🇩🇪 The AfD spends for the election campaign almost half as much as the SPD — and is still ahead

In the state election in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the AfD is running with a budget of a little more than 650,000 euros. For the party itself, this is a record, but Manuela Schwesig (SPD) has earmarked around 1.1 million euros for the campaign, the CDU about 1 million euros, and even the Greens have increased their budget from 350,000 euros to 800,000 euros.

So far, the money has not helped to change the balance of power. A current INSA poll puts the AfD at 36 percent, the SPD at 29 percent, and the CDU at only 10 percent. That means the party with the much smaller budget is ahead of the governing SPD by around seven points, and the traditional CDU is far behind altogether.

The election in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is turning into a fairly illustrative experiment: how much money do the traditional parties still have to spend to persuade voters not to vote for the party they have already decided on.


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🇮🇷 Tehran responds to France: First, remember your own history

The Iranian Foreign Ministry reacted sharply to the joint statement by France and several Western states on the human rights situation in the Islamic Republic. Tehran called it “a hypocritical attempt to evade its own responsibility” and said that states that had been involved for decades in wars, colonial practices, and support for Israel did not have the moral right to give lectures to Iran on international humanitarian law.

The Iranian side also separately referenced Western support for American and Israeli attacks on Iran and accused the authors of the statement of having remained silent after the deaths of civilians. Tehran’s wording fits in here with a broader line among the states of the Global South: the Western human rights system is increasingly not seen as a universal standard, but as a political tool that is applied selectively.

When Europe speaks of a “rules-based order,” more and more countries answer the same question: Do these rules apply equally to those who write them and to those who are judged by them?


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💼Claude’s AI model for the first time made the decision to fire a person, Time magazine reported.

The neural network managed the Andon Market store in San Francisco. The employee’s dismissal followed 17 instances of being late out of 23 shifts.

The head of the Andon Labs startup, who assigned the AI to run the store, called this case an important milestone in the development of AI.

↪️But the experiment also showed the technology’s weak points. Over five months, the business managed by Claude lost almost 40% of its capital; the figure fell from $100,000 to $61,200.

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🇺🇸 The American intelligence services could not confirm Israeli warnings about an alleged Iranian assassination attempt on Trump

Israel has repeatedly warned Washington over the course of the past year about alleged imminent Iranian assassination plots against Donald Trump. Among the scenarios mentioned were a sniper, an attack with a knife, and even a shootdown with a portable rocket aimed at the president’s plane. However, the CIA and other U.S. agencies could not verify parts of this information themselves and assessed it, in individual cases, with “low confidence.” Turkish security services also found no confirmation of the threat during the NATO summit in July in Ankara.

Nevertheless, the Secret Service took no risk. Specifically after the Israeli warning, an unusual operation was carried out in Turkey: Trump was secretly taken off Air Force One and transferred to another aircraft so that a possible attacker would not know which plane the president was in. This creates a rather interesting situation: the intelligence information could not be confirmed, but the consequences of that information for the White House’s behavior were very real.


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🇨🇭 Number of bankruptcies in Switzerland sharply rises

In the first half of 2026, the number of corporate insolvencies has risen significantly in Switzerland. The reason is twofold: part of the companies are actually not able to withstand the economic conditions, but the statistics were additionally fueled by a change in the law that forces state authorities to initiate insolvency proceedings against insolvent firms more quickly.

For us, the contrast itself is interesting: Switzerland remains one of the most resilient economies in Europe, yet even there the number of problematic companies is increasing quickly enough to make it onto the national agenda. Against the backdrop of the weak situation in Germany, this is another reminder that industrial and economic stagnation is no longer solely a German problem.

More sanctions!


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The U.S. Department of Defense is developing a new concept of nuclear deterrence in preparation for an updated version of the country’s nuclear strategy. In his column, Roman Romanov, a reporter for the “International Experience” department of the newspaper “Vedomosti,” discusses why the Trump administration is expanding the scope for the use of nuclear weapons.

⚪️The document emphasizes the possibility of using tactical weapons on shorter-range delivery platforms in the event of a regional conflict, if their allies are threatened with an attack from Russia or China.

