​ JD Vance due in Hungary to back Orban’s re-election bid. 8 hours ago. Nick ThorpeBudapest. EPA. US Vice-President JD Vance is due in Hungary to back veteran Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a key European ally of the Trump administration, in a tough parliamentary election.. Vance is expected to address an election rally with Orban in a football stadium in Budapest on Tuesday afternoon.. Last month, US President Donald Trump said Orban had his “complete and total support” in a video message to the Hungarian Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Budapest.. The 12 April election is billed as Orban’s toughest challenge in a political career going back almost 40 years.. On Sunday he faces Peter Magyar, a former insider in Orban’s party Fidesz, who broke with him two years ago to found the centre-right Tisza party. Tisza leads Fidesz by between 10% and 20% in most polls. Only the strongly pro-government Nezopont agency puts Fidesz narrowly ahead.. Orban’s friendship with Trump goes back to 2016, when he was the first and only EU leader to back Trump in the US presidential election. That friendship has flourished since then. Orban strongly backed Trump for re-election in 2024, and was in Washington last October to secure an exemption for Hungary from US sanctions on Russian oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil.. Trump later made clear that the exemption was a personal deal between himself and Orban – implying that if Orban loses this election, his successor would have to re-apply.. Hungary, almost alone among EU countries, has defied calls from Brussels to wean itself off Russian fossil fuels. In Washington, Orban also committed to buying more US liquefied natural gas (LNG), as well as US nuclear technology and fuel. Hungary depends heavily on Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline from the east, and on Russian gas through the TurkStream pipeline from the south.. Both sources are now problematic. No oil has reached Hungary through the Druzhba pipeline, which crosses Ukraine, since the end of January. Orban blames Ukraine for failing to restore the pipeline, after a Russian attack on oil infrastructure in western Ukraine on 27 January.. Reuters. Interestingly, there has been no visible diplomatic support for the Hungarian government from the Trump administration on the pipeline issue. To prevent shortages, Hungary has been forced to release fuel reserves and import non-Russian oil through an alternative pipeline from Croatia.. A new problem emerged on Sunday, when the Serbian government – Hungary’s neighbour to the south – announced that explosives had been found and neutralised near the TurkStream gas pipeline, close to the border with Hungary.. Orban and pro-government media labelled the incident a terror attack on Hungary’s energy supply. But former intelligence sources in Hungary, and the opposition leader Peter Magyar, accused Orban of staging the incident with the help of the Serbian President Alexander Vucic to boost his chances of re-election  

​ Taiwan opposition leader makes first China visit since 2016. 1 hour ago. Kelly Ng. Reuters. The leader of Taiwan’s main opposition party arrived in China today, making her the party’s first incumbent chief to visit the country in a decade.. Cheng Li-wun, who took over as Kuomintang (KMT) chairperson last year, said she “gladly accepted” President Xi Jinping’s invitation to visit and hopes to be a “bridge for peace”.. Beijing cut off some communications with Taiwan after the Democratic Progressive Party’s Tsai Ing-wen became president in May 2016, citing Tsai’s refusal to endorse the concept of a single Chinese nation.. Cheng is expected to meet Xi during the later part of her six-day trip, which will span the cities of Shanghai, Nanjing and Beijing.. Although the KMT has traditionally maintained warm ties with China, Cheng’s eagerness to visit contrasts with her predecessors’ more cautious approach towards cross-strait relations, some analysts say.. Her trip comes amid growing scepticism about the US in Taiwan “largely stemming from [Donald] Trump’s mixed signals on his Taiwan policy and the Middle East conflict”, says William Yang, North East Asia analyst at the non-profit think tank International Crisis Group.. “Cheng sees this as an opportunity for her to present herself as the political leader capable of maintaining cross-strait exchange and potentially reducing cross-strait tension,” Yang says.. China sees self-governed Taiwan as a breakaway province that will eventually be part of the country, and has not ruled out the use of force to achieve this.. But many Taiwanese consider themselves to be part of a separate nation.. Although the US has formal ties with Beijing rather than Taiwan, it has for decades remained the island’s biggest arms supplier. In recent years Trump has said that Taiwan should pay the US for defending it against China.. Just last week, a bipartisan US delegation visited Taipei, urging the parliament there to pass a $40bn special defence spending budget. The proposal is currently stalled in the opposition-dominated parliament.. Xi’s invitation to Cheng comes weeks before he is due to meet Trump, who is scheduled to call on Beijing on 14 and 15 May.. “Beijing wants a cordial meeting with Taiwan’s opposition to undermine the argument for US-Taiwan defence cooperation,” says Wen-ti Sung, a political scientist with the Australian National University’s Taiwan Centre.. This will then allow China to focus on “cutting business deals” with the US during Trump’s visit, rather than addressing cross-strait issues, Sung explains.. For Cheng and the KMT, this could be politically beneficial ahead of Taiwan’s local elections later this year.. Despite having started her political career as a pro-independence advocate, Cheng has in recent years tried to cultivate a reputation as a peace builder.. She is “trying to thread a needle between the US and China… to strengthen her leadership stature while highlighting Taiwan President Lai Ching  

