A Weekend of Elections That Left Incumbents Weaker Everywhere but Moscow

The AfD wins a German state outright, and Merz's CDU falls out of its parliament altogether

Two German states voted on Sunday. In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern the Alternative for Germany finished first with about 38%, ahead of the Social Democrats on roughly 35%, while Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Christian Democrats dropped below the 5% threshold — the first time the CDU has failed to win any seats in a state parliament. The Left came third on about 6.5% and the Greens scraped in at about 5.6%. In Berlin, exit polls put Die Linke first on around 24.5%, the CDU on about 20% and the AfD on about 16%. Merz called the north-eastern result a "disaster"; his approval rating is running near 14% after sixteen months in office.

Why it matters: The AfD has won state elections before, but a governing chancellor's party being squeezed out of a legislature entirely is new, and it happened in the polarisation between the AfD and the SPD — Merz's own coalition partner in Berlin. That makes his position inside the federal coalition, not just against the far right, the live question this week.

Sources: Al Jazeera·RTE·CNN

Russia finishes its first national vote of the war, and United Russia keeps its majority

Three days of voting for all 450 seats of the State Duma ended on Sunday, the first national election in Russia since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. An exit poll reported by Bloomberg put United Russia near 49%; partial official counts carried by state media ran higher, above 57%, with the party leading in around 161 of the 225 single-mandate districts. On provisional figures the ruling party takes roughly 258 seats, down from the 310 it held going in, with the Communists, the LDPR, New People and A Just Russia sharing most of the rest. Counting is not complete and the numbers have moved through the night.

Why it matters: Nobody expected a different winner. The number that matters is the drop from a constitutional supermajority to a working one, achieved in a vote with no organised opposition on the ballot — which is the Kremlin managing the appearance of a contest rather than losing one.

Sources: Bloomberg·Foreign Policy·The Moscow Times·LIGA.net

Iran names its price as world leaders arrive in New York

Iran's security chief Mohsen Rezaei said in an interview published on Saturday that Tehran has passed its conditions for resuming talks to the mediators, Qatar and Pakistan, and is waiting for a reply from President Donald Trump. The core demands are an end to the fighting on all fronts, the unfreezing of Iranian funds and the lifting of the US naval blockade; Iranian state media put the full list at seven points. The Strait of Hormuz remains effectively shut — eight ships transited on 13 September against a normal 85 a day. UN high-level week opens today, the General Debate starts Tuesday, and Trump is due to meet Volodymyr Zelensky, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham and Japan's Sanae Takaichi the same day.

Why it matters: Every other story in this brief prices off this one. The oil premium that made the Fed hike last week, the energy bill behind Germany's politics and the strain on Saudi export routes all trace back to a waterway that reopens only if these conditions are answered.

Sources: Reuters via BOE Report·IRNA via GlobalSecurity·Reuters via US News·United Nations

Vučić fixes his resignation for 27 September, two days later than he first said

Aleksandar Vučić now says he will submit his resignation as president on 27 September, after returning from the United Nations, and campaign as a private citizen for the 25 October snap parliamentary election with the aim of becoming prime minister. He had earlier named 25 or 26 September. Because a presidential election must be called at least 30 days before polling, the date rules out holding it alongside the parliamentary vote. Vučić has scheduled four SNS rallies — Belgrade, Novi Sad, Kragujevac and a closing event in Niš. The student list that grew out of nearly two years of protests registered 250 candidates and about 75,000 signatures a week ago. Bosnia and Herzegovina votes on 4 October.

Why it matters: The shifting date is not procedural fussiness: separating the two elections means Serbia gets a parliamentary campaign fought on Vučić's record without his name on a ballot, and a presidential vacancy to be filled later on terms set by whoever wins in October.

