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European elections, Biden's cancer and an 'anti-pro-life' bombing

 
Today's INTERNATIONAL story

Pro-EU centrist beats Trump acolyte in Romania vote

What happened
The centrist mayor of Bucharest, Nicusor Dan, won Romania's presidency yesterday, defeating hard-right nationalist George Simion 54% to 46%. Simion, considered the front-runner after getting the most votes in the first round two weeks ago, conceded defeat last night after initially claiming victory and then alleging voter fraud. Voter turnout, at 65%, was the highest since 1996. Poland and Portugal also voted yesterday. 

Who said what
The victory of Dan, a soft-spoken former math professor and political independent, is a "setback for Europe's surging nationalist forces," The New York Times said, and it "will likely calm fears in Europe's political mainstream" that Romania "might join Hungary and Slovakia in opposing help for Ukraine and in cozying up to Moscow." Dan, 55, ran as an anticorruption moderate conservative committed to the European Union and NATO.

Simion had modeled his campaign on President Donald Trump's and "promised to 'Make Romania Great Again,'" The Wall Street Journal said. He spent a week in the U.S. "at the height of the campaign," giving interviews to MAGA figures like Steve Bannon and telling a conservative U.S. magazine that he and Polish right-wing presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki could form a pro-Trump alliance in Europe. Nawrocki advanced to the June 1 runoff election yesterday, coming a close second to liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski.

This "really strong result" for Dan is "another example of the positive Trump effect on European election cycles where concerns about the political and policy direction moving in a MAGA-like way have mobilized voters," Eurasia Group's Mujtaba Rahman told Reuters. 

What next?
Dan told supporters "there will be a difficult period ahead" to form a majority government and find a prime minister who can steer parliament toward reducing Romania's budget deficit. In Poland, Trzaskowski "could face an uphill struggle in the runoff," the Times said, as Nawrocki's 29% plus the 21% won by two far-right candidates adds up to a right-wing majority. In Portugal, the ruling center-right Democratic Alliance won the most seats in parliament but once more failed to secure a majority, dashing hopes that the country's third election in three years would "end the worst spell of political instability for decades," The Associated Press said.

 
 
Today's NATIONAL story

Biden diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer

What happened
Former President Joe Biden was diagnosed with an "aggressive" form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones, his office said yesterday. Biden, 82, received the diagnosis on Friday and he and his family are "reviewing treatment options."

Who said what
Biden's office said his cancer was given a Gleason score of 9, with 10 being the most malignant. "While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management," the statement said. Once it has metastasized to the bones, "it's very treatable, but not curable," Dr. Matthew Smith of Massachusetts General Brigham Cancer Center told The Associated Press.

Cancer and tragedy have been a "recurring part of Biden's personal and political life," The Washington Post said. He "dedicated much of his later career to cancer research after losing his son Beau to brain cancer in 2015." When launching his 2022 "cancer moonshot" to halve the U.S. cancer death rate over 25 years, Biden said it could be an "American moment to prove to ourselves and, quite frankly, the world that we can do really big things."

What next?
Thanks to prostate cancer treatments developed in the past few years, "life is measured in years now, not months," University of Washington specialist Dr. Daniel Lin told The New York Times. People with metastatic prostate cancer "can live 5, 7, 10 or more years," said Dr. Judd Moul at Duke University. So an octagenarian like Biden "could hopefully pass away from natural causes and not from prostate cancer."

 
 
Today's CRIME Story

Bombing of fertility clinic blamed on 'antinatalist'

What happened
The FBI yesterday said a 25-year-old with "nihilistic ideations" was the primary suspect, and only fatality, in a car bombing on Saturday that damaged a fertility clinic and nearby buildings in Palm Springs, California, and injured four people. Akil Davis, assistant director in charge of the FBI's Los Angeles Field Office, called the "targeted attack against the IVF facility" an "intentional act of terrorism" and probably the "largest bombing scene that we've had in Southern California."

Who said what
Davis said the "primary suspect," Guy Edward Bartkus, appeared to have tried to livestream the explosion and the FBI was studying a "possible manifesto" tied to the bomber. The writings were "anti-pro-life," said U.S. Attorney Bilal Essayli. The suspect appeared to be "antinatalist," a law enforcement source told the Los Angeles Times, and he "used a very large amount of explosives — so many that the bomb shredded his remains." 

