Yoga teacher holds scorpion pose for 29 minutes, breaks world record

Yash Moradiya broke a Guinness World Record by holding the scorpion yoga pose 

for 29 minutes and 4 seconds. Photo courtesy of Guinness World Records

May 10 (UPI) -- A yoga instructor in India broke a Guinness World Record by holding the difficult scorpion pose for 29 minutes and 4 seconds.

Yash Moradiya, 22, a Dubai native living in India, said he took on the record for longest time to hold the scorpion position as a means of raising awareness of the benefits of yoga.

"The scorpion position, particularly, is all about stability. The longer we hold the pose, the better we learn to establish the mental resilience to survive any critical situation we face in life with grace," Moradiya told the Khaleej Times. "Yoga has the ability to transform our physical and mental well-being, driving us to unlock our hidden potential of our bodies away from limiting thoughts."

Moradiya, who has been practicing yoga since he was 8 years old, said he has been working on his endurance in the scorpion position for five years.

He successfully held the position for 29 minutes and 4 seconds, handily defeating the previous record of 4 minutes and 47 seconds.

PATRIARCHY IS RAPE

'Sins of the Amish' docu-series explores rape in Amish communities

"Sins of the Amish" follows survivors in the Amish community.

 Photo courtesy of Peacock


May 10 (UPI) -- Peacock released the trailer for its true crime docu-series Sins of the Amish on Tuesday. The two part series premieres May 24.

Sins of the Amish follows Amish women who are pursuing justice against men in the community who raped them. One survivor alleges her biological father raped her when she was five.


"The odds of an Amish woman getting raped by a guy within their own community, it's 1 out of every 6, on a good day," one survivor says.

Another survivor discusses the Amish community bussing in people to support her attacker. One young woman calls her attacker a pedophile.

"Amish communities view going to the police as a greater sin than the rape itself," another survivor says.

Sins of the Amish explores the Amish and Mennonite communities and the roles of women in them. While many see the Amish as a peaceful community, as portrayed in films like Witness, the docu-series delves into abuse and mind-control that keeps women subservient to men.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M 

Ex-Coca-Cola chemist sentenced to 14 years for stealing trade secrets for China

The Justice Department on Monday said a woman from Lansing, Mich., who worked for Coca-Cola was sentenced to 14 years for stealing trade secrets for the benefit of China. File Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo

May 10 (UPI) -- A federal judge in Tennessee has sentenced a chemical engineer to 14 years in prison for conspiring to steal secret chemical formulas to create the coating inside of beverage cans and use it to set up a new Beijing-supported company in China.

Xiaorong "Shannon" You was sentenced Monday after a jury convicted her last month following a 13-day trial on charges of conspiracy to commit trade secret theft, conspiracy to commit economic espionage, possession of stolen trade secrets, economic espionage and wire fraud, the Justice Department said.

The sentence also includes three years of supervised release and a fine of $200,000.

"The defendant stole valuable trade secrets and intended to use them to benefit not only a foreign company, but also the government of China," Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen of the Justice Department's National Security Division said in a statement.

You was convicted of stealing secret formals to create bispheno-A-free coating, a chemical used to line beverage cans and food containers to prevent their contents from coming into contact with the metal surface. The coating protects the container from corrosion and its contents from contamination.

According to the indictment, You gained access to the formulas developed at a cost of more than $120 million by Dow Chemical and other companies while being employed by The Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta, Ga., as its principle engineer for global research and then as a packaging application development manager for Eastman Chemical Company in Kingsport, Tenn.

Federal prosecutors said she worked at Coca-Cola from December 2012 to August 2017 before becoming employed the next month by the Eastman Chemical Company. At both companies she was among a handful of employees with access to the trade secrets in question, they said.

The indictment states that until recently beverage cans and containers were coated with the chemical bisphenol-A but due to its possible harmful effects companies began searching for an alternative, and developed bispheno-A-free coating.

Prosecutors said You participated in a conspiracy to steal the bispheno-A-free formula to set up a coating company in China with Weihai Jinhong Group.

The indictment states that the group had received millions of dollars from the Chinese government to support the new company and that You intended for her theft to benefit not only Beijing but also the province of Shandong, the city of Weihai and the Chinese Communist Party.

