Eurosceptic George Simion appeared on course for victory in the first round of Romania’s presidential election re-run on Sunday, exit polls showed, after a ballot seen as a test of the rise of Donald Trump-style nationalism in the European Union.

The polls showed former senator Crin Antonescu, 65, and Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan, 55, roughly tied in second place at about 21-23%, behind Simion’s 30-33%.

Exit poll data does not include the sizable vote of Romanians abroad, where Simion and Dan are popular.

Simion, 38, opposes military aid to neighboring Ukraine, is critical of the EU leadership and says he is aligned with the US president’s Make America Great Again movement.

“This is not just an electoral victory, it is a victory of Romanian dignity. It is the victory of those who have not lost hope, of those who still believe in Romania, a free, respected, sovereign country,” Simion said after the exit polls were published.

His victory, in a runoff due on May 18, could isolate the country, erode private investment and destabilize NATO’s eastern flank, where Ukraine is fighting a three-year-old Russian invasion, political observers say.

“Let’s be cautious about the exit poll results … because they are without the diaspora’s (votes). So, let’s wait for the exact vote count that will come later tonight,” Dan told supporters.

Sunday’s vote came five months after a first attempt to hold the election was canceled because of alleged Russian interference in favor of far-right frontrunner Calin Georgescu, since banned from standing again.

Simion voted alongside Georgescu, who called the election a “fraud” and urged people to take their country back. As dozens of people thronged outside the voting station chanting “Calin for president,” Simion said his vote was “to restore democracy.”

“It’s possible the diaspora vote will be enough to push Dan into the run-off,” said Sergiu Miscoiu, a political science professor at Babes-Bolyai University. “But Dan may have a harder time against Simion.”

Eastern flank

Simion is not the only MAGA-style politician seeking election in central Europe. Karol Nawrocki, the presidential candidate backed by Poland’s main nationalist opposition party in a presidential election on May 18, met Trump this week.

If elected, they would expand a cohort of eurosceptic leaders that already includes the Hungarian and Slovak prime ministers.

“Romania and Poland are two important countries for the United States,” Simion told Reuters on Friday.

“We represent partners and we represent allies, both military and politically, to the current (US) administration. This is why it is important for MAGA presidents to be in charge in Bucharest and Warsaw.”

Romania’s president has a semi-executive role that includes commanding the armed forces and chairing the security council that decides on military aid.

To date, Romania has donated a Patriot air defense battery to Kyiv, is training Ukrainian fighter pilots and has enabled the export of 30 million metric tons of Ukrainian grain through its Black Sea port of Constanta since Russia’s invasion.

The country’s president can also veto important EU votes and appoints the prime minister, chief judges, prosecutors and secret service heads.

The Trump administration has accused Romania of suppressing political opposition and lacking democratic values after November’s election was canceled on what Vice President JD Vance called “flimsy evidence.”

Police in Brazil said on Sunday that two people have been arrested in connection with an alleged plot to detonate explosives at a free Lady Gaga concert in Rio de Janeiro.

The Rio event on Saturday was the biggest show of the pop star’s career that attracted more than 2 million fans to Copacabana Beach and had crowds screaming and dancing along.

Even as Brazilian authorities said they arrested suspects in the hours before Lady Gaga’s show, the event went ahead without disruption — leading some to question the seriousness of the threat. Serious security concerns typically lead organizers to cancel such massive events — as happened with Taylor Swift’s concerts in Vienna last year.

Police said said nothing about the alleged plot at the time to in an effort to “avoid panic” and “the distortion of information.”

On Sunday, a spokesperson for Lady Gaga said the pop star and her team “learned about this alleged threat via media reports this morning. Prior to and during the show, there were no known safety concerns, nor any communication from the police or authorities to Lady Gaga regarding any potential risks.”

The statement added: “Her team worked closely with law enforcement throughout the planning and execution of the concert and all parties were confident in the safety measures in place.”

Security was tight at Saturday’s concert, with 5,200 military and police officers deployed to the beach where fans were reveling in the pop singer’s classic hits like “Born This Way,” which became something of an LGBTQ anthem after its 2011 release.

Rio de Janeiro’s state police and Brazil’s Justice Ministry presented the bare outlines of a plot that they said involved a group that promoted hate speech against the LGBTQ+ community, among others, and had planned to detonate homemade explosive devices at the event.

“The plan was treated as a ‘collective challenge’ with the aim of gaining notoriety on social media,” the police said. The group, it added, disseminated violent content to teenagers online as “a form of belonging.”