​ Australia’s most-decorated living soldier charged over alleged war crimes. 1 hour ago. Tiffanie TurnbullSydney. Australia’s most-decorated living soldier has been charged over allegations he committed war crimes in Afghanistan.. Ben Roberts-Smith – who left the defence force in 2013 – was arrested at Sydney airport on Tuesday and will face court over five counts of the war crime of murder. He will spend the night in a cell, before a bail hearing on Wednesday.. A defamation judgement in 2023 found the former Special Air Service (SAS) corporal and Victoria Cross recipient had killed several unarmed Afghans.. The 47-year-old denies all wrongdoing, and has previously said the allegations against him- which have not yet been assessed at a criminal standard -were “egregious” and “spiteful”.. The civil trial was the first time in history any court has examined claims of war crimes by Australian forces.. Roberts-Smith argued the alleged killings occurred legally during combat or did not happen at all, and last year lost an appeal against the Federal Court finding.. At a news conference in Sydney on Tuesday, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) confirmed a 47-year-old former soldier had been arrested and said he would be charged with killing unarmed detainees while serving in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012.. He faces one charge of the war crime of murder, one of jointly commissioning a murder, and three of aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring a murder.. “It will be alleged the victims were shot by the accused or shot by subordinate members of the ADF [Australian Defence Force] in the presence of, and acting on the orders of, the accused,” Commissioner Krissy Barrett said.. In 2020, a landmark investigation known as the Brereton Report found “credible evidence” that elite Australian soldiers unlawfully killed 39 people in Afghanistan, recommending 19 current or former ADF members be investigated.. A specialist team – called the Office of the Special Investigator (OSI) – was set up to do so. It has charged only one other person so far.. Ross Barnett, director of investigations at OSI, said Roberts-Smith’s arrest was a “significant step” under “challenging circumstances”.. Getty Images. “The OSI has been tasked with investigating literally dozens of murders alleged to have been committed in the middle of a war zone in a country 9,000km from Australia,” he said.. “We can’t go to that country, we don’t have access to the crime scenes… We don’t have photographs, site plans, measurements, the recovery of projectiles, blood spatter analysis… We don’t have access to the deceased.”. Barrett added that allegations of misconduct were confined to “a very small section of our trusted and respected ADF”.. “The majority of the ADF do our country proud,” she said.. Earlier on Tuesday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he would not comment on the case as it is before the courts.. “[It] is very important that there not be political engagement,” he said.. In a  

​ Little sign of breakthrough as Trump’s Iran deadline nears. 10 hours ago. Anthony ZurcherNorth America correspondent. Getty Images. US President Donald Trump has set deadlines, made demands and issued threats over the course of the five-week joint US-Israeli war against Iran. But seldom have they been this explicit.. The new round of strikes against Iran will be devastating. They will begin at 20:00 Washington DC time on Tuesday (00:00 GMT on Wednesday) . Within four hours, every bridge and power plant in the nation will be “decimated”.. “Very little is off-limits,” Trump said on Monday.. To avoid this fate, according to the president, Iran has to make a deal “that’s acceptable to me”. A component of the agreement should include “free traffic of oil” through the Strait of Hormuz.. Trump threatens to take out Iran in ‘one night’ if no deal before deadline. Trump issues expletive-laden threat to Iran over Hormuz Strait blockage. As the final hours tick down, there has been little indication that Iran is ready to agree to Trump’s ultimatum. They’ve rejected a temporary ceasefire and issued their own list of demands, which a US official described as “maximalist”.. This places the US president in a delicate position. If there is no agreement, Trump could extend his deadline – for the fourth time in the past three weeks.. But backing away after such detailed threats, punctuated with expletives and dire warnings, could undercut his credibility as the war grinds on.. It’s possible Iran, and the rest of the world, could conclude that despite America’s military might and tactical skill – readily displayed in this weekend’s intricate operation to rescue two downed airmen deep in Iran – it is not negotiating from a clear position of strength.. “We won,” Trump insisted during a news conference on Monday afternoon. “They are militarily defeated. The only thing they have is the psychology of: ‘Oh, we’re going to drop a couple of mines in the water’.”. That “psychology” – the ability to deter oil tankers from moving through the Strait of Hormuz with drones, missiles and mines – may be a more potent Iranian asset than the US has been willing to acknowledge.. During Monday’s news conference, Trump marvelled at US military precision on display in last year’s “Midnight Hammer” bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear sites, the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January and this weekend’s rescue mission.. He and his national security team celebrated that most recent effort – which included co-ordinating hundreds of aircraft and elite military personnel, and employing misdirection and technological wizardy. But the effort, while remarkable, was to avoid what Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth acknowledged was a “potential tragedy”.. Even if that tragedy had been averted, the triumphant rescue underlined the risk US forces still face in Iran. And the president may be learning that US military power has its limits.. “We can bomb the hell out of them,” he   

​ Nine policemen sentenced to death in India over Covid custody killings. 12 hours ago. George Wrightand. Anbarasan Ethirajan,global affairs correspondent. AFP via Getty Images. Nine police officers have been sentenced to death in India over the deaths in custody of a father and son in 2020.. P Jeyaraj, 58, and his son Benicks, 38, both died in jail in the southern state of Tamil Nadu – days after they were detained for allegedly keeping their mobile phone shop open in breach of lockdown rules during the Covid-19 pandemic.. The two men were stripped and ruthlessly assaulted in front of each other, the sentencing judge said on Monday – describing the case as a clear abuse of authority.. “They did this with the intention of killing,” he said.. The officers, who were found guilty of murder last month, will be able to appeal against their sentences.. “They attacked unarmed people. They should not be forgiven. They should not be given lesser sentences based on their age or family background. They are all educated,” the judge also said of the officers at sentencing.. Ten police officers in total were arrested over the brutal deaths of the father and son but one of the accused died of Covid in 2020.. The case triggered protests in Tamil Nadu, with state opposition lawmakers among those who took to the streets.. Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi and Indian cricket star Shikhar Dhawan were among those who demanded justice for the two men on social media.. The deaths also brought the issue of police brutality in India back into the limelight.. Rights groups say hundreds of people die while in custody in India every year. They point out that torture and abuse to extract confessions from suspects have become part of policing.. Earlier this year, several UN experts called on India to undertake major reforms to modernise policing in line with international human rights standards.. Outrage grows over deaths in Indian police custody. Five policemen arrested over India custody deaths. India