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INTERVIEW: Sorority hosting ‘Fall into Wellness’ health fair and blood drive
As the seasons change, Midlands residents are encouraged to prioritize preventive health and give back to local hospitals during an upcoming community wellness event.
Insurance Coverage Lags as Cancer Science, Treatment Move Forward
Health insurance may not cover experimental targeted therapies for rare cancers, which do not have an established standard of care.
Fact check: What are U.S. Senate candidates’ stances on data centers in KS race?
As some communities seek to leverage projects to offset local taxes, others are preparing to vote on proposals to ban data center developments outright.
EJN and Schmidt Ocean Institute Train Brazilian Journalists on Ocean Science, Governance and Data Reporting
The ocean covers more than 70% of the planet, yet much of it remains poorly understood by the public and underreported in the media. To help journalists strengthen their coverage of marine issues and
Forced Eviction of 87-Year-Old Woman Spurs Outrage in Spain
Demonstrations broke out across the country over the woman’s eviction in Madrid, putting rising rents and affordability at the top of the political conversation.
Big business warns Trump against diesel export ban in joint letter
The national average for a gallon of diesel reached $6.51 on Thursday, nearly $3 more than the same period a year ago, according to data from AAA.
Ohio advocates hope data plus relationships will equal better health for moms and babies
Organizations in Ohio's biggest metros reveal what they've learned so far from a new initiative to combat the long-running tragedy of too many mothers and babies dying preventable deaths amid persistent barriers.
California senator proposes tax to discourage price gouging at the pump
With gas prices spiking and diesel prices at an all-time high, Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., says he is introducing legislation to discourage oil companies from price gouging at the pump
California senator proposes tax to discourage price gouging at the pump
With gas prices spiking and diesel prices at an all-time high, Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., says he is introducing legislation to discourage oil companies from price gouging at the pump
California senator proposes tax to discourage price gouging at the pump
With gas prices spiking and diesel prices at an all-time high, Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., says he is introducing legislation to discourage oil companies from price gouging at the pump
Jamie Chadwick tests F1 car for first time with Williams run in Portugal in 'best day of my life so far'
Three-time W Series champion and Sky Sports F1 pundit completed 32 laps in Williams 2025 car in the Algarve this week; watch the full story of Jamie Chadwicks Williams test across Sky Sports F1s coverage of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix
Harvard Business School announces 2026 Goldsmith Fellows
Harvard Business School (HBS) has announced the 2026 recipients of its Horace W. Goldsmith Fellowships. Established in 1988 by the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation and Ronay and Richard L. Menschel (MBA 1959), a former director of the foundation and a limited partner at Goldman Sachs, to encourage students from the nonprofit and public sectors to attend HBS, these fellowships enable the School to award $10,000 to a select number of incoming MBA students for each of the two years of the MBA Program.
Judge orders White House to restore access to CNN, MS NOW and Politico. Reporters say they're still blocked
The back-and-forth is the latest in an extraordinary showdown between Trump and media outlets whose coverage he dislikes.
Is metascience being co-opted?
In July, the White House released a report that argued academia is deeply dysfunctional and in need of radical reform.Science: A New Golden Age sets out a litany of problems many academics will recognise: interminable waits for grants; short-term funding rather than support for longer, more ambitious projects; ballooning administrative requirements; pressure to publish, and many more. “The scientific machine is getting bogged down,” it says. At least on the face of it, Science: A New Golden Age is a triumph for the metascience movement, a loose-knit, global group of academics, philanthropists and think tankers that want far more testing and experimentation in how we fund public research and innovation. The report tells US research funders to set up internal metascience units to do just this. But it has also set alarm bells ringing that metascience is being conveniently deployed to help justify the defunding of US universities, which US vice president JD Vance has openly labelled “the enemy.” “Just because you have an issue with your plumbing in your house doesn't mean you light the entire house on fire and burn it to the ground,” said Colette Delawalla, chief executive of Stand Up for Science, a group campaigning against what it says are attacks on scientists by the Trump administration. No one is arguing that academia doesn’t need reform, but there’s debate over how far and how fast the system should be shaken up. Does public R&D need slow and steady evidence-based adjustment, or radical new experiments?One of the key arguments in Science: A New Golden Age is that there’s not enough funding for what it calls “mid-level” science: engineering-heavy projects that require tens of millions of dollars, involve ten to a hundred people, and last around five years. Such a project might develop a brain-computer interface for people with Alzheimer's disease, for example. As such, the US National Science Foundation (NSF) has already announced $1.5 billion to set up so-called X-Labs, effectively new research organisations to pursue breakthroughs in areas such as quantum sensing and new scientific instruments. Funding divertedBut there’s a catch: this money has squeezed NSF budgets for more traditional, fundamental research grants, Science reported in June, likely meaning less cash for university-based scientists. Science: A New Golden Age also makes various swipes at universities, accusing them of extracting overheads from scientists to fund administrative bloat. “We have become dependent on a narrow set of legacy institutions,” it says. The report doesn’t mention it, but the US government is simultaneously seeking greater powers over federal funding, which would allow political appointees at funding agencies to screen or cancel research grants mid-project. The White House is also seeking to slash the NSF’s budget by more than half in 2027, although similar cuts proposed for 2026 were blocked by Congress. Convenient hookThis has worried some that the metascience agenda could be misused as a kind of smokescreen to further weaken universities. James Wilsdon, executive director of the Research on Research Institute at University College London, said that the report contains lots of “interesting ideas” and agrees that in places, academia is a “pretty broken system.” But the risk is that metascience is being deployed as a “convenient hook” to support cuts and a “political land grab” to transfer grant power from scientists to political appointees in US funding agencies.So far, the metascience agenda hasn’t been seized on by radical right parties in Europe. But Wilsdon worries it will cross the Atlantic, politicising research reform efforts and making them more difficult to carry out. The report is already making some in Europe sceptical of the entire idea. “The system is not without flaws, but the metascience discussion is not likely to improve the system but rather to generate munition to undermine it,” said Claes de Vreese, a professor of AI and society at the University of Amsterdam. Peter Thiel protégéOfficially, Science: A New Golden Age has just one named author: Michael Kratsios, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and a former chief of staff to Silicon Valley mogul Peter Thiel. He also served as chief financial officer of Thiel’s Clarium Capital Management. Since the 1990s, Thiel has criticised US universities for moving away from teaching what he views as the classic works of western civilisation, and drifting towards “anti-Western zealotry.” And since 2011, he has offered two-year fellowships of $250,000 to young people to skip or drop out of university, and instead start companies or pursue scientific research. “College can be good for learning about what’s been done before, but it can also discourage you from doing something new,” according to the Thiel Fellowships website. In other areas, the Trump administration has promoted academics with a longstanding interest in metascience. For example, the head of the National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya, in 2020 co-authored a study arguing the funder backs overly conservative proposals, although he achieved wider prominence as a critic of pandemic lockdowns. Careless talk costs fundingEven