Romania’s outgoing centrist president, Klaus Iohannis, resigned on Monday as opposition hard-right parliamentary parties planned to have him impeached.

The European Union and NATO member state, which borders Ukraine, was plunged into institutional chaos last year when little-known far-right NATO critic Calin Georgescu won the first round of a presidential election.

After accusations of Russian interference – denied by Moscow – Romania’s top court voided the entire election.

With the two rounds of the election set to be re-run on May 4 and May 18, Romania’s top court had said Iohannis, whose second and last term expired on December 21, would stay on until his successor was elected.

But in January, three far-right opposition parties, which control around 35% of parliament seats, filed a motion to impeach Iohannis.

With the motion up for a vote, and Iohannis deeply unpopular, analysts have said some lawmakers from mainstream pro-European parties could give the hard-right’s impeachment effort the required majority.

“The request will have consequences both domestically and abroad,” Iohannis told reporters. “To spare Romania this pointless and negative crisis… I am resigning from the president’s office.”

Senate speaker Ilie Bolojan, head of the Liberal Party, a member of the ruling coalition, will take over as interim president with limited powers until the election.

The three hard-right groupings, whose support has risen since Georgescu’s surprise win, had used their campaign against Iohannis as a reason to stage protests and seize the political agenda.

Israeli police raided two Palestinian bookstores in occupied east Jerusalem on Sunday, confiscating books and arresting one of the owners and his nephew, according to their family members.

CCTV footage shared by the owners, four brothers from the Muna family, shows police officers putting books in trash bags at one of the branches of the Educational Bookshop, a decades-old respected institution with Arabic- and English-language branches.

Photos shared by Muna of the Arabic-language store show books, notebooks and writing materials scattered on the ground.

Israeli police said in a statement Monday that two people were arrested on suspicion of “selling books containing incitement and support for terrorism.”

“The suspects who allegedly sold the books were taken into custody by police detectives,” the police spokesperson’s unit said.

Israeli police said that “detectives encountered numerous books containing inciteful material with nationalist Palestinian themes” in the stores.

Among them was a children’s coloring book titled “From the River to the Sea.” The expression is politically controversial in Israel. Some Palestinians use the phrase in support of a homeland between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, but many Jews regard it as a call for Israel’s destruction.

The Educational Bookshop was established in 1984 on the central Salah el Dein street in East Jerusalem. The original branch sells Arabic books, while the English-language store opened years later is frequented by Palestinians, Israelis and foreigners alike.

The group “The Time Has Come”, which lobbies for peace between Jews and Palestinians, said the bookstore and its people “are an important part of the shared future we envision for Jerusalem. The arrest and confiscation not only harm the right to free expression and the freedom of information but also place the city’s future on the brink.”

Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for Palestinian Territories, said she was “shocked by the raid” on the bookstores, which she called “an intellectual lighthouse and family-run gem resisting Palestinian erasure under apartheid.”

Albanese also urged the international community in Jerusalem to “show up, stand with the Muna family, and protect this vital hub.”

Correction: This article previously referred to “The Time Has Come” group as “Ad Kan.” The two groups are separate entities, and the comments in this article are those of “The Time Has Come.”

A bus veered off a highway bridge into a polluted ravine in Guatemala City early on Monday, killing at least 51 people and trapping survivors, a spokesperson for the city’s fire department said.

The densely packed bus was traveling into the capital from the town of San Agustin Acasaguastlan on a busy route into the city from when it plunged approximately 20 meters (65 feet) from Puente Belice, a highway bridge that crosses over a road and creek.

The spokesman, Carlos Hernandez, said the bodies of 36 men and 15 women had been sent to a provincial morgue set up for the accident.

Images shared by the fire department on social media showed the bus partially submerged in wastewater surrounded by victims’ bodies.

Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo declared three days of national mourning and deployed the country’s army and disaster agency to assist response efforts.

“I stand in solidarity with the families of the victims who today woke up to heartbreaking news. Their pain is my pain,” Arevalo said on social media.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

Hamas has said the next hostage release scheduled to take place in Gaza on Saturday will be postponed, accusing Israel of breaking the ceasefire deal.

In a post on X, Abu Obeida, spokesman for the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ armed wing, said that the handover of the prisoners “who were scheduled to be released next Saturday … will be postponed until further notice, and until the occupation commits to and compensates for the entitlements of the past weeks retroactively.”

He added: “We affirm our commitment to the terms of the agreement as long as the occupation commits to them.”

In response to Hamas’ announcement, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said he has instructed the country’s military to “prepare at the highest level of alert for any possible scenario in Gaza.”

The defense minister described Hamas’ move as a “complete violation of the ceasefire agreement and the deal to release the hostages.”

Israel’s far-right former minister of national security, Itamar Ben Gvir, said Israel should respond with a “massive attack on Gaza.”

“Hamas’ announcement must have one real-life response: a massive attack on Gaza, from the air and land, alongside a complete halt to humanitarian aid to the Strip, including electricity, fuel and water, and including the bombing of aid packages that have already been brought in and are in Hamas’ hands in Gaza,” Ben Gvir, leader of the Jewish Power party, said in a Monday statement.

Hamas and Israel have each accused the other of violating the agreement throughout the first phase of the deal, raising questions about whether the ceasefire that took more than 15 months to reach would hold.

Hamas released three hostages on Saturday in the latest exchange since a ceasefire went into effect on January 19.

In exchange, Israel released 183 Palestinian prisoners, of whom 18 were serving life sentences. The majority had been detained in Gaza since October 7 and had no public charges against them.

Hamas has now released a total of 16 Israeli hostages as part of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement, of a total of 33 promised at staggered intervals during this stage. Eight of those 33 are dead, according to the Israeli government.

