Emmanuel Macron takes a break from domestic troubles on Wednesday when he makes a day trip to Berlin, Germany’s capital. The French president will speak at the Berlin Global Dialogue, a talkfest on world affairs. He will defend his call for greater European strategic autonomy, his pet project to give the continent a louder voice amid great-power competition and international crises.

Mr Macron will also hold talks with Germany’s Olaf Scholz, another European leader beleaguered by political discontent and coalition tensions. After a successful state visit by the French president to Germany in May, strains have returned to Franco-German relations . The French government’s budget deficit is heading for over 6% in 2024, putting its fiscal credibility at risk. Germany is already sceptical. It will not be in any mood to back France’s calls for more joint European borrowing or a bigger European Union budget as long as the country cannot get its own finances in order.

Russia’s economy, subject to unprecedented Western sanctions, has repeatedly defied the doomsayers. While consumer confidence across most of the rich world is in the doldrums, in Russia it is reaching all-time highs. Growth in real wages is strong. Figures released on Wednesday are expected to show that the economy continues to perform strongly. Economists believe that monthly GDP grew by around 3% year on year in August.

Fiscal stimulus is mostly responsible for the boom. Vladimir Putin, the president, is spending a large chunk of the savings he made during the 2010s. Meanwhile, oil exports are bringing in much-needed foreign currency. Help from Russia’s allies is also helping to keep the economy alive. China, India and other non-Western countries are supplying Russia with much-needed imports. Some real-time indicators suggest that the economy is slowing, though not by much. The world’s most sanctioned economy continues to march on.

Eric Adams, New York City’s mayor, is due back in court on Wednesday, a week after he was indicted on five federal charges, including bribery. He has pleaded not guilty and his lawyers have filed a motion to dismiss the charges. So far, he is resisting calls to resign. But many New Yorkers are worried about his ability to lead the city while preparing his case.

There are two mechanisms to force him out of office. Kathy Hochul, New York’s governor, has the authority to remove him via a rarely used law. Franklin Roosevelt is the only governor to have exercised this power, when he initiated proceedings against Jimmy Walker, a former mayor, who was accused of bribery. Mr Walker resigned before he was removed. A second option, which has never been used, would be for certain high-ranking elected municipal officials to form an “inability committee” under the city charter. The city’s public advocate would then become mayor until a special election is held.

As the highly contagious mpox spreads across the Democratic Republic of Congo, the country has been preparing to roll out vaccines. But the campaign, slated to start on Wednesday, was delayed at the last minute. A new date has not been given, but officials say that the vaccine doses delivered to the east of the country on Monday will need to begin to be distributed within a week.

That may not be enough to contain the outbreak. In August the World Health Organisation declared it a global health emergency. Cris Kacita, who is heading the rollout, says that the 265,000 doses received from America and the EU are insufficient– although more are on the way. Transporting doses at low temperatures to remote areas is a logistical nightmare. The biggest challenge may be vaccine hesitancy. Only 56% of the population has heard of mpox, and efforts to fight conspiracy theories are hampered by the remoteness of communities and limited phone access.

Giant pandas are rightly held up as a conservation success story. In 2016 the species’ endangered status was downgraded from “critically endangered” to “vulnerable”. However, giant pandas are not out of the woods yet. The world’s remaining wild population is fragmented into 33 isolated groups, so inbreeding has become a problem.

But now researchers writing in Science Advances, a scientific journal, have made some welcome advances in panda conservation. They were able to generate pluripotent stem cells, capable of forming new animal tissue, from giant pandas. The scientists scraped skin cells from two animals in Chengdu, a city in western China, and reprogrammed them. These could now be induced to turn into cells of any other type—even sperm or eggs. The cells will allow researchers to study panda diseases without bothering them; and perhaps, one day, to help make baby pandas.