Venezuela’s electoral council, stacked with officials loyal to the autocrat Nicolás Maduro, claimed late Sunday that his party had won an overwhelming victory in regional and legislative elections.

No independent vote monitors were present, and critics called the election a performance designed to rubber-stamp a government approved by Maduro.

The results, announced on state television and presented without evidence, stripped the opposition of some of the last few positions it held, including the governor’s seat of Zulia, the country’s most-populous state, and the heart of its oil wealth.

Despite near-empty streets and polling places, the electoral council claimed that turnout was higher than 40%. The electoral council did not post the results online, as it had done in elections before 2024.

Benigno Alarcón, a political scientist with the Andrés Bello Catholic University in Caracas, said the vote lacked the minimum requirements to count as democratic.

The announcement comes less than a year after a presidential election in which Maduro also claimed victory, despite a vote count that showed him losing decisively to his opponent, Edmundo González. That tally was found to be accurate by the Carter Center, an independent monitoring group, which said Maduro’s claim was a “falsification.”

Previously, four of the country’s 23 states had been held by governors not aligned with the government. Now, just one, Cojedes, in central Venezuela, will be controlled by a dissenting voice.

The voting took place amid a bitter fight among opposition leaders about whether to participate in the vote.

The country’s most prominent opposition leader, María Corina Machado, a former legislator who backed González last year, had called for people to abstain, saying the government should recognize the result of the July 2024 election.

Maduro’s movement, called Chavismo, has been in power for a quarter-century; this was its 32nd election.

Ex-cop escapes: A search was underway in northern Arkansas for a former police chief convicted of first-degree murder and rape who slipped out of a high-security prison dressed in a fake law enforcement uniform.

Grant Hardin, 56, escaped Sunday from the Calico Rock North Central Unit. He is considered extremely dangerous.

An image released by the Stone County Sheriff’s Office on its Facebook page shows what it says is Hardin wearing clothes similar to a law enforcement uniform, escaping through a controlled gate while pushing a cart of utility materials.

Hardin held several law enforcement positions in the state beginning in the 1990s, according to public records and local news reports. He was terminated multiple times and was trailed by reports of using excessive force, poor performance and, in one instance, falsifying a police report, according to local news media.

In 2017, Hardin was arrested and charged with shooting James Appleton just outside Gateway, a town near the Missouri border, where Appleton worked in the water department. While in prison, Hardin’s DNA was tied to an unsolved rape case from more than 20 years earlier.

EU tariff talks: The European Union’s chief trade negotiator said Monday that he had “good calls” with Trump administration officials and the EU was “fully committed” to reaching a trade deal by a July 9 deadline, after President Donald Trump agreed to delay his threatened 50% import tax on European goods.

Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic said on X that the EU’s executive commission was pushing “at pace” toward an EU-U.S. deal.

The stakes are high, given the size of the U.S.-EU trading relationship. Although the trade partners don’t have a free-trade agreement like the one the U.S. has with Mexico and Canada, $1.8 trillion in goods and services cross the Atlantic in both directions each year.

EU Commission spokeswoman Paula Pinho told a news conference that EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Trump agreed to “fast-track” the negotiations. The result of the call means that “there is a new impetus for these negotiations, and we will take it from there ... from our side, we always said we were ready to make a deal.”

The EU has offered Trump a “zero for zero” deal in which tariffs would be removed on industrial goods including automobiles, but the U.S. administration has said it will not lower tariffs below a 10% baseline imposed on almost all its trading partners. Trump has also announced tariffs of 25% on steel and automobiles.

Shooting in SC: Ten people were shot during a fight that started after a private boat hosting a holiday weekend party arrived at a dock Sunday night in South Carolina.

No one died in the shooting in Little River, although some of the wounded were in critical condition, Horry County police said. At least one person who was not hurt by gunfire was taken to the hospital.

The shooting happened around a dock where a private charter boat leaves for cruises.

The boat was docked, and detectives are trying to figure out exactly where the fight and shooting began.

Little River is about 20 miles northeast of Myrtle Beach.

Russia role in UK fires: A top Kremlin official scoffed Monday at a report that Russia could be involved in recent arson attacks on the private home of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, a building where he once lived and a car that he had owned.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was responding to a Financial Times report that U.K. security officials were looking into whether Russia was involved in the attacks.

The Associated Press has not been able to independently confirm the FT report that relied on unidentified senior U.K. government figures.

“London tends to suspect Russia of anything bad that happens in the U.K.,” Peskov said when asked about the report at his regular press briefing. “As a rule, all these suspicions are groundless, unsubstantiated and often laughable.”

No one was injured in the fires that occurred on three nights between May 8 and 12 in north London, authorities said.

Three men with ties to Ukraine face arson charges and are being held without bail; they have a hearing June 6 in London’s Central Criminal Court.

A prosecutor said there was no explanation for the crimes and no official has publicly said Moscow is behind the fires.

But the arsons fit a pattern of disruption that Western officials have accused Russia and its proxies of carrying out dozens of times to undermine support for Ukraine since Moscow’s full-scale invasion three years ago and to sow division in Europe.