In the end, Emmanuel Macron was re-elected as president of France, the first incumbent president to win a second term in 20 years. Ultimately, though, MacArthur comfortably beat his far-right rival Marine Le Pen with 58.5 percent of the vote to her 41.5 percent. However, this does represent the largest vote share for the far-right party in French history and was closer than when the two went head-to-head in 2017. It's worth noting, though, that the voter abstention rate was the highest it's been in 50 years, at 28%.

Regardless of his victory speech, Macron acknowledged that many voted for him not to support his ideas but to stop the ideas of the far-right and ultimately vowed to be the president for everyone. Le Pen has conceded defeat but said that her score was a shining victory in itself and told her supporters to look ahead to the great battle of the June legislative elections.

And that's what she tried to say yesterday. She tried to say this is not a defeat, this is the highest we've ever done, which is correct, but it's still a defeat, of course. Why is she wide in her appeal? Two things happened: She managed to soften her far-right positions, and the other thing that happened is that there was another far-right candidate, Eric Zemor, just by perspective. She became less extreme because someone was saying more extreme things. Left-wing candidate Jean-Luc Melancthon, who came in a close third in the first-round vote, hailed Le Pen's defeat and also set his sights on the legislative elections, with him likely playing a key role in determining if Macron's party can snatch the parliament along with the presidency.

Over in Slovenia, the Electra also headed the polls, with voters in the country delivering a surprising victory for a new left-leaning environmentalist party, the freedom movement, and unseating their three-time conservative prime minister.

The freedom movement led by businessman Robert Globe was founded just months ago, but they were able to win 34 percent of the vote in this election. They are going to be able to secure a majority thanks to bringing in smaller centre-left parties, and that's good news for many because the outgoing right-wing prime minister has been accused of overseeing democratic backsliding in the country in a similar manner to his Hungarian ally, Victor Orban, and has even come under the scrutiny of the EU for this. Golob, who will be the country's new prime minister, has promised to restore normality and said that the victory will enable us to take the country back to freedom, but with no governmental experience, the freedom movement won't have an easy job.

The US secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, and defence secretary Lloyd Austin made an unannounced visit to Kyiv on Sunday in what was the highest-level American visit to Ukraine since Russia invaded in February. Blinken and Austin had a 90-minute bilateral meeting with Ukraine's president, Zelinski, as well as his foreign minister, defense minister, and interior minister. Secretary of State Blinken told reporters in Poland on Monday that Russia had already failed its principal aim of totally subjugating Ukraine and added that US diplomats would return to Ukraine later this week. Blinken also went on to say that we don't know how the rest of this war will unfold, but we do know that a sovereign, independent Ukraine will be around a lot longer than Vladimir Putin is on the scene.

Staying with the conflict, it's been reported today that a Russian oil depot in Druzbah has been set alight and continues to rage following a suspected Ukrainian missile strike. There haven't been any reports yet of deaths or injuries, and it's also not yet been confirmed that the fire was the result of a strike, but it would be a natural target for Ukraine. The facility itself is being used to transport Russian oil to Europe as well as being used as an administrative centre for the region, and the site is owned by a state-controlled Russian oil company. While this doesn't look good for the Russians, they claim that there's no need to evacuate the 400 000 people who live in the nearby city, but this could be a further development that brings on a new phase of this war.

Finally, though it seems today that we might be getting ever closer to Twitter being in the hands of billionaire Elon Musk, While he put in an offer to purchase the company a few weeks ago, not much has really come out of the ensuing negotiations, but an anonymous source close to Twitter has now claimed a deal is closer than ever with an agreement being made on financing with Musk proposing to pay 54.20 dollars a share. It's been suggested that Musk would pull this money together via 13 billion dollars in debt financing, a 12.5 billion loan against Tesla stock, and a 12 billion loan in equity financing. It's broadly expected that if Musk does take control of Twitter, then you try and make the platform more pro-free speech with him saying that he needs to make improvements to its products and services.