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Sometimes we like convenience stores for their charm as much as their actual convenience.
Now, a new one popping up in Hong Kong is hoping to endear customers and crank up the novelty factor by having the whole thing be run by a single humanoid robot. The South China Morning Postreports that it’ll be the first of its kind to open in the bustling city.
Plopped on the Hung Hom waterfront, the 24-hour pop-up — packaged in a portable “capsule” — will be managed by “Xiao Gai,” a humanoid built by the Beijing-based AI and robotics firm Galbot. At five feet and six inches tall, it will use its gangly six feet of arm span to stock shelves, pick out out items, and handle customer checkouts, according to Inside Retail.
The Hong Kong Investment Corporation, which is backing the project, is hailing it as a sign of how AI “is entering people’s everyday lives in more tangible ways.”
According to Galbot, the Xiao Gai bot can start friendly conversations and speak in multiple languages, selling everything from snacks to over-the-counter medicines. Galbot projects that the sheer novelty of the store will boost the area’s foot traffic by up to 40 percent, and plans to roll out another 100 robot-managed capsule stores in ten cities.
Amusing as the pop-up might be, it’s another sign of robots being deployed to take over actual roles in the workplace. In May, Japan Airlines announced it would start experimenting with robot baggage handlers at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, one of the busiest airports in the world.
There’s quite a bit of potential for this to go wrong, though perhaps that could boost the robot shop’s attraction as a pure curiosity. Viral footage earlier this year, for example, showed a restaurant robot suddenly go berserk, flinging tableware everywhere as employees struggled to get it under control.
One wonders how the robot will handle the business side of operations, too. An AI agent that was put in charge of running an entire coffee shop in Stockholm blew through most of its budget in barely a month, making blunders like ordering 3,000 latex gloves.
I’m a tech and science correspondent for Futurism, where I’m particularly interested in astrophysics, the business and ethics of artificial intelligence and automation, and the environment.
Benito Mussolini stepped out onto the Piazza del Campidoglio at 10:58 in the morning of April 7, 1926. He had just delivered a speech prepared for him by his lover, the Jewish writer Margherita Sarfatti.
The speech had been a success, and Mussolini left satisfied, making his way through the cheering crowd.
Suddenly, a woman approached within a few meters of the Duce. She was holding a Lebel, a deadly revolver issued to the French army during the first world war. She pointed it at the dictator and fired.
Mussolini shortly after the assassination attempt which grazed his nose. wikimedia
Mussolini was grazed on the nose by the bullet. The next day’s newspapers reported that he was saved by a sudden shift of his head while giving the Roman salute. The woman attempted a second shot, but the gun failed to fire.
Blocked and beaten by the crowd, the woman was immediately arrested and taken to the Mantellate prison (a Roman female prison), where she gave her personal details. She claimed not to remember the attack and appeared surprisingly calm and indifferent.
The woman in question was Violet Albina Gibson, the daughter of the 1st Baron Ashbourne Edward Gibson. The Baron was the Lord Chancellor of Ireland for almost 20 years (1885-1905), before its independence from Great Britain. Gibson was born in Dublin on August 31, 1876, into a pro-British Anglican family.
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After the assassination attempt, Gibson was branded insane. The political motive behind the attack was hushed up to reduce the embarrassment of both British and Italian governments.
Only by downgrading the attack to the senseless behaviour of a madwoman – judicially certified by a court – could it have been possible, as indeed happened, to proceed with Gibson’s repatriation, as all parties hoped.
The Insights section is committed to high-quality longform journalism. Our editors work with academics from many different backgrounds who are tackling a wide range of societal and scientific challenges.
This version of history was believed for decades. It was only in 2014 that Gibson’s story was brought to a wider audience by the documentary, Violet Gibson, The Irish Woman Who Shot Mussolini, based on the work of historian Frances Stonor Saunders. Finally, in 2021, Dublin Council honoured her stand against tyranny with a plaque outside her childhood home.
Now, new evidence buried in a number of Italian archives, uncovered by one of us (Giovanni), further substantiates Gibson’s clear anti-fascist political motives and reveals how the attack was carefully planned. It shows how:
When Gibson moved to Rome, she lived next door to the Duke of Cesarò, an opposition leader, prominent anti-fascist and a man she would later claim was her lover.
Gibson’s acquaintance with the Duke was further corroborated by a new analysis of her psychiatric report.