"Stealing technology isn't just a crime against a company -- It's a crime against American workers whose jobs and livelihoods are impacted," said Bradley Benavides, acting director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division.

You's case is one of dozens the Justice Department prosecuted under its now-shuttered China Initiative, which the previous Trump administration launched in 2018 to investigate economic espionage for China.

The program resulted in charges against numerous Chinese academics and researchers but attracted criticism of departmental bias, and was shutdown in late February.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Mississippi sues Brett Favre, dozens of others over welfare spending scheme


Brett Favre was sued in civil court Monday in connection to a sprawling welfare spending scandal in Mississippi.

 File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo


May 10 (UPI) -- The Mississippi Department of Human Services has filed a lawsuit against retired football legend Brett Favre, retired professional wrestler Ted DiBiase and more than two dozen other people and companies in a bid to recover millions of dollars in misspent welfare funds.

The department announced Monday in a statement that it had filed the civil lawsuit against 38 parties previously identified in an audit report published in September of having wrongfully received Temporary Assistance for Needy Families funds.

State auditor Shad White, who authored last fall's audit report, said he applauds the filing of the lawsuit and is grateful Mississippi is taking the next step toward securing justice for taxpayers.

"We knew this day would eventually come," he said in a statement. "We will continue to work alongside our federal partners -- who have been given access to all our evidence for more than two years -- to make sure the case is fully investigated."

The state is seeking to recover some $24 million in misspent funds from TANF, a program to provide assistance to unemployed or low-income Mississippi residents.

According to a copy of the lawsuit obtained by Mississippi Today, John Davis, the former director of the state's Department of Human Services, and Nancy New, the head of non-profit Mississippi Community Education Center, are at the center of this scandal.

The complaint alleges that Davis entered an agreement with New that he would disregard laws so she could distribute TANF funds to family and friends through her organization if she did the same for Davis.

"That illegal quid pro quo agreement and conspiracy between Davis and New resulted in all of the transfers of TANF funds for non-TANF purposes," the complain states.

The lawsuit states that DiBiase, better known by his wrestler name The Million Dollar Man, is a close friend of Davis and that he along with his two sons received more than $1.7 million in TANF funds from May of 2017 in the scheme.

Concerning Favre, the complaint states he allegedly convinced New and Davis to buy stocks in companies he was affiliated with.

The document states that he was the largest individual outside investor and holder of corporate stock in Prevacus, Inc., a biotechnology corporation, and he urged a second defendant to solicit New to use MDHS grant money to invest in the company.

He then hosted New, Davis and others at his home where they received a presentation on investing in the company, the complaint states, adding they agreed to invest in Prevacus and also later in its corporate affiliate, PreSolMD, Inc.

The complaint states New's non-profit transferred $1.7 million in funds to Prevacus in January 2019 to secure clinical trial sites in Mississippi to promote an experimental anti-concussion drug developed by Prevacus.

The lawsuit claims that the claimed motive behind the investment was "a sham" concocted to conceal the actual purpose of the transaction, which was to enrich the defendants.

"Moreover, neither the falsely pretended purpose of that agreed $1.7 million transfer of TANF funds to Prevacus, nor the actual purpose, had any relationship to the pursuit of lawful TANF purposes," it states.

In total, Prevacus and PreSolMD received $2.1 million in TANF funds between January and October 2019, which the state is now seeking to recover through the lawsuit.

The state also says Favre was paid $1.1 million in TANF funds for four speeches he never performed.

Bob Anderson, executive director of MDHS, said he was tasked by Gov. Tate Reeves to correct the mistakes of his department and that begins with filing the civil complaint.

"This is our initial complaint, as in any civil lawsuit, as discovery proceeds, we anticipate that additional parties and additional claims may be added or changed as the matter moves forward," he said.

The filing of the lawsuit follows Nancy New and her son, Zack New, pleading guilty late last month in federal court in relation to the scandal, which White called "the largest public fraud scheme in state history."

Yellen says letting states ban abortion would harm U.S. economy, 'set women back decades'

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen testifies on Tuesday before the Senate banking committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. 

