTSE 100 fell 1.3% to a two-week low, and Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC both lost 2%.

“A selling wave is sweeping across global markets,” said Jochen Stanzl, the chief market analyst at CMC Markets. “The tariffs imposed by the US government and the fear of new announcements as early as Wednesday are creating a bleak atmosphere on trading floors worldwide.”

Wall Street opened sharply lower on Monday. The S&P 500 was down by 1.4%, the tech-dominated Nasdaq fell 2.4% and the Dow Jones was off 0.8%.

Gold hit a record high of $3,128 (£2,416) per ounce, as investors rushed into safe-haven assets before Trump’s latest tariffs.

Larry Fink, the chief executive of BlackRock, issued veiled criticism of Trump’s trade tariffs on Monday, declaring that “protectionism has returned with force”.

In his annual letter to shareholders, the boss of the world’s biggest investment fund manager said that “nearly every client, nearly every leader” he had spoken to was “more anxious about the economy than any time in recent memory”, adding: “I understand why.”

Economists fear that adding tariffs on imported goods will push up US inflation as importers pass on costs to customers, and also hurt confidence. Data last Friday showed consumer sentiment across America had fallen sharply this month, to its lowest level since 2022, knocking shares in New York.

Goldman Sachs has now raised its estimate for the probability of a US recession during the next 12 months to 35%, up from 20% previously, and warned that this would typically lead to further losses on Wall Street.

“The historical equity market recession playbook implies a roughly 25% S&P 500 drawdown from the recent market peak. If followed, this pattern would suggest a further 17% drawdown from today’s price to a trough level of roughly 4,600,” Goldman analysts told clients.

The Swiss bank UBS has cut its forecasts for where the S&P 500 index of US stocks will end the year, from 6,600 points to 6,400.

However, Mark Haefele, the chief investment officer at UBS Global Wealth Management, added: “This also means that there is still meaningful upside for broad US equities by year-end, in our view.”

Trade war fears have hurt markets during March, a month in which Trump announced new 25% tariffs on auto imports. An index of global stocks produced by MSCI has fallen by 4.5% this month, with one day to go, its worst monthly performance since September 2022.

The US dollar has also had its worst month in more than two years, having dropped by 3.5% against a basket of other currencies during March.

Over the weekend, Trump said he “couldn’t care less” if US carmakers raised their prices because of the new tariffs.

Stephen Innes, a managing partner at SPI Asset Management, said money managers worldwide were “de-risking” portfolios or simply sitting on their hands.

“Investors aren’t just reacting to the initial auto tariff volley and the unknowns around reciprocal tariffs – the real jitters stem from the potential second-order effects of a drawn-out trade war: slower global growth, crimped capex [capital expenditure], and waning consumer confidence. The unknown tariff rubric is simply applying the angst,” Innes said.

As aid from China, Russia, India and the UK begins to flow into Myanmar, there is a conspicuous gap in global support from the world’s richest country: the US.

The powerful 7.7-magnitude quake that struck central Myanmar on Friday has caused widespread destruction, flattening swathes of the country’s second-largest city, Mandalay, and even a tower block in the Thai capital, Bangkok, more than 600 miles (1,000km) away.

The true picture of the crisis is yet to be fully revealed, given limited access to a nation that has been racked by a conflict since a 2021 military coup. The death toll, now at 1,700, is widely expected to rise.

Despite the logistical challenges, some countries have been quick to act. But Donald Trump has been accused of blowing up the US’s ability to respond to international disasters through cuts to foreign aid programmes.

China sent an 82-person team of rescuers into the country on Saturday. On Sunday, the state-run Xinhua news agency said a 118-member search and rescue team had also arrived. The team included earthquake experts, medical workers, field hospital workers and rescue dogs.

The Chinese government said on Monday that it has sent a first batch of relief supplies worth 100m yuan ($13.78m) to Myanmar, including tents, blankets and first aid kits, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Hong Kong has earmarked HK$30m ($3.8m) for emergency relief support, and sent in a 51-person team, with two search and rescue dogs and equipment, including life detectors. Russia’s emergency and health ministries said they had flown 120 rescuers, a medical team and supplies to Myanmar. And an aid flight from India landed in Myanmar on Saturday, with four more aircraft and two navy ships on the way, officials said.