Homes in several states raided

Authorities arrested two people in connection with the alleged plot – a man described as the group’s leader in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul on illegal weapons possession charges, and a teenager in Rio on child pornography charges. Police did not elaborate on their exact roles in the plot or on how the group came to target Lady Gaga’s free concert.

“Those involved were recruiting participants, including teenagers, to carry out integrated attacks using improvised explosives and Molotov cocktails,” police said.

The Justice Ministry said that it determined the group posed a “risk to public order.” It said the group falsely presented themselves online as “Little Monsters” – Lady Gaga’s nickname for her fans – in order to reach teenagers and lure them into “networks with violent and self-destructive content.”

The ministry said there was no impact on those attending the open-air concert.

During a series of raids on the homes of 15 suspects across several Brazilian states, authorities confiscated phones and other electronic devices. Although police said they believed homemade bombs were intended for use in the planned attack, there was no mention of the raids turning up any weapons or explosive material.

‘Historical moment’

Lady Gaga has expressed gratitude for the enormous crowd in an Instagram post that said nothing of the alleged plot.

“Nothing could prepare me for the feeling I had during last night’s show – the absolute pride and joy I felt singing for the people of Brazil,” she wrote. “The sight of the crowd during my opening songs took my breath away. Your heart shines so bright, your culture is so vibrant and special, I hope you know how grateful I am to have shared this historical moment with you.”

Her free beach concert stood out at a time of surging ticket prices for live music around the world as concert-goers pay budget-busting costs to see their favorite artists.

Rio has done this before – last May, superstar Madonna performed the finale to her latest world tower for some 1.6 million fans on the sprawling sands of Copacabana Beach.

One of Pope Francis’s “popemobiles” is being transformed into a mobile healthcare unit for children and sent to the Gaza Strip, the Vatican’s official media outlet said on Sunday.

In one of his final wishes before his passing, Francis entrusted the popemobile used during his 2014 pilgrimage of the Holy Lands to the Catholic aid network Caritas Jerusalem, Vatican News said, to help respond to the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza.

Francis asked that the vehicle be used to help injured and malnourished children in the war-torn Palestinian enclave.

Caritas are converting the vehicle into a mobile health station by retrofitting it with medical equipment for diagnosis, examination, and treatment of children, and other life-saving supplies.

Staffed with doctors and medics the new clinic on wheels will be sent to communities that lack access to functioning healthcare facilities, once safe access to Gaza is feasible, Caritas said.

“It’s not just a vehicle, it’s a message that the world has not forgotten about the children in Gaza,” Peter Brune, secretary general of Caritas Sweden, said in a statement.

World peace was a core message throughout Francis’ pontificate, with him having called for ceasefires of both the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas wars on multiple occasions, the final of which was on Easter Sunday – the day before his death.

Francis had been making near-nightly calls to the Holy Family Church – Gaza’s only Catholic church – which had been serving as a de facto shelter for its community of worshippers and some Muslims throughout Israeli military campaigns that followed the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel by Hamas.

He had also controversially installed a Nativity scene during Christmas festivities depicting a baby Jesus swaddled in a keffiyeh, a traditional Palestinian garment now heavily associated with pro-Palestine movements and activism, which the Vatican removed from display shortly after it was put on display.

The Conclave that will vote for Francis’ successor assembles on Wednesday.

President Vladimir Putin said in remarks published on Sunday that Russia had sufficient strength and resources to take the war in Ukraine to its logical conclusion, though he hoped that there would be no need to use nuclear weapons.

Putin ordered thousands of Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022, triggering Europe’s biggest ground conflict since World War Two and the largest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the depths of the Cold War.

Hundreds of thousands of soldiers have been killed or injured and US President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he wants to end the “bloodbath” that his administration casts as a proxy war between the United States and Russia.

In a film by state television about Putin’s quarter of a century as Russia’s paramount leader entitled “Russia, Kremlin, Putin, 25 years,” Putin was asked by a reporter about the risk of nuclear escalation from the Ukraine war.

“They wanted to provoke us so that we made mistakes,” Putin said, speaking beside a portrait of Tsar Alexander III, a 19th century conservative who suppressed dissent. “There has been no need to use those weapons … and I hope they will not be required.”

“We have enough strength and means to bring what was started in 2022 to a logical conclusion with the outcome Russia requires.”

Trump has been signaling for weeks that he is frustrated by the failure of Moscow and Kyiv to reach terms to end the war, though the Kremlin has said that the conflict is so complicated that the rapid progress Washington wants is difficult.