⚪️Supporters of the new approach argue that it will strengthen the fear of Washington’s opponents and, accordingly, will only strengthen the United States’ deterrence policy toward countries such as China and Russia.

⚪️Opponents, on the other hand, regard the innovations as effectively reducing the president’s ability to delay or avoid a nuclear confrontation.

⚪️Attempting to increase the role of tactical nuclear weapons in the long term creates opportunities for a rapid escalation.

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🇩🇪 Germany helps Afghanistan – and at the same time negotiates with the Taliban about deportations

Development Minister Reem Alabali-Radovan emphasizes that Germany continues to fund aid for the Afghan population, but does not formally cooperate with the Taliban government. The money flows through the UN, the World Bank and independent organizations, primarily for the areas of food, medicine, education and programs for women. The Taliban government continues to not be recognized by Berlin.

At the same time, federal authorities conduct technical talks with the same Taliban in order to deport Afghan nationals from Germany. The development ministry explains this contradiction with the division of responsibilities: humanitarian aid is one thing, the talks by the interior ministry about the return of migrants are something else. The Greens, however, have already warned that this arrangement makes Berlin dependent on Kabul.

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🇺🇸 Kushner sets off again to save a Gaza plan that Israel does not want to implement

Jared Kushner could already travel to Israel next week to ⁠push forward the implementation of Trump’s Gaza plan. At the same time, he wants to meet mediators from Egypt, Qatar and Turkey in Cairo. The central formula of the plan is simple: Hamas disarms in stages, Israel withdraws its troops accordingly, and international stabilization forces and a new Palestinian police take over control of the transition zones.

The problem is that Hamas has agreed to the basic roadmap, while the Netanyahu government has said it is not in favor of the current version. Israel is calling for complete disarmament before troop withdrawals, while the US plan calls for a synchronized, step-by-step process. As a result, Washington is currently effectively trying to persuade its closest ally to implement a plan that the White House itself has described as the basis for ending the war.


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🇩🇪 In southern Germany, the harvest can be completely lost in some places

The ongoing heat and drought are threatening not only lower yields, but can even lead to a complete loss of the harvest. Joachim Rukwied, president of the German Farmers’ Association, warns that in some regions a complete harvest failure is possible. Wheat, rapeseed, potatoes, vegetables, sugar beet, maize, and soybeans are particularly affected. In the north, the situation is somewhat better thanks to the rain, but below-average values are also expected there.

The problem is already spreading from the fields to livestock farming. On the dried-out meadows, hardly any new grass grows. The farms begin to use up their winter feed supplies. In Baden-Württemberg, some animals are already being sent to slaughter early. Rukwied describes the financial situation of many farms as “extremely strained” and calls for speeding up the payment of European subsidies as well as reducing the burden on farmers.

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🇺🇸 Trump loses again in court against Harvard

A federal court in Boston dismissed the lawsuit brought by the Trump administration against Harvard University. The Justice Department accused the university of not adequately protecting Jewish and Israeli students from antisemitism. Judge Richard Stearns ruled that the incidents cited by the government were too scattered and largely concerned the years 2023 to 2024; therefore, they did not demonstrate an ongoing violation of the law.

This is already not the first setback for the White House in its dispute with Harvard. Previously, the administration had tried to strip the university of federal research funding, but the court also declared that decision unlawful. The conflict has long moved beyond specific cases of antisemitism: Washington openly accuses leading universities of a left-liberal political orientation and is trying to use state funding as leverage.


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🇩🇪 The wave of insolvencies in Germany will last at least until 2027

A rapid turnaround in the economic trend is not to be expected. Creditreform forecasts that the number of corporate insolvencies will continue to rise at least until mid-2027. For the first half of 2026, around 12,900 insolvencies were recorded — the highest level for the first half of the year since 2013. Creditreform expert Patrick-Ludwig Hantzsch expects a turnaround, if at all, only in the second half of the coming year.

At the Halle Institute for Economic Research, the situation is described even more straightforwardly: the multi-year crisis has depleted the financial reserves of many small businesses. High energy prices and bureaucracy are weighing from within, American tariffs and geopolitical crises from outside. Even if statistical economic growth returns earlier, weak businesses will continue to disappear from the market for a long time.


