Fico, 59, returned to power in Slovakia last year. Having previously served twice as prime minister, from 2006 to 2010 and again from 2012 to 2018, his third term made him the longest-serving head of government in Slovakia’s history.

He and his party Smer (Direction) have most often been described as left-populist, though he has also been compared to right-wing politicians like the nationalist prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán.

After five years in opposition, Fico’s party won parliamentary elections last year on a pro-Russian and anti-American platform. He vowed to bring an end to Slovakia providing Ukraine with military support as it battled Russia’s full-scale invasion, and has argued that NATO and the United States provoked Moscow into war.

After his election victory, the new government immediately halted arms deliveries to Ukraine. Thousands repeatedly took to the streets across Slovakia to rally against Fico’s pro-Russian and other policies, including plans to amend the penal code to eliminate a special anti-graft prosecutor and to take control of the public media.

Fico’s return to power caused concern among his critics that he and his party — which had long been tainted by scandal — would lead Slovakia away from its pro-Western course. He vowed to pursue a “sovereign” foreign policy, promised a tough stance against migration and non-governmental organizations, and campaigned against LGBTQ+ rights.

He earned a reputation for his tirades against journalists, and faced criminal charges in 2022 for allegedly creating a criminal group and misuse of power. In 2018, he and his government stepped down amid controversy after Slovakian investigative journalist Ján Kuciak was murdered along with his fiancée. Kuciak had been reporting on tax-related crimes implicating high-level Slovak politicians.

“So I was sitting with President Trump and he asked me if I was OK. He asked me if I needed money,” Cohen recalled.

“He said, um, ‘Alright. Just make sure you deal with Allen’” — the Trump family’s longtime financial sentry, Allen Weisselberg, currently serving a second stint on Rikers for a perjury conviction — Cohen added.

During his second day on the witness stand, he told the Manhattan Supreme Court jury that the meeting happened on Feb. 8, 2017, not long after Trump took up residency at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Trump’s then-lawyer was still waiting to be paid back for silencing Daniels about claims of an extramarital tryst with Trump 11 days out from the election. Establishing Trump’s knowledge of the hush money reimbursement is crucial for prosecutors to prove their case.

“Did he say anything about anything that would be forthcoming?” prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asked.

“Yes,” Cohen replied. “It would be a check for January and February.”

During over five hours in the witness box on Monday, Trump’s loyal lawyer-turned-chief antagonist said his boss played a direct role in the effort to silence Daniels, former Playboy model Karen McDougal and a Trump Tower doorman about a series of sex scandals, the latter two of whom were paid off by former tabloid publisher David Pecker. Trump has pleaded not guilty and strongly denies the affairs.

Trump’s chief financial officer said he’d be reimbursed for handling the hush-money deal in installments purporting to cover a retainer fee as the president’s personal attorney, Cohen said. He testified Monday and Tuesday that the role was mostly meaningless and that he felt abandoned once Trump left Fifth Ave. for the White House.

“[Trump] approved it. And he also said, ‘This is going to be one heck of a ride in D.C.,’” Cohen said Monday.

Cohen, who went to federal prison for the payoff after pleading guilty to violating campaign finance laws and other crimes in 2018, wanted the remittance in one lump sum, but “Mr. Trump allegedly said, ‘No, it’s better, it’s better to do it over the 12 months.’”

Trump, 77, is accused of repeatedly falsifying New York business records throughout 2017 to disguise the reimbursement to Cohen — classifying it as payment for legal fees — to disguise an underlying scheme to hide damaging information from the voting public.

On Tuesday morning, Hoffinger pulled up each of Cohen’s 11 invoices to display to the court and asked him if they were false or accounted for actual “services rendered.”

“No ma’am,” Cohen answered. “They were for reimbursement.”

Asked how many hours of work he put in throughout 2017 while being compensated monthly in the tens of thousands, Cohen said, “Less than 10.”

Among the evidence the jury will have before them when they begin to deliberate is a bank statement reflecting Cohen’s payoff to Daniels — wired to her attorney, Keith Davidson, through a shell company hastily set up by Cohen in the waning days of the 2016 race. They will also have the invoices and the 11 checks Cohen received bearing Trump’s renowned spiky signature written with a Sharpie.

Last week, Weisselberg’s longtime deputy, ex-Trump Org controller Jeff McConney, identified handwritten notes on the Davidson statement as the penmanship of his former boss. The CFO calculated that Cohen was owed $420,000 — $130,000 for the payment to Daniels and an additional $50,000 Cohen paid a tech company for Trump-related work, then multiplied by two to account for taxes plus a $60,000 bonus.