The UK has pledged £10m ($12.9m) in humanitarian aid, with UK-funded local partners already mobilising on the ground. The EU has promised €2.5m ($2.7m) in initial emergency relief.

From south-east Asia, Indonesia will deploy logistical aid from Monday, including a hospital ship and several helicopters. The Philippines and Vietnam are sending teams of medics.

But the US, once among the biggest providers of foreign aid, has been slow to act, with a modest pledge of $2m announced on Sunday. “It’s a real bad one, and we will be helping. We’ve already spoken with the country,” Donald Trump told reporters on Friday, describing the quake as “terrible”.

The US embassy in Myanmar added in a statement on Sunday that “a USAID emergency response team is deploying to Myanmar to identify the people’s most pressing needs, including emergency shelter, food, medical needs, and access to water”.

But Trump’s gutting of American foreign aid infrastructure and funding mean the three-person USAID assessment team is not expected to arrive in Myanmar until Wednesday, almost a week after the disaster, according to a report by the New York Times.

It was also unclear what aid would be sent, or how any money would be used, given that the systems needed to distribute aid had been dismantled, said Phil Robertson, director of Asia Human Rights and Labour Advocates. “Maybe the embassy can do it, but they don’t have any of [USAID’s] specialists.”

Key among those specialists are USAID’s elite disaster assistance response teams (Darts), which are usually deployed as first responders to catastrophes worldwide to coordinate US relief efforts, direct aid and provide technical expertise. Those teams will probably vanish as USAID gets dismantled.

Robertson said the US had gone from “leader” to “laggard”.

A US rescue team arrived in Thailand on Sunday to assist with search efforts at the site of a building that collapsed in the capital, Bangkok.

Delivering help to neighbouring Myanmar, which is gripped by conflict, will be far more challenging. Rights groups have warned that assistance should be funnelled carefully to the country through community-based groups, and not the military junta, which has a history of weaponising aid.

“Donald Trump has completely blown up the US government’s ability to respond to international disasters. He unilaterally dismantled the pre-eminent aid agency,” Robertson said.

“It’s entirely appropriate that China and Russia are sending their teams faster than the US did. Because that’s the new reality … This is something we’re going to see time and time again over the coming years, every time there’s a disaster.”

The US had been “disarmed” in relation to its soft power, he added.

On Friday a three-judge panel lifted the injunction blocking Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) from shuttering USAID, at roughly the same time the Trump administration notified Congress of plans to eliminate the agency entirely, despite pushback from some members of Congress, who say their permission is required first.

USAID staff worldwide have received termination notices effective in July or September which, if enacted, would leave a skeleton aid crew operating under the banner of the US Department of State.

Nether the state department nor a USAID-state coordinating office responded to a request for comment.

In the wake of a natural disaster, the swift deployment of aid was key, said humanitarian organisations such as Doctors Without Borders.

International organisations such as the World Health Organization – from which the US recently withdrew – has mobilised its logistics hub in Dubai to prepare trauma injury supplies and trigger its emergency management response. The agency is urgently seeking $8m to save lives and prevent disease outbreaks over the next 30 days.

The UN humanitarian agency Ocha is also mobilising emergency response efforts, alongside its partner organisations.

“A severe shortage of medical supplies is hampering response efforts, including trauma kits, blood bags, anaesthetics, assistive devices, essential medicines, and tents for health workers,” Ocha said in a statement on Saturday.

Researchers have developed a blood test for patients with thinking and memory problems to check if they have Alzheimer’s and to see how far it has progressed.

The team behind the work say the test could help medics decide which drugs would be most suitable for patients. For example, new drugs such as donanemab and lecanemab can help slow the progression of Alzheimer’s, but only in people in the early stages of the disease.

Prof Oskar Hansson from Lund University, a co-author of the work, said: “There is an urgent need for accurate and cost-effective Alzheimer diagnostics considering that many countries have recently approved the clinical use of amyloid-targeted therapies [such as donanemab and lecanemab].”

Plaques of a protein called amyloid beta and the formation of tangles of another protein called tau in the brain are considered hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease.

Writing in the journal Nature Medicine, Hansson and colleagues reported how they found fragments of tau, called eMTBR-tau243, could be detected in blood and correlated with a build-up of tau tangles in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s, but not other diseases.

