At least 30 bodies have been recovered from the Potomac River in Washington DC after a mid-air collision between a passenger jet and a US army helicopter. The American Airlines flight, carrying 64 people from Wichita, Kansas, collided with a Black Hawk helicopter with three soldiers on board as it approached Ronald Reagan airport. Germany’s opposition leader, Friedrich Merz, has pushed a controversial motion to tighten asylum laws through parliament by relying on support from the far-right AfD. Chancellor Olaf Scholz called his opponent’s decision to breach the “firewall” against far-right parties – which has been in place since the fall of the Nazi regime – an “unforgivable mistake”. Researchers say they have found a way to predict which people with a high risk of bowel cancer will develop the disease with 90% accuracy. The new technique should enable those with inflammatory bowel disease to determine whether they’re at risk with a simple blood test.

What’s driving Europe’s young to populism

The promise of modern democratic capitalism is that every generation should be better off than the last, says Zoë Grünewald in The New European. Looking at today’s youth, this promise has failed: the current gap between generations is “stark and growing”, and the young are now fuelling a “populist surge” across Europe and elsewhere. In last June’s European elections, 30% of French under-34-year-olds cast their ballot for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, 16% of Germany’s under-25s backed the AfD, and more than 20% of young Italians supported Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy. In the US election, 56% of men and 40% of women aged 18 to 29 voted for Donald Trump.

The main reason many of these populists are winning is because they are confronting systemic injustices “head-on”. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has introduced tax exemptions for workers under 25, along with financial subsidies and tax breaks for young families. National Rally has targeted young French workers with welfare benefits and job guarantees for native-born citizens. Centrist parties bemoan these “quick fixes” and argue that younger generations will benefit more from their sensible, long-term policies: planning reforms, renewable energy investment, and so on. Which is all well and good, but it doesn’t do much to draw in a deeply dissatisfied youth who can’t afford to have children or buy a house. If centrists and progressives want to hold on to their young voters, they need to look to the far-right’s “winning strategy”: proposing policies that offer them “instant relief”.

No expense was spared at Reform UK’s fundraiser at the Mayfair members’ club Oswald’s on Tuesday evening, says The Guardian. The 90 or so guests, including several major former Tory donors, paid up to £25,000 for a ticket, and drank Dom Pérignon along with jeroboams of white burgundy and claret. Nigel Farage told attendees, including the boxer Derek Chisora, pop star Holly Valance (who is married to party treasurer Nick Candy) and the Duke of Marlborough, that Reform membership was “rocketing”, and ended his speech by singing the Village People classic YMCA in honour of Donald Trump. Festivities later moved to 5 Hertford St, the sister club for Oswald’s, and continued until 3am.

The world’s most expensive cheese has an unlikely secret ingredient, says The Takeout: donkey milk. Pule, which is made in a protected wetland in West Serbia and costs around £1,000/kg, consists of 40% goat’s milk and 60% milk from the ultra-rare Balkan donkey, of which only a few hundred remain. Added to the beast’s scarcity is the fact that while a cow can produce around 55 litres of milk a day, a jenny (lady donkey) might squeeze out two litres if you’re lucky. Given it takes 22 litres to produce one 900g block of pule, the price doesn’t sound too bad. Apparently it tastes a bit like Manchego. Иум!

Rwanda’s disgraceful invasion of Congo

The capture of the Congolese city of Goma by the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel militia on Monday threatens a “humanitarian disaster on an immense scale”, says Le Monde. More than 1.5 million displaced people are living in makeshift camps on the outskirts of the city, which is now overrun with fighters who have spent the past three years committing multiple atrocities, including mass rape and murder. So why is the UN, on whom millions in this benighted region rely for their most basic necessities, unable to say clearly who is to blame? At its emergency meeting on Sunday, the UN Security Council called for the withdrawal of “external forces”. They should be explicit: Rwanda has invaded the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Since it was ravaged by genocide in 1994, Rwanda has been feted by the West for its extraordinary economic success and rapprochement between the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups. Its strongman president, Paul Kagame, has been especially lauded for his skill in all this. But, under the guise of hunting out Hutus who participated in the genocide, he sent troops across the border into Rwanda’s “huge, chaotic” neighbour – which just happens to have vast mineral wealth. This invasion is likely to lead to the general outbreak of war in a region already scarred by violence, where the UN’s largest and oldest – and perhaps most useless – peacekeeping force is stationed. The very least the international community can do is “name the conflict’s protagonists”.

In the 1940s and 1950s, the most sought-after jobs in Ireland were at the Guinness Brewery in Dublin, says Mary Killen in The Oldie. Not only were staff entitled to a free pint of the black stuff every day, they also had free lunch, a pension, and, “best of all, regular social events at which singletons had a good chance of meeting a romantic partner”. The most popular bash was “the tall man’s dance”. Shorter men always tried to gatecrash, knowing that all the “top-of-the-range” female workers would be there. But “the door was six feet tall and only men who had to duck were allowed to go in”.

Officially, there are 24 languages in the EU, says Alice Hancock in the FT, but there is a 25th language – acronyms – that even ministers struggle to understand. At the European Council the other day, I came through the JL building to attend the TTE council, where they would sign off the PPWR and hear about the SET plan. The following day was an ENV council. Running concurrently was the FAC and GAC where ministers discussed EDIP and EPF. Climate laws passed and revised in the past five years include EPBD, LULUCF, EED, CSDDD, CSRD and an updated ETS directive. If you need a drink after all that, the MEPs’ bar is in the EP at ASP Bloc G.

It’s a robot display at the Spring Festival Gala in Beijing to celebrate the Lunar New Year, says Business Insider. In a three-minute routine alongside human partners, 16 humanoid automatons decked in floral red jackets performed an elaborate Chinese folk dance, spinning handkerchiefs around and throwing them up in the air. The company behind the dancing droids, Unitree, also makes four-legged, doglike robots, which can be fitted with machine guns and took part in a joint Chinese-Cambodian military training exercise last year. 🤖😬