Cohen revealed Monday that notes on the statement documenting the $50,000 expense were his own.

The jury on Tuesday heard how Cohen and Trump’s feud came to pass following Cohen’s 2018 guilty plea, with the former fixer saying he last spoke with his longtime boss sitting feet away at the defense table after his office and hotel room were raided by the feds, which Cohen called the “worst day of my life.”

“He said to me, ‘Don’t worry, I’m the president of the United States, there’s nothing here — everything’s going to be OK. Stay tough. You’re going to be OK,’” Cohen recalled, adding that others told him he was “loved” by Trump.

In the immediate aftermath, Cohen — who has since sought to rebrand himself as a liberal resistance hero — said he felt “reassured, because I had the president of the United States protecting me.”

Trump’s eyes were closed for long periods of Tuesday’s testimony, leaving spectators wondering if he was dozing off, and he and Cohen barely looked in each other’s direction.

Trump’s court appearances have drawn high-profile supporters, including former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Eric Trump, and his wife, Lara, on Tuesday. House Speaker Mike Johnson lamented the trial outside the lower Manhattan courthouse without stepping foot inside the courtroom.

Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, Florida Republicans Byron Donalds and Cory Mills, and Fox News host Laura Ingraham were also among those who came to the courthouse. Ingraham received a talking-to from a court officer for taking out her phone.

Trump lawyer Todd Blanche came bucking out of the gate on cross-examination later Tuesday, almost instantly earning a sustained objection when he asked Cohen if he’d recently referred to him on TikTok as “a crying little s–t.”

“Sounds like something I would say,” Cohen replied.

Blanche also asked Cohen about schoolyard taunts he’d made in public about Trump, ranging from “dictator douchebag” and “boorish cartoon misogynist” to “Cheeto-dusted cartoon villain.” Cohen didn’t deny any of them.

Blanche attacked his credibility from all sides by portraying him as driven by hatred and financial greed. He highlighted Cohen’s countless public statements calling for Trump to be imprisoned, his propensity to wax lyrical on the phone with reporters, and the motivations behind his extensive cooperation in prosecutors’ Trump probe leading to the case on trial.

Cohen, known for having a notoriously short fuse, has yet to lose his cool on the stand and gave mild, one-word replies to the grilling.

The defense has claimed that Cohen’s payment to Daniels was an example of him going rogue and showed an unhealthy obsession with his boss. Cohen on Tuesday rejected that framing.

Asked about past praise Cohen gave of Trump — calling him “a good man” in 2015 and saying that he “cares deeply about this country” and “he’s a man who tells it straight” — Cohen said he believed his remarks at the time.

“At that time, I was knee-deep into the cult of Donald Trump,” he explained.

It emerged in court Tuesday that Cohen was the prosecution’s last scheduled witness. Trump’s lawyers said they had yet to decide whether their client, the presumptive GOP nominee in this year’s presidential election, would take the stand.

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Ian Thomas Cleary, of Saratoga, was arrested last month in Metz, near the France and Germany border, where he’s being held pending extradition hearings, a French prosecutor confirmed Tuesday.

U.S. authorities have been on the hunt for the 31-year-old American since June 2021, when the Adams County District Attorney’s office in Pennsylvania issued a warrant for his arrest.

The former Gettysburg College student is accused of stalking a fellow student at a college party in late 2013. Cleary, who was 20 at the time, allegedly assaulted 18-year-old Shannon Keeler as she texted her friends for help.

Even though Keeler reported the rape to authorities after it happened — and even had to endure a painful rape exam on the day of the assault — charges weren’t filed against Cleary until nearly eight years later.

In the summer of 2021, the victim went back to authorities after reading Facebook messages that appeared to have been sent to her by Cleary.

“So I raped you,” he wrote in one of the messages. “I’ll never do it to anyone ever again,” he added. “I’ll pray for you.”

After the warrant for Cleary’s arrest was issued, Keeler said she was grateful. However, she noted the only reason why he was being sought by police was because she had gone public with her story, “which no survivor should have to do in order to obtain justice,” she said.

Cleary — who, according to his website, has worked for Tesla but left the company to become a writer — was arrested on a street in Metz on April 24.

He told local authorities he had arrived in France from Albania “two or three years ago.”

According to a French official, Cleary said he had only arrived in Metz recently but didn’t have housing there.

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The escaped prisoner was identified as Mohamed Amra, a convicted burglar who goes by the nicknamed La Mouche, or “The Fly.”

Amra is also the subject of an investigation of an alleged kidnapping and a separate homicide case in Marseille, according to the Associated Press.

