May 18, 2025
A roundup of local and world news
Newsroom, 18.05.2025, 13:55
ELECTION Nearly 18 million Romanian registered voters are expected at the polls today to choose their president for the next 5 years from the 2 candidates who have reached the final round: the hard-right populist leader of AUR, George Simion, and the centrist independent Nicusor Dan, the current mayor of Bucharest. On May 4, in the first round, Simion got 41% of the votes, and Dan 21%. George Simion also ran in the presidential election at the end of last year, cancelled by the Constitutional Court over flaws triggered by foreign interference in favour of the pro-Russian extremist Călin Georgescu. Nicusor Dan is running for the top office for the first time. There are almost 19,000 polling stations throughout the country, while Romanians abroad vote in 965 stations. As in the previous round, Romanian voters residing abroad had three days – Friday, Saturday and Sunday – to exercise their right to vote. Today they can vote until 9 pm, Romanian time. By noon local time, over 25% of the Romanians had voted, while the number of those who turned out to vote abroad exceeded 900,000. In the first round, little over 53% of the Romanians voted.
BALLOTS Poland also hosts presidential elections today, which might decide whether Donald Tusk’s coalition government will be able to push liberal reforms further, the BBC reports. The conservative president Andrzej Duda, whose term in office is drawing to a close, has repeatedly used his veto rights to block bills from the coalition, which lacks a parliamentary majority. The main candidates are Rafal Trzaskowski, representing the ruling Civic Platform party, the historian Karol Nawrocki, who is backed by the Law and Justice Party (PiS) and is the head of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, and the far-right candidate Slawomir Mentzen. Portugal, meanwhile, is holding its 3rd round of general elections in 3 years. The snap elections are held after the government was dismissed under a no-confidence motion, initiated amid a controversy surrounding Prime Minister Luís Montenegro’s family business. Polls show his coalition would win with 34% of the votes, as against the 26% expected for the Socialists.
POPE LEO Hundreds of thousands of Catholic believers and 150 delegations from around the world in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican today attend the enthronement service of Pope Leo XIV, elected 10 days ago at the conclave of cardinals, after the death of Pope Francis. During the inauguration mass, symbolic rituals are performed that represent the assumption of responsibility and the spiritual task that the new Pope is called to fulfill for the Universal Church, the Italian public broadcaster reports. The mass is performed by Pope Leo XIV together with 200 cardinals and 750 bishops and priests. The ceremony is attended, among other officials, by the US vice president James David Vance, and the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. Romania is represented by the Senate speaker Mircea Abrudean, and by the Romanian Ambassador to the Holy See, George Bologan.
FOOTBALL FCSB (Bucharest) alongside over 50,000 fans Saturday evening celebrated their second consecutive champion title, after winning against Universitatea Craiova 1-0, in the last-but-one round of the Romanian Super League. The Bucharest-based team secured their champion title in the previous round. FCSB, which has not lost a championship match since last fall, also had a successful European season, reaching the Europa League’s round of 16. FCSB will play in the Romanian Super Cup against CFR Cluj, which won the club’s 5th cup this week with a victory against FC Hermannstadt.
EUROVISION Austria won the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest in the Swiss city of Basel on Sunday, in the country’s first victory since the cross-dressing artist Conchita Wurst won in 2014, Reuters reports. JJ, the stage name of Johannes Pietsch, a 24-year-old Austrian-Filipino countertenor from Vienna, combined operatic elements, techno and soprano trills in his song “Wasted Love”, delighting both the professional jury and telephone voters. JJ beat Israel’s representative, Yuval Raphael, a survivor of the October 7 attacks, who performed the song “New Day Will Rise”. Eurovision, which has asserted its political neutrality, has again faced controversy this year in the context of the war in Gaza. (AMP)