May 10 (UPI) -- Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Capitol Hill Tuesday that global fiscal growth is volatile and uneven due to the ripple impact of COVID-19 around the world and the Russian war in Ukraine -- and cautioned that banning abortion in the United States would also create economic harm.

Appearing before the Senate banking committee to outline the Treasury's budget needs, Yellen said that both global events are the two main outside factors affecting the U.S. economy.

Although the domestic economy has made strides in the two years since the arrival of the pandemic, the Treasury chief told the panel that it's still deeply ingrained in world markets and the fighting in Ukraine is disrupting the normal flow of business.

"There is the potential for continued volatility and unevenness of global growth as countries continue to grapple with the pandemic," Yellen said. "Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has further increased economic uncertainty."

"The U.S. financial system has continued to function in an orderly manner, though valuations of some assets remain high compared with historical values," she added. "We stand firmly with the people of Ukraine and have implemented an unprecedented suite of sanctions on Russia that have been implemented by financial institutions."

Yellen, who was the first chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, said at Tuesday's hearing that she'd expect that overturning Roe vs. Wade would lead to fewer women in the workforce and harm to the U.S. economy. 

Yellen, who was the first chairwoman of the Federal Reserve under President Barack Obama between 2014 and 2018, also told lawmakers on the panel that overturning the Supreme Court's landmark abortion ruling in Roe vs. Wade would have an unforeseen negative impact economically.

"I believe that eliminating the right of women to make decisions about whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades," she said.

Yellen explained that legalized abortion led to noticeable increases in female participation in the U.S. workforce -- and that striking down the 1973 ruling could have a similar impact in reverse.

Yellen was asked about her opinion on the issue in light of a leaked Supreme Court opinion last week that indicated the court is planning to overturn the Roe vs. Wade decision. If the high court dismisses the ruling, each state would have to determine on their own whether the practice is legal. A number of Republican-led states like Texas, Missouri and Iowa have already moved to ban abortion.

"Denying women access to abortion increases their odds of living in poverty or need for public assistance," she said.

Yellen was also asked about rising inflation and said that price arcs in the United States may be at or near their peak. She said the Federal Reserve increasing interest rates last week should begin to show dividends soon -- but cautioned that a new round of COVID-19 lockdowns in China could revive the same supply chain issues that disrupted the global economy for nearly two years.

Similarly, the Treasury chief pointed to climate change as another area that could significantly impact the U.S. and world economies without measures to mitigate its impact.

Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., pushed back against that assessment -- instead pointing to cybersecurity as a more significant concern.

SEE

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/05/yellen-trip-to-capitol-detours-into.html

Is Ukraine conducting a sabotage campaign inside Russia?

Analysts say at least some of the incidents, particularly those in Bryansk, 

Russia, point to a possible effort by Kyiv to bring the war to their invaders

2022/5/8 
© Agence France-Presse

Washington (AFP) - A deadly fire at an aerospace research institute in Tver, northwest of Moscow. Another blaze at a munitions factory in Perm, more than 1,100 kilometers (680 miles) to the east. And fires in two separate oil depots in Bryansk, near Belarus.

Coincidences, or a sign that Ukrainians or their supporters are mounting a campaign of sabotage inside Russia to punish Moscow for invading their country?

Since the blaze at the Central Research Institute of the Aerospace Defense Forces in Tver on April 21, which killed at least 17 people, social media has leapt on every report of a fire somewhere in Russia -- especially at a sensitive location -- as a sign that the country is under covert attack.

No one is claiming responsibility, but analysts say at least some of the incidents, particularly those in Bryansk, point to a possible effort by Kyiv to bring the war to their invaders.

In a post on Telegram, Mykhaylo Podolyak, a senior advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, called the fires "divine intervention."

"Large fuel depots periodically burn... for different reasons," he wrote. "Karma is a cruel thing."

'We don't deny' -

In a massive country such as Russia, a fire at a remote factory or building would normally not be particularly eyebrow-raising.

But since Russian forces invaded Ukraine on February 24, more than a dozen blazes noted by people who document the war have drawn huge attention on social media, amid fears there is a concerted campaign of arsonous terror by the Ukrainians.