The team’s analyses, which involved 902 participants, found levels of this tau fragment were elevated in people with Alzheimer’s symptoms who had mild cognitive impairment, and higher again in those with dementia. Levels were not raised in people with cognitive impairments due to other conditions.

“Scientifically, these results are very promising and important as this marker performed better than existing tests and the new marker could help track performance of new drugs in trials,” said Prof Tara Spires-Jones, a neurodegeneration expert at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in the work.

But, she said, it was not a foolproof blood test for Alzheimer’s.

“This is also not a simple test, rather requiring complex scientific methods only available in specialist laboratories, so this will not be routinely available without further validation and development of cheaper, easier detection,” she said.

Dr Sheona Scales, the head of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said eMTBR-tau243 was one of a number of different biomarkers being studied for use in blood tests for Alzheimer’s.

“What’s interesting is that the blood levels of eMTBR-tau243 seem to be linked to a person’s memory and thinking abilities,” she said. “At present, it is not always possible to make a connection between the level of tangles observed with imaging and level of cognitive impairment, but having blood tests that do this will help to monitor diseases like Alzheimer’s in the brain as they progress, and help inform prognosis in future.”

Another piece of research, also published in Nature Medicine, has revealed the ratio of two proteins in brain fluid is associated with the degree of cognitive impairment experienced by people with Alzheimer’s, independent of levels of amyloid beta plaques and tau tangles in their brains.

This research, led by scientists in the US, involved samples from 3,397 people across the US, Sweden and Finland, and looked at levels of two proteins – YWHAG and NPTX2 – that are normally found at the junctions, or synapses, between neurons in the brain.

The team found the ratio of YWHAG:NPTX2 was better able to indicate that people were experiencing cognitive problems than their levels of amyloid beta and tau, and could be used to predict their future cognitive decline and dementia onset.

Prof Tony Wyss-Coray, a co-author of the study from Stanford University, said the results could help identify the best medications for individuals and help design better clinical trials by selecting appropriate participants.

Five people died and another four were seriously injured after an explosion on Monday at a coalmine in Spain’s northern region of Asturias, officials have said.

Two other workers at the Cerredo mine in Degaña, about 450km (280 miles) north-west of Madrid, were unharmed in the incident, local emergency services said.

Officials had earlier said two people were missing but they now believe everyone has been accounted for.

While the cause of the explosion has not been confirmed, emergency services said they had been alerted to an “incident” involving “a problem with a machine”.

Local media said the machine had exploded.

The injured were taken to hospitals in nearby cities, two of them by helicopter. They had suffered burns and, in one case, a head injury.

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, sent his “sincere condolences” to the families of the victims and wished a “speedy recovery” to the injured, in a message posted on X.

The head of the regional government of Asturias, Adrián Barbón, declared there would be two days of mourning “as a sign of respect for the deceased”.

Mining has for centuries been a major industry in Asturias, a densely forested mountainous region.

In 1995, 14 people died after an explosion at a mine in Asturias near the town of Mieres.

Elon Musk gave out $1m checks on Sunday to two Wisconsin voters, declaring them spokespeople for his political group, ahead of a Wisconsin supreme court election that the tech billionaire cast as critical to Donald Trump’s agenda and “the future of civilization”.

“It’s a super big deal,” he told a roughly 2,000-person crowd in Green Bay on Sunday night, taking the stage in a yellow cheesehead hat. “I’m not phoning it in. I’m here in person.”

Musk and groups he supports have spent more than $20m to help conservative favourite Brad Schimel in Tuesday’s race, which will determine the ideological makeup of a court likely to decide key issues in a perennial battleground state. Musk has increasingly become the center of the contest, with liberal favourite Susan Crawford and her allies protesting Musk and what they say is the influence he wants to have on the court.

“I think this will be important for the future of civilization,” he said. “It’s that’s significant.”

He noted that the state high court may well take up redistricting of congressional districts, which could ultimately affect which party controls the US House.

“And if the [Wisconsin] supreme court is able to redraw the districts, they will gerrymander the district and deprive Wisconsin of two seats on the Republican side,” Musk claimed. “Then they will try to stop all the government reforms we are getting done for you, the American people.”

