Actually, Bärbel Bas should have discussed this morning at the “German Employers’ Day,” but instead the former Federal Labor Minister will receive her dismissal certificate from the Federal President in the afternoon. Frank-Walter Steinmeier then appoints Alexander Schweitzer as Bas’s successor (more on Schweitzer here ). Perhaps it is no coincidence that Bas announced her resignation on the day before the most important annual employers' event: She probably no longer wanted to attend this appointment at the "Bund of German Employers' Associations" (BDA), an organization from which the outgoing SPD leader's government activities were met with little goodwill from the start (more on that here).
The surprising resignation of the Labor Minister throws a glaring spotlight on the state of the black-red coalition, and what emerges is unpleasant: the stumbling Chancellor and CDU party leader presents a five-page self-rescue paper with the pithy title "What has to happen now," but not even high-ranking party colleagues seem to be interested in it, report my colleagues Paul-Anton Krüger and Christian Teevs (more here).
The fight for the sovereignty of interpretation seems much more important on this day: Were the “CDU attacks” on Bas “inhumane and ruthless,” as her party friend Manuela Schwesig writes on X? Or should the SPD parliamentary group in North Rhine-Westphalia also take these “moral appeals” to heart, after all they are setting up an investigative committee “against the cancer-stricken Minister Ina Scharrenbach” (more on that here). This is what CDU General Secretary Franziska Hoppermann thinks.
You don't have to be Catholic or even religious to like Pope Leo XIV, at least as far as that's even possible with a pope. Leo is neither intimidated by Donald Trump (more on that here) nor taken over by Emmanuel Macron (more on that here). He supports migrants (more on this here) and is committed to addressing the crimes committed by Catholic priests against children and young people (more on this here). And he recognized the dangers of artificial intelligence early on and made warnings about it his topic (more on that here). And he also helps his older brother with his tax returns. It looks like the world could do worse than this Pope at this time.
Recently, almost a month after his 71st birthday, Leo XIV went public with a personal statement: An examination revealed a lump in his lung. That's why he's having surgery today.
A lump like this can have very different causes, it can be harmless or it can be lung cancer. In any case, the uncertainty after such a diagnosis is hell - probably even for someone who has the shortest line to the top. I wish Leo a procedure without complications and a long, healthy life afterwards! And not just out of compassion, but also out of self-protection: It is really still far too early for a new round of conclave reporting with all the details and rites.
More background here: Pope Leo comes to the hospital for lung surgery
Sometimes my colleagues answer questions for me with their texts that I only realize when I read them that I have already asked myself. Today, for example, this one: Why the hell are bicycles getting louder and louder? Lately, I've been seeing more and more cyclists coasting past me while idling, their rear wheels rattling so loudly that I wonder if there's something wrong with them or with my ears.
My colleague Michail Hengstenberg explains: This is intentional. The noise comes from the so-called freewheel hub and is a trend (more on that here). There are actually people who intentionally install particularly loud bicycle hubs. I don't have any statistics on this, but from my personal observation it's only men who rattle so loudly, and mostly those who dress up in such a sporty way on their bike ride to work, as if it were about winning a stage in the Tour de France. In addition to the visual attack, there is now the acoustic attack on other people. Where are the road traffic regulations when you need them?
The whole story here: Are loud rear wheel hubs the sports exhaust of bike hipsters?
