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Viktor Orbán has turned Hungary into the main home for Chinese capital in Europe, capturing more than a quarter of all Chinese investment coming into the continent over the past two years.

The outsized share, including a wave of investment into EV factories, has been a fillip to an otherwise struggling Hungarian economy hit by the EU withholding about €20bn of funding over rule of law concerns.

Orbán’s challenge now is pulling off the diplomatic gymnastics required to simultaneously remain an ally to Xi Jinping and Donald Trump’s incoming administration of China hawks, while managing the threat of a chronic decline in EU funds.

Even against the backdrop of his rule of law dispute with Brussels, Orbán has exacerbated tensions with other EU capitals by maintaining strong diplomatic ties with both Beijing and Moscow.

Márton Nagy, economy minister and a former adviser to prime minister Orbán, told the Financial Times that China’s investments had helped maintain the country’s car industry as “a very strong core” of its economy, which is eventually expected to account for almost a third of GDP.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv would like to end the war with Russia next year through "diplomatic means" as both countries prepare for President-elect Donald Trump's return to the White House.

In an interview with the Ukrainian media outlet Suspilne, Zelenskyy said he is certain that the war will end "sooner" than it otherwise would have once Mr. Trump becomes president.

The prospect of Trump returning to power in the United States next year has raised questions about the future of the conflict, as the Republican has been critical of U.S. military aid to Kyiv.

Zelenskyy said that Ukraine "must do everything so that this war ends next year, ends through diplomatic means."

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy tells Suspilne media platform that under US president-elect Donald Trump the war in Ukraine will end quicker, according to Suspilne website.

Trump, who takes office in January, has said he’d seek a quick deal between Kyiv and Moscow.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz held a phone call earlier on Friday, the first direct communication between the leaders in almost two years and discussed the war in Ukraine.

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[Photo: US Government] A hooded detainee imprisoned at Abu Ghraib. He is standing on a box with wires attached to his left and right hand; he was told that he would be electrocuted if he fell off the box.

On November 12, a federal jury in Alexandria, Virginia, returned a unanimous verdict for Abu Ghraib torture victims Salah Al-Ejaili, Suhail Al Shimari and Asa’ad Al-Zuba’e, awarding each $3 million in compensation and another $11 million for punitive damages against CACI Premier Technology, Inc., a publicly traded defense contractor with annual revenues approaching $3 billion.

The eight jurors found unanimously that late in 2003 CACI interrogators conspired “with military personnel to inflict torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment on detainees in the Abu Ghraib hard site that resulted in [each of the three men] being tortured or subjected to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.”

Following US’s illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq based on lies about complicity in the 9/11 attacks and “weapons of mass destruction,” in April 2004, CBS News’ “60 Minutes” published graphic photos of Iraqis rounded up by the US military and incarcerated in Abu Ghraib Prison outside Bhagdad being tortured by electric shocks, held in stress positions, threatened with dogs and humiliated sexually. Many photos depict gloating US soldiers posing with victims.

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As Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake left the polling station at the Abeysingharama Temple in Maradana, Colombo, on Thursday, Sulaiman called out to him, urging him to stop and listen to his grievances. The police quickly accosted Sulaiman and asked him to leave the venue.

Sulaiman’s hope that Dissanayake will deliver justice that his predecessors did not finds echoes across Sri Lanka, which overwhelmingly voted for the centre-left leader in presidential elections in September. Now, that hope will be tested like never before.

Dissanayake’s National People’s Power (NPP) won a landslide majority in Thursday’s parliamentary election, securing 159 seats in a house of 225 members – representing a comfortable two-thirds majority. The main opposition, Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), under its leader Sajith Premadasa, won just 40 seats.

According to political analyst Aruna Kulatunga, this is the first time since 1977 – when Sri Lanka changed its parliamentary system to proportional representation – that a single party has won a clear majority. This is also the first time that the incumbent president has the numbers needed to pass legislation in parliament without needing to rely on any allies or coalition partners.

The expectations from the NPP are high. Led by Dissanayake’s Marxist-leaning Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, the NPP also includes multiple organisations, including civil society groups that came together during the 2022 protests against the government of then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was ousted from power.

