During his 15 years in power, Hungary's Viktor Orban (pictured above) has become the model for other would-be authoritarian strongman leaders, including President Donald Trump. Driven by a conservative nationalist agenda, his Fidesz Party has transformed Hungary into a self-declared "illiberal state." But now, said Bloomberg, Europe's longest-serving premier is "facing the toughest political challenge to his rule."

What did the commentators say?
Orban's power is "indeed now under threat but not in the way, or from the people, one might expect," said BBC Budapest correspondent Nick Thorpe. Peter Magyar is a former Fidesz insider who emerged as a surprise challenger in early 2024, after he spoke out against a child sexual abuse cover-up that led to the resignation of the Fidesz president. Since then, the 44-year-old conservative has toured the country, calling out rampant nepotism and corruption while highlighting the perilous state of the economy and declining public services. 

The key to Magyar's appeal, said law professor Maciej Kisilowski in The Japan Times, is that although he "broke with Orban's authoritarian 'mafia state,' he did not abandon many of the conservative values that Orban represents." Boosted by his savvy and, at times, irreverent use of social media, Magyar represents an emerging "far-right-lite" in Europe, in the mold of Italy's Giorgia Meloni, that minimizes its "most harmful geopolitical, economic and environmental" policies while still playing to the "deeply entrenched nativist and anti-intellectual sentiments of today's conservative voters." 

This strategy appears to be paying dividends. Recent polling has Magyar's Tisza Party surging to a massive 15-point lead over Fidesz, up from a nine-point lead in March, said Bloomberg. Orban's "formula of bashing gays, migrants and the European Union seems to have stopped working," for the time being at least, said The Economist.

What next?
Orban is still expected to seek a fifth term in parliamentary elections in April 2026. But for the first time, he has broached the topic of succession, which was until now "largely taboo within Fidesz circles," said Bloomberg. "When the time comes, we will manage," he said to pro-government newspaper Magyar Nemzet on Monday, adding that the notion that only he could lead Fidesz is a "myth."

Humans will likely go extinct eventually, leaving behind a planet that will have to adjust in their wake. And while there's no true consensus as to what a human-free world will look like, there are a number of theories.

What will the Earth look like?
It's most likely that humans will be the cause of their demise. While there's a "chance our species can survive the effects of climate change, it looks increasingly likely that we and many other living things will go extinct," said JV Chamary at the BBC. While warmer surface and ocean temperatures will affect biodiversity long into the future, without humans, an ice age may hit the planet. 

Humans would "leave mountains of waste that would persist for thousands of years, poisoning, trapping, cutting and harming other species," said The Spectator. The houses and buildings left behind would be "destroyed by termites, and creepers would grow through the cracks, causing the wood to rot and eventually collapse," said Science ABC. 

What would happen to other species?
"Natural selection will drive some populations to split into distinct species," said the BBC. "This 'adaptive radiation' is why mammals diversified after dinosaurs died out." 

Perhaps a new dominant species could take control. Some experts have suggested that the octopus could become the next big species after humans because of its potential for "filling an ecological niche in a post-human world," said Tim Coulson, an Oxford University biologist, at The European. 

How would the Earth recover?
While the Earth would go through turmoil in the immediate aftermath of human extinction, in "a thousand years, the world you remember would still be vaguely recognizable," said Basmajian. "Some things would remain." 

Chances are, the loss of humans will be a positive for nature. One example: Air pollution improved during the Covid-19 pandemic due to protocols during the lockdown. 

"We often see biodiversity recovering after major mass extinctions within roughly 2 million to 5 million years," said Erin Saupe, a palaeobiologist at Oxford University, to the BBC. Ultimately, human extinction would "reveal something about the way we treated the Earth," said Basmajian. It would also "show us that the world we have today can't survive without us and that we can't survive if we don't care for it."