Gibson moved to Italy after the murder of Giacomo Matteotti, the socialist leader kidnapped and killed by a fascist squad.
Gibson travelled to the small town where the trial of Matteotti’s murderers took place.
Evidence from several key witnesses was ignored or twisted.
Who was Violet Gibson?
At the age of 18, Gibson was a debutante in the court of Queen Victoria. Debutantes were young, upper-class women who were presented to the monarch to mark their official entry into high society and the marriage market.
Gibson was photographed standing next to the future King George V in 1897 during a visit to the Ashbourne family in Howth Castle, when he was Duke of York.
In conflict with her family, Gibson converted to Catholicism at the outbreak of the first world war and Scotland Yard registered her “anti-British pacifism”. Over the years, she would develop a Christian-socialist attitude that saw her sympathise with the poor.
She also had strong ties to Italy, a country she had visited frequently and for long periods as a young woman. Partly because of her father’s interest in Italian reunification, on which he had written extensively, she had always followed Italian politics with passion and apprehension as the country was falling towards right-wing extremism.
She was extremely worried about the rise of fascism, starting at least from the 1923 assassination by a fascist squad of the priest Don Giovanni Minzoni.
Then, according to her family, in August 1924 she reacted furiously to one of the first BBC news broadcasts reporting the discovery of the body of socialist leader Matteotti.
The suspicions of Mussolini’s involvement in plotting his murder ushered in a long period of crisis that the Duce only managed to overcome in January 1925. It accelerated his authoritarian drift toward dictatorial power, with support he had won from King Victor Emmanuel III.
British reaction to Gibson’s arrest
There were violent reactions from the fascist movement following Gibson’s attempt. The fascists were by then a powerful force in the country and were calling for revenge against those who had dared to plot against the head of government.
George V’s embassy in Italy issued a statement the day after the assassination attempt. It said the embassy was unaware of Gibson’s presence in Rome, believing that she was interned in a nursing home in England. King George V himself, perhaps embarrassed by that old photo of himself, immediately condemned “the ignoble attack”.
British Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain also expressed “horror” at the act committed by a woman belonging to the British aristocracy in a telegram to Mussolini.
We have also reviewed correspondence, stored in the UK’s National Archives, sent from Chamberlain in the aftermath of the attempt. In these messages he instructed Ambassador to Italy Sir Ronald Graham to help Italian investigators. The ambassador told Chamberlain he had “little doubt” that Gibson was “a tool of outside influence”. Nevertheless, Chamberlain instructed him to suggest she was mad and she should be in a mental institution in England. He said this would minimise repercussions on the hitherto good international relations between the two countries, reporting also that Churchill was “charmed by Mussolini”.
Almost in unison, Gibson’s family members also denied that there could be any political significance to her actions. They promised, if released, she would be properly cared for in a health facility in England.
Investigations
During the initial interrogations with the magistrate (which took place under the liberal penal code of Zanardelli) in four separate interviews in April, May and June 1926, Gibson continued to state, somewhat vaguely and confusingly, that she did not remember trying to shoot Mussolini.
Then, in mid-June, the defendant’s attitude suddenly changed.
On June 12 and 16, under the guidance of lawyer Enrico Ferri and assisted by Bruno Cassinelli, she confessed to being responsible for the attack and claimed she had an accomplice – the prominent anti-fascist politician, Duke Antonio Colonna, Duke of Cesarò (1878-1940).
She also claimed she was insane. This seemed to be enough to quell rumours of a conspiracy. It was all the work of a mad woman, acting alone.
But a question loomed: what was Gibson doing in Italy in the first place?
New evidence
Our fresh critical analysis of the trial documents shows that Gibson arrived in Italy with her lady-in-waiting Mary McGrath in October 1924 and lived in Rome at Via Gregoriana. This was just a few steps away from the Duke of Cesarò’s house in Via Gregoriana. But when she talked about her movements across Rome in subsequent interviews, she never mentioned this address.
This, together with the Duke’s admission of having met Gibson in 1912 in Munich at a conference of the Theosophical Society, suggests that – despite the Duke’s denials – he and Gibson had met in Rome prior to the attempted murder.
Furthermore, it is important to stress that Gibson’s companion in Italy, Mary McGrath, distanced herself from the prevailing family attitude that attributed Gibson’s mental infirmity as the cause of the attack.
Our archival research clearly shows that, when summoned by the Italian Consul in Dublin on May 19, McGrath maintained that she did not believe her mistress was insane, and even added that she suspected she used to meet many people every day during her stay in Rome.