before the Trump administration embraced the metascience agenda, some metascientists privately wondered whether they should be careful not to overstate dysfunctions in academia, in case this gets used as ammunition against universities. But others think being cautious with criticism is pointless. After all, last year, the Trump administration sought to cut funding from US universities on an entirely different premise: supposed antisemitism on campus. “I don't think these governments need a technical metascientific excuse to attack the universities, they will want to do so anyway,” said Will Stone, a researcher at Science Works, a new think tank advocating for a “metascience revolution” in the UK. “I think researchers should report what they find, even when the findings may be used to advance policies they disagree with,” echoed Russell Funk, a researcher at the University of Minnesota, who in 2023 co-authored a highly influential paper that argued scientific papers were becoming less disruptive over time. No justificationThat said, Funk thinks that metascientific research certainly doesn’t justify a weakening of universities. Instead, scientists need “time, resources and stability to pursue unfamiliar ideas,” he said. “Taking away those conditions works against the very goal the reforms are supposed to achieve.”The Institute for Progress, a Washington DC-based innovation policy think tank that has championed X-Labs and metascience units, also says that reforms should complement, not supplant, universities. “Unpredictable, unreliable, and reduced federal funding to researchers is destabilising to the very foundations of research and development and is bad,” said Jenn Gustetic, the institute’s director of metascience and R&D policy.Evolution or revolution?This points to a much bigger divide in the metascience community: how far and how fast should public R&D be shaken up? Does it need evolution or revolution? For example, Science: A New Golden Age says the science system relies too heavily on traditional “workhorse” project grants, the type that pay out around $250,000 a year to fund “hypothesis-driven science by small teams on tractable questions.” However, in criticising project grants, the report “decisively picks one side of a debate that is far from settled,” David Hilmer Rex, a metascientist based in Denmark, has written. In June, Pierre Azoulay, a metascientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, defended project grants, saying that the alternative of X-Labs “merits scepticism.”A-B testingOne challenge in metascience is that it’s easier to generate evidence for some types of change than others. Most straightforwardly, research funders can run A-B tests on different ways of awarding money. For example, Germany’s Volkswagen Foundation recently trialled distributed peer review, where applicants rate each other’s proposals, and measured its results against traditional review panels. Distributed peer review made quicker decisions, although awarded money to largely different ideas. However, much of the focus of the metascience movement has been on founding fast-moving and free-acting new research organisations and funders, in contrast to the alleged stodginess of mainstream academia or public innovation grants. A culture of speed and freedom are the animating principles behind Germany’s Sprind or the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria).Related articlesViewpoint: it's time to experiment with how Europe funds science European researchers sound the alarm that Trump rule changes will hit cooperationHowever, while it’s possible to closely study previously successful bodies, such as the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), for historical clues to their secret sauce, it’s impossible to guarantee in advance that the likes of Sprind or Aria will actually work as hoped. But advocates of new organisations say this inherent uncertainly shouldn’t stop us trying. “If we wait for definitive proof that something will work before we try it, I don't know where your proof is coming from,” said Stone. Trade-offsUp until now, experiments in metascience haven’t generally come with hard trade-offs over money. In the US, new ideas such as focused research organisations have often been funded by billionaire philanthropists. In Europe, new innovation agencies such as Sprind and Aria, or the Netherland’s new National Agency for Disruptive Innovation, haven’t needed explicit cuts elsewhere in the research system. But with the $1.5 billion establishment of X-Labs by the NSF, the trade-offs are becoming clearer. Some metascientists privately wonder whether a smaller pilot would have been more appropriate, given that the idea is untested. The Institute for Progress counters that the $1.5 billion X-Labs budget is spread out over a decade, so will account for less than 2% of the NSF’s annual budget. “It’s important to remember that [Darpa] was once an institutional experiment as well. Now it’s one of the most cited innovative funding models in the world,” said Gustetic.As for Europe?The US isn’t the only country placing metascience at the heart of its research strategy. Science: A New Golden Age looks admiringly at the UK, which in 2024 set up a Metascience Unit to scrutinise how it funds research. In Brussels, it’s more of a mixed picture. In 2018, the EU set up the European Innovation Council to funnel grants and equity to start-ups, although it’s sometimes criticised for awarding money too slowly. Recently, the council has started experimenting with challenges, where teams of inventors compete to overcome a technological challenge. The European Commission also wants to experiment with partially randomising grant winners, to cut down on bureaucracy. However, the Commission’s own advisers have said the EU’s own research schemes are too conventional. They want the Commission to establish a new dedicated unit to scrutinise and experiment with funding. But there’s no sign of a such unit emerging in Brussels’ plans for the next Horizon Europe programme, which from 2028 is set to distribute more than €160 billion over seven years. Sam Bogerd, director of breakthrough innovation at the Brussels-based Arq Foundation, an AI-focused think tank that also looks at metascience, says that Europe might have the opposite problem to the US: universities and basic research funding are still reasonably well supported, but there’s not enough experimentation. “We're not taking a close enough look at where this money can achieve the most, and I am worried that the good ideas around metascience will be tainted politically by their association with the Trump administration,” he said. He’s still lobbying for the Commission to set up an experimental unit. But in the meantime, the Arq Foundation plans to do its own research, and is currently hiring two metascience researchers to run the rule over how Brussels spends research funding.
Smurfit Westrock to Acquire CMPC's Chilean Containerboard and Corrugated Business for $420 Million
Smurfit Westrock has announced its agreement to acquire the Chilean Containerboard and Corrugated business of Empresas CMPC S.A. for $420 million
Mental and Behavioral Health Profiles – Memorial Regional Hospital’s Outpatient Behavioral Health Center
Encouraged by growing awareness of mental health and continued progress in reducing stigma, Laura Pawlicki, LCSW, believes compassionate care begins with building trust. As a social worker at Memorial Regional Hospital’s Outpatient Behavioral Health Center, she is committed to helping individuals and families navigate life’s challenges and improve their well-being and quality of life. “Mental […]
Greek PM urges 'courage' in talks with UK over Parthenon Marbles
Greece's Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Thursday called for "political will and courage" to resolve the country's protracted battle with Britain over returning the prized Parthenon Marbles to A...
Emily Fox signs new Arsenal contract
Arsenal have announced that defender Emily Fox has signed a new contract with the club.The American first joined the Gunners from North Carolina Courage midway through the 2023/24 campaign.Since then...
Why are trading cards surging again? Average collectors, wealthy investors seeing value
Trading cards likely generated well over $1 billion in sales in August alone, pushing the once sleepy hobby into uncharted waters.
Opinion: Kobach's politics of tragedy underline our nation's immigrant crime double standard
When a native-born American commits a murder, we generally understand the concept of individuality perfectly well. We ask about motive, rage, domestic conflict, ideology, drugs, mental illness, opportunity or the peculiar facts of that person's life.
Global bond sell-off deepens amid fears US economy may be running too hot
Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news
Urban Edge Network | Live College Sports, Highlights & Originals
Watch live college sports, full schedules, highlights, school coverage, and original programming on Urban Edge Network.