Stakes are particularly high in the north of the country where the Tamil community voted for the NPP, breaking with its pattern of voting for Tamil parties. The NPP secured a majority of the seats in the north. The north and east of the country, where the Tamil population is largely based, were the epicentres of the bloodiest battles during a three-decade civil war between the Tamil rebels and the Sri Lankan army. The war ended in 2009 when Sri Lankan armed forces decimated the Tamil armed leadership.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz held a phone call Friday to discuss ways to end the war in Ukraine, according a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Uncertainty over support from Western allies has also been growing ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the White House next year. Germany is Ukraine’s second-biggest supporter after the US and has pledged billions of euros in additional aid.

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For the first time, Chinese scientists and their US collaborators have been able to precisely measure the age of volcanic eruptions on the far side of the moon.

Previously this was only estimated through remote sensing observations.

Two research teams led by scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, based in Beijing and Guangzhou, used radiometric dating to analyse isotope decay in basalts, a type of volcanic rock brought back to Earth by China’s Chang’e-6 mission in June.

Their studies, published on Friday in journals Nature and Science, both found that the moon’s oldest and deepest crater on its far side was volcanically active around 2.8 billion years ago.

In comparison, samples returned by the Apollo, Luna and Chang’e-5 missions – all from the near side – established that lunar volcanism occurred between 4 billion and 2 billion years ago.

The Nature paper highlighted that the 2.8 billion-year age was “surprisingly young” as volcanic activities on the far side were traditionally thought to have ended much earlier. Most volcanic eruptions were associated with the near side and believed to have ceased by around 3 billion years ago.

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The Israeli attack on Iran in late October destroyed an active top secret nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin, according to three U.S. officials, one current Israeli official and one former Israeli official.

The strike — which targeted a site previously reported to be inactive — significantly damaged Iran's effort over the past year to resume nuclear weapons research, Israeli and U.S. officials said.

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Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake thanked voters on Friday for delivering his leftist coalition a landslide victory in snap parliamentary elections that repudiated establishment parties blamed for triggering an economic crisis.

Dissanayake, a self-avowed Marxist, swept September presidential elections on a promise to combat corruption and recover stolen assets, two years after a slow-motion financial crash imposed widespread hardships on the island nation.

His decision to immediately call polls and secure parliamentary backing for his agenda was vindicated on Friday, with his National People’s Power (NPP) coalition taking at least 159 seats in the 225-member assembly, exceeding a two-thirds majority.

In a sign of the magnitude of support for Dissanayake, his party won the most votes in the northern district of Jaffna, dominated by the island’s minority Tamil community, for the first time since independence from Britain in 1948.

Dissanayake, the 55-year-old son of a labourer, had been an MP for nearly 25 years and was briefly an agriculture minister but his NPP coalition held just three seats in the outgoing assembly.

He stormed to the presidency after successfully distancing himself from successive leaders blamed for steering the country to its 2022 economic crisis.

Portraits of communist luminaries including Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Friedrich Engels and Fidel Castro hang in Dissanayake’s office in the capital.

Since his rise to popularity, however, he has softened some policies, saying he believes in an open economy and is not totally opposed to privatisation.

Dissanayake had campaigned on a pledge to renegotiate a controversial US$2.9 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout secured by his predecessor.

But since taking office, he has resolved to maintain the existing agreement with the international lender.

The country’s main private sector lobby, the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, has tacitly supported Dissanayake and his programme.

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India and China’s progress in ironing out long-standing border tensions has sparked hopes of a revival in trade ties that could open up Chinese investments in sectors such as electric vehicles (EV) and consumer electronics.

Earlier this month, India Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar noted that there was “some progress” in disengagement of troops from both sides of their border, saying it was a “welcome move” which “opens up the possibility that other steps could happen”.

Ties between India and China hit one of their lowest points following a clash between troops along the disputed Himalayan border in 2020, and relations have only begun to warm with the withdrawal of soldiers on either side of the border.

That followed an earlier agreement in October on patrolling arrangements on the border between the two countries.

India had increased scrutiny for visa applications from Chinese citizens in the wake of the border clashes, which hurt some of India’s key manufacturing firms as stricter visa rules meant specialised engineers from China could not enter the country, leading to production losses.

The two countries have not had any direct flights for four years, but there are signs that these could again resume following the easing of border tensions. India’s aviation minister said in September that both sides had discussed an early resumption of scheduled passenger flights.

“We are hoping that there will be more Chinese investments, joint ventures as well as technology transfers,” said Vinod Sharma, chairman of the Confederation of Indian Industry’s National ICTE (Electronics hardware) Committee. “Secondly, we are hoping that China will allow exports from India of manufactured goods.”

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