The bad news keeps coming. Wherever Kyiv looks, Moscow seems to have the advantage.

Russia is making gains at key spots along the frontlines of eastern and southeastern Ukraine, while unleashing wave after wave of aerial terror against Ukrainian cities.

At the same time, Moscow is preparing to launch a counteroffensive in the southern Russian region of Kursk, the site of Kyiv’s only major military success this year. Moscow has deployed nearly 50,000 troops to Kursk, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says, numbers that were boosted by recently arrived North Korean troops.

Barros, who leads the Russia and Geospatial Intelligence teams at the DC-based conflict monitoring group, said that Russia’s advantage on the battlefield makes it impossible for Ukraine to prepare for a possible counteroffensive.

“The Russians are the ones taking action, and they’re forcing the Ukrainians to respond. That’s not a good thing, because you lose wars by constantly being on the defensive. … You just get boxed into a corner and you have to choose from a buffet of bad options,” Barros added.

The situation is particularly dire around Kupiansk. The key northeastern city is once again at risk of falling to Russia after it was liberated by the Ukrainians in September 2022 following more than six months under Russian occupation.

Kupiansk sits on the crossroads of two major supply roads and the Oskil river, which forms a major defensive feature in the area. Taking over Kupiansk would make it a lot easier for Russia to push further into the Kharkiv region. That would in turn put further pressure on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second biggest city that has been pummeled by Russian drones and missiles on nearly daily basis.

Russian state news agency Tass reported on Friday that Russian troops entered the outskirts of the city, although Ukrainian officials insisted Kupiansk remained under full control of their forces.

At the same time, Ukraine is struggling to hold back Russian advanced further south, around the city of Kurakhove, which has been surrounded from three sides for months. Earlier this week, Zelensky called the situation around Kurakhove “the most difficult area” of the frontline.

But while Russia seems poised to take over the city in the coming days or weeks, Barros said this may not be a strategically significant loss for Kyiv, as it won’t significantly impact its ability to defend the wider region.

Ukraine has put up a fierce fight in the area in recent months, even though it has lost some ground.

Kurakhove lies some 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Pokrovsk, a key logistical hub that has been in Russia’s crosshairs for many months. By late summer, Pokrovsk appeared almost certain to fall. Yet Kyiv’s forces have – for now – managed to repel Russia’s advances there, forcing Moscow to redraw its plans.

Barros said that the Pokrovsk situation is just one example of Russia’s failure to achieve its own, publicly stated goals.

“They were working towards trying to seize Pokrovsk this fall, but they have abandoned this operational objective, and they’ve actually started attacking in a different direction,” Barros said.

“It’s not just the Russians failing. It is actually part of a very stalwart Ukrainian defense,” he added.

Since seizing Avdiivka in early 2024, Russia has only managed to advance some 30 to 40 kilometers (18 to 25 miles) deeper into Ukraine’s territory. That is a very small advance given the huge costs to the Russian military.

Moscow has lost about five divisions worth of mechanized equipment, amounting to many hundreds of tanks and armed personnel carriers, in the Pokrovsk region in just the past year, according to the ISW’s assessment of visual evidence from the battlefield.

“To lose five divisions worth of tanks and other personnel carriers over the course of a year to only advance about 40 kilometers, you can go and compare this to all the other major mechanized offenses of the 21st century and even the great battles of the Second World War …. that’s actually a really terrible performance,” Barros said.

War of attrition – but for how much longer?

Since the start of the full-scale invasion, and despite the assistance from its allies, Ukraine has always been on the back foot when it comes to material and manpower.

Russia has more weapons; more ammunition and more people.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strategy still appears to be slowly grinding Ukraine down by outgunning and outspending it and by wearing down its western allies.

But number of analysts have said that Putin has a limited window of opportunity to achieve this goal, given the staggering losses Russia is suffering to make even the smallest advances.