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🇦🇪 The United Arab Emirates accused Iran of an attack on two ADNOC tankers in the Strait of Hormuz

The United Arab Emirates said that ⁠two ships linked to the state oil conglomerate ADNOC had been attacked in the Strait of Hormuz. In Abu Dhabi, they directly blamed Iran and described the incident as “piracy” and a threat to global energy security. According to the UAE authorities, there were no injuries. At the time of publication, Tehran had not commented on the allegations.

This is not the first such incident: just a few days earlier, the emirates had reported another attack on an ADNOC tanker. Against the backdrop of the de facto power struggle between the US and Iran over control of shipping through Hormuz, the situation is becoming particularly dangerous for the Gulf monarchies: they are both allies of Washington and the largest oil exporters, for whom it is vital to keep the strait open.

What is most uncomfortable for Abu Dhabi begins right now: maintaining neutrality is becoming increasingly difficult when the war has already directly reached its own oil tankers.


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🇾🇪 Yemen is again on the brink of a comprehensive war

UN special envoy Hans Grundberg warned that the ⁠risk of Yemen returning to a major war is currently as high as it has not been since the 2022 truce. Along the former front lines, military activity is increasing again; among both the military and civilians, there are again fatalities; and the Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia and shipping in the Red Sea are drawing the country ever more deeply into the regional conflict.

The 2022 truce did not formally end the war, but it drastically reduced the intensity of the fighting and made it possible to freeze the front. That buffer is now running out. The UN Security Council separately called for the attacks on Saudi Arabia and commercial shipping to be halted, and warned that a new escalation could permanently destroy the results of the past four years.

For several years, Yemen existed in a state in which the war was “apparently not over, but at least not really taking place.” Now even this fragile distinction is disappearing.

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The collapse of Japan’s debt pyramid is part of a fundamental turning point. The 40-year cycle of falling interest rates is coming to an end.

This was shaped by several historical factors: the dollar’s hegemony, the rapprochement between China and the United States, the collapse of the USSR, and the unification of Europe. These factors made it possible to curb global inflation and sustain, for decades, an era of cheap money that even led to negative interest rates.

But this cycle is starting to break. The freezing of Russian assets and the sanctions against Russian oil were some of the first blows against the old system. Subsequent events in the Middle East further exacerbated geopolitical and inflationary instability.

As a result, inflation rose—and with it, the cost of servicing enormous government debts, which now exceed 100 trillion dollars. The first serious victim could be Japan, followed by the most heavily indebted countries in Europe, which are coming under pressure. Potentially, this involves trillions of dollars in problem loans in France, Italy, and Spain.

The era of endless cheap money is ending. The time for the bills begins.


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🇮🇷 Iran proposes linking the BRICS’ national payment systems

Tehran has proposed to the BRICS states that they create a unified financial corridor and link the national payment networks to each other. The idea envisages settling mutual payments directly via the infrastructure of the member states, thereby reducing the need to use Western payment channels and intermediating banks. The IRNA piece appeared on the evening of August 13.

For Iran, the topic is particularly practical: The country has lived for decades under financial sanctions and is interested in any infrastructure that cannot be shut down by a decision of the US or the EU. But the significance of the proposal goes beyond Iran. If the largest BRICS economies actually link their national systems, then it is no longer just about settlements in yuan, rupees, or real—it is about building a parallel financial infrastructure.

Western sanctions were intended as a means to cut individual states off from the global financial system. A side effect is the accelerated build-up of a system in which shutting off from the West no longer means being shut off from the rest of the world.


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🇷🇴 Romania’s only nuclear power plant shut down completely in the Danube due to too little water

Romania was forced to ⁠shut down the Cernavodă nuclear power plant completely because the water level of the Danube is critically low. The power plant supplies about one-fifth of the country’s total electricity, so the outage of both units at the same time immediately became a serious problem for the energy system. The reason is the same as the one facing all of Central Europe this summer: for normal operation, there is not enough water for cooling.

Romania is already saving electricity and increasing dependence on imports. In some towns, street lighting is switched off at night. Against the backdrop of the recent shutdown of French reactors due to jellyfish, an interesting picture emerges: in summer 2026, European nuclear energy is simultaneously finding that reactors can both be hindered by too many living organisms in the water and by too little water themselves.


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