However, from the defendant’s somewhat extravagant and in our view quite intentional judicial behaviour (claiming to be both mad and responsible for the crime), an altered mental state emerged during interrogations that was used to suggest the existence of a cognitive bias.
By declaring herself insane, she denied full responsibility for the criminal act. Further doubts also arose from the fact that she told the experts she loved the Duke of Cesarò, yet continued to denounce him as an accomplice.
Under the liberal penal code in force at the time, admitting responsibility for the attack while simultaneously declaring herself insane (and therefore irresponsible for the act) forced the magistrate to order a psychiatric evaluation.
From the testimonies gathered during the police investigations and checks conducted by the experienced police commissioner, Epifanio Pennetta, other important aspects emerged.
Although they were willingly denied by Gibson, these findings confirmed instead the defendant’s clear premeditation of the attack, carried out with anti-fascist motivations.
Contrary to this perspective, erasures and misrepresentations would instead emerge, which can only be explained, historically, as prejudicially influenced by the Mussolini regime.
These aspects were not accepted as significant evidence in the Special Military Tribunal – which took over the case – and were not subsequently examined by historians, with the exception of some references in the book by American historian Richard O. Collin, who was the first to shed some light into the Gibson affair in 1986.
Attending Matteotti’s trial
A critical piece of evidence which was ignored by investigators at the time was the fact that several witnesses testified to having seen Gibson attend the trial against Giacomo Matteotti’s assassins in Chieti between March 16 and 24, 1926.
These testimonies are highly significant: only devout anti-fascists travelled to the small mountain town where the regime had moved the highly sensitive trial.
Travelling to Chieti was neither easy nor straightforward at the time – even now it takes three hours by coaches which didn’t exist at the time. It required a very serious commitment.
In contrast to these witness testimonies, Gibson would categorically deny having attended the trial.
The body of socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti is discovered on the outskirts of Rome on August 16 1924, two months after his disappearance. Archivio GBB/Alamy
Surprisingly, she was believed by the military magistrates despite their own affirmation in the ruling that her past, present and future statements should be prejudicially deemed false and unreliable.
Upon her return to Rome from Chieti, likely disappointed by the outcome of the legal proceedings, which had resulted in only light convictions for Matteotti’s assassins, Gibson would demonstrate her desire to implement a plan she had perhaps already conceived for some time. A plan that was kept secret.
Then, on March 28, 1926, witnesses interviewed during the preliminary investigation reported her presence at Villa Glori – at the anniversary of the founding of the Fascist Party, attended by Mussolini.
Gibson also denied being at this event and was, again, believed by the magistrates.
It’s important to highlight that this episode occurred a few days after the end of the Matteotti’s murderer trial and shortly before the events of April 7.
These testimonies, which the military judges did not credit, lead us to suspect that Gibson may have already been contemplating an attack on Mussolini on this occasion – suggesting clear premeditation and consistent anti-fascist motivation.
The psychiatric report and a lover
On July 8, 1926, psychiatrists were appointed. Sante De Sanctis and Augusto Giannelli were the family’s expert witness and the court-appointed expert witness, respectively. The experts were asked whether, “Miss Gibson was rationally aware and free of will at the time of the accused act”; if the accused was suffering from mental insanity, and “how the statements recently made to the investigating magistrate should be considered”.
This came as a surprise to the experts who tried unsuccessfully to highlight the paradox she was falling into by declaring that she loved a man who she ended up damaging by her accusations.
In August, the mental health experts’ unanimous verdict was that the defendant was partially insane and therefore could not be responsible for her crime.
The spy and the Special Military Tribunal
Meanwhile, Mussolini was pushing forward his authoritarian agenda. In Autumn 1926 there had been two more attempts on his life from the young anarchists Gino Lucetti and Anteo Zamboni (both of whom missed their target).
The government took advantage of the situation by pressing on with its “hyper-fascist laws” which dissolved all political parties, ended Parliamentary democracy and introduced a Special Military Tribunal for crimes against the regime. Crucially, the new tribunal could inflict the death penalty, which was reintroduced 37 years after its abolition.
It is worth noting at this stage that, according to Italian historian Mauro Canali, one of Gibson’s lawyers, Bruno Cassinelli, was also an informant for Mussolini’s government, with the codename Brucassi.