Another three guards were injured in the carnage, which occurred around 11 a.m. local time while the convoy was en route to Rouen in northern France. Multiple vehicles struck the van at a toll booth and assailants fired “heavy weapons” to aid the escape before fleeing with the prisoner.

“All means are being used to find these criminals,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said in a statement. “On my instructions, several hundred police officers and gendarmes were mobilized.”

Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti said during a news conference that it was the first time since 1992 a French prison service worker has died in the line of duty.

“Everything, and I mean everything, will be done to find the perpetrators of this heinous crime,” he said. “These are people for whom life means nothing. They will be caught, they will be judged, and they will be punished according to the crime they have committed.”

People in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota were seeing hazy skies as winds from 146 wildfires in British Columbia and Alberta, at least 40 of them deemed “out of control” by the Canadian Interagency Fire Center, lofted smoke southward over the U.S. border.

Southern Minnesota was predicted to reach unhealthy fine-particle levels, prompting state officials to recommend everyone should “limit prolonged or heavy exertion and time spent outdoors.”

Smoke from wildfires blankets the city as a couple has a picnic in Edmonton, Alberta on Saturday. (Jason Franson/The Canadian Press via AP)Wisconsin also saw haze through the weekend, extending its warning late into Monday. Minnesota officials extended the warning through 11 p.m. Monday. Air quality conditions in all the affected states ranged from “moderate” to “unhealthy” for everyone, NBC News reported.

People in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula also saw hazy skies and reported the smell of smoke, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Joe Phillips.

The smoke was not slated to stop there. The winds could blow it all the way to Iowa and Chicago late Tuesday and early Wednesday, NWS meteorologist Rafal Ogorek said.

In Canada, 86,000 acres had been charred in Manitoba, where evacuations were underway, CNN reported. Residents of several First Nations were forced to leave as the fires rapidly spread.

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The pop-rapper from Biel/Bienne beat out Croatian rock artist Baby Lasagna for the title with their song “The Code.” Switzerland hadn’t won Eurovision since Quebec-born Celine Dion competed for the country in 1988.

“I hope this contest can live up to its promise and continue to stand for peace and dignity for every person,” Nemo said after winning, saying they accepted the trophy for “people that are daring to be themselves and people that need to be heard and need to be understood. We need more compassion; we need more empathy.”

Always a showy exhibition of different cultures from across Europe, this year’s Eurovision was also marked by protests and the controversial expulsion of a top competitor.

Hours before the grand final on Saturday, Dutch artist Joost Klein was expelled from the competition. Organizers said Klein was involved in a backstage incident that led to a complaint from a female crew member.

Dutch public broadcaster AVROTROS was outraged by the removal of the 26-year-old artist, claiming he did not touch the staff member and the punishment was “very heavy and disproportionate.”

“We are very disappointed and upset for the millions of fans who were so excited for tonight. What Joost brought to the Netherlands and Europe shouldn’t have ended this way,” AVROTROS said in a statement.

Throughout the competition, people protested against the inclusion of Israel and the country’s representative, Eden Golan. She was under tight security all week and was met with cheers and boos when she took the stage Saturday. Golan eventually finished in fifth place after soaring up the odds table throughout the week.

This year’s competition was held in Malmo, Sweden, 50 years after ABBA won Eurovision with “Waterloo.” The Swedish group did not appear in person to celebrate the occasion, though their virtual “ABBA-tars” from the “ABBA Voyage” show were displayed at one point.

Though Eurovision is traditionally considered an uplifting spectacle of music, Nemo said their experience had been “really intense and not just pleasant all the way.”

“There were a lot of things that didn’t seem like it was all about love and unity and that made me really sad,” Nemo said. “I really hope that Eurovision continues and can continue to stand for peace and love in the future. I think that needs a lot of work still.”

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Amandeep Singh, 22, was already in custody on an unrelated case before he was identified as a suspect in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, police said late Saturday.

Nijjar was gunned down outside the house of worship he led, Guru Nanak Gurdwara, in the Vancouver suburb of Surrey on June 18.

Earlier this month, three Indian nationals who were temporary residents of Canada — Kamalpreet Singh, 22; Karan Brar, 22, and Karanpreet Singh, 28 — were arrested and charged with Nijjar’s murder. They had their first court appearances last week.

Nijjar was a prominent advocate for the creation of an independent Sikh nation, to be called Khalistan, in what is currently the Sikh-majority Indian state of Punjab.

India had designated Nijjar as a terrorist and sought his extradition from Canada in 2016, though it was rejected.