Los Alamos Small Business, Wolf & Mermaid Enchanted Cafe, Selected As New Food And Beverage Contractor For National Laboratory
Pictured at the fireside chat panel September 15 at Northern New Mexico College are, from left, Pat Vanderpool – Executive Director of the Regional Development Corporation, Scott Baird –…
Hands-on science can be cool
After spending many long days conducting experiments to find a new way to combat bacterial infections in crops, Misha Hegde and Mia Soleil Maurer have been rewarded with international recognition and access to top research facilities. But these are not typical scientists. They are 16-year-old German high school students.“Our supervisor told us that in order to start a project, you need to begin with either a question or a problem,” says Misha, adding that she and Mia had read about antibiotic resistance in certain plants being treated for bacterial infections. “We found out that antibiotics overuse is very common in agriculture,” explains Mia. “Our aim was to create an alternative to antibiotics and to try to raise awareness of the problem of overusing antibiotics.”Their subsequent research has focused on harnessing bacteriophages, the natural predators of bacteria, to eliminate pathogens threatening food crops treated with antibiotics. At the Schuldorf Bergstraße Jugend forscht MakerLab in Seeheim-Jugenheim, located in the German state of Hesse, they discovered a novel phage that infects the Rhizobium rhizogenes bacterium, which causes the hairy root disease that can reduce yields of tomatoes, carrots, soya beans and other food staples.The students believe their method could curb antibiotic use, while protecting plants from infections without disturbing the natural soil microbiome. “The application of phages is host-specific, so they would only kill the targeted pathogen or disease-causing bacteria,” explains Mia. It may also offer environmental benefits, since applying antibiotics can contaminate groundwater.Getting to this point has not been easy. The childhood friends admit to feeling frustrated when their trials did not yield the expected results. “We spent six months on our first experiment, just doing the same thing over and over and over again, to the point where we thought, is it even worth it? Why are we doing this?” Misha says. “You just need to be brave enough to take that first step and keep going.”The benefits of inquiry-based learningTheir determination has paid off. In 2025, the pair won first prize in biology at Jugend forscht, Germany’s national competition for young people interested in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. They were also among the winners of the German Research Foundation Europa-Preis, which is awarded to selected national winners at Jugend forscht, and took third place in the 2025 European Union Contest for Young Scientists.The Jugend forscht Foundation opens doors for young people to connect with scientists as well as industry professionals. Jessica Bönsch, executive director of the Foundation, sees Misha and Mia as prime examples of how young people can develop a deeper understanding of science through their own research projects. “The experience of working on your own research question is very important,” she explains, adding that “inquiry-based learning engages with real-life problems in a way that can be more motivating than traditional classroom teaching.”The Jugend forscht Foundation offers financial support through sponsor pools in Germany’s federal states. Some projects are developed in cooperation with student research centres, university labs or informal collaborative learning areas called makerspaces. Other activities start as hands-on “garage projects” and can grow within the Jugend forscht network and infrastructure.The Jugend forscht Foundation is also a partner of Science Comes to Town, an EU initiative to strengthen public awareness about science and create bridges between researchers and communities. The EU-financed project involves universities, research institutions and other stakeholders in three host cities — Brest (France), Kiel (Germany) and Split (Croatia).“It's so important for people not to live in a bubble, because I think science can be very scary if you misunderstand it,” Mia says of SCTT. The initiative’s aim of raising awareness about science is “absolutely amazing,” Misha adds. “I think it's the best way to kind of make science digestible for the public. In a world where misinformation in science is getting more radical, more dangerous, becoming more of a threat to the trust in scientific infrastructure and foundations, we need such programmes.”Misha and Mia also believe that SCTT can help break down gender stereotypes in science by encouraging young women to study and pursue careers in scientific fields. Both students have benefited from female mentors and encouragement they had when they were much younger. Mia’s love of science began with a class trip to a lab, while Misha — with a smile on her face — says she wanted to study history until “a teacher kind of coerced me into joining a school science club.”Recognition beyond EuropeIn May, Misha and Mia were among the finalists at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair held in Phoenix, Arizona, and involving nearly 1,700 pre-university students from over 60 countries. “It was very crazy because there were so many people and so many teenagers interested in science,” Mia recalls. The event was also challenging. “It was eight hours of continuously presenting your project,” adds Misha.Attending the fair was a chance for the young women to see first-hand the value of international collaboration as well as how research cultures differ. “America is a bit more willing to take risks, and I think that's something we can learn about here in Europe,” Misha explains. However, she continues, “I think Europe has the talent, has the innovation and has the resources” to be competitive.Misha and Mia plan to continue their phage experiments in the new school year, inspired by the project’s hands-on nature and the support they receive from their supervisors. They have also attracted the interest of professional scientists and received invitations to leading research facilities, including the Centre for Synthetic Microbiology, jointly run by the University of Marburg and the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Germany. “It is so cool that we can do something to try to move the world in our school and at this age,” Mia says.After completing secondary school, Mia plans to study microbiology and pursue a career in medical research, focusing on Ebola and other infectious diseases. “This has been my dream for so long,” she says. Her friend Misha is interested in biological research with a focus on medicine. “I've gotten addicted to the process of going to the lab, planning out experiments, then failing, trying again,” Misha says. “I think there's just so much to be discovered, so much to be done.”The students' names and photos were published with the permission of their parents.Science|Business, which connects policymakers, academics and industry through its news reporting, analysis and events, is an SCTT partner.
Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies VR Announced For Meta VR Glasses & Quest
A new VR release in Capcom's visual novel adventure series brings courtroom drama to Meta VR Glasses and Quest in 2027.
Connecticut launches new tax credit for small businesses offering health coverage
A new tax credit is aimed at helping small businesses save money while getting more people affordable health coverage.
Oracle and Buck Institute for Research on Aging Advance Federal Aging Research Initiative
ORLANDO, Fla., Sept. 23, 2026 — Oracle Health and Life Sciences Summit — Oracle and the Buck Institute for Research on Aging are collaborating to advance intelligence into age-related disease and support discoveries that can extend the healthy years of life. Buck will leverage Oracle Life Sciences Data Intelligence, which encompasses 122 million+ de-identified longitudinal […]
Snap Specs Hands-On: Minimum Viable Consumer True AR Glasses
Snap Specs is optically rough, but with impressive tracking just about passes the minimum bar for first-generation true AR glasses.
Speck hired as chief marketing officer at Hyper Energy Bar
Hyper Energy Bar has named Rebecca Speck chief marketing officer as the drive-thru beverage company expands across the Midwest. Speck will lead the company’s brand and marketing strategy. She most recently served as vice president of strategy and insights at Scooter’s Coffee, where her work included brand growth, menu and product strategy and customer insights.…
Trump administration's ban of three prominent news outlets from White House is in court
The extraordinary showdown between President Donald Trump and media outlets whose coverage he dislikes moved Wednesday to a courtroom in the nation’s capital, where a judge is hearing arguments on whether the president’s move banning three news organizations from White House grounds violates the Constitution.
Political shifts may shape how quickly Germany adopts electric cars and solar power
A new study conducted by the Climate Action Research Lab (CARL) at the University of Freiburg finds that electric cars and photovoltaic systems are less widespread on average in municipalities with strong ...
