Fury over Viktor Orbán’s decision to veto the European Union’s €90 billion loan for Ukraine burst into the open on Thursday as leaders castigated, one by one, in the harshest terms yet, the “unacceptable” behaviour of the Hungarian prime minister.

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The condemnation was led by António Costa, the usually mild-mannered president of the European Council, whose authority is being directly challenged by Orbán’s disruption.

“The leaders took the floor to condemn the attitude from Viktor Orbán, to remember that a deal is a deal and all the leaders need to honour that word,” Costa said at the end of the summit, venting months of frustration over the antics of the Hungarian.

“Nobody can blackmail the European Council. Nobody can blackmail the European Union institutions,” he told reporters after being questioned by Euronews, insisting that the loan will be paid out as agreed last December. Still, Orbán doubled down on his veto.

Separately, Costa praised Ukraine’s efforts to repair the Druzhba pipeline and allow an EU-led inspection on site in line with demands by Hungary and Slovakia just days before the summit, despite the fact that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was personally against reinstating transit of Russian oil through Ukraine as the war continues.

Orbán insists that Ukraine has purposely sabotaged the pipeline to orchestrate an energy crisis ahead of a tight election on April 12. Zelenskyy says the allegation is unfounded but has also lashed out in public at Orbán in multiple occasions.

Costa, according to a diplomat, said both must tone down the rhetoric, but also noted that Hungary is putting on the table impossible conditions, such as ensuring the safety of transit, while Russia keeps pounding Ukraine with missiles and drones.

“This is not acting in good faith, when you put a condition that neither the European Union nor the member states can ensure,” Costa said.

“Because only Russia is willing to decide if they try again to destroy the Druzhba pipeline,” he added, noting Moscow has attacked it more than 20 times since 2022.

“And of course, it is not the responsibility of Ukraine, the Commission, the European Council or any member state.”

In an effort to break the impasse, Brussels announced two days before the summit that Ukraine had allowed an external inspection and the EU would provide funding to fix the pipeline. But the pressure on Zelenskyy to approve the on-site mission failed to get the Hungarian leader to change his mind.

And it now poses a direct threat to the credibility of the institutions, the functioning of the EU and the top leadership from Costa to Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen.

On Thursday evening, von der Leyen said Hungary, alongside Slovakia and the Czech Republic, agreed at the highest political level to go ahead with the loan in December in exchange for being financially exempted.

“That condition has been fulfilled. So let us be clear about where we stand: the loan remains blocked because one leader is not honouring his word,” she said.

“But let me reiterate what I already said in Kyiv: we will deliver one way or the other.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz also accused Orbán of an “act of serious disloyalty” that should be prevented in the future, changing voting rules if necessary.

French President Emmanuel Macron called for the December deal to be respected and warned that concerns about energy security “must not be instrumentalised”.

Sweden’s Ulf Kristersson, Austria’s Christian Stocker and Belgium’s Bart De Wever were among those who criticised Orbán for exploiting the dispute with Kyiv for his re-election campaign, which has taken an explosive tone in its final stretch.

High Representative Kaja Kallas went further, questioning the motivations of the veto and the Hungarian arguments: “I guess, in the time of elections, people are not that rational.”

No backing down

A roundtable session described as “heated and tense” by diplomats was not enough to get Orbán to back down. If anything, he doubled down. And leaders quickly understood the veto will most certainly remain until the Hungarian elections take place.

After the summit, the Hungarian leader went a step beyond and suggested Brussels is working with Ukraine to force a pro-Brussels government in Budapest.

“The European institutions, including parts of the Commission and the European Parliament, would like to have a change of government in Hungary. And they finance it,” he said as he departed the meeting.

The accusations are not new, but they are serious as they imply political meddling. As the campaign enters its final weeks, Orbán is intensifying his attacks on his opponent, Péter Magyar, as a puppet candidate of von der Leyen and Zelenskyy.

Before leaving Brussels, he vowed to “no money for Ukraine” until the oil flows are back and claimed he “had defended the Hungarian national interest by breaking the blockade”.

The Hungarian veto comes at a precarious time for Europe.

The United States, under President Donald Trump, has cut off all assistance to Ukraine, leaving Europeans to pick up the tab alone.

The €90 billion loan agreed in December, following contentious talks among leaders, serves as the backbone of Ukraine’s budget needs for 2026 and 2027. Without it, Ukrainian authorities have warned they may not be able to make ends meet, and that could have serious repercussions on the battlefield.

Under the original plan, Kyiv was supposed to receive the first payment in early April to avoid a sudden cut-off in foreign assistance. But the veto, coupled with the Hungarian vote, has thrown that timeline into disarray.

Although opinion polls show Orbán trailing Magyar by double digits, he could still win as the gap narrows ahead of the vote and prolong the veto even further.

To make matters more difficult, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, whose country is also connected to Druzhba, has warned that he will continue the blockage if Orbán loses the elections and the pipeline is not repaired.

The dispute poses an exceptionally complex challenge for Brussels, which is caught between safeguarding energy security for member states and supporting Ukraine.

For António Costa, the person tasked with ensuring that decisions taken by EU leaders are upheld, Orbán’s defiance threatens to undercut his authority.