Former US President Joe Biden, Western European leaders and Ukraine cast the invasion as an imperial-style land grab and repeatedly vowed to defeat Russian forces, which control about a fifth of Ukraine.

Putin portrays the war as a watershed moment in Moscow’s relations with the West, which he says humiliated Russia after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 by enlarging NATO and encroaching on what he considers Moscow’s sphere of influence.

Trump has warned that the conflict could develop into World War Three. Former CIA Director William Burns has said there was a real risk in late 2022 that Russia could use nuclear weapons against Ukraine, an assertion dismissed by Moscow.

Putin in power

Putin, a former KGB lieutenant colonel who was handed the presidency on the last day of 1999 by an ailing Boris Yeltsin, is the longest serving Kremlin leader since Josef Stalin, who ruled for 29 years until his death in 1953.

Russian dissidents – most now either in jail or abroad – see Putin as a dictator who has built a brittle system of personal rule reliant on sycophancy and corruption that is leading Russia towards decline and turmoil.

Supporters cast Putin, who Russian pollsters say has approval ratings of above 85%, as a savior who pushed back against an arrogant West and put an end to the chaos which accompanied the 1991 disintegration of the Soviet Union.

In the carefully choreographed state television film, which gave viewers a rare look behind the notoriously closed life of the Russian president, Putin was shown offering chocolates and a fermented Russian milk drink to Pavel Zarubin, a top Kremlin correspondent, in his private Kremlin kitchen.

Putin said that he first knelt in prayer during the 2002 Nord-Ost Moscow theater crisis, when Chechen militants took over 900 people hostage. More than 130 hostages were killed.

“I don’t feel like some kind of politician,” Putin said of his 25 years in power as president and prime minister.

“I continue to breathe the very same air as millions of Russian citizens. It is very important. God willing that it continues as long as possible. And that it doesn’t disappear.”

Marine salvage experts on Sunday began operations to recover from the seabed off Italy’s Sicilian coast the British-flagged superyacht “Bayesian,” which sank last summer, killing UK tech magnate Mike Lynch, his daughter and five others.

Operations will be conducted by two floating cranes: “Hebo Lift 2,” which has remotely operated underwater equipment and vehicles, and “Hebo Lift 10,” one of the most powerful maritime cranes in Europe, which docked Saturday in the Sicilian port of Termini Imerese after arriving from Rotterdam.

The Italian coast guard is supervising operations and patrolling the security perimeter to ensure the safety of personnel working on the recovery. It said that the overall operation to retrieve the Bayesian could take from 20 to 25 days. After the wreck is brought ashore, judicial authorities investigating the sinking will examine it.

Prosecutors are investigating the captain and two crew members for possible responsibility in connection with the August 19, 2024, sinking. The 56-meter (183-foot)-long, 473-ton yacht sank during what appears to have been a sudden downburst, or localized powerful wind from a thunderstorm that spreads rapidly after hitting the surface.

The yacht’s 75-meter (246-foot) aluminum mast – the second tallest in the world — will be cut to allow the hull, which lies 49 meters (160 feet) below the surface, to be brought to the surface more easily, said coast guard Capt. Nicola Silvestri.

In addition to Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, Morgan Stanley International Chairman Jonathan Bloomer and wife Judy, attorney Chris Morvillo and wife Neda, and ship’s cook Recaldo Thomas died in the shipwreck.

With the help of nearby vessels, 15 of the 22 people were rescued in the initial phase, one body was recovered, and six others reported missing. The bodies of the six missing people were found following long and complex search efforts, which continued until August 23.

In a dilapidated home on the outskirts of Havana, Heidy Sánchez shows off photos from a past life.

She flips though images on her iPhone of visits to Sea World with her husband and 17-month-old daughter and the couple dressing up in Santa attire for Christmas.

“I don’t know if it was the American dream,” Sánchez said. “But it was my dream, my family.”

That dream and family were ripped away in late April when Sánchez was deported from Florida to her native Cuba, even though both her daughter and husband are US citizens.

Sánchez crossed into the US from Mexico in 2019 when the first Trump administration required asylum seekers to wait on the other side of the border for immigration appointments as part of the “Remain in Mexico” program.

But Claudia said threats from cartels, which often target Cubans for kidnappings and extortion, prevented her from making her appointment. When she finally did cross the border again she told immigration agents her life was at risk in Mexico and she was allowed to stay. After nine months in immigration custody, she was released and able to join her family in Tampa.

There she studied to become a nursing assistant, met her husband, a naturalized US citizen also from Cuba, and after several in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments, finally realized her dream of becoming a mom.