Time of Use Rate for Small and Medium Businesses Now Available
We’re excited to announce that our Time of Use (TOU) rate option for customers with services on Small and Medium Business rates is now available! Just like the residential TOU rate, this optional rate encourages shifting electricity use away from peak hours, giving your business more ways to manage costs and support a cleaner, more […]
UFC Veteran Encourages Gable Steveson to Leave Jon Jones
UFC veteran Matt Brown has encouraged heavyweight prospect Gable Steveson to leave Jon Jones and find someone else to coach him. Steveson was shockingly defeated by Sean Sharaf on the UFC 331 main card this past Saturday in the biggest upset in UFC history, based on the odds. Following the bout, Steveson left the cage […] The post UFC Veteran Encourages Gable Steveson to Leave Jon Jones appeared first on HEAVY.
ESM Students Earn Spot In Global Science Bank
Seven Eastport-South Manor students have moved beyond the traditional high school science lab, earning a place for their research in a global scientific archive used by professional researchers around the world.
RIC business opportunity forum planned Nov. 12 in Richmond
Richmond International Airport will host its sixth annual POWER Forum Thursday, Nov. 12, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Greater Richmond Convention Center. The free event is designed for businesses interested in airport contracting and procurement opportunities. Sessions will address potential business partnerships, technical assistance, access
New Tax Credit Available For Small Businesses Offering Health Insurance
Eligible businesses, which include those with 50 or fewer employees, can receive a tax credit of up to $1,000 per employee per year when they offer an Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangement (ICHRA) through Access Health CT.
Valkyries first playoff game marks Thrive City’s shift to permanent ‘entertainment zone,’ allowing to-go alcohol
The Valkyries are set to host their first playoff game at Chase Center Sunday and it marks the start of a permanent change at Thrive City, as full-time entertainment zone which allows customers at the bars and restaurants to take alcoholic beverages out into the 11-acre piazza outside the arena.
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Historic Island Park mural reemerges 43 years after its Brattleboro unveiling
BRATTLEBORO — Forty-three years after its original unveiling, portions of a large mural depicting Brattleboro’s long-lost Island Park have emerged from storage at a moment when renewed public interest is
Bethesda President Says Obsidian Will Retain ‘Creative Identity’ Despite Becoming Part Of Bethesda
"The Obsidian leadership team will continue to lead Obsidian"
Ad break during game was unscheduled, says Disney+
Coverage of Arsenal's Women's Champions League opener also featured a dog on set, a vegetable platter and a rotating floor.
Insurance Coverage Lags as Cancer Science, Treatment Move Forward
By Arthur Allen Sep 22, 2026 Mason Henderson with his mother, Tabitha Lowe, in November 2025 during a visit to New York, where Henderson was participating in a clinical trial to treat his brain cancer. Henderson died in May 2026 after a two-year battle with the disease. (Jerry Lowe) Mason Henderson with his mother, Tabitha…
Reform and the UAE – a threat to British politics
By Alex Carlen The United Arab Emirates likes to present itself as part of the solution to the climate crisis. The oil-rich Gulf state has committed to Net Zero by 2050, hosted COP 28, and even declared “championing climate action” as one of three strategic objectives for this week’s session of the United Nations General Assembly. But behind the scenes the UAE has quietly built one of its closest political relationships in Europe with the party most hostile to climate action in Britain: Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. There is no evidence that the UAE is funding Reform. But a new FairSquare report, Petro-populism: the UAE–Reform threat, published today, documents a growing political relationship that should concern anyone interested in the integrity of British democracy. Reform’s leaders have embraced the UAE’s political model and promoted positions that align closely with the Emirati government’s priorities, while the UAE has given Farage and his party unusually warm access and public backing. What is emerging is not simply a relationship between British politicians and a wealthy Gulf state, but a channel through which an authoritarian government can cultivate political influence here, and abroad. Democracy for Sale relies on its readers. If you already support us, thanks so much. If you don’t, sign up to support fearless independent investigative journalism. Subscribe Back in January, Nigel Farage appeared at a GB News event in Dubai. On the 50th floor of a tower overlooking the luxury resorts and upscale residences of Palm Jumeirah, the Reform leader declared: “I want Clacton to look like this.” At the event – which Farage never declared on his official register of interests – senior Emirati officials mixed with British expats. Farage was keen to flatter. “We recognise you are our friends”, he said, assuring them that “a Brexit London, a Reform London, will remember you.” Controversy surrounding Reform’s finances and its susceptibility to foreign influence have centred around high-profile donations from billionaire crypto donors, and the jailing of Nathan Gill, Reform’s former leader in Wales, for accepting bribes to give pro-Russia speeches. Far less attention has been paid to Reform’s blossoming new alliance with the UAE, an oil-rich authoritarian state with a track record of ruinous anti-democratic interventions. Farage wasn’t always so fond of the UAE. Back in 2023 he called it an “absolute monarchy with an abysmal human rights record.” Now Reform’s hierarchy calls the UAE home. Deputy leader Richard Tice splits his time between his constituency and Dubai and has called on the UK to learn from the UAE. The party’s treasurer Nick Candy runs a firm which has been in partnership with a UAE-state linked firm since 2024. Nadhim Zahawi sits on the board of an Abu Dhabi think tank alongside an array of the most senior UAE officials and is reportedly close to three brothers of the country’s despotic ruler Mohammed Bin Zayed. Reform’s leading lights have effusively praised the UAE’s governance model, defended it from criticism, and advanced its political agenda in the UK. GB News, whose two major shareholders – the Legatum Foundation and Paul Marshall – have strong links to the UAE, has been more than happy to broadcast UAE propaganda and was forced to pay damages in 2025 after airing a false claim about a UK charity by the UAE “disinfluencer” Amjad Taha. The UAE has responded in kind. When the UAE Minister for Foreign Affairs conducted an official visit to the UK in May, Farage was the only non-government figure granted an audience. UAE state media publicised the meeting, and said that they discussed “the strategic relations between the two countries and ways to enhance them in a manner that serves mutual interests.” For the UAE these ‘mutual interests’ largely concern its paranoia over political Islam, and in this regard the UAE-Reform alliance is part of a broad and troubling pattern. Following a crackdown on dissent at home in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, the UAE has offered material and political support to a range of violent and authoritarian actors willing to oppose the Muslim Brotherhood with no regard for the consequences. Its meddling in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, and most notably Sudan, have been devastating. The UAE’s strategy of seeking out partners on the political fringes who it believes will advance its interests is not unique to Britain – it extends beyond the Middle East to Europe and the US. In France, it has offered clandestine support to Marine Le Pen through secret meetings, as well allegedly funding trips to the region after which Le Pen returned with a renewed focus on the UAE’s perceived enemies – Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood. Left-wing opposition leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon has accused the UAE of smearing him and of “encouraging discrimination, hatred or violence”. In the US, the UAE actively supported the rise of Donald Trump, establishing itself as a key ally during both his first and second terms. Around these relationships sits a wider ecosystem of figures willing to amplify UAE narratives, that even extends to Andrew Tate and Tommy Robinson. Subscribe In Britain, the UAE has used a combination of aggressive diplomacy and illicit, disruptive tactics to achieve its policy goal of eliminating any perceived threat from political Islam. In 2012, for instance, it threatened to block billion-pound arms deals with the UK and stop inward investment if David Cameron did not act against the Muslim Brotherhood and rein in the BBC’s coverage of the group – going so far as to suggest, with no supporting evidence, that the group had infiltrated the BBC. It has financed smear campaigns against a high-profile UK charity and funded a mercenary to secretly surveil, and possibly assassinate, a British national on British soil. In Reform UK, the UAE has finally found an ally willing to not only ban the Muslim Brotherhood, but to publicly vilify the group and repeat the UAE’s claims that dangerous Muslims are a fifth column in British society, a narrative that aligns with the Islamophobia and anti-immigration sentiments that underpin Reform’s populist politics. The Rycroft review into foreign interference concluded that “hostile states and non-state actors have a clear incentive to attempt to undermine UK democracy.” The UAE’s network and alliance with Reform must be understood within that framework. It is a powerful, disruptive and deeply authoritarian actor with the resources and networks to intervene in our politics, and a track-record of doing so in a multitude of other countries. The evidence of the threat the UAE poses is overwhelming. The question is whether parliamentarians are willing to call the UAE out and demand action using the tools that the government has to respond. Placing the UAE on the “Enhanced Tier” of the Foreign Registration scheme alongside Russia and Iran would send a powerful signal to the UAE that its meddling will no longer be tolerated, and would place Farage’s next trips to the UAE under the scrutiny they deserve. Alex Carlen is research and advocacy manager at London based human rights organisation FairSquare and author of its new report Petro-populism: the UAE–Reform threat. Subscribe
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Is 50 the new 60?
