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”.