He had already defended Giovanni Corvi, a communist that had killed the fascist MP Armando Casalini in September 1924 (shouting “Vendetta per Matteotti”), and who was also judged mentally insane.
It is easy to imagine that Gibson’s judicial strategy (defended by the same lawyer) was also aimed at obtaining the same declaration of insanity from the military judges. And unlike the original judges, the military judges were influenced by Mussolini who at that point was keen on maintaining good relations with the British government.
The first ruling of the newly operational Special Military Tribunal, was with the Gibson case.
The case was dealt with in a private hearing and a verdict was reached on May 6, 1927. The first point reiterated extensively by the military judges was that nothing but lies could be expected from Gibson.
It was therefore essential to prevent these scandalous lies from being uttered in a public hearing. The ruling therefore established that both her past and present statements and those that could have been made in a public hearing were to be prejudicially deemed false and unreliable.
The final decision on Gibson’s mental infirmity was taken, uniquely, by military judges, who based it on “legal-ethical” reasons.
The verdict
On this basis, the Special Military Tribunal, having ignored all politically relevant aspects of the previous investigation, on May 6, 1927, independently ruled that there was “no case to answer against Violetta Albina Gibson, regarding the crimes she was charged with, because she is not punishable by reason of mental illness”.
The verdict, which explicitly mentioned “the intervention of his excellency Benito Mussolini”, ordered her release in order for Gibson to be admitted to a mental asylum for treatment.
Yet, the police authorities, rather than delivering her to a Roman psychiatric hospital, as had happened in similar cases, released her, once again, on Mussolini’s orders.
Return to England
The regime handed Gibson over to her sister, Constance, On May 9, 1927, in a breach of the usual procedure. Three days later, the sister accompanied Gibson back to England on a long train journey. With them, undercover Italian police, one Italian nurse, three English nurses and a travel agency attendant. None of them were dressed in their usual uniforms and Gibson did not know what was about to happen to her.
Some family members and political figures expressed gratitude to Mussolini for freeing one of their compatriots who had “senselessly” attempted to kill him. In compliance with the ruling of the Special Military Tribunal in Italy, which had erased the political motivation and judicially certified the defendant’s insanity, a further psychiatric diagnosis was ordered to confirm her mental illness.
The “senseless” motivation for the attack was quickly confirmed with a certification of insanity rushed through by Maurice Craig and Bernard Hart, two doctors in Harley Street. Gibson was admitted to St Andrew’s Hospital in Northampton (a town around 60 miles north of London) where she would remain segregated for almost 30 years.
In April 1930, on the fourth anniversary of her assassination attempt, she tried to take her own life, but a nurse found her before she could. Only her sister Constance kept visiting in the hospital, while the rest of the family kept their distance.
Throughout her time at St Andrew’s Hospital, she repeatedly pleaded for her liberation in letters to her family, to the Queen and to members of the government, including Winston Churchill.
When the young Princess Elizabeth married Prince Philip, in 1947, Gibson wrote her a clear, kind and simple letter which read:
In the happiest period of your life, I make this request that you write to the Home Secretary saying that you would be glad if he would release me from this mental hospital so that I can go into a convent…In 1926, I shot at Mussolini and was shut up in this hospital for the course of His Majesty’s pleasure. I am feel quite sure that your kind-hearted grandfather would not take any pleasure in keeping me here any longer, twenty weary years and six months. I am now old, bed-ridden with very bad heart disease and other illnesses…You will not need to fear that I will ever shoot anyone again as I am old and ill and occupied in very quiet matters, especially prayers. So if you get me my freedom, I am sure that such a kind act will bring a blessing on your marriage…
As with most of the other letters, it was never sent and they lie in St Andrew’s Hospital archive.
Epilogue
Antonio Colonna, the Duke of Cesarò – the man Gibson professed to love – was forced to retire from politics after her arrest and the investigation over his role. He died in Rome, aged 62, in 1940 just a few months after fascist Italy had declared war on Great Britain.
Italian partisans eventually killed Mussolini on April 28, 1945. It is not known how Gibson received either piece of news.
A commemorative plaque was unveiled for Violet Gibson at her childhood home on Merrion Square, Dublin, in 2022. PA/Alamy
The collective memory of Gibson was for a long time shaped by the narrow conception of mental health in the early 20th century, the diagnostic conclusions of Italian and British psychiatrists and the international agreement between governments that had her confined in a mental institution.