Subscribe TL;DR: Younger generations are showing signs of worse health compared to earlier-born cohorts at the same age This backward “drift” is showing up both in mortality risk and chronic disease Worsening trends in obesity and diabetes are the most consistent signals Taking the long view, we’ve made astonishing gains in health and life expectancy in the last century. Global average life expectancy has more than doubled from 32 years in 1900 to 73 years in 2024. (But don’t forget, there were still old people when life expectancy was 32). As people lived longer, they also generally lived healthier along the way. It turns out that avoiding things that can kill you early, like malnutrition and lots of childhood infections, also keeps you healthier later in life. In a classic 2004 paper, Finch and Crimmins proposed that cohorts of children who benefited from fewer early life infections had less lifetime exposure to inflammation and cardiovascular disease later in life, accelerating mortality improvements at older ages. Poor nutrition in the womb has also been linked to a higher risk of later chronic disease. The upshot is that improvements in childhood health can pay dividends many decades later. The combination of better living conditions (nutrition, sanitation) and medical advances (antibiotics, vaccines, blood pressure meds, etc) meant that people’s healthy lifespan generally expanded, even as they lived longer. Aging researchers call this best-case scenario “compression of morbidity”—meaning we delay the onset of disease and disability even faster than the years of life we are adding. During my 20+ year research career, we could generally bank on the idea that younger generations would not only live longer but also keep getting healthier along the way. “60 is the new 50” as they say… Enter “Generational Health Drift” Sadly, this expectation of steady progress may be changing. You’ve probably heard that US life expectancy gains have slowed to a crawl in the past couple of decades. Mortality improvements are also slowing (though less dramatically) in many other high-income countries (you can read more about that in a review paper I wrote here). Mortality is a very blunt health measure, but it is often a good barometer for the broader population health trends happening underneath. And we are now seeing that younger generations may be in worse health at similar ages compared to earlier born cohorts. My collaborator Prof. George Ploubidis at University College London coined this worsening health in more recently born cohorts “generational health drift.” “Generational health drift” is bad news on multiple fronts. Most obviously, we don’t want our health progress to go backward. But the timing is also bad, since our populations are aging. In demographic terms, “population aging” means that the proportion of the population at older ages (i.e >65 years) is increasing. Fun demography fact: Current population aging is not due to the recent declines in the birth rates making the news, but declines in fertility decades ago, after the “baby boom.” As baby boomers reach older ages, the smaller cohorts behind them mean the percentage of older adults will increase. For example, the share of the population age 65 and older in the US increased from 12.4% in 2004 to 18.0% in 2024. This story of population aging was written long ago. Many worry that population aging will put pressure on health care and pension systems. But if people reach older ages in better health than in years past, those fiscal pressures would be less dire than projected. Healthy older people can also continue to contribute to society in many valuable ways, including paid work, caregiving, community service….even high political office 🤷. On the flip side, if younger generations reach retirement age in worse health and with more disabling conditions, this could magnify the societal challenge of population aging. Evidence for worsening generational health A recent paper that I LOVED in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Dr. Leah Abrams and colleagues examined which birth cohorts (aka generations) were behind worsening US mortality. Behold the Lexis diagram (cue swooning demographers). Calendar time is on the x-axis, age on the y-axis. Birth cohorts can be followed over time as they age on the diagonal lines moving up and to the right. This figure plots the year-on-year % change in all-cause mortality at a given age. Green shading indicates mortality improvements over time, white is stagnation, and gray shading indicates worsening mortality. Following the diagonal line for those born in 1950, you can see a noticeable shift from green to gray that follows this cohort for most of their lives. This gray shading shows generally worsening mortality for the 1950 to 1959 birth cohorts compared to their predecessors across all ages. Concerningly for my GenX and elder millennial peeps, there was also a deterioration in mortality for birth cohorts born in the 1970s and 1980s, visible as dark gray areas at ages 30 to 45 during the 2010s. While some of these mortality changes reflect specific shocks such as the opioid epidemic, most deaths still occur from major causes of death such as cardiovascular disease and cancer. For cancer, the gray in the top left corner of the figure below reflects the legacies of smoking for older cohorts, followed by a period of green with improvements in cancer mortality as smoking rates declined. But the white/gray shading in the bottom right corner highlights a stagnation and reversal of the cancer trends, with cohorts born around 1970 to 1985 experiencing worsening cancer mortality. This deterioration was most noticeable for colon cancer mortality, possibly linked to obesity or dietary factors. Not just dying more, but less healthy along the way. A recent paper by Dr. Laura Gimeno of University College London (of which I am a co-author), found evidence that more recently born cohorts in Great Britain have stagnating or worsening health. A stylized picture of what“generational health drift” might look like: The review paper found: Rates of childhood overweight and obesity were highest among Gen Z. Rates of diabetes in the 40s almost doubled from 3.1% among the Baby Boomers to 5.9% in Generation X. Gen Z reported higher rates of poor mental health in adolescence compared to earlier-born groups. These UK results are consistent with studies showing worsening health across generations in the US as well. A 2021 US study found that more recently born cohorts had worse biological markers (like blood pressure and blood sugar) than earlier generations at the same age. A separate 2022 study of Americans aged 50 and over found that more recently born generations had a higher number of chronic diseases, with younger age of disease onset. A 2024 Lancet paper found that in the US, women born in 1945 had 33% obesity prevalence at age 50, rising to 48.2% for women born in 1970 turning 50. So what’s going on, and can we turn it around? We don’t have a definitive answer for what’s causing the deteriorating health of younger cohorts, but circumstantial evidence points to worsening trends in obesity and diabetes in both the US and UK. Remember