Prior to his death, Nijjar had been told people were trying to kill him. However he never traveled with security. Witnesses told police two men opened fire as Nijjar stood in the gurdwara’s parking lot.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in September there was credible evidence the Indian government was behind Nijjar’s murder. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was appalled by the accusation and sent dozens of Canadian diplomats home in response.

Amandeep Singh is believed to be one of the two gunmen, sources told Global News in Canada. He was arrested in November 2023 in the Toronto suburb of Brampton on gun and drug charges and had been detained ever since, according to Global News.

Police said the four suspects may have ties to India’s Bishnoi crime group, Global News reported. Amandeep Singh was arrested alongside four other men when he was detained outside Toronto.

In late November 2023, the FBI announced it had foiled a similar-sounding plot to murder another prominent Sikh activist, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, in New York. According to charging documents in that case, Pannun and Nijjar were both targets of the Indian government.

Indian leaders have insisted the government had no role in the killing of Nijjar or any plot against Pannun.

The Sikh independence movement was strongest in the 1980s, but the insurgency was crushed by a violent government crackdown that killed thousands. In 1984, Indian forces attacked an armed Sikh group at Sikhism’s holiest site, the Golden Temple.

After Indian forces captured the temple, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her bodyguards, who were both Sikh.

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The 26-year-old singer and rapper was booted from the competition following reports that Swedish authorities were investigating a “complaint made by a female member of the production crew,” event organizer European Broadcasting Union (EBU) said in a statement early Saturday.

The incident occurred after the artist’s performance Thursday evening in the second semi-final qualifier of the contest and it didn’t involve any other performer or delegation member, according to the organization.

Citing the event’s “zero-tolerance policy towards inappropriate behavior” and its commitment to “providing a safe and secure working environment for all staff at the contest,” organizers said Klein’s “behavior towards a team member [was] deemed in breach of contest rules.”

Statement spokesperson #europapa #eurovision #eurovision2024 pic.twitter.com/DPkLzT0IUw

— Songfestival (@songfestival) May 11, 2024

Klein’s unprecedented and dramatic last-minute exit shocked viewers and prompted an angry response from Dutch public broadcaster AVROTROS, which said on social media it would no longer announce its jury scores on television in protest.

In an earlier post, the broadcaster said Klein never touched the female staff member, adding the punishment was “very heavy and disproportionate.”

“We are very disappointed and upset for the millions of fans who were so excited for tonight. What Joost brought to the Netherlands and Europe shouldn’t have ended this way,” the broadcaster said.

Klein was one of the early favorites to make it to the top in Saturday’s grand finale with the song “Europapa,” which he described as a tribute to his father.

“‘Europapa’ is about an orphan who travels throughout Europe (and beyond) to find himself and tell his story,” he said.

The 65th edition of the influential contest — which catapulted the Swedish group ABBA into international fame after “Waterloo” won the top prize in 1974 — was also marked by days of protests by pro-Palestinian demonstrators who opposed the participation of Israel.

Saturday’s grand finale got underway at 9 p.m. local time.

Keir Johnston, 38, pleaded guilty on Thursday to attacking his wife, Grace Johnston, in their home on Scotland’s Isle of Colonsay on March 6, 2022.

Days before the incident, the couple, who married in 2015, got into a fight over Grace interviewing for a job on the mainland, The Guardian reported Friday. Johnston did not want her to go, but she did so despite his protests.

In the hours before the attack, Johnston was drinking at a pub and texting his wife, prosecutor Chris Macintosh told the court. One of the messages read: “You should support me but you do not.”

When Grace returned home later that night, Johnston, who’d been asleep at the time, awoke and announced that he planned to leave her.

“She went outside the property to stop him leaving. He followed her and pinned her to the ground,” Macintosh said. “He placed both knees on her arms, so she was unable to move. He then began strangling her with both his hands.”

A passerby who heard Grace scream was able to separate the two and Johnston went back inside the home. But he returned just a few minutes later, this time with a knife in hand. He then vowed to “finish her off,” before again choking her.

Grace was eventually able to call the police and told them her husband was trying to kill her.

Johnston’s attorney, Marco Guarino, said his client wants to accept responsibility for the assault. A judge denied him bail and he is slated to be sentenced in June.

The violent attack came some seven years after the couple gained worldwide fame through a viral social media post. Grace’s mother, Cecilia Bleasdale, was looking for a second opinion when she texted her daughter a snap of the dress she planned to wear to their upcoming wedding. But the image she sent left the couple confused after they disagreed over the color of the garment.

My house is divided over this dress. #whiteandgold pic.twitter.com/DcHay027Rg

— Robert Flores (@RoFlo) February 27, 2015

Johnston saw it as blue and black while Grace perceived it to be white and gold. Their wedding guests were equally floored by the color-changing dress, and one of them eventually posted it to Tumblr. From there, the post exploded, with high-profile personalities and celebs weighing in on debate.