Gibson died in St Andrew’s Hospital, on May 2, 1956, a few months before her 80th birthday. No friends or family attended her funeral.
In her will, she requested a requiem mass and to be buried in a Catholic cemetery – this final wish was ignored by her family.
Gibson came closer than anyone to killing Mussolini. Her attempt was well planned and executed. Had she succeeded, the history of the 20th century would have been very different.
To hear about new Insights articles, join the hundreds of thousands of people who value The Conversation’s evidence-based news. Subscribe to our newsletter.
Andrea Pisauro is a member of the Matteotti Committee London, set up by the London branches of Associazione Nazionale Partigiani d’Italia, INCA CGIL advice bureau, Partito Democratico and the cultural association Manifesto di Londra to honour the memory of Matteotti in London, his role in the fight for democracy and international antifascist legacy. He has also received funding from the Fondazione Giacomo Matteotti to study the LSE documents over the trial of Matteotti’s murderers
Giovanni Pietro Lombardo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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Remote workers, particularly those living alone, are passing more days with zero human contact.Ievgen Chabanov/Adobe Stock
A new study finds increased isolation and distress in remote-friendly occupations
Jun 18, 2026 / Read time: 6 minutes
Clea Simon
Harvard Correspondent
Key takeaways
Rates of remote work quadrupled in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now researchers have uncovered a sharp rise in mental distress over the same period for workers in remote-friendly roles.
The impacts, driven by rising isolation, were concentrated among those who live alone. According to Harvard economist Amanda Pallais, analyses of American Time Use Survey data reveal “this huge increase in the number of days that people are spending with no human contact whatsoever.”
The rise of remote work, Pallais concludes, explains about one-third of the generalized increase in isolation and mental distress over the past 15 years.
Workers have long struggled with striking the right work-life balance for optimal physical and mental health. In recent years, remote work was held up as a powerful remedy for this challenge.
In a new paper for Science, economist Amanda Pallais examines an overlooked cost of this arrangement: When people stop working alongside others, their mental health suffers.
Pallais, Robert C. Waggoner Professor of Economics, began studying remote work in 2015. Her initial questions on the subject revolved around flexibility.
“We found that workers valued the ability to work remotely more than other forms of workplace flexibility,” she said. “It has large benefits. You may be saving 50 minutes on a commute. You don’t have to get dressed.”
The drawbacks took Pallais longer to unearth. In research that continued after the 2020–21 pandemic — a period over which remote work quadrupled in the United States — she found increasing evidence that this new way of working came with a steep toll on mental health, driven by rising isolation.
Pallais’ new study draws on five nationally representative surveys, with a sample size topping 580,000 respondents. To ensure the effects captured stemmed from remote work itself, rather than the upheaval of COVID, Pallais and her co-authors set aside the peak pandemic years of 2020 and 2021. Instead, they compared the years before the pandemic to the more settled period that came after.
When people don’t go to the office, they spend more time alone during the workday and they are less likely to go out for drinks or dinner afterwards.
Amanda PallaisRobert C. Waggoner Professor of Economics
To avoid reverse causality concerns — whereby workers with mental health problems were more likely to request remote work — U.S. workers in occupations that could be performed remotely, like software engineering and marketing, were compared to workers in jobs that could not, like mechanical engineering and nursing.
Results showed remote work rising far more for workers in jobs that could be done remotely. By 2024, these employees were spending about 30 percent of workdays fully remote.
Also documented was what the co-authors characterize as a “precipitous” rise in mental health problems for workers in remote-friendly roles. The pattern held across various measures of mental distress, including a widely used screening tool called the K-6 Generalized Psychological Distress Scale and the self-reported prevalence of seeing a mental health professional or taking medication for depression or anxiety.
The negative effects were concentrated among people living alone. The American Time Use Survey, collected continuously by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, allowed Pallais and her colleagues to compile self-reported data on hours spent in the company of others, both during the workday and after hours. They found the lack of interactions adding up over the periods they studied.
“Particularly for people living alone, we saw this huge increase in the number of days that people are spending with no human contact whatsoever,” Pallais said. “When people don’t go to the office, they spend more time alone during the workday and they are less likely to go out for drinks or dinner afterwards.”
A large body of literature correlates this type of isolation with negative health outcomes. Indeed, some studies equate the dangers of isolation with smoking or unchecked high blood pressure. The rise of remote work, Pallais’ paper concludes, explains about one-third of the generalized increase in isolation and mental distress found between 2011 and 2019 as well as the post-COVID period of 2022 to 2024.