Following the release of the three hostages on Saturday, Hamas and its allies still hold a total of 73 people taken from Israel on October 7, 2023, of 251 initially taken. Three additional hostages, held captive since 2014, are still in Gaza.

Under an agreement signed in Qatar last month, negotiations to begin a second phase were supposed to begin on Monday.

Earlier Monday, the Hamas-run Gaza Government Media Office said Israel had refused to allow the entry of shelter supplies specified in the ceasefire agreement

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Scores of unexploded bombs dating from World War II have been recovered from a children’s playground in northern England after a chance discovery.

Two bombs were initially removed by the British Army, the UK Ministry of Defense said in a statement. The parish council was then advised that a full survey of the area was required, according to a council spokesperson.

Bomb disposal company Brimstone Site Investigation then uncovered 65 10-pound practice bombs and smoke cartridges on the first day of works, with a further 90 practice bombs recovered on the second day.

According to the parish council, all of the bombs need to be found and removed before the park can be reopened. It said 174 devices had been found so far.

“Whilst this ordnance is described as practice bombs, they do still carry a charge and given the numbers involved, need to be recovered by professionals to satisfy all concerned that the playpark area is once again safe for contractors and ultimately users of the equipment,” the council said in its statement.

Local politician Mark Mather told the BBC that the area was reportedly used to train the Home Guard volunteer army during World War II, and it appeared that after the war the ordnance was buried.

Further excavations will be carried out to make sure the playground is completely free from unexploded ordnance before new equipment is installed, the parish council added.

In February 2024, thousands of residents were evacuated in Plymouth, southwest England, as authorities worked to remove an unexploded 500-kilogram (1,102-pound) bomb discovered in a garden in the city.

This is not the only time that unexploded ordnance has been discovered in England recently.

The bomb was moved before being disposed of at sea, after it was decided that detonating it in situ would have risked significant damage to nearby properties.

US President Donald Trump has suggested Ukraine may fall under Russian control “someday,” as he called for the war-torn country to share its natural resources in exchange for US assistance.

Trump, whose return to power has thrown doubt over billions of dollars in future US aid to Ukraine, told Fox News in an interview on Monday that he had told Kyiv he wanted “$500 billion worth of rare earth.”

Ukrainian officials had “essentially agreed” to the proposal, he claimed.

Ukraine has “tremendously valuable land in terms of rare earth, in terms of oil and gas, in terms of other things,” Trump said. “I want to have our money secured, because we’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars.”

He added: “They may make a deal, they may not make a deal. They may be Russian someday, or they may not be Russian someday. But we are going to have all this money in there and I say I want it back.”

Trump, who has been vocal about the need for a quick end to the conflict but short of public ideas, had earlier floated the idea of meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky this week.

His envoy to Ukraine and Russia, ret. Gen. Keith Kellogg, announced he would discuss their vision for peace in Ukraine with allies at the Munich Security Conference, on February 14-16. Kellogg is then expected to visit Kyiv four days later, for his first, long-anticipated trip there, according to Ukrainian state media.

North Korea has treated hundreds of Russian soldiers injured in Ukraine, Moscow’s ambassador to Pyongyang told state media, as he revealed new details of the reclusive state’s backing for the Kremlin’s war effort.

Wounded Russian troops have been recovering in North Korean medical facilities, Ambassador Alexander Matsegora told state-run outlet Rossiyskaya Gazeta in an extensive interview published Sunday.

“A clear example of such a brotherly attitude (between Russian and North Korea) is the rehabilitation of hundreds of wounded soldiers … in Korean sanatoriums and hospitals,” he said.

The Russian envoy’s comments are the latest sign of deepening ties between the two countries, which have recently reached heights unseen since the Cold War.

North Korea has sent about 12,000 soldiers to Russia, according to Ukrainian officials and Western intelligence reports, following Moscow and Pyongyang’s pledge to help each other if either nation is attacked in a landmark defense pact signed last June.

About 4,000 North Korean troops have reportedly been killed or injured in combat after being deployed to Kursk since at least November to repel Ukraine’s incursion in the southern Russian border region, Ukrainian officials and Western intelligence said.

Meanwhile, Russia has also received thousands of shipping containers of munitions or munitions-related material from North Korea, and Moscow’s forces have launched North Korea-made missiles on Ukraine, according to US officials.

In his interview with state media, Matsegora claimed that North Korea had treated wounded Russian soldiers for free.

“When we offered to compensate our (North Korean) friends for at least part of their expenses, they were sincerely offended and asked us never to do it again,” he said.

Matsegora also said that children of Russian troops killed in Ukraine had vacationed in North Korea last summer, and Russia and North Korea are developing student exchanges.

Moscow supplies Pyongyang with coal, food, and medicine, he added.

South Korea’s intelligence service declined to comment on Matsegora’s remarks.

The extent of care potentially available to wounded Russian troops within North Korea’s dilapidated health infrastructure remains unclear.

Doctors who have defected in recent years often speak of poor working conditions and shortages of everything from medicine to basic health care supplies.

Some analysts also cast doubt on Matsegora’s troop recuperation remarks, pointing to Russia’s brutal military tactics as the war in Ukraine grinds toward its third anniversary.

Russia “has reportedly been sending wounded personnel back into assault groups without treatment, demonstrating a general disregard for soldiers’ health,” The Institute for the Study of War said in a news release Monday, “calling into question official Russian claims to be sending Russian soldiers abroad for treatment, particularly to North Korea.”

However, any arrival of experienced Russian troops, particularly officers, in North Korea “may allow the Russian military to work with North Korean forces and disseminate lessons from the war in Ukraine while ostensibly recuperating,” the US-based conflict monitor added.