Joanna Kakissis

Thelma Okocha had never thought about going to Northern Ireland. Yet here she was, standing on a rocky strap of mossy shore, in the rain. For her, this is hallowed ground.

"Euron Greyjoy almost killed Jaime Lannister here," says Okocha, a 29-year-old business intelligence developer who works in New York. Then she motions to a nearby cave where her tour group is huddled. "And that's where Melisandre gave birth to that demon shadow that killed Renly Baratheon," she says, "I can't believe I'm here."

Katerina Hasapopoulos is not your typical rule-breaker. She's 41, the daughter of immigrants and once a power-lunching marketing director.

Now, she says, "I'm a rebel. I'm a tree sister. I am an Earth protector."

Having children, three little girls, she says, helped her think more seriously about the world they would grow up in. Though Brexit dominates most headlines in the United Kingdom, Hasapopoulos devours stories about how humans are causing climate change.

Updated at 3:30 p.m. ET

Austria's youngest-ever chancellor, 33-year-old Sebastian Kurz, is poised to reclaim his job after his party received its biggest victory in years, according to partial results of parliamentary elections.

His conservative Austrian People's Party received more than 37% of the vote, 5 percentage points higher than its showing in 2017, when it teamed up with the far-right Freedom Party to form a government.

Emine Dirican, a beautician from Istanbul, tried to be a good wife. But her husband hated that she worked, that she socialized, even that she wanted to leave the house sometimes without him.

She tried to reason with him. He lashed out.

"One time, he tied me — my hands, my legs from the back, like you do to animals," recalls Dirican, shuddering. "He beat me with a belt and said, 'You're going to listen to me, you're going to obey whatever I say to you.' "

Deep in Northern Ireland's County Armagh, on a farm tucked into the impossibly green hills and orchards, Philip Toner is feeding his cows.

"This is my life," he says, walking into the main cow shed, greeted by moos. "I've been working this dairy farm for 28 years. My children grew up on it, and now we run it together. My family has actually farmed this land since back in the mid-1800s."

Toner is 50, lanky and welcoming, with reading glasses perpetually propped on his silver hair. He points to the original 19th-century farmhouse, where his oldest son now lives.

Updated at 3:20 a.m. Monday

The United Kingdom is trying to defuse an escalating standoff with Iran just days before Britain's ruling Conservative Party announces the successor to Theresa May, who is resigning.

Some 160,000 members of the Tory Party have until today to return their ballots selecting a new leader. The winner, to be announced on Tuesday, is expected to be Boris Johnson.

Updated at 11:20 a.m. ET

Greeks elected a conservative party led by the scion of a powerful political dynasty in national elections on Sunday, a rejection of the country's left-wing government seen as being too slow in improving the economy after a long financial crisis.

Five years ago this month, Danisch Farooqi dropped off his daughter, Aaliya, at her mother's house in the German port city of Hamburg.

He remembers walking the girl, then almost 4, to his ex-wife's front door and hugging her.

"And I said, 'I'll see you next week,' " he recalls.

A few days later, he received a call from an unknown number in Turkey. It was his ex-wife's new husband. He told Farooqi he was in Turkey, recovering from injuries sustained while fighting in Syria. He'd brought the whole family to Turkey, including Aaliya.

In Germany, the European Union's biggest cheerleader, the upcoming elections for the European Parliament are supposed to inspire unity.

Instead, nationalism is unraveling European unity. Populist parties that rail against immigration, globalist elites and the EU itself are expected to gain seats in the elections. The United Kingdom already voted on Thursday; Germany and most other EU states will vote on Sunday.

Updated at 5:45 p.m. ET

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban visited the White House on Monday, his first formal meeting with a U.S. president in more than 20 years.

Then-President Bill Clinton received Orban, now one of Europe's most prominent nationalists, in 1998, back when the Hungarian leader was a 35-year-old reformist who had earned his pro-democracy street cred as an anti-Soviet activist. Orban had helped his country transition out of communism.