The strain the conflict is putting on Russia’s economy is clearly growing. Russia has massively increased its military spending over the past two years and its economy is now showing signs of overheating: inflation is running high, and companies are facing labor shortages. Trying to control the situation, the Russian Central Bank has raised interest rates to 21% in October, the highest in decades.

And while Russia has many more people than Ukraine, it is suffering significant losses and recruitment of new troops is already a problem – last time the Russian military introduced a partial mobilization, hundreds of thousands of men fled the country.

The recent influx of North Korean troops into Russia will help for some time, but the material losses could be harder to make up for.

“Between the economy, the shortage of men in Russia and losing the pile of vehicles that the Russians require for their current style warfare, these are strategic resources that are going to impose serious problems on the Kremlin if the current tempo holds for the next year,” Barros said.

Whether Ukraine could take advantage of these problems will depend mostly on the willingness of its allies to continue support it – and the return of the former president Donald Trump to the White House certainly puts a major question mark over that.

Zelensky this week said that the war will end “faster” once Trump returns to the presidency.

“If the international Western coalition, including the United States, keeps backing the Ukrainians for the next maybe 12 to 16, 18 months, there will be opportunities to really disrupt the way that the Russians have been resourcing this war,” Barros said. “(They) can decide whether the Russians win or lose.”

More than half a million people have been evacuated from their homes as Super Typhoon Man-yi made landfall along the eastern coast of Catanduanes, Philippines on Saturday.

Winds are currently up to 160 mph (260 kph), making Man-yi the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane.

More than 500,000 people in the country’s Bicol region have been evacuated, a disaster official told DZRH radio, Reuters reported Saturday. This number is expected to rise.

At least 26,000 people in the country’s Northern Samar province were evacuated on Friday and Saturday, according to the country’s government-run Philippine News Agency (PNA).

A further 18,000 were preemptively evacuated from the Eastern Samar and Samar provinces, PNA reported, with patients and staff members of Eastern Samar’s Arteche District Hospital being evacuated to the area’s municipal hall.

Man-yi underwent rapid intensification on Friday, jumping from a tropical storm early Friday to a super typhoon early Saturday. The increase of 55 mph in 24 hours well exceeds the definition of rapid intensification, which is 35 mph in 24 hours.

Signal 5 warnings have been issued for the Catanduanes area by the Philippines meteorological agency PAGASA. This is the highest level for warnings that can be issued.

Catanduanes Governor Joseph Boboy Cua asked for “continued prayers” for the area in a Facebook post, PNA reported.

“Most importantly, we pray you do not forget about Catanduanes. We appeal for your power restoration teams, free calls and text booths, in-kind donations, help and attention, especially after the typhoon leaves the country,” he said in the Facebook post, according to PNA.

After crossing Catanduanes, Man-yi is expected to make another landfall about 70 miles (110 km) northeast of Manila Sunday afternoon.

The storm is expected to bring several meters of potentially catastrophic storm surge, widespread damaging winds and power outages, severe flooding and landslides across a significant swath of eastern Luzon.

Intense Israeli strikes targeted areas of Beirut’s southern suburbs Saturday as the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah considered its response to a fresh ceasefire proposal.

The strikes marked the fifth straight day of Israeli attacks on the Dayiyeh region of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold. Lebanon’s National News Agency said three areas were hit.

The Israel Defense Forces said it had targeted Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure, accusing the Iran-backed group of embedding itself within the civilian population. It issued evacuation orders across several locations ahead of the attacks.

Israel has intensified its strikes on the capital and expanded its ground operation in southern Lebanon in recent days. The heavy strikes coincide with revived negotiations for a ceasefire in Lebanon.

The latest proposal is the first to be submitted by the US and Israel since a temporary ceasefire was negotiated in late September. Those efforts were upended when Israel killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in a major bombing attack in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

Authorities are “optimistic” that Hezbollah will agree to the terms of the agreement and expect to submit an official response to the latest proposal next Monday, the Lebanese official said. But Hezbollah is yet to respond.