The antinatalism movement, which considers procreating unethical or unjustifiable, "specifically condemns violence," Brian Levin, an extremism expert at Cal State San Bernardino told the Times. The bomber's "purported rambling, idiosyncratic 'political’ statements'" suggest he was a "hopeless unstable young man" driven to a "brutal death" by a "personally distorted embrace of an obscure anti-life ideology."

What next?
Dr. Maher Abdallah, who leads the bombed American Reproductive Centers clinic, said on social media that none of the embryos stored there were damaged and the clinic would be fully operational this morning. "Thank God today happened to be a day that we have no patients," he told The Associated Press on Saturday.

 
 

It's not all bad

Ella Walker thought spinal surgery would keep her from attending prom, but staff at Memorial Hermann The Woodlands Medical Center in Texas instead brought prom to her. The team put up decorations, keeping with the "Roaring '20s" theme of Walker's high school prom, and an ICU nurse did her hair. Doctors allowed the teen to briefly remove her back brace so she could wear her dress and take pictures with friends. The impromptu celebration was "amazing," Walker told ABC News.

 
 
Under the radar

Babesiosis, a rare tick-borne illness, is spreading in new parts of the U.S. through blacklegged or deer tick bites, according to an article published in the Journal of Medical Entomology. The disease has been "historically concentrated in the Northeast and Upper Midwest," but "is now expanding in the Mid-Atlantic region," said a press release. This includes rising cases in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Wisconsin, but the hotspot is Maryland, Virginia and Delaware. 

So far, "there are not many cases," Ellen Stromdahl, a retired tick researcher from the Defense Centers for Public Health and the lead author of the article, told The Baltimore Banner. "We think it's the tip of the iceberg and we want to give an early warning." The number of cases is likely to be underrepresented as well, because medical experts may not know to even test for it.

One-quarter of babesiosis cases are asymptomatic. However, "people who do develop symptoms, especially older adults and immunocompromised people, can get quite sick," said Grist. "Untreated, the parasites, which infect and destroy red blood cells, can lead to organ failure and death." Many of the ticks spreading babesiosis also carry Lyme disease. "The Lyme-babesiosis connection is an active area of research," said Grist. 

A major factor in the geographic spread of babesiosis is climate change. "Climatic conditions in the southern mid-Atlantic have always been welcoming for ticks," said Grist. "But warmer-than-average winters that have been occurring with grim regularity in recent years are turning some states in the region into year-round breeding sites."

 
 
On this day

May 19, 1536

Anne Boleyn, second wife of King Henry VIII, was beheaded at the Tower of London after being found guilty of adultery and treason. Their marriage, following Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon, was a key event in the English Reformation and break from the Catholic Church. Boleyn's reputation was restored under the reign of her daughter, Queen Elizabeth I.

 
 
TODAY'S newspaperS

Pope Leo XIV was "installed as first pontiff from U.S.," the Chicago Sun-Times says on Monday's front page, and said it was time for "a united church" and "the hour for love." Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy "talks with Vance, Rubio" at Leo's installation mass in Rome, the Chicago Tribune says. "Russia steps up Ukraine attacks before Trump call" today, The Wall Street Journal says. "Israel expands attacks in Gaza," The New York Times says. "Trump officials find a way to evade rules they dislike: Don't enforce them," says The Washington Post.

► See the newspaper front pages

 
 
Tall tale

Roommates from hell

After Chicago police told Marco Velazquez they could not remove squatters from a property he had up for sale, the homeowner decided to move in with the intruders. Dealing with the unwanted guests was a "nightmare," Velazquez told ABC 7 News. He hoped that spending the night in the house would pressure them to leave, but instead, Velazquez, his wife and a few friends stayed in one part of the house while the squatters holed up in another. He eventually paid them $4,300 to leave.

 
 

Morning Report was written and edited by Theara Coleman, Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Justin Klawans, Devika Rao, Rafi Schwartz and Peter Weber, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.

Image credits, from top: Alex Nicodim / Anadolu via Getty Images; Grzegorz Galazka / Archivio Grzegorz Galazka / Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images; Gabriel Osorio / AFP via Getty Images; 24K Production /Getty Images