Even fires late last month in Russia's far east -- at an airbase north of Vladivostok and at a coal plant on Sakhalin -- raised suspicions.

And on Wednesday, a massive conflagration struck a chemicals plant in Dzerzhinsk, east of Moscow.

"Russian saboteurs against Putin continue their heroic work," said Igor Sushko, a Ukrainian racecar driver who regularly posts photos and videos on Twitter of alleged acts of sabotage inside Russia -- but offers no proof they were deliberate.

Another Zelensky advisor, Oleksiy Arestovych, was equally opaque to The New York Times, noting that Israel never admits its covert attacks and assassinations.

"We don't confirm, and we don't deny," he said.

Part of the strategy?

War analysts believe the infernos in Bryansk, which hit facilities sending oil to Europe, were deliberate and tied to the war.

The anonymous analysts behind "Ukraine Weapons Tracker," a Twitter account that posts detailed accounts with supporting videos of attacks by both sides, said they received "reliable" information that the Bryansk fires were the result of attacks by Ukrainian Bayraktar drones.

"If accurate, then this story again shows the ability of Ukrainian forces to conduct strikes in Russian territory using long-range assets," they wrote.

"I think it was probably a Ukrainian attack, but we cannot be certain," Rob Lee, another war analyst, told The Guardian.

Added to that have been a number of apparent shellings by helicopters and drones and evident acts of sabotage against infrastructure in Kursk and Belgorod Oblast on the Ukrainian border, close to the fighting.

The governors of Belgorod and Kursk have both blamed the fires and destruction of infrastructure such as railway bridges on saboteurs and attackers from Ukraine.

An April 1 attack on a Belgorod fuel depot, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on his Telegram channel, was the result of "an air strike from two helicopters of the armed forces of Ukraine, which entered the territory of Russia at a low altitude."

"Nothing that would confirm Ukrainian sabotage, except for the fact that many of the fires seemed to hit strategic/military targets," said Phillips O'Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, Scotland.

Such attacks "certainly seem to be a part of their strategy," he said.

Pentagon officials have said that Russian forces inside Ukraine are hobbled by weak supply chains, and attacks on their infrastructure would further affect their war effort.

But US officials would not comment on whether, deeper inside Russia, there is an active campaign of sabotage hitting targets not-so-directly related to the invasion.

Webb telescope's first full color, scientific images coming in July

2022/5/9 
© Agence France-Presse

Washington (AFP) - Get ready for a summer blockbuster.

The James Webb Space Telescope will produce "spectacular color images" of the cosmos in mid-July -- its first observations dedicated to its mission of scientific discovery, an astronomer overseeing the project said Monday.

The successor to Hubble has spent the last five months aligning its instruments in preparation for the big reveal, with scientists deliberately remaining coy about where the cameras will be pointed.

"We'd really like it to be a surprise," Klaus Pontoppidan, a scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore told reporters, adding that the secrecy was partly due to the first targets not yet being finalized.

NASA and its partners the European Space Agency (ESA) and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) formed a committee to create a ranked list of objects, which they now intend to work through.

Webb's team has already released a series of star field images taken for calibration purposes, but the new photographs will be of astrophysics targets, key to deepening humankind's understanding of the universe, said Pontoppidan.

These images will actually be shot in infrared, and then colorized for public consumption.

Visible and ultraviolet light emitted by the very first luminous objects has been stretched by the universe's expansion, and arrives today in the form of infrared, which Webb is equipped to detect with unprecedented clarity -- giving it an unprecedented view of the first stars and galaxies that formed 13.5 billion years ago.

Webb, which is expected to cost NASA nearly $10 billion, is among the most expensive scientific platforms ever built, comparable to the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, and its predecessor telescope, Hubble.

Its mission also includes the study of distant planets, known as exoplanets, to determine their origin, evolution and habitability.

DOTCOM BUST
US extradition dropped after Megaupload co-defendants strike deal
2022/5/10 03:35 (EDT)

© Agence France-Presse

Kim Dotcom was originally charged with racketeering, fraud and money laundering in the United States and still faces extradition

Wellington (AFP) - Two former colleagues of tech entrepreneur Kim Dotcom have agreed to face online piracy charges in a New Zealand court in exchange for US extradition proceedings being dropped, authorities and the defendants said on Tuesday.