A unanimous state supreme court on Sunday refused to hear a last-minute attempt by the state’s Democratic attorney general to stop Musk from handing over the checks to two voters, a ruling that came just minutes before the planned start of the rally.

Two lower courts had already rejected the legal challenge by Democrat Josh Kaul, who argues that Musk’s offer violates a state law. “Wisconsin law prohibits offering anything of value to induce anyone to vote,” Kaul argued in his filing. “Yet, Elon Musk did just that.”

But the state supreme court, which is now controlled four-to-three by liberal justices, declined to take the case as an original action. The court gave no rationale for its decision. All four liberal justices have endorsed Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, the Democratic-backed candidate.

Kaul had no immediate comment on the court’s order.

Musk’s attorneys argued in filings with the court that Musk was exercising his free speech rights with the giveaways and any attempt to restrict that would violate both the Wisconsin and US constitutions.

The payments are “intended to generate a grassroots movement in opposition to activist judges, not to expressly advocate for or against any candidate,” Musk’s attorneys argued in court filings.

Musk’s political action committee used a nearly identical tactic before the presidential election last year, offering to pay $1m a day to voters in Wisconsin and six other battleground states who signed a petition supporting the First and Second amendments. A judge in Pennsylvania said prosecutors failed to show the effort was an illegal lottery and allowed it to continue through Election Day.

Musk’s attorneys, about four hours before the rally was to begin, asked that two liberal justices who have campaigned for Crawford – Jill Karofsky and Rebecca Dallet – recuse themselves from the case. His attorneys argued their work for Crawford creates “the spectre of inappropriate bias.” If they did recuse, that would leave the court with a three-two conservative majority.

Both justices rejected the request and said they would spell out their reasons why at a later date.

One of the court’s conservative justices has endorsed Schimel, who wore a “Make America Great Again” hat while campaigning Sunday.

Schimel said in a national television interview that he does not control “any of the spending from any outside group, whether it’s Elon Musk or anyone else” and that all Trump asked was whether he would “reject activist judges” and follow the law.

“That’s exactly what I’ve committed to anybody, whether it’s President Trump, Elon Musk or any donors and donors or supporters or voters in Wisconsin. That’s my commitment,” Schimel told Fox News Sunday.

The contest has shattered national spending records for a judicial election, with more than $81m in spending.

It comes as Wisconsin’s highest court is expected to rule on abortion rights, congressional redistricting, union power and voting rules that could affect the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election in the state.

Halle Berry has said she now believes her historic Oscars win in 2002, for Monster’s Ball, was an anomaly, and that fellow black female actors should therefore stop “coveting” Academy Awards.

Berry, now 58, is the only black woman to have won the leading actress Oscar in the awards’ nearly 100 year history. Cynthia Erivo’s nomination for Wicked earlier this year marks the first time a woman of colour has been nominated for the leading actress Oscar more than once (she was previously nominated for Harriet). Only 15 black women have ever been in contention for the prize.

Speaking on upcoming documentary Number One on the Call Sheet, Berry said that the 23 years since her victory have “forced me to ask myself, did it matter? Did it really change anything for women of colour? For my sisters? For our journey?”

Berry adds that she felt the tide would turn in 2021, when both Andra Day and Viola Davis were nominated, for The United States vs Billie Holiday and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom respectively.

“I felt 100% sure that this was the year one of them was gonna walk away with this award,” she says, adding: “For equally different and beautiful reasons, they both deserved it, and I thought for sure.”

However, both women losing out to Frances McDormand for Nomadland made Berry reconsider, she said.

“The system is not really designed for us, and so we have to stop coveting that which is not for us. Because at the end of the day, it’s ‘How do we touch the lives of people?’ and that fundamentally is what art is for.”

The documentary also features Taraji P Henson and Whoopi Goldberg expressing amazement over the dearth of leading actress winners – and nominees.

“Wait a minute, none of us were good enough?” Goldberg asks. “Nobody? In all of these people, nobody? … What are we missing here? This is a conversation people have every year.”

Goldberg won the best supporting actress Oscar in 1990 for Ghost; some 11 black women have now been given that award.

“I don’t think the industry really sees us as leads, you know?” says Henson in the documentary. “They give us supporting [actress awards] like they give out candy canes. That just – I don’t know what to do with that. Because what are you saying to me?”