that cohort trends reflect lagged effects of early environments, and younger generations have faced both earlier onset and more severe obesity across their lifetimes. Despite these very concerning trends, the future is not set in stone. We’ve reversed poor generational health trends before: drops in smoking are a major reason cancer and heart disease deaths fell so dramatically in recent decades. GLP-1 drugs may finally turn the tide against rising rates of obesity and diabetes, though it is still early days. But things could also get worse…for example from a return to higher levels of childhood infectious diseases that can have a lasting impact on health. See for example: [ ](https://jenndowd.substack.com/p/dont-you-forget-about-measles-the) [ Don’t You Forget About Me(asles): The Virus That Erases Immune Memory ](https://jenndowd.substack.com/p/dont-you-forget-about-measles-the) Jenn Dowd, PhD · March 24, 2025 [ Read full story ](https://jenndowd.substack.com/p/dont-you-forget-about-measles-the) Even as an optimist, emerging data on the “generational health drift” has my full attention. For most of my research career, we took it for granted that each generation would be healthier than the last. But if present trends continue, **50 could be the new 60….**and Gen Z celebrities will soon look older than Paul Rudd :). Stay well, Jenn Share the Health! If you found this post useful, please share it with a friend. Share
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How lip-syncing to AI let Forced Entertainment ‘play the game of theatre’
Today we have a fascinating piece by long-time Forced Entertainment fan Ben Kulvichit, speaking to Tim Etchells about their latest show Cold Sweat, how they are integrating lip-sync and AI voices into their work, the question of ‘authenticity’ on stage, and how lip-sync has even opened the door for them to make “something a little bit like drama”. This piece is a paid partnership with the Southbank Centre, where you can see Cold Sweat next month – we’re very grateful to the Southbank Centre for their ongoing support for Exeunt. Holly Williams ‘It was immediately interesting and uncanny’ **By Ben Kulvichit** “Is the microphone on?” So goes one of the opening lines of Signal to Noise, delivered by a human performer lip-syncing to an AI-generated voice. The voice is American, cheery but sluggish, slowed down into a gelatinous drawl. It repeats ad infinitum in a farce of stuckness; an answer never materialises. I find myself asking the same question as I hop on a Google Meet call with Tim Etchells, the artistic director of Forced Entertainment. We spend five or ten minutes frowning at each other, muting and unmuting, me gesticulating in semaphore into my webcam, checking if I am coming through now, restarting the laptop. To Etchells, I appear exaggeratedly mouthing words, my voice missing. In this gloopy purgatory of broken communication, life imitates art imitates life imitates art. We try a Zoom instead. Forced Entertainment, the pioneering British theatre company who have been at the avant-garde of performance since the 1980s, turned an interesting artistic corner with Signal to Noise, created on the occasion of their 40th anniversary. The whole performance employed this lip-sync technique to AI voices; on the face of it a left-field move from a company whose identity has long been grounded in the earthy, immediate presences of its performers and its unassuming, low-tech approach to theatricality. The technique, however, turned out to provide the company with a “rich new seam” of artistic enquiry, and has now spawned a trilogy of works. The second instalment, Cold Sweat, plays at Sheffield Theatres, Southbank Centre, and Lancaster Arts in October, while the third part, Everything Must Go, has been touring in Europe and is slated to come to the UK in 2027. As is often the case with Forced Entertainment shows, the main conceit for this work didn’t arrive until quite late. They were “four or five weeks into rehearsals for Signal to Noise,” Etchells recalls, and getting nowhere. Away from rehearsals, he had been playing around with feeding “weird texts” to AI voices to see how they would cope with them – “basically for my own amusement” – and was compelled by the uniformly “serviceable, benign, good-natured” tone they would read in, no matter how poetic, fractured or experimental the writing. On a hunch, he brought some examples into rehearsals and the performers gave lip-syncing a go. “It was immediately interesting and uncanny,” he recalls, with the performers having to deal in the moment with the problem of mapping themselves onto another artificial ‘performer,’ which itself was dealing with the problem of a very human text. “Almost all the writing for these projects would be useless to us unless it was done in this way,” says Etchells. “We wouldn’t know what to do with it. It’s too poetic. It’s too fictional. It’s too tangled.” But exploring lip-syncing along to the text has opened “an enormous reservoir of ways of thinking about writing and performing.” Subscribe to Exeunt, and get two in-depth pieces on theatre a week, direct to your inbox Subscribe Forced Entertainment have long been sifting through the detritus of popular culture, from daytime TV to end-of-the-pier vaudeville, magic acts and clown shows, to find frameworks for their own unusual entertainments. Lip-syncing, then, makes sense for them to experiment with. As a mode of performance, it’s wired into popular consciousness through pop stars trying to convince stadium audiences of their liveness, or those same voices as channeled through the made-up lips of contestants on RuPaul’s Drag Race, or movie dialogue spreading virally through the host bodies of TikTok users. For Etchells, lip-syncing is often about “approaching real voices and trying to take on their aura,” subsuming that original human presence into yours. “There’s a very basic, elemental sort of theatre magic to it, produced in this very easy way.” This broad approach resonates with instances of lip-syncing within contemporary performance, too. In works like Re-Member Me and Showmanism, performance artist Dickie Beau acts as a kind of spirit medium for archival recordings (this process of re-membering – as in, giving corporeal form to voices – relies on his masterfully precise actor’s technique), while Frankie Thompson is similarly possessed by a host of characters ranging from a nine-year-old Jacob Rees-Mogg to Cliff Richards, all of whom she finds compellingly nauseating, in the exorcism ritual that is her latest show, Horrible Things. What’s different about Forced Entertainment’s use of lip-syncing is that here, there is no original presence to be channeled. The performers are instead taking on what Etchells describes as “the voices of nobody,” or rather the “phantasmic, aggregated echoes” of the many many voices on whose data the AI has been trained, and which are now conjuring into existence words they never actually said. There is a sort of mournful, empty quality to these voices, having “washed up” far away from the people they originally belonged to, to find themselves in stranger’s mouths listing objects, wondering if anyone can hear them and