It remains unclear if the intensified strikes across Lebanon will influence the ceasefire negotiations. On Thursday alone, Israeli airstrikes resulted in the deaths of at least 59 individuals throughout Lebanon, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health.

Most of the strikes have been in Shia-majority areas where Hezbollah wields influence, but Israel has also struck buildings housing displaced families well outside areas of the militant group’s dominance.

Meanwhile Hezbollah has continued systematically firing projectiles onto areas in northern Israel. At least 60 projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanon into Israel on Saturday, the IDF said.

Israel launched a major offensive in Lebanon in mid-September following months of tit-for-tat border attacks, which started when Hezbollah attacked Israel in solidarity with Hamas and Palestinians in Gaza. Returning 60,000 civilians to their homes in northern Israel has become a political imperative for the Israeli leadership.

Dozens of people detained during protests over Venezuela’s disputed presidential election have been released, according to the local rights group Foro Penal.

Fifty people were released from the Tocorón prison in the state of Aragua and 20 more from three other prisons, Foro Penal’s leader Alfredo Romero said early Saturday.

Video footage from outside one of the prisons shows some of those released hugging loved ones surrounded by cheering crowds.

According to Foro Penal, more than 1,800 people have been detained for protesting July’s election, which saw strongman President Nicolas Maduro reelected despite widespread skepticism about the result in Venezuela and abroad.

Human Rights Watch has said there are “credible” reports of 24 people being killed during the crackdown on the protests.

More releases could be on the way, with Venezuela’s Attorney General saying Friday it would review the cases of more than 200 people detained during the protests.

The releases come after one protester died in custody.

Jesús Manuel Martínez Medina, a member of the opposition party Vente Venezuela, was detained on August 2 and had been in hospital since October 11.

The Attorney General said Friday he had died in hospital after receiving “adequate medical attention,” but did not specify the date of his death.

Venezuela has been in a state of crisis since the July election, when Venezuela’s electoral authority – a body stacked with Maduro allies – declared him the winner with 51% of the vote.

But tens of thousands of tallies published by the opposition suggested a win for opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez.

Multiple countries have refused to recognize Maduro’s victory.

Maduro – a follower of “Chavismo,” the left-wing populist ideology named after his predecessor Hugo Chávez – is set to begin his third consecutive six-year term in January.

The head of Georgia’s Central Electoral Commission was doused with black paint Saturday at a meeting to confirm the results of the country’s divisive Oct. 26 parliamentary elections.

Protesters gathered outside the commission’s building in Tbilisi, where officials announced that the ruling Georgian Dream party had won 53.93% of the vote.

Opposition supporters have rejected the results amid allegations that the vote was rigged, an accusation that Georgian Dream denies.

The Saturday session was interrupted when David Kirtadze, a commission member from the opposition United National Movement party, threw black paint at commission chairman Giorgi Kalandarishvili.

Before the incident, Kirtadze told Kalandarishvili that the official results of the vote did not reflect voters’ “true choice.”

Kalandarishvili responded by saying that the use of “pressure, bullying and personal insults” proved that there was no evidence of vote rigging.

When the meeting resumed, Kalandarishvili was seen with a bandaged eye.

“It once again becomes evident that there is no tangible proof indicating that the elections were manipulated,” he told the audience.

European election observers have described the Georgian parliamentary elections as taking place in a “divisive” atmosphere marked by instances of bribery, double voting and physical violence.

Many Georgians viewed the vote as a pivotal referendum on the country’s effort to join the European Union. The bloc suspended Georgia’s membership application process indefinitely in June after the country’s parliament passed a “foreign influence law” that critics say mimics Moscow’s crackdown on civil society.

Critics have accused the ruling Georgian Dream, established by Bidzina Ivanishvili, a shadowy billionaire who made his fortune in Russia, of becoming increasingly authoritarian and tilted toward Moscow. It has recently adopted laws similar to those used by the Kremlin to crack down on freedom of speech and LGBTQ+ rights.

