Tobias Rausch: Four votes for the AfD – did they come from the CDU?

Tobias Rausch (AfD) has been elected President of the State Parliament of Saxony-Anhalt - according to information from ZEIT, apparently through a deal with the CDU. Rausch received 48 yes votes. That's four more than the AfD and BSW have together. These four votes may come from the CDU. In return, the AfD is said to have agreed to elect a CDU politician as vice president. It is unclear whose votes Rausch actually received because the election was secret. An AfD politician was also elected as the first vice president of the state parliament: the right-wing extremist Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, but only with 44 votes. Two more vice presidents are still to be elected (as of October 6, 2026, 4:30 p.m.). Tilman Steffen from the politics department assesses how far the cooperation between the CDU and AfD could go and whether an AfD prime minister could follow in December.

Former BND President August Hanning has been arrested. According to information from ZEIT, the Federal Prosecutor General is investigating him and another former BND employee, Hanning's former office manager. The investigators became aware of the two through discoveries in the case of the kidnapped children of the steakhouse heiress Christina Block. As a private consultant, Hanning is said to have obtained confidential documents from his former office manager in exchange for money. The allegations include treason and secret service agent activity. The presumption of innocence applies. Kai Biermann from the ZEIT investigative department knows what he is supposed to have done with this information.

Also in the update: Student representatives in France have announced another nationwide protest against abuses in the education system for today. Hundreds of schools have been closed for two weeks, partly because the protests have repeatedly turned violent. Annika Joeres explains why the violence is escalating so much. She reports for ZEIT from France.

And: The Belgian-American physicist Francis Halzen will be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics this year. He has advanced a project that allows researchers to observe special particles in the ice at the South Pole. Robert Gast from the ZEIT science department explains what these are.

And otherwise? Wrigley is bringing back old-school chewing gum varieties