In actuality, the dress is blue and black.

Cohen has been outspoken about his feelings on his former boss ahead of his expected appearance next week, sparking a response from Trump’s lawyers. The ex-president is under a gag order and barred from talking about witnesses.

“It’s now becoming a problem every single day that President Trump is not allowed to respond to this witness but the witness continues to talk,” lawyer Todd Blanche said.

Earlier Friday, a defense team’s efforts to prove how the former president was concerned about how his family would take the news of the Stormy Daniels sex tryst allegations fizzled. The dramatic fourth week of the first criminal trial of a U.S. president wrapped on Friday with a series of witnesses establishing key pieces of evidence and setting the scene for the case’s star witness, Cohen.

Trump, 77, has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony charges alleging he covered up reimbursement to Cohen for paying adult film actress Stormy Daniels into silence 11 days before the 2016 election by logging it internally as payment for legal fees. 

Prosecutors say the payoff was hastily arranged as the Trump campaign sought to contain the fallout of the damning “Access Hollywood” tape and concluded a yearslong conspiracy to unlawfully promote Trump’s candidacy by suppressing negative information from voters. 

Trump’s defense has claimed that Cohen went rogue in paying off Daniels and that he believed he’d paid him for legitimate legal services. 

Social media digs upset Trump

In response to the request from Team Trump, Merchan directed prosecutors to keep Michael Cohen on a tighter leash in the home stretch of the case — even though they’ve said they’ve already done everything they could do.

Cohen “was talking explicitly” about the case on a TikTok live Wednesday night, dressed in a white t-shirt with a picture of Trump in an orange jumpsuit behind bars, Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche said, asking that “he be prohibited from talking, the same way as Mr. Trump is.”

ADA Joshua Steinglass said Cohen had already been repeatedly warned to not make public statements.

“The fact of the matter is these witnesses are not subject to the gag order and we have no recourse if they make those statements,” Merchan said.

As Merchan ordered the prosecutors to remind Cohen not to make public statements, Trump smirked.

Trump v. Cohen set for next week

Laying the groundwork for Cohen’s expected testimony next week, prosecutors used Trump’s own words to show how his feelings about his longtime fixer changed amid revelations about the hush money scheme.

Trump came to the defense — and then bashed  — Cohen, who pleaded guilty to orchestrating the hush money payments to the porn star in 2018 in a series of tweets during his presidency after the feds began probing his fixer’s payoff to Daniels.

The tweets, read aloud to the jury by witness Georgia Longstreet, a paralegal for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, directly addressed the hush money payments.

“Mr. Cohen, an attorney, received a monthly retainer, not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign, from which he entered into, through reimbursement, a private contract between two parties, known as a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA,” Trump wrote weeks after the FBI raided Cohen’s office in April 2018.

But Trump turned by the following August after Cohen’s surprise guilty plea to campaign finance violations and other crimes.

“If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!” he wrote in August of the same year.

Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg was in the courtroom for part of Friday’s proceedings.

‘The whole situation was very unpleasant’

Former top White House aide Madeleine Westerhout, who lost her job after saying she had a better relationship with Trump than his daughters, testified Friday morning that she understood the then-president was worried about his family when the Daniels allegations were made public.

But under further questioning, she couldn’t recall Trump mentioning his wife or kids at all in a conversation after the news broke.

“I don’t believe he specifically said that, but I could just tell the whole situation was very unpleasant,” Westerhout said to a sustained objection. Her comment was stricken.

Prosecutors are attempting to prove that Trump wanted Daniels’ story killed not for concern of his family — but over how news of the Tahoe dalliance would affect his political prospects.

Westerhout, 34, once Trump’s presidential executive assistant and director of Oval Office operations, first took the stand late Thursday, spoke glowingly of the presumptive Republican nominee and broke down into tears Thursday, relaying details of her firing after telling reporters she had a better relationship with the former president than his daughters and said they were overweight.

“I was invited by a White House colleague of mine to what I understood to be an off-the-record dinner. And at that dinner I said some things that I should not have said,” Westerhout testified.

“That mistake, eventually — ultimately, cost me my job. And I am very regretful of my youthful indiscretion. But I feel like I’ve learned a lot from that experience. I think I’ve grown a lot since then.”

Earlier in the week, Stormy Daniels took the stand for her bombshell testimony, including a fiery hourslong cross-examination by Susan Necheles, who attempted to paint her as an unreliable liar based on her work in the porn industry.