glitching in interminable loops. There is a cold, sad anonymity to it all. Etchells remarks that occasionally the software company he used has notified him that particular people are withdrawing their voices from the platform, instructing him to cease use of those voices. Using these technologies in performance certainly brings up ethical questions around digital rights, consent, identity and ownership, although in the grand scheme of things, Etchells is fairly blasé about it: of all the purposes someone’s voice might be put to without their knowledge, “an avant-garde performance is probably the least of their worries.” [ ](https://exeuntmagazine.substack.com/p/frankie-thompson-horrible-things-essay-mental-health-compulsive-behaviours-pleasance-courtyard-soho-theatre) [ Frankie Thompson: How I manage my own ‘horrible things’ at the Edinburgh Fringe ](https://exeuntmagazine.substack.com/p/frankie-thompson-horrible-things-essay-mental-health-compulsive-behaviours-pleasance-courtyard-soho-theatre) Exeunt · Aug 25 [ Read full story ](https://exeuntmagazine.substack.com/p/frankie-thompson-horrible-things-essay-mental-health-compulsive-behaviours-pleasance-courtyard-soho-theatre) For the performers, though, lip-syncing to these strange, artificial voices is an odd task, requiring them to bend their live, human presence into the shapes produced by machines. Politically, it mirrors processes that are already at play in the continued computational automation of human life. Etchells brings up James Bridle’s writings on new technologies as a reference point: one example Bridle gives is of “chaotic storage”, a logistics technique employed by Amazon fulfilment centres whereby items are stored not according to traditional methods of categorisation or alphabetisation, but in a way that an algorithm determines to produce the most efficient routes for ‘picking’ based on customer purchase patterns. This appears completely random and incomprehensible to humans, with paddling pools sitting next to USB sticks sitting next to blowtorches, and so for the warehouse workers, the process of picking items becomes completely reliant on technology which tells them where to go. Our world is increasingly being designed not with humans in mind, but rather machines. As Etchells puts it, “technology malforms the space, and then you end up having to live in it.” Initially, Forced Entertainment tried their best to live in the world of machines: “I was in the it’s-got-to-be-perfect school of lip-sync,” says Etchells. But with their aesthetic being so tied to the failing act, the slipping mask, the shoddy costume, “it’s no surprise really that that didn’t last.” Instead, the performers got to enjoy being late for a line, or playing games with each other, “stealing” each other’s voices. Etchells compares it to the principles of ventriloquism, in which a free-floating voice unattached to a body is fundamentally discomforting and “sort of traumatic”. That discomfort is equally as alluring to Forced Entertainment as the satisfaction of precision, the pretence of authenticity only interesting if shown to be a pretence. Lip-sync has also opened up new avenues for the company. Having been allergic all their lives to Plays-with-a-capital-P, with Cold Sweat Forced Entertainment find themselves approaching something a little bit like drama. Rather than the presentational arena of Signal to Noise’s open white stage, Cold Sweat places us more decisively in a “fictional locale”: what appears to be “the aftermath of some disastrous party or backyard drinking binge” where three figures – family members, or neighbours, perhaps – are the last ones standing. “It’s all quite acrimonious and accusatory, everyone’s talking over each other.” For Etchells, this more fictional mode is “a door that we’ve never been able to open. We’ve just never really gone there.” Perhaps it is the technique of lip-syncing, an extra buffer of mediation, that allows them to venture away from the here-and-now without feeling that they have to commit to the “psychological claptrap” that comes along with acting; to be able to “play the game of theatre, without getting one’s hands too dirty.” As I wonder how else the impulses behind Forced Entertainment’s work have changed over time, it occurs to me that over the last ten years of new creations, with the exception of If All Else Fails, the company’s performers haven’t ever spoken on stage: there were two shows without any language at all, Out of Order and Under Bright Light, and then this trilogy of lip-sync works. Etchells agrees it’s a shift away from earlier productions, that were so often about “the actual voices of the performers and their actual presences. We had a lot of money, in some ways, on an authentic approach to what it might mean to speak on the stage.” But this sense of authentic presence itself had a fakeness to it; these days, Etchells can’t stand that mode of being onstage where performers “are here to be cheeky and witty versions of themselves. I don’t want to be charmed.” Pulling back into a more anonymous space has resulted in works that feel slightly sharper-edged, more brutal in a way. “All of these shows are post-Brexit, post-Trump, post-truth, post-everything,” Etchells notes. Speech, charisma, authenticity – these things feel politically loaded, and perhaps warmth and openness just don’t feel like the right tools to reflect the world we’re living in. “It feels like the space is closing down, and we’re trying to deal with the fact that the system, the structure that you’re in, is more oppressive and more powerful. It probably always was, but I think we’re just more tuned to it now.” Yet even without their voices, the performers’ distinctive presences – ones that many audiences have followed around for years, if not decades – still, inevitably, shine through as they physically navigate whatever unending task the system of the piece has set for them. They’re still trying to keep up with the onslaught of text, still running about, changing costumes, moving stuff around. The human is always stuck in the teeth of the machine, jamming the smooth, frictionless cheeriness of the not-real, gesticulating silently, trying desperately to communicate. Cold Sweat is at Sheffield Theatres, 2 to 3 October; Southbank Centre, London, 9 to 10 October; Lancaster Arts, 14 October [ ](https://exeuntmagazine.substack.com/p/exeunt-recommends-the-best-autumn-theatre-2026-lives-of-others-standard-of-living-our-friends-in-the-north-lanny-) [ Exeunt recommends... the best autumn theatre ](https://exeuntmagazine.substack.com/p/exeunt-recommends-the-best-autumn-theatre-2026-lives-of-others-standard-of-living-our-friends-in-the-north-lanny-) Exeunt · Sep 16 [ Read full story ](https://exeuntmagazine.substack.com/p/exeunt-recommends-the-best-autumn-theatre-2026-lives-of-others-standard-of-living-our-friends-in-the-north-lanny-) This piece was paid for by the Southbank Centre. Such support helps Exeunt to keep publishing the most interesting writing, about the most exciting theatre. Interested in partnering with Exeunt? Visit our Advertise with Exeunt page, where you can get more information, download an advertising pack, and find our contact details.