Sources: Vreme·AP via WTOP·Balkan Insight

The Houthis take Yemen's Red Sea coast, and Saudi Arabia's last export route narrows

After capturing the Red Sea coastline from the internationally recognised government on 11 September, the Houthis have consolidated control of the approaches to the Bab al-Mandab strait and stepped up missile and drone attacks on Saudi oil and economic sites; earlier strikes this month started fires at oil facilities and wounded 73 people. More than 80,000 Yemenis have been displaced since the start of September, and the US embassy in Israel warned Americans across the region on Sunday to expect flight cancellations and airspace closures. With Hormuz closed, Saudi seaborne crude going out through Bab al-Mandab between March and mid-July ran about eight times higher than a year earlier.

Why it matters: The kingdom has been routing around one blocked strait by using another. Both are now contested at the same time, which is why a barrel of crude still costs more than $95 even in a week when oil fell.

Sources: AGBI·NPR·ABC News Australia

Friday's session: America shrugs, Europe sells the carmakers

Wall Street closed the Fed's hike week almost flat and split. The S&P 500 rose 0.17% to 7,650.50 and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.39% to 26,522.55, while the Dow shed 95.40 points, or 0.18%, to 51,682.64 — technology carrying an otherwise heavy tape on a quadruple-witching expiry. The bond market did the damage: the 10-year Treasury yield settled around 5.01% and the 30-year near 5.33%, back at the levels that unsettled equities midweek. WTI crude fell 1.6% to $95.71, gold added 0.4% to about $4,418 an ounce, and bitcoin jumped roughly 5.9% to the low $81,000s. Europe was much worse: the STOXX 600 lost 1.1% to 635.45 and the DAX fell about 1.6% to roughly 25,300, its lowest close since late July, led down by Volkswagen (−6.0%), Porsche (−5.2%) and Mercedes-Benz (−4.8%), with Deutsche Telekom off 4.1%.

Why it matters: Two different markets are trading two different problems. The US is still arguing about how far a tightening cycle goes with yields at 5%; Europe is repricing an industry, and Friday's fall was one company's profit warning spreading through an index.

Sources: TheStreet·Charles Schwab·Trading Economics·Reuters via Yahoo Finance

A zero-click flaw in AI coding agents, and two of the four are still unpatched

Researchers at AIR Security disclosed Plugin4Shell last week, a remote code execution flaw affecting the plugin systems of Anthropic's Claude Code, OpenAI's Codex, GitHub Copilot and Google's Gemini CLI. The agents check out the exact commit a plugin marketplace pinned but never verify that the commit is the one that landed, so whoever controls a plugin's repository can make the checkout resolve to their own code while the pin still looks honoured. Because these tools update installed plugins in the background, no click, approval or reinstall is needed. Anthropic patched Claude Code in 2.1.179 and OpenAI patched Codex in 0.146.0; Microsoft has not shipped a fix for Copilot, and Google has deprecated the Gemini CLI and will not patch it.

Why it matters: This is a software supply-chain attack aimed at the machines that write and deploy other software, inside companies that have handed coding agents real repository credentials. The unpatched half of the problem sits in the tool with the widest enterprise install base.

Sources: Help Net Security·The Register·CSO Online·AIR Security

Trump announces an "AI Force" and an AI czar, and rules out constraints

President Trump said on Saturday that he will name a czar for artificial intelligence and stand up an "AI Force", modelled on the Space Force he created in his first term. He repeated that fears about the technology are a hoax while conceding some risk, saying the government would look for bad actors and use the existing criminal and civil justice system, and promised not to "hinder or stifle the growth of this incredible industry". He gave no detail on how the AI Force would be organised, what authority it would hold or where in the federal government it would sit. The post of AI and crypto czar has been vacant since David Sacks left earlier this year at the end of his term as a special government employee.

Why it matters: The announcement follows a summer of warnings from researchers about losing control of advanced systems, and answers them with promotion rather than rules — which leaves the EU as the only large jurisdiction writing binding constraints, and leaves US companies to choose whether to follow them abroad.

Sources: Washington Post·NBC News·CNN

One inherited mutation raises lung cancer risk 60-fold in people who never smoked

A study in Science by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the 23andMe Research Institute, drawing on de-identified genetic data from more than 3.3 million consenting participants, found that carriers of a rare germline mutation in the EGFR gene, T790M, have roughly 25 times the general risk of lung cancer — and more than 60 times the risk among people who never smoked. The same mutation is well known to oncologists as an acquired change that makes tumours resistant to targeted drugs; what is new is how much it does when inherited. The authors traced its spread in the United States to a founder event in the southern Appalachians about 200 years ago.