Dotcom, founder of the Megaupload file-sharing system, is still being pursued by the United States on fraud, money laundering and racketeering charges punishable with up to 20 years in jail.

The website -- an early prototype of cloud storage -- was shut down when New Zealand police raided Dotcom's Auckland mansion in January 2012 at the behest of the FBI, triggering numerous court hearings and appeals.

Former coders Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk said in a statement issued by their lawyer that they have agreed to face equivalent charges in New Zealand.

"We have reached an agreement with the New Zealand Government and the United States of America under which we have agreed to be charged in New Zealand for offences similar to those we face in the United States," the two men said.

They emphasised that the case has taken a "heavy toll on our lives" and that neither wants to leave New Zealand, where they have residency.

New Zealand's Crown Law Office confirmed the deal in a statement, saying the charges filed in Auckland District Court on Tuesday morning were the equivalent of what the pair would have faced in the United States.

US prosecutors allege the Megaupload service facilitated widespread piracy of films and publications, costing rights holders more than US$500 million.

Dotcom is now the last remaining person charged in the case to still be facing extradition.

A fourth defendant, former Megaupload marketing manager Finn Batato, had extradition charges dropped last year after developing a life-threatening medical condition.

All four men have maintained their innocence, questioning why Megaupload was targeted.

Dotcom responded on social media on Tuesday, posting a defiant photograph accompanied by a message: "Keep fighting!".

He denies any wrongdoing and is living in Queenstown, New Zealand while on bail as he fights extradition proceedings.

ARTS
Art in exile: Afghan Sara Nabil fights for women's rights

Radical and direct: Afghan artist Sara Nabil employs her art to denounce women's oppression in her home country. Kunsthalle Mannheim is now showing her works.



Afghan artist Sara Nabil screams life into her performances

What is politics and what is art can hardly be separated in Sara Nabil's work. The Afghan artist — who now lives in Germany — processes her own experience of oppression, escape, and the search for identity in her work.

Through photographs and performances, she depicts how women in Afghanistan become victims of systematic oppression. She also explores ways to regain control over their identity.

For the new show at Mannheim's Kunsthalle, Sara Nabil unfolds an artistic radicality that is new for her: In a performance before the exhibition began, the artist completely cut off her long, black hair in front of an audience.

She snipped and snipped away, before she ultimately shaved off the last bits. This artistic protest was a way for Nabil to show how the female body in Afghanistan has increasingly become a venue for political ideologies, cultural conflicts and power struggles — even more so since the Taliban seized power again last summer. There, such a public staging of female corporeality is taboo.
Women's rights in Afghanistan

For Sara Nabil, art is an act of self-liberation. "In Afghanistan, we have an Islamic, patriarchal society. Because of my identity as a woman, I have always been oppressed," she told DW. "By cutting my hair, I regain freedom over my body. I'm going against the rules, laws and regulations imposed on me as an Afghan woman by religion, society and the government."

During the performance, she called on the audience to donate their own hair, as a sign of solidarity with women in Afghanistan and those who have experienced the same fate.

The Kunsthalle Mannheim performance was filmed by three different artists, with the different videos being integrated into the exhibition, along with Nabil's hair.

"What's important in Sara Nabil's work is that there's an option for action in art, which is a way to reclaim freedom over your own body," exhibition curator Christina Bergemann told DW.

When women cannot determine how their bodies are shown: a photograph by Afghan artist Sara Nabil

Nabil witnessed a suicide bombing in Kabul — and fled

Sara Nabil was born in 1994 in the Afghan capital Kabul and went to school after the Taliban regime was overthrown in 2001.

As a teenager, she began to study modern art at the Center for Contemporary Arts Afghanistan (CCAA). In 2008, she participated in an exhibition that was also shown in Germany.

She then studied political science at Karwan University in Kabul beginning in 2013. Even then, as a women's rights activist and artist, she was threatened by the Taliban. In December 2014, she witnessed a suicide bombing at the university.