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Jiang Feng: The Unravelling of German & European Politics
A state election in eastern Germany has become a revealing test of the changing political landscapes of Germany and Europe, writes Jiang Feng, Professor and Chairman of the Council of the Shanghai Academy of Global Governance and Area Studies (SAGGAS) at Shanghai International Studies University. His analysis follows the decisive victory of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) (which has been classified as right-wing extremist by German authorities)in the state of Saxony-Anhalt on 6 September, in which it finished far ahead of its mainstream rivals. Jiang previously served as Minister-Counsellor at the Chinese Embassy in Berlin. The following article was published on 8 September 2026 on huanqiu.com, the online platform of the Global Times. On 6 September, the results of the state election in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, were announced. The Alternative for Germany (AfD), classified as far-right by German authorities, made history by becoming the largest party in the state parliament, winning 43.8 per cent of the vote — twice its share in the previous election. The Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which had governed the state continuously for 24 years, won just 17.2 per cent, its worst result ever in Saxony-Anhalt. On the night the results were announced, the atmosphere at the CDU gathering was unusually calm. There was neither shock nor argument, as if the defeat had long been expected. Several veteran party members who had spent years working in the state government said: “Defeat is not a bad thing. It is time to make changes.” This state election has not only upended Saxony-Anhalt’s political landscape, but also laid bare the deep tensions between Germany’s traditional party structure and model of governance, on the one hand, and an increasingly polarised society on the other. Its repercussions are already being felt at the federal level, making Saxony-Anhalt a useful case study of the broader trend towards political polarisation and realignment in Europe. Governing Difficulties after Electoral Victory The most immediate consequence of the election is a historic setback for the mainstream party order that took shape in post-war Germany. In Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD has leapt from a peripheral party to the largest political force in the state. Its electoral base has expanded beyond the traditional category of “marginal protest voters” to take on the characteristics of a cross-class coalition. The party has not only consolidated its support in rural areas, but also attracted many middle-class voters and even members of the social elite with stable jobs, their own homes, and substantial incomes. It has thus evolved from a “protest party” into one with the potential to govern. Despite its commanding lead in the vote, however, the AfD faces an institutional obstacle to governing the state: the mainstream parties’ long-standing “firewall” against it. Neither of the two potential routes to forming a government appears likely to break the current political deadlock. The first would be a coalition of establishment parties, led by the CDU and bringing together the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens, the Left Party (Die Linke) and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) in a cross-camp government. In terms of parliamentary arithmetic, such a coalition could prevent the AfD from forming a government and preserve the outward stability of the traditional political order. Yet these parties are fundamentally divided over key issues including immigration, the energy transition, economic management, and cultural and education policy. Coalition negotiations would therefore be extremely difficult, and even if a government could be formed, it would most likely prove short-lived. More importantly, an alliance of establishment parties aimed at keeping the largest party out of government would play directly into the AfD’s narrative that “political elites are suppressing public opinion”. It could deepen perceptions of political unfairness, further strengthening the AfD’s political capital, and creating a dynamic in which “the more it is suppressed, the more people vote for it”. Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s candidate for state premier, has said that if efforts to form a government fail because other parties refuse to cooperate, the AfD will push for a fresh election, which he believes could deliver the party an absolute majority of seats. This points to more intense political battles ahead. The second option would be a coalition between the AfD and the BSW. Together, the two parties would command a simple majority in parliament, making this, on paper, the quickest route to forming a government. The BSW is the only elected party that has not ruled out cooperation with the AfD, and the two parties share some common ground, including on policy towards Russia. There is therefore a degree of political basis for cooperation. Were such a coalition to materialise, Germany would see its first state government jointly formed by a party defined as far-right and one with a far-left background, creating what might be called a “bipolar anti-establishment alliance”. Such an outcome would fundamentally break with the ideological boundaries of post-war German party politics. It is worth noting that even if the AfD ultimately fails to enter the state government, its roughly 47 per cent share of parliamentary seats would give it a powerful blocking minority. Without its consent, major decisions requiring a two-thirds majority — including constitutional amendments, significant budgetary adjustments, and state-level institutional reforms — would be extremely difficult to pass. Therefore, whoever ultimately forms the government, the AfD will be an unavoidable force in Saxony-Anhalt politics, with a direct influence on the state’s legislative process. Systemic Failures in Germany’s Governance Model The Saxony-Anhalt election result reflects a systemic failure of Germany’s post-war mainstream-party model of governance to adapt to rapidly changing socioeconomic conditions. It stems from multiple, mutually reinforcing structural tensions and highlights the existing political system’s difficulty in adapting to “an increasingly polarised society First, collective anxiety has replaced individual material hardship as a central driver of political mobilisation. The rise of the AfD can no longer be explained simply by poverty or social marginalisation. Its increasingly cross-class electoral base suggests that what is driving voters towards the party is, above all, concern about the broader direction of society. This anxiety about the future of the political community goes beyond individual gains and losses. In political discourse, economic anxiety has become closely intertwined with immigration, while immigration and refugee issues are, in essence, questions of social fairness. This perception turns conflicts over the distribution of social resources into negative assessments of governing parties, providing a broad social basis for far-right political narratives. Second, regional disparities and East German identity have undermined the strategy of addressing eastern Germany’s structural challenges at the regional level. More than three decades after German reunification, eastern states such as Saxony-Anhalt have experienced periods of economic growth, but their underlying economic structures remain weak, and household incomes and wealth remain significantly below those in western Germany. At the same time, they continue to face population outflow, an ageing population, labour shortages, and other structural challenges. At a deeper level, historical experiences — including the collapse of the former East German economic system, mass unemployment during the transition, and the westward shift of decision-making power over major issues — have left some residents with a sense of being “second-class citizens” and of being excluded. For years, the German government treated the “syndrome” of reunification as a regional problem to be gradually addressed at the local level. That approach is becoming increasingly unsustainable, as regional development disparities emerge as a core structural factor shaping national politics. Third, the erosion of institutional trust is perhaps the most decisive factor. AfD supporters tend to distrust establishment institutions, including parliament, government, and the mainstream media. Their concerns about economic security, pensions, and social fairness are significantly greater than the social average. Increasingly, their support for the AfD reflects not an expectation that the existing system can be improved, but a search for an alternative to the current political order. Such a systemic deficit of trust will be extremely difficult for the traditional parties to repair in the short term. Fourth, a generational shift in political mobilisation has amplified political polarisation. Unlike traditional parties, which rely heavily on offline rallies and mainstream media coverage, the AfD has developed a social-media mobilisation strategy built around “raising an issue — identifying who is responsible — offering a simplified solution — building a shared identity”. It turns complex social tensions into concise political narratives, rapidly channelling public sentiment into political support. The contrast on the eve of the election was particularly telling. The establishment parties, together with trade unions and churches, organised an offline march attended by more than 10,000 people, but its reach was largely confined to those present and to traditional media coverage. The AfD held a much smaller indoor event, yet livestreaming on TikTok, YouTube, and other platforms, combined with the involvement of online influencers, gave it a reach and mobilising capacity far beyond that of the march. The contrast illustrates how the traditional parties’ methods of political mobilisation are increasingly struggling to keep pace with a political environment transformed by changes in media technology. A Microcosm of Structural Political Change in Europe The shockwaves from the Saxony-Anhalt election quickly travelled beyond the state to the federal level. Calls for political accountability followed immediately after the results were announced. The governing CDU and SPD are now under enormous pressure, while Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil face an unprecedented test. Political polarisation in Germany is no longer simply a regional phenomenon. The post-war model of multiparty government by establishment parties is breaking down and being reshaped. Viewed in a broader European context, the Saxony-Anhalt election is part of a continent-wide wave of party polarisation, mainstream-party decline, and rising right-wing forces. Far from an isolated phenomenon, it is a microcosm of the structural political changes unfolding across Europe. Weak economic growth, cultural tensions over immigration, and declining trust in institutions are fuelling the rise of right-wing forces in several countries, challenging the liberal internationalist order established in post-war Europe. As a core member state of the European Union, Germany’s ability to adapt its political system and the direction of its politics will have profound implications for both European integration and the evolution of the international order. Subscribe [ Pekingnology China’s Germany watchers take stock of Berlin’s uneasy turn On 7 December 2025, nearly 50 Chinese scholars and policy researchers gathered in Beijing for the 2025年德国形势年终研讨会 “2025 Year-End Seminar on the Situation in Germany… Read more 9 months ago · 31 likes · 1 comment · YIRUI LI and Yuxuan JIA ](https://www.pekingnology.com/p/chinas-germany-watchers-take-stock?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web&embedding_publication_id=1151841) [ Jiang Feng on Germany's 2025 and beyond: no easy exit ](https://www.eastisread.com/p/jiang-feng-on-germanys-2025-and-beyond) Yirui LI and Yuxuan JIA · Jan 24 The following is an op-ed by Jiang Feng, published on 29 December 2025 at Shanghai Observer 上观新闻, the digital platform of Jiefang Daily, the official newspaper of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC). [ Read full story ](https://www.eastisread.com/p/jiang-feng-on-germanys-2025-and-beyond)
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