President Salome Zourabichvili, who has rejected the official results, says Georgia has fallen victim to pressure from Moscow against joining the European Union. Zourabichvili, who holds a mostly ceremonial position, has urged the United States and EU to support the demonstrations.

Officials in Washington and Brussels have urged a full investigation of the election, while the Kremlin has rejected the accusations of interference.

Eight people were killed and 17 others injured in a stabbing attack on a college campus in eastern China on Saturday, police said — the latest in a recent spate of attacks that has shaken a nation long used to low rates of violent crime.

The attack took place around 6:30 p.m at the Wuxi Vocational Institute of Arts and Technology in the city of Yixing, according to a police statement. A suspect was detained at the scene, it said.

The statement said the suspect was a recent graduate who was motivated by “failing (an) exam, not receiving a graduation certificate, and dissatisfaction with internship compensation.” An investigation is ongoing.

The attack is the latest mass casualty incident to hit China — a country of 1.4 billion that has one of the lowest rates of violent crime in the world, partly due to its strict gun controls and powerful mass surveillance.

Last Monday, 35 people were killed after a car plowed into people who were exercising in the southern city of Zhuhai in the country’s deadliest known attack on the public in a decade. Around 40 others were injured.

As news of that attack spread, censors swooped in to take down online videos of the attack and moderate social media discussions

In October, police arrested a 50-year-old man after a stabbing attack near an elementary school in Beijing injured five people, including three children.

In September, three people were killed and 15 others injured in a knife attack at a suburban supermarket in Shanghai.

Also in September, a bus crashed into a crowd of students and parents outside a school in Tai’an city in Shandong province, killing 11 people and injuring 13 others. Chinese authorities did not reveal whether that incident was accidental or deliberate.

This story has been updated with additional infomation.

A foul-mouthed former Philippine president who jailed political rivals, insulted the pope and claims to have hired “death squad” gangsters is running for re-election in his hometown in a desperate bid to strengthen his scandal-hit political dynasty.

Labeled “Asia’s Trump” by some commentators due to his unorthodox leadership style and bombastic rhetoric, Rodrigo Duterte is aiming for a perhaps even more unlikely political comeback than Donald Trump’s seismic return to the White House.

Duterte, 79, wants to return as mayor of Davao City, on the southern island of Mindanao, where he held power for more than two decades before leading the archipelago nation between 2016 and 2022.

His return to politics is about more than a personal quest for power, analysts say – it’s an attempt to shore up support for his family against the Philippines’ other famed political dynasty – the Marcoses, who have an opposing vision for the country, particularly its relationships with the United States and China.

In a political culture dominated by clan-based alliances, the Marcoses and the Dutertes made a vow of unity when Duterte’s daughter, Sara Duterte-Carpio, ran for vice president alongside Ferdinand Marcos Jr. – son of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who died in exile in 1989 after a brutal 21-year reign.

The duo won a landslide victory in 2022, but not even halfway through their term the alliance is disintegrating as Duterte-Carpio faces calls for her impeachment for alleged corruption, which she denies.

The Marcos-Duterte fallout has since descended into public tirades and name-calling – a hallmark of Rodrigo Duterte’s years as a straight-talking, filter-free president.

Richard Heydarian, senior lecturer at the Asian Center of the University of the Philippines, says the older Duterte has entered the political maelstrom to bolster his family’s defenses as they fight battles on several fronts.

“The Dutertes are at their most vulnerable moment in almost a decade,” he said.

Death squads and a war on drugs

Duterte soared to power on a promise to replicate on a national scale his anti-crime crackdown in the family’s stronghold of Davao, winning the 2016 presidential election in a landslide.

In the years that followed, more than 6,000 people were killed in his war on drugs, according to police data, though independent monitors believe the number of extrajudicial killings could be much higher.