A man blew himself up in front of her. For Nabil, it was a decisive turning point: "This time I survived, but next time I will die," she recalls thinking.

Shortly after, in February 2015, she took advantage of an invitation to a student conference in the Netherlands to ask for political asylum in Germany. Since 2016, she has been studying art at the Hochschule für Gestaltung (University of Art and for Design) in Offenbach.

Opening dialogue through art

Since she was able obtain a visa, her escape differs from many other people's flight from their home country, Nabil said. But she shares the experience of exile with millions of people who are persecuted because of their religion or political stance.

She still hasn't come to terms with her escape, says the young artist, adding that she feels she is living between two worlds. She also continually asks herself: How will my art be received in Afghanistan? She says that she is not always understood there.

Some things come across as shocking to Afghan society, she says. "But that's what I want. I want to say something strong that makes a difference and opens up new dialogues."

Sara Nabil also spreads her message via social media.

On Instagram, she posted a video in front of the United Nations headquarters in Geneva on March 8 to mark International Women's Day. In it, she shouts into the camera for a good two and a half minutes, visibly straining at the end. "This is a cry for survival, resistance, equality and liberation from all social and political shackles," Nabil writes in the post.

Dismayed by destruction of artistic sphere in Afghanistan

"It is very painful for me that art is currently not taking place in Afghanistan," the artist told DW. Everything that has been created in the field of art in the last 20 years has been destroyed by the Taliban, she says.

The Taliban ordered the closing of schools for girls: Pupils in Kabul in March 2022

For example, graffiti artworks in public spaces have been painted over with sentences from the Koran. At the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, the Taliban destroyed instruments and arrested artists. Friends of Sara Nabil have also been arrested. Her family had to flee to Germany after being threatened by the Taliban due to Sara's activism.

It is frightening how women and girls are deprived of their identity, says Nabil. She deals with this topic in her photo series "Power," which is on show at the Kunsthalle Mannheim. The black-and-white photographs focus on a person veiled beyond recognition.

"Sara Nabil uses various, partly fictitious forms of full-face veiling to depict that the Taliban deliberately use dress and behavior regulations to oppress women and girls in their fundamentalist interpretation of Sharia law," says Christina Bergemann, the exhibition's curator.

Advocating education of girls and women

Nabil said that veiling prevents women from being both able to perceive and to shape their environment properly. Thus, they would be more or less excluded from the public realm.

Nabil does not aim to criticize the headscarf or those who decide to cover their hair. She does, however, denounce the oppressive mechanism of the full-face veil and the power structures associated with it.

The last image of her photo series "Power" is completely black; you cannot see anything. "This is what the Taliban envisions for women. The woman has completely disappeared," Nabil says.

Nabil's work extends far beyond art. To help girls in Afghanistan in a concrete way, she has founded an online program for schoolgirls called E-School Afghanistan. With the program, she wants to ensure that at least some Afghan girls receive an education. The Taliban have barred girls from going to school beyond the sixth grade, despite announcements to the contrary when they took power of the country.

The exhibition "Sara Nabil" runs through August 28, 2022 at the Kunsthalle Mannheim and is open to the public free of charge.

This article was originally written in German.

German populism takes a blow

Both the far-right AfD and the socialist Left Party were punished by German voters in recent state elections. German populism has struggled in the wake of the Ukraine war.

The far-right populist AfD has taken a beating in recent elections

Sunday's election in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein proved to be another blow to the far ends of the country's political spectrum.

Both the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the socialist Left Party lost votes and failed to make the 5% hurdle necessary to enter the state parliament — continuing a trend that began in March with the state election in Saarland.

The humiliation was more significant for the AfD, the upstart right-wing populist party that experienced an electoral surge following its birth nine years ago, and who until Sunday had been represented in all of Germany's 17 parliaments, and had never failed to win re-election to any of them.

The reaction was one of relief for many in the country's political scene, including the Central Council of Jews in Germany, whose President Josef Schuster called the AfD's failure "one of the best pieces of news of yesterday's election day."

Schleswig-Holstein's AfD leader Jörg Nobis saw his party exit from parliament — a first.