In a related paper, now forthcoming at the peer-reviewed Quarterly Journal of Economics, Pallais and colleagues show remote work also contributing to joblessness for young workers, potentially responsible for “about two-thirds of the increase in young college graduates’ unemployment since the pandemic,” Pallais said.
“Remote work has obvious benefits that people really value,” the economist said, including benefits for people unable to work in conventional office settings.
However, the downside is that it “worsens mental health, particularly for people who live alone,” as well as depriving young workers of valuable networking.
Ultimately, Pallais said, “the benefits may be more obvious than some of the costs.”
The Rundown: In this guide, you will learn how to share ideas faster with Typeless. Using dictation + AI, you will identify, research, and summarize a topic without touching your keyboard.
Step-by-step:
Download Typeless and complete the tutorial. Make sure the keyboard shortcuts don’t conflict with other appsPress Ask Anything to research: “What are some recent trends in consumer AI use cases that I could use to draft an interesting tweet? Pick one clear idea”Open a useful article, select the relevant text, and tell Typeless to summarize it or rewrite it into your preferred format, such as an X thread or emailUse Ask Anything to open X, Gmail, or Docs, then dictate your draft naturally while Typeless cleans it up and turns rough speech into polished content
Pro tip: If you make a mistake while dictating, correct yourself naturally. Typeless’s AI will understand and only write your final, corrected idea.
View in browser PRESENTED BY COMCAST Axios AMBy Mike Allen · Jun 23, 2026Hello, Tuesday! Smart Brevity™ count: 1,672 words … 6½ mins. Thanks to Noah Bressner for orchestrating. Edited by Andrew Pantazi and Lucia Maher.
Situational awareness: Iran won’t let UN inspectors into the nuclear sites the U.S. and Israel bombed, foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei told reporters today, Axios’ Barak Ravid writes.
That contradicts Vice President JD Vance, who said yesterday that Iran had agreed in the Switzerland talks to let inspectors back into the country.
1 big thing: Britain’s lost decade Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photos via Getty Images
Ten years ago today — on June 23, 2016 — the Brexit referendum unleashed a populist tide that rewrote the rules of Western politics.
A decade later, a diminished and fractured United Kingdom is preparing for its seventh prime minister — still haunted by the future it was promised, Axios’ Zachary Basu writes.
Why it matters: Keir Starmer was elected as a competent, level-headed antidote to 14 years of Conservative rule — a period consumed by austerity, ideological warfare and the chaos of leaving the European Union.
His resignation yesterday, less than two years after a historic Labour landslide, reveals Britain’s chronic instability has outgrown partisan explanation.
State of play: For many Western leaders, the U.K. is the ultimate cautionary tale — a live experiment in modern populism, unfolding inside one of the world’s oldest and wealthiest democracies.
Brexit began with utopian promises of an unshackled “Global Britain” that could curb immigration, slash red tape and take back control of its borders and budget.
Instead, a succession of Conservative prime ministers plunged the country into deeper dysfunction: Theresa May was broken by the Brexit negotiations, Boris Johnson by scandal, Liz Truss by market panic, and Rishi Sunak by electoral humiliation.
Today, Britain remains marooned in a low-growth cycle — saddled with trade friction, high prices, strained public services and a hyper-sensitive electorate that tolerates virtually no political failure.Chart: Danielle Alberti/Axios
Zoom in: Starmer’s tenure was consumed by migration and cost-of-living crises, providing ideal conditions for Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK to peel away Labour’s traditional working-class support.
Enter Andy Burnham: The former Greater Manchester mayor and charismatic “King of the North” is widely seen as the lone Labour heavyweight with the authentic populist appeal needed to blunt Farage’s momentum.
In a special election engineered to return him to Parliament, Burnham beat Reform decisively, likely clearing the way for him to take over the Labour Party and become Britain’s next prime minister.
Zoom out: If and when he enters Downing Street, Burnham’s greatest challenge will be incumbency — a proven liability across the democratic world in the years since COVID.
In France,Emmanuel Macron’s approval rating has at times fallen as low as 11%, while the far-right National Rally is polling as the favorite to win next year’s presidential election.
In Germany, the far-right AfD has made unprecedented gains and continues to widen its lead over Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives.
In Hungary, voters ended Viktor Orbán’s 16-year rule this April, toppling the most entrenched nationalist government in the EU.
