Russia has launched a huge strike on Ukraine’s energy facilities and military infrastructure, Russian news agencies report, citing the Ministry of Defence.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday said Russian forces launched about 120 missiles and 90 drones in a “massive” combined air attack – one of the largest barrages of the near-three-year war.

A Russian drone attack on the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv killed at least two people and wounded six others, including children, Zelenskyy said, adding that “all areas” were left without power.

Explosions were heard across Ukraine on Sunday, including the capital, Kyiv, the key southern port of Odesa, and the country’s west and central regions, according to local reports.

Eight people have been killed and 17 others wounded in a knife attack at a vocational school in Wuxi city, eastern China, police said.

The attack occurred at the Wuxi Vocational Institute of Arts and Technology in Yixing County at about 6:30pm local time (10:30 GMT), the Yixing police said in a statement.

Police said the suspect was a 21-year-old former student at the school, who was meant to graduate this year, but had failed his exams.

“He returned to the school to express his anger and commit these murders,” police said, adding that the suspect had confessed.

This is the second deadly attack within a week after a man drove his car into people at a sport facility in the southern city of Zhuhai, leaving 35 people dead and injuring 43 others.

And there has been a spate of other attacks in recent months.

In October, in Shanghai, a man killed three people and wounded 15 others in a knife attack at a supermarket.

And the month before, a Japanese schoolboy was fatally stabbed in the southern city of Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong.

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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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Tokyo police arrested a 65-year-old American man Wednesday on suspicion of property damage after he allegedly carved letters into the wooden pillar of a torii gate at the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward.

The suspect, identified as Steve Lee Hayes, whose address and occupation are unknown, has admitted to the allegations. He reportedly admitted that he “wrote his family members’ names.”

Keir Starmer said he would defend the budget “all day long” at the Welsh Labour conference, amid protests by farmers outside the venue.

In his first address to the Welsh Labour conference since taking power, the prime minister went on to hail a “path of change” with Labour governments in Wales and Westminster.

“Make no mistake, I will defend our decisions in the budget all day long,” he said. “I will defend facing up to the harsh light of fiscal reality.

[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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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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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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In one of the conversations early on Oct. 7, General Gil told the prime minister that hundreds of Hamas operatives had started behaving in a way that suggested that they may be about to invade Israel, according to three officials briefed on the investigation. The timing of that call is one of the details that is said to have been changed in the official transcripts.

The content and timing of these calls are important because they could help shape the way that Mr. Netanyahu is seen by both voters and historians.

For more than a year, Mr. Netanyahu has denied being briefed in advance about the invasion. He has avoided setting up a state inquiry to assess the culpability of Israel’s military and political leaders, including himself.