'Voters don't appreciate strife'

The Schleswig-Holstein AfD blamed internal strife. The party's parliamentary group, made up of five representatives after the 2017 election, had already seen two parliamentarians leave after falling out with the rest of the party. "Voters don't appreciate rows," a disgruntled Schleswig-Holstein AfD party leader Jörg Nobis told the ARD news network on Sunday night.

The Left Party has seen a decline on all levels. National party co-leader Susanne Hennig-Wellsow recently stepped down in the wake of an internal sexism row, and at the state level in Saarland, internal strife saw the party's veteran co-founder Oskar Lafontaine leaving the party altogether just days before the election.

But is this really a national trend for the parties on the opposite ends of Germany's political spectrum? Yes, according to Ulrich von Alemann, professor of political science at Düsseldorf University. "These are obviously not good times for small, radical parties," he told DW. "When the elephants stamp through the savannah, it becomes uncomfortable for the mice."

Von Alemann believes the elections in Saarland and Schleswig-Holstein have reversed the oft-predicted demise of Germany's big centrist parties, and this is likely to make coalition-forming and governing a lot easier. "A few years ago, it was said that three-way coalitions are our destiny now in Germany, and now we see that there's another way," he said.

Both the AfD and the Left Party have seen an erosion in support

Rallying around in a crisis

The Ukraine war has also exacerbated the small parties' problems, partly because both the AfD and the Left Party have been seen as Russia-friendly.

"Both parties have traditionally seen the Russian position as more justified than the NATO or US position," said Wolfgang Seibel, chair of politics and public administration at the University of Konstanz. "It could also be the 'rally around the flag' effect could be playing a role — that in crisis situations, where the issue is war and peace in Europe, the parties that 'represent the state,' so to speak, are strengthened at the expense of those at the margins of the political spectrum."

Left Party co-chair Susanne Hennig-Wellsow resigned at a time of plummeting voter shpport

But in one sense it's strange that neither the AfD nor the Left Party appear to have been able to profit from their broadly-shared, anti-war position: Both argue that Germany should not send more arms to Ukraine, and should remain as neutral as possible in the conflict. Quite a few Germans agree with that: The last few weeks have seen a decline in the proportion of Germans in favor of sending more weapons. Opinion polls show that society is split on the matter.

But the problem for the AfD and the Left Party is that this debate is largely being carried out among the mainstream political parties. "The more cautious positions are already represented in the big parties, and the protest parties on the left and right aren't necessary to have those positions represented in parliaments," said von Alemann.

"The concern that the war could escalate if Germany engages too much — that is already represented in the main political debate. The chancellor himself already represents it to some extent," added Ursula Münch, director of the Tutzing Academy for Political Education in Bavaria. "There isn't an obvious gap in the political debate, as there was during the so-called migration crisis, which only the AfD filled with its anti-migration stance."

MORE NAZI'S IN E. GERMANY THAN IN UKRAINE 

Watch video 02:54 Far-right AfD still holds wide appeal in eastern Germany

Comparison with France

The other conundrum about the current trend in Germany is the question of how the German trend does not fit at all with the recent French experience, where President Emmanuel Macron had to fight off a tough challenge from the far-right Marine Le Pen as well as the success of left-wing leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who took 21.7% of the first-round vote.

But that can be explained by a host of factors, according to Münch, starting with the completely different government and party systems in the two countries. "Macron pushed the centrist parties into irrelevance with his République en Marche movement," said Münch. "That highlighted the weakness of such movements, because the distance of such one-person movements to underprivileged populations became much greater, and Le Pen was able to profit from that. I think we're protected from that in Germany with our party system and the strength of our parties."

In France, far-right populist candidate Marine Le Pen managed to gain support

Münch also suggests that the outer parties on the left and right are far from dead, especially in eastern Germany, where the Left Party still leads one state government, and the AfD is, in Münch's words, "in the middle of the political action. I would say that east and west Germany are developing in different directions."

Now, however, both parties need to concentrate on recovering lost ground at next Sunday's big west German election in North Rhine-Westphalia, the state home to nearly a quarter of Germans. Both the AfD, currently polling at 7%, and the Left Party, at 3%, have reason to be worried.

Edited by: Rina Goldenberg