Many of the victims were young men from impoverished shanty towns, shot by police and rogue gunmen as part of a campaign to target dealers.

The bloodshed prompted an investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and a monthslong House of Representatives inquiry, as well as a separate Senate inquiry led by the cousin of the current president.

In a House hearing Wednesday, Duterte declared that he was finally ready to face the ICC, even urging prosecutors to “hurry up” and “start the investigation tomorrow.” In typically combative fashion, however, he also told the 12-hour long hearing that he would kick any ICC investigators who came to the Philippines to face him.

Duterte’s fighting talk comes after the former president made a stark admission to the Senate inquiry last month during his first public appearance in the investigations.

Before an audience of millions watching on television and online, Duterte told lawmakers he hired a “death squad” of gangsters to kill criminals while mayor of Davao City, 600 miles (965 kilometers) from the capital Manila.

“I can make the confession now if you want,” Duterte said. “I had a death squad of seven, but they were not police, they were gangsters.”

But in the same hearing, Duterte distanced himself from claims he directly ordered his national police chiefs to carry out extrajudicial killings during his time as president. He also said he told police officers to “encourage” suspects to fight back, as legal cover for the killings.

Duterte’s attempts to fend off criticism come as his daughter fights calls for her impeachment over claims she misappropriated funds from both the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education.

Lawmakers in September deferred the approval of budgets to her office as allied political clans at odds with the Dutertes demanded more transparency and accountability over her public spending.

Heydarian, the analyst, said Duterte’s decision to run for Davao mayor marks an attempt to keep the family politically relevant, and is likely an acknowledgment that he may not have what it takes to run for a seat in the national legislature.

His return to Davao may also serve to support his sons – incumbent Davao mayor Sebastian Duterte and congressman Paolo Duterte – who are contesting the Davao election but are viewed as “out of touch” with locals, Heydarian said.

“It’s always foolish to underestimate the Dutertes given their almost fanatical base in certain parts of the country, but I think it would also not be foolish to think that the Dutertes are also now facing an existential crisis,” Heydarian said.

From unity to animosity

The Marcos-Duterte alliance was always an unlikely one. But major cracks appeared in January, when Rodrigo Duterte called Marcos a “drug addict” and threatened that the president could be removed from power.

Months later, Vice President Duterte-Carpio resigned as education secretary, a departure seen by analysts as a sign that the relationship between the country’s top leaders was beyond repair.

In October, Duterte-Carpio aired a litany of grievances against the president in a two-hour livestreamed press conference, saying she “wanted to chop his head off.” She said the Marcoses “used her” to propel themselves to victory in the 2022 election.

At one point, Duterte-Carpio spoke about Ferdinand Marcos Sr. – the late patriarch and longtime dictator. She said she had become so incensed by the attacks on her that she wanted to dig up his body and “throw it in the West Philippine Sea.”

Despite this, Duterte-Carpio told reporters she does not regret running for vice president under Marcos. “They can drag me to hell,” she said. “And when they get there, I will be the president of hell.”

Marcos insisted he thought he and the vice president were friends.

“I always thought that we were,” he told reporters on the sidelines of an Association of Southeast Asian Nations conference in September. “But maybe I was deceived.”

His son, Sandro Marcos, entered the fray, saying in a rare statement that he “cannot remain silent” as the vice president “threatens to exhume a former president and behead an incumbent one.”

At the heart of the feud is geopolitics, specifically how the Philippines should balance its relationships with China and the US, according to Ranjit Singh Rye, an assistant professor of political science at the University of the Philippines.

The incumbent Marcos administration has leaned more closely toward Washington – the Philippines’ oldest and closest ally – particularly strengthening its military alliance, in a move that reverses Duterte’s pro-Beijing tilt for investment in infrastructure.

Cozying up to China is believed to have led to the nefarious proliferation of the gambling and online scams industry, with alleged links to Chinese organized crime, under Duterte’s administration.

The leaders’ split views on the Philippines’ geopolitical standing ultimately divided the Marcos-Duterte alliance, according to Rye.