Why it matters: Lung cancer screening is built around smoking history, which is exactly the group this variant does not sort. A single, testable mutation with an effect this large is the sort of finding that changes who gets offered a scan — though the paper establishes risk, not yet a screening benefit.

Sources: Science·Dana-Farber·News-Medical

Volkswagen writes down Porsche and cuts its margin forecast to 1%

Volkswagen slashed its 2026 outlook on Friday, flagging about €10bn ($11.5bn) of one-off charges: a €6bn goodwill write-down on its stake in Porsche AG — a year after a €3bn impairment on the same asset — plus provisions for job cuts and a weak Chinese market. The group now expects an operating margin of around 1% for the year, against 4–5.5% previously. VW shares fell as much as 7.5% and closed 5.6% lower, Porsche AG fell 3.3%, and BMW and Mercedes-Benz were dragged down with them. Porsche has been squeezed from both ends by US tariffs and the collapse of demand for foreign luxury brands in China, and earned a margin of just 1.1% last year. The supervisory board approved cutting a further 50,000 positions on 4 September.

Why it matters: Europe's largest carmaker is now writing off the value of its most profitable brand rather than its volume business. That is the tariff-and-China problem arriving on the balance sheet, and it is why the DAX had its worst day since July.

Sources: Bloomberg via Detroit News·Invezz·Volkswagen Group

City stay top, the Chiefs survive overtime, and Atlanta takes the NL East

Manchester City beat Sunderland 5–3 on Saturday, the highest-scoring game of the Premier League weekend, and stay top of the table. Liverpool won 1–0 at Bournemouth on Sunday, and Fulham held Manchester United to a goalless draw in the late match. In the NFL, Kansas City edged Indianapolis 33–30 in overtime on Sunday night, Harrison Butker kicking the winner; the Chiefs are 2–0 and the Colts 0–2, with Week 2 closing tonight. In baseball, the Atlanta Braves clinched the National League East on Sunday by beating Houston, and the same result handed the Boston Red Sox a postseason berth — six of the twelve playoff places are now filled, alongside the Dodgers, Brewers, Rays and Yankees. Formula 1 returns this weekend in Baku.

Sources: RTE Sport·NBC·MLB

The Partners for Multilateralism summit opens UN week, New York

European Council President António Costa convenes the P4M summit today with Canada and Kenya, ahead of Tuesday's General Debate. It is meant to gather countries from across regions behind the multilateral system and international law.

Why it matters: It is the first read on how many governments are willing to sign up to that framing in a week when the US president arrives promising bilateral deals instead.

Source: European Council

Chicago Fed activity index and the first Fed speakers since the hike, 13:30 CEST onward

The August national activity index lands this afternoon, and Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee speaks. Ten Fed appearances are scheduled across the week against a thin data calendar; flash PMIs follow on Wednesday.

Why it matters: With the 10-year yield sitting at 5%, the market needs to hear whether last week's hike was the start of a sequence or a one-off answer to an oil shock. This week that guidance comes from speeches, not data.

Source: Kiplinger

Coalition arithmetic in Schwerin and Berlin

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern's Social Democrats must now build a majority in a chamber that contains no CDU at all, with the AfD as the largest party and every other bloc ruling out working with it. In Berlin, Die Linke's lead in the exit polls leaves the incumbent CDU-led arrangement in question.

Why it matters: Whether a workable government can be assembled without the AfD in a state it just won is the question German politics has been deferring for a decade, and it now has to be answered in a specific parliament.

Source: RTE

Giants at Rams, Monday Night Football, 02:15 CEST

The last game of NFL Week 2 closes out a round in which Kansas City needed overtime to stay unbeaten.

Why it matters: It is the only fixture left in the round, so tonight sets the first real shape of the conference standings before Week 3 opens on Thursday.

Source: ESPN