Between the lines: Even President Trump, who faces a treacherous midterm test in November, is proving vulnerable to the same toxic anti-incumbent forces.
His 2016 victory was intertwined with Brexit’s geopolitical shock — a warning that voters across the West were willing to torch the establishment to express disgust with migration, globalization and elites’ failures.
But now Trump is the establishment. High prices and the Iran war have dragged his approval into the high 30s. The world’s most successful anti-system politician is suddenly struggling to run against a system he controls. Share this story.
“I spoke until 2 am with soldiers and commanders currently in Lebanon or who left within the last 24 hours, and these are the facts from the ground:
Soldiers can see Hezbollah operatives reestablishing positions, repairing infrastructure, rearming, and resuming operations, yet our troops are not allowed to open fire on them. They see operatives observing IDF soldiers with binoculars, and they are not permitted to shoot. Decisions that were once made by a company commander on the ground now require approval from a major general. Because of this bureaucracy, even when a fighter is seen running from place to place carrying a shoulder-fired missile, he is not eliminated because by the time approval arrives, he has already disappeared.
The enemy understands these restrictions and is exploiting them to rapidly rebuild its presence, putting our soldiers’ lives at risk.Israeli Air Force aircraft have completely stopped operating. There have been incidents involving wounded soldiers that required evacuation under heavy covering fire. Massive fire support was not used during those evacuations, resulting in harm to our troops.
When Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel Katz stated at 11 p.m. last night that the IDF has freedom of action in Lebanon, they did not tell the truth.That is not correct. The truth is that our sons in Lebanon have their hands tied. This is the situation on the ground right now. This is negligence. You cannot send our sons to face Hezbollah fighters with their hands tied. Untie the hands of our soldiers now, this very moment.”
UKRAINE WITH BRITISH HELP HIT RUSSIA DEEP ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF HITLER’S RUSSIA OFFENSIVE!
Operation Barbarossa started on June 22, 1941, 85 years ago. On the 85th anniversary, Starmer and Zelensky executed the biggest escalation of the war, effectively drawing NATO into the conflict.
That is what Putin had called such strikes earlier. Not my words.
Will Putin eat his words or strike back, throwing NATO into the conflict?
-> The symbolism is huge. Especially for Russia.
Starmer has already resigned, so his successor can smooth it out? The same happened in Biden’s last days he escalated harshly and left, and Putin did not strike back, hoping Trump would end the war. Now we’ll see what they do. Crazy situation.
A top Nvidia exec says the company’s next-gen AI hardware could largely defuse water-use concerns, Axios’ Amy Harder reports.
Data centers are facing pushback for their use of energy and water — and Nvidia’s chips are helping drive the AI boom behind much of that demand.
Nvidia’s new coolant is a recirculated liquid mixture with water and propylene glycol, similar to the antifreeze in your car.
It can run at temperatures up to 113°F, hotter than previous systems.
Data centers using the new coolant could shift away from much more water- and energy-intensive chilling tech.
Josh Parker, Nvidia’s chief sustainability officer, told Axios ahead of London Climate Action Week, which opened this weekend: “The water consumption challenge for data centers is largely solved.” Reality check: Adoption will depend on costs — which Nvidia declined to discuss.
Giovanni Pietro Lombardo Professor of History of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome
M. Andrea Pisauro Lecturer in Psychology, University of Plymouth
Cut typing time in half with AI voice commands
Axios AM: The lost decade
View in browser PRESENTED BY COMCAST Axios AMBy Mike Allen · Jun 23, 2026
Hello, Tuesday! Smart Brevity™ count: 1,672 words … 6½ mins. Thanks to Noah Bressner for orchestrating. Edited by Andrew Pantazi and Lucia Maher.
Situational awareness: Iran won’t let UN inspectors into the nuclear sites the U.S. and Israel bombed, foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei told reporters today, Axios’ Barak Ravid writes.
Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photos via Getty Images 
Chart: Danielle Alberti/Axios
Zoom in: Starmer’s tenure was consumed by migration and cost-of-living crises, providing ideal conditions for Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK to peel away Labour’s traditional working-class support.
Between the lines: Even President Trump, who faces a treacherous midterm test in November, is proving vulnerable to the same toxic anti-incumbent forces.
AI water breakthrough
Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios
Reality check: Adoption will depend on costs — which Nvidia declined to discuss.
canisgallicus 