Just three years ago, the daily Dunantuli Naplo was considered a reliable source of news in southern Hungary wine country.

Its name means Trans-Danube Journal. Based in Pecs, a cobblestoned university city that once thrived on coal mining, the newspaper's journalists were known for digging into important local issues and holding politicians accountable.

The race to build the next generation of super-fast mobile-data networks has begun in Germany, which started auctioning off its spectrum licenses for 5G on Tuesday.

But this highly technical event has become the center of a geopolitical storm between the U.S. and China, with Europe caught in the middle.

The European Union has largely tolerated Hungary's nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban, despite his government's crackdown on civil society and virulently anti-migrant rhetoric.

Then came the billboards depicting two elderly men who appear to be cackling. One is the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker. The other is Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros, who Orban loyalists falsely claim is plotting to flood Europe with Muslim migrants.

"You have the right to know what Brussels is planning," the billboard reads.

Nearly 75 years ago, Hungarian police forced Rozsa Heisler onto a train, along with thousands of other Hungarian Jews.

"We were crammed together for five days without food or water," she recalls. "We didn't know where we were going. Then we reached Auschwitz."

Heisler's mother and grandfather were murdered at the concentration camp. She and her sister, sent on to a labor camp, survived on leftover potato peels.

Andrassy Avenue in the Hungarian capital of Budapest is lined with neo-Renaissance mansions and luxury boutiques representing the finest names in Europe.

One name stands out: Ghraoui. It's the name of a premier chocolatier from Syria.

Inside, there are hand-engraved orange trees on the walls and frescoes of apricot trees on the ceiling. There are glass cases, as if you're in a gallery or a jewelry store.

Updated at 7:33 p.m. ET

Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a darling of Europe's far right, has tightened his grip on power in ways that have shocked the European Union.

His ultranationalist Fidesz party has gamed the electoral system, shut down most independent media, forced out an American university and even created new administrative courts that will be directly controlled by the government.

The men and women from eight African countries packed into a rubber raft late last month and set off from the Libyan city of Sabratha in the hope of crossing the Mediterranean to reach Italy.

But powerful sea winds blew them off course. They drifted at sea for 10 days before their boat ended up back in Libyan waters and capsized off the coast of Misrata.

At least 12 died. Libyan authorities managed to rescue 10.

George Sarelakos emerges from the sea lugging a giant tire. Another two divers surface — with a shopping cart and a netted bag bulging with a cassette player, cans and lots of plastic.

It takes six more people to heave this all onto the main pier of the Greek island of Poros.

Liliana Czegledi devoted herself to keeping her daughter, Ioana, alive.

The girl had been born with a compromised immune system, a damaged heart and muscles that wouldn't work. She wasn't expected to live past her second birthday. Czegledi gave up her bartending job to care for her.

"I made sure she never caught a cold because the doctor said a cold could kill her," recalls Czegledi, 50, at her home in the village of Sînandrei in western Romania. "I only brought her into the hospital when it was absolutely necessary."

The witch lives in the suburbs of the Romanian capital, Bucharest, in a busy village with a Renaissance palace.

There's a poster of her outside her house in Mogoșoaia: "The most powerful witch from Europe," the poster reads, "Mihaela Minca."

"Welcome, welcome!" she says, emerging through a beaded curtain at the front entrance. She's in a floor-length, black dress with bright flowers. Her hair, also black, is pulled back in a baby-blue headscarf.

For decades, whenever stevedore Giorgos Nouchoutidis arrived for work at the port of Piraeus, he would breathe in the fresh, briny sea breeze and feel a surge of pride.

Like many churchgoers in Romania, retired engineer Marius Tufis opposes same-sex marriage.

"I don't like man with man and woman with woman," he said, frowning in the sun after Sunday's service. "Our religion does not accept this."

Same-sex marriage is already banned in Romanian civil code, but that's not enough for Tufis. He worries that the European Union, which he sees as divided between the liberal West and the conservative East, will force Romania to change the law.