“It’s completely unacceptable what Hungary is doing,” Costa said on Thursday. “And this behaviour cannot be accepted by the leaders.”

NEW YORK (AP) — For decades, the strongest evidence for the earliest human settlement in the Americas came from a site in Chile called Monte Verde.

Scientists found echoes of human presence dating back to around 14,500 years ago, including footprints, wooden tools, foundations for a building and the remains of an ancient fire pit. They dated sediments and artifacts from the site to this time frame.

A new study challenges the age of this important site, suggesting Monte Verde might be much younger than scientists thought. But not everyone agrees with the findings.

Scientists sampled and dated sediments from nine areas along the Chinchihuapi Creek by the site and analyzed how the landscape changed over thousands of years. They uncovered a layer of volcanic ash from an eruption dating back to about 11,000 years ago.

Anything above that layer — in this case, the Monte Verde wood and artifacts — had to be younger, according to study co-author Claudio Latorre.

“We basically reinterpreted the geology of the site. And we came to the conclusion that the Monte Verde site cannot be older than 8,200 years before present,” said Latorre, who works at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.

The researchers think changes to the landscape, including a stream wearing down the rocks, may have mixed old layers with new, causing researchers to date ancient wood as part of the Monte Verde site.

The findings were published Thursday in the journal Science. Several scientists, including those involved with the original excavations, take issue with the results.

“They have provided, at best, a working hypothesis that is not supported by the data they presented,” said Michael Waters of Texas A&M University, who had no role in either study.

Experts not involved with the research say the study includes analysis of samples from the area surrounding Monte Verde, where the geology isn’t comparable to the site itself. And they say there’s not enough evidence that the layer of volcanic ash once covered the entire landscape.

They also say the study doesn’t offer a sufficient explanation for the artifacts found at the site that have been directly dated to 14,500 years ago, including a mastodon tusk fashioned into a tool, a wooden lance and a digging stick with a burned tip.

“This interpretation disregards a vast body of well-dated cultural evidence,” archaeologist Tom Dillehay of Vanderbilt University, who led the site’s first excavation, said in an email.

The new study’s authors disagree with these criticisms, saying they sampled within, upstream and downstream of the site. And there’s not enough evidence that the dated artifacts at the site really are that old, said co-author Todd Surovell, of the University of Wyoming.

The Monte Verde site is critical to scientists’ understanding of how people got to the Americas. Scientists used to think the first arrivals were a group of people 13,000 years ago who made tipped stone tools known as Clovis points. The discovery and dating of Monte Verde, which was initially mired in controversy, appeared to put that to rest.

It’s unclear how a new date for the site might affect the human story. Since Monte Verde, researchers have uncovered sites in North America that predate the Clovis people, such as Cooper’s Ferry in Idaho and the Debra L. Friedkin site in Texas.

But another big question is how, exactly, people got to the Americas from Asia, maneuvering south of two massive ice sheets covering Canada. Did humans arrive in time for the sheets to part, revealing an ice-free corridor? Did they travel along the coast in boats, or over a mix of water and land?

A revised date for Monte Verde could reopen discussions about the most likely route by early humans, said Surovell. Future independent analyses of other early human sites could provide more clarity.

“Given enough time and given the ability to do science, science is self-corrective,” Surovell said. “It eventually reaches the truth.”

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

A retired U.S. general predicted that “neither Israel nor the U.S. will fully succeed in replacing the Iranian regime.” 

Former Lt. Gen. Mark Schwartz was quoted by the Israel Hayom newspaper as making the remark. The joint U.S. and Israeli missions against Iran, named Operation Epic Fury and Operation Roaring Lion, are in their 20th day Thursday.

“In my professional assessment, neither Israel nor the U.S. will fully succeed in replacing the Iranian regime. The main reason is that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of Iranian religious leaders who can replace the Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah, if he is eliminated,” Schwartz told Israel Hayom. 

“No matter how many successors you kill one after another, there will always be another one in line. Iran’s intelligence and security apparatus, the Revolutionary Guards, and the Iranian military also have depth. They are capable of replacing the top of the organization if it is destroyed,” he reportedly added. 

IRAN’S SUPREME LEADER MOJTABA KHAMENEI ‘MISFUNCTIONING,’ NOT CONTROLLING REGIME: SOURCES 

Schwartz is a career Green Beret who served in the U.S. Army for 33 years, according to The National Special Forces Green Beret Memorial, where he is the chairman of the advisory board.  

The organization said, “During his career, Mark served throughout the Middle East, Europe, and North Africa,” and, “He has had the opportunity to lead strategic planning and operations working with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the United Nations, the European Union, and the United States Agency for International Development.” 

PENTAGON SEEKS AT LEAST $200 BILLION FROM CONGRESS FOR IRAN WAR 

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had warned Wednesday that if the Iranian regime survives Operation Epic Fury, “it will likely seek to begin a yearslong effort to rebuild its military, missiles and UAV forces.”   

Gabbard also said the intelligence community “assesses that Operation Epic Fury is advancing fundamental change in the region that began with Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7th, 2023, and continued with the 12-day war last year, resulting in weakening Iran and its proxies.”   

The campaign so far has resulted in the killing of former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has been replaced by his son, Mojtaba Khamenei.