The US and the EU should take great care about the military training they provide other states. Training men with guns in under-resourced and under-institutionalised states is a very risky proposition, argue Jesse Dillon Savage and Jonathan Caverley. Military training provided from abroad can destabilise a recipient state’s politics, altering the balance of power between certain military actors and the government.

As expected, Angela Merkel emerged from yesterday’s German election in position to remain as chancellor for a fourth term. But she returns to office with a blow to her authority, and question marks over what sort of administration she will be able to form. Patricia Hogwood reports on a win secured with a lower percentage of the vote than expected. The far right AfD, meanwhile, clocked up big gains, taking it into parliament for the first time. Daniel Hough explains what that might mean.

An art show is polarising Brazilians, still dealing with the political turmoil triggered by the 2016 removal of the democratically elected president Dilma Rousseff. “Queermuseu”, an LGBTQ-centric exhibit in the city of Porto Alegre has been closed down in response to evangelical Christian pressure, dismaying artists and free-speech advocates. When a country starts censoring freewheeling art, writes Marcia Tiburi, citing Nazi Germany and Fascist Spain, it’s a troubling sign of things to come.