“The differences are irreconcilable because they both represent a different vision of where the Philippines needs to go and how the Philippines needs to be governed,” Rye said.

Home turf survival

When Duterte filed his candidacy in Davao, he was met by a roaring crowd of supporters. “I want to serve you. Davao is better than yesterday,” he told reporters, implying its current progress was due to his past iron grip.

The midterm elections are not until May 2025 but politicking and campaigning in the Philippines starts punishingly early, and thousands of local posts are up for grabs across the country of just under 120 million people, from district councilors and mayors to lawmakers.

Cleve Arguelles, a political scientist and head of polling firm WR Numero, said the outcome could shape the political landscape for years to come.

In Davao, five members of the once-mighty Duterte clan are facing off with familiar rivals.

Along with Sebastian, who will be his father’s running mate, Rodrigo’s eldest son Paolo is seeking re-election to Congress and two of Paolo’s sons are running for other local seats. Political pundits are saying that at least one Duterte may make a bid for the presidency in 2028.

“The Dutertes are not just joining this race as regular players. This is a fight to the death. This is for their political survival,” Arguelles said.

The Dutertes’ biggest challenger in Davao is the Nograles clan, reigniting a decades-old family rivalry.

The late Prospero Nograles remains the only person from Mindanao to have served as the nation’s House speaker. Though he only held the role for two years until 2010, the patriarch of the Nograles family built formidable ties with influential lawmakers and entrenched political elites across a decades-long career in local and national politics.

Now, the next generation of Nograles politicians is running against the Dutertes in their shared hometown.

Karlo Nograles is running against Rodrigo Duterte for the mayoralty while his sister, Margarita, a lawyer and rising TikTok influencer, is challenging Paolo.

Karlo Nograles has said people in Davao “deserve a chance to have real, meaningful and lasting change” – a message that could sway a portion of voters, Arguelles said.

“If the Dutertes lose the ballot in their home turf, it’s a sign that they have not been able to defend themselves from attacks on several fronts,” Arguelles said.

A lingering problem for the Dutertes is their relationship with Pastor Apollo Carreon Quiboloy, a self-styled “appointed son of God” and founder of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ church, who is wanted by the FBI for alleged sex trafficking.

Quiboloy is a close supporter and spiritual adviser of Rodrigo Duterte, who regularly appeared on a church-linked media network when he was mayor of Davao and was accused by lawmakers of concealing Quiboloy’s whereabouts.

The church leader was arrested in September after a weeks-long standoff involving nearly 2,000 officers who surrounded a sprawling church compound just outside Davao International Airport – a massive operation for which Marcos took credit.

Despite all the controversies and alleged links to extrajudicial killings and suspected criminals, Duterte has told Davao voters that a vote for him is a vote for order.

Weight loss drugs such as Wegovy and Ozempic have been hailed worldwide as revolutionary for medicine. In the United Kingdom, the government is hoping they might also improve public finances, eyeing their use to help unemployed people re-enter the workforce and ultimately save money on health care.

“For many people, these weight-loss jabs will be life-changing, help them get back to work, and ease the demands on our NHS [National Health Service],” British Health Secretary Wes Streeting wrote recently in The Telegraph newspaper.

Streeting added that obesity is “placing significant burden on our health service,” costing the NHS £11 billion ($14 billion) annually and leading people to take an average of four more sick days each year, which hurts the economy.

To counter that, the government is funding a five-year trial of the weight loss drug Mounjaro, or tirzepatide, in conjunction with the drug manufacturer Eli Lilly, which will collect data on participants’ quality of life and changes to their employment status and sick day use.

But the proposals have sparked backlash from healthcare professionals, who say that new pharmaceutical treatments have resulted in massive demand that the country’s public health system can’t cope with.

Additional measures to prevent obesity in the first place are desperately needed, health experts say.

