Some politicians in the United Kingdom hope a growing movement in the city of Manchester could help turbocharge the country’s political and economic landscape. This school of thought, dubbed Manchesterism, originated in the city decades ago but has been championed by Greater Manchester’s mayor in recent months. But while many in Manchester view the idea positively, it has been received with more skepticism across the U.K.

What’s Manchesterism?
It’s a “modern and functional response to the high-inequality, low-growth trap that came from the 1980s drive to overcentralize political power,” said the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. One major tenet of Manchesterism is laissez-faire or free-market economics. Proponents of the theory argue that deindustrialization causes major economic problems. 

Another is devolution, or the delegation of power from a centralized federal government to more local governments. In 2014, Manchester signed a devolution agreement that “gives the region additional powers and greater accountability.”

Manchester has the “fastest-growing city-region economy in the U.K. — proof that it’s possible to use public funds effectively while reducing crisis spending,” said Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham at The Guardian. Burnham, who has called Manchesterism “business-friendly socialism,” argues that deindustrialization “left people and businesses paying way over the odds for the essentials” and is the “root cause of today’s cost-of-living crisis.” Replicating Manchesterism on a national scale could mean “putting electoral reform center stage as the means to create a more collaborative politics.”

Would it work across the United Kingdom?
Opinions are mixed. It could “revive Britain’s fading grandeur,” partially because it has happened in the U.K. before, said The New Statesman. The “extraordinary economic success of Manchester, Liverpool, Cardiff and Leeds enabled Britain to take on its important role through the 19th century and into two world wars.” Manchesterism could encourage the country to “remove one of the main barriers to U.K. prosperity and productivity by embracing a far more radical devolution of economic power to cities other than London.”

But Manchesterism is largely affiliated with the U.K.’s center-left Labour Party, which is “now far more commonly associated with the obsessions of metropolitan liberalism than with industrial organizing, worker representation or old-fashioned class politics,” said UnHerd. The “jury’s out” on whether Burnham’s “inchoate offer of Manchesterism is the answer to our precipitous trajectory of national decline.”

Syria is home to the largest population of Islamic State group prisoners in the world. But its fledgling government is struggling to contain the tens of thousands of militants and their relatives. 

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-dominated militia that runs many of the prisons in northeast Syria, had to abandon the notoriously volatile al-Hol camp last week. Syrian government forces moved in to secure the camp a day later, but dozens of prisoners had already escaped. And the SDF also lost control of the al-Shaddadi camp, from which about 120 prisoners escaped. 

‘Unresolved security dilemma’ 
The Islamic State group’s members and families have been held in more than two-dozen camps and detention facilities in Syria since 2019, when a U.S.-backed coalition of mostly SDF-led forces seized back the last of the territory the group had captured. Most in the camps haven’t been charged, and many foreign-born detainees have been stripped of their citizenship. 

U.S. military commanders and analysts have “warned that the detainee population is an unresolved security dilemma” that threatens the stability of post-Assad Syria, said The Wall Street Journal. The Islamic State group has been targeting the camps with “propaganda and messages to stir unrest,” and it has active “sleeper cells” inside them. Routine searches have found weapons. And yet SDF guards are often “pulled away” from their duties to “deal with instability elsewhere.” 

In 2022, the Islamic State group’s militants detonated a truck carrying explosives at the gate of the al-Sina’a prison, leading to a “weeklong battle” against U.S. and Kurdish forces. More than 500 died, and during the “chaos,” hundreds escaped. But little has been done to increase security at detention sites since. 

Prison control issue 
A dispute between the SDF and the Syrian government is exacerbating the situation. After “weeks of deadly clashes,” the SDF agreed to merge fully into the Syrian military and “hand over control of security infrastructure,” including the prison camps, to the government, said The New York Times. 

The ensuing chaos around the al-Hol and al-Shaddadi camps merely “underscored the fragility” of that deal. The government is accusing the SDF of releasing the Islamic State group’s detainees and “exploiting the security threat” for “political gains.” The U.S. said it was moving to relocate the detained fighters to a “secure location” in Iraq, said NPR, but the “fate of the tens of thousands” of their family members “remained unclear.”

A Japanese Spitz dog sits beneath lanterns at Kwai Chai Hong, a back alley popular with tourists that embraces “heritage revival” in Chinatown in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The light display is part of a “Guardians of Legacy” Chinese New Year art installation celebrating 2026 as the Year of the Horse.
Annice Lyn / Getty Images

Television series centered around a hospital have always been a staple of entertainment, starting with ABC’s short-lived “City Hospital.” And at their best, these shows are a mirror for what ails society, typically delivered with a heaping side of melodrama and romance.

‘M*A*S*H’ (1972-83)
One of the best series based on a movie, the beloved “M*A*S*H” (pictured above) softened its source material’s grim anti-war messaging just enough for prime-time viability over the course of its 11-season run. “No scripted television show before, and no episode of any show in the 40 years since, has ever had more eyeballs on it at the same time” than the M*A*S*H series finale, said Kenneth Lowe at Paste Magazine. (Prime Video)

‘Bodies’ (2004)
Unlike most medical procedurals, BBC Three’s little-known, two-season “Bodies” has a very tight narrative through line. Full of “suffocating claustrophobia, grinding despair or nameless dread,” creator Jed Mercurio’s series is “totally addictive” in part because a “brilliant seam of dark humor runs through the show, lightening the load considerably,” said James Donaghy at The Guardian. (The Roku Channel)

‘Nurse Jackie’ (2009-15)
Showtime’s “Nurse Jackie” stakes out its territory in the first episode, when we see nurse Jackie Peyton (Edie Falco) sneaking Percocets before treating patients and flushing a patient’s severed ear down the toilet. Jackie is “grippingly watchable but far from likable” in this “deftly touching show,” said Tim Lusher at The Guardian. (Netflix)