Sánchez maintains she hardly fits the stereotype of the dangerous undocumented immigrants that the Trump administration says it is taking off US streets.

“I never had so much as a ticket,” she said.

Still, with the immigration hearing she had missed in 2019 and the changing political fortunes for Cuban immigrants who previously had residency in the US all but guaranteed, Sánchez’s time in the US was running out.

In April, Sánchez was contacted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that an appointment she had with officers was being moved up to the next day. Still, her attorneys told her it was likely a routine check-in. Instead, when she showed up for the appointment with her daughter Kailyn and an attorney, ICE agents told her she was being taken into custody and to hand over her daughter to relatives.

“Call the father to come get her, you are staying here,” Sánchez said the agents informed her.

‘Don’t take away my daughter’

In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security denied Sánchez and her attorney’s accounts that she was not given the option to take her daughter with her.

“We take our responsibility to protect children seriously and will continue to work with federal law enforcement to ensure that children are safe and protected,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said.

“The Trump administration is giving parents in this country illegally the opportunity to self deport and take control of their departure process with the potential ability to return the legal, right way and come back to live the American dream,” the statement continued.

Sánchez’s attorney said they tried to stop her deportation by arguing that her removal would hurt her daughter, who she was breast feeding and has suffered seizures. But two days later, as Sánchez’s attorneys were requesting a hearing in the case, she was already in the air on a deportation flight to Havana.

Cañizares said the manner in which Sánchez was repeatedly moved from different ICE facilities – making it impossible to see her client – before her fast-track deportation was “shady.”

Now any possible legal avenue for Sánchez to return to the US could likely take years, Cañizares said. Sánchez and her family are hoping that backlash to her story could lead to enough public support – particularly among the Cuban-American community that supported Trump in the 2024 presidential race – to enable a reunification.

“The Trump administration is ripping families apart for political games,” US Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL) posted on X along with a photo of her meeting Sánchez’s husband Carlos.

“We are pursuing every action to reunite this family and unfortunately are still waiting for a response from the White House to explain their illegal actions,” she posted.

As controversy swirls around her case, Sánchez is struggling to adapt to the dire situation in Cuba where daily power outages and increasing scarcities have made life even tougher on the island than when she left six years ago.

She lives in a house with relatives where parts of the ceiling are caving in and electricity is cut for hours each day. The cell reception from the one state-run provider is so spotty in the area she either has to walk several blocks away or scale up to the roof of the house to call her husband and daughter.

Her family is only a 90-minute flight away but for the immediate future remains agonizingly out of reach.

“I have to pump milk which should feed my daughter and throw it in the trash,” Sánchez said. “That hurts me so much to do.”

She worries constantly about her young daughter who has trouble sleeping and has suffered convulsions again following her mother’s deportation.

“Her father puts recordings of me singing to her so that she can sleep,” Sánchez said. “I am suffering but I know my girl is suffering more.”

Japan and China have accused each other of violating the airspace around the Japanese-controlled East China Sea islands, which Beijing also claims.

The latest territorial flap came as both appeared to have warmer ties while seeking to mitigate damages from the US tariff war.

Japan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement it lodged a “very severe protest” with Beijing after a Chinese helicopter took off from one of China’s four coast guard boats, which had entered Japan’s territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands. The helicopter violated Japanese airspace for about 15 minutes on Saturday, the ministry said.

The statement called the incident an “intrusion … into Japan’s territorial airspace” and urged the Chinese government to ensure preventive measures.

Japan’s Self-Defense Force scrambled fighter jets in response, according to the Defense Ministry.

China also protested to Tokyo over a Japanese civilian aircraft violating its airspace around the islands, saying it was “strongly dissatisfied” about Japan’s “severe violation of China’s sovereignty,” according to a statement by the Chinese Embassy in Japan late Saturday.

China Coast Guard said it “immediately took necessary control measures against it in accordance with the law” and dispatched a ship-borne helicopter to warn and drive away the Japanese aircraft.

Japanese officials are investigating a possible connection between the Chinese coast guard helicopter’s airspace intrusion and the small Japanese civilian aircraft flying in the area around the same time.

China routinely sends coast guard vessels and aircraft into waters and airspace surrounding the islands, which China calls the Diaoyu, to harass Japanese vessels in the area, forcing Japan to quickly mobilize its jets.

Saturday’s intrusion was the first by China since a Chinese reconnaissance aircraft violated the Japanese airspace off the southern prefecture of Nagasaki in August. Chinese aircraft have also violated the Japanese airspace around the Senkaku twice in the past.