Fierce debate on obesity solutions

There’s no question about the issue of obesity in the UK – at least 29% of adults in England are obese, as are 15% of children between the ages of 2 and 15, according to the latest Health Survey for England, which used 2022 data.

Obesity is the second most common cause of preventable death in England, after smoking, according to government health data. It’s also a risk factor for type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dementia, liver disease and several cancers.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said that his government needs to “think differently” about how to reduce pressure on the country’s national health care system, overburdened amid staffing shortages and funding pressures. Part of that new thinking is exploring weight loss drugs.

Yet obesity experts and healthcare professionals say that because the health system is already overloaded, drugs are hard to administer at scale and solutions need to go much deeper.

“The idea that this is the solution to obesity is a complete fantasy. We still need to prevent as many cases as possible,” said Alfred Slade, government affairs lead at the Obesity Health Alliance, a coalition of organizations that work together to reduce the condition across the UK.

The OHA has crunched the numbers on existing weight loss drugs like Wegovy, the brand name for the appetite suppressant semaglutide. The conclusion? It’s nearly impossible to make it widely available.

Currently, about 4.1 million people living with excess weight meet the criteria to get Wegovy through England’s national healthcare system. But fewer than 50,000 people per year will actually receive the treatment due to underfunding for NHS services and staffing levels, even with additional financing in the coming years, according to the alliance, citing NHS estimates.

To improve access, the government is also expanding the use of the drug Mounjaro, or tirzepatide, for obesity patients in addition to Type 2 diabetes patients. The health ministry claims that up to 250,000 people with the greatest need could receive it over the next three years.

The alliance says it’s not clear how the government will pay for the drugs, or how it plans to fund “wraparound support” that is essential alongside these prescriptions, such as dietary advice and physical activity support to ensure patients don’t lose muscle mass as well as fat.

The government trial studying links between weight loss drugs and employment is also raising alarm bells among healthcare experts, who argue that medical need should always be the driving factor behind prescriptions.

“Obesity management services should be available to all who could benefit but where prioritization has to be made, this must be done based on clinical need not the potential economic output of the patient,” wrote Jack Doughty, a senior policy officer at Diabetes UK, in a blog post.

The UK’s health ministry has been clear that the NHS will continue to treat people based on clinical need and not prioritize those who are unemployed.

Early prevention translates to ‘huge’ cost savings

A key issue with weight loss drugs is that they are “dealing with the symptom, not the cause” of obesity, according to Martin White, professor of population health research at the University of Cambridge. Experts argue you need to tackle both.

“It’s a whole population problem, not a small number of individuals,” White said. “We have to work out ways to change the context or the environment that is leading people to eat that many excess calories.”

One way is to implement stronger taxes on unhealthy products.

For example, the UK’s tax on sugary soft drinks has already resulted in manufacturers reducing the amount of sugar in sodas, and studies indicate that price increases are deterring some consumers. There are growing calls to tax food products with sugar and salt in a similar way.

Experts are also calling for stronger marketing regulations to prevent unhealthy foods from being advertised to children. In October 2025, a watershed law that prevents junk food advertising before 9 p.m. on TV, streaming services and online will come into force in the UK.

Another policy solution is to require healthier food to be served in public-sector facilities, like schools, hospitals and prisons. White said that kind of intervention could also be applied to the private sector, if offices and corporate caterers are required to serve healthier food.

In schools, experts say there are also problems with implementing the existing regulations for healthy food, which is another area that could benefit from more oversight and investment. For example, one government report has called for more funding to widen access to free and nutritious school meals.

“Increasingly, what we’ve seen is that kids are starting to put on weight from a very early age,” White added. “But if you can prevent it really early, then the cost savings in terms of health care become huge.”

Of course, changing an entire food system is harder than prescribing a drug. But tackling an obesity problem that impacts roughly one-third of British adults will require multiple solutions, across all sectors of society.

“There is no such thing as a silver bullet for obesity,” the Obesity Health Alliance emphasized.