News: Merz announces Aigner candidacy, World Climate Conference in Antalya, Nvidia boss Jensen Huang admits affair

Ilse Aigner will be the next Federal President. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. Hape Kerkeling, the only serious alternative candidate, wishes her the best (more on that here). And Friedrich Merz has finally spoken out: Yesterday evening, at an informal dinner with the CDU presidium, the Chancellor announced a decision that was no longer his. The Aigner train was already in full swing by then, and Merz only had the choice of jumping on or being run over (more on that here).

Before the decision was announced, those close to the Chancellor yesterday referred to the years of friendship that Merz has had with Aigner. Merz has a holiday home on Tegernsee. When he's there, we also meet up to go hiking. The Minister of State for Culture Wolfram Weimer is also said to belong to the circle of friends, one could read. It's interesting what such information can do: Ilse Aigner isn't quite as likeable anymore.

By the way, could it be that Merz only remained silent about Aigner's candidacy for such an absurdly long time because he didn't want his unpopularity to rub off on her? Merz would then be a kind of anti-Midas: everything he keeps his hands off turns to gold.

Climate protection was once the most important issue in the world, but that was a long time ago. Now there are much more important things for the federal government, such as saving the German automobile industry by completely weakening the Europe-wide ban on combustion engines. The media is also not entirely innocent when we report practically every day about the latest emissions of hot air from Washington, but comparatively far too little about the threat to humanity's survival posed by self-generated global warming.

The 31st United Nations World Climate Conference begins today in Antalya, Turkey, and the questions that arise here are the same as in previous years: How do countries manage to reverse growing CO₂ emissions into falling ones? And how can they contain the consequences of the climate crisis (more on this here)?

There is broad agreement on the goals, but that is no longer the case when it comes to the methods of achieving these goals. My colleague Susanne Götze describes which two camps face each other: On the one hand, there are the electric states like China and many members of the European Union, which are restructuring their economies in order to be able to do without fossil fuels at some point. On the other side are the petrostates, which live from the sale of oil and gas and who therefore say: It is not fossil fuels that are the problem, but CO₂. And you can bury it in the ground.

As if the increasing warnings that the AI ​​bubble was bursting weren't enough, a juicy, all-too-human scandal is now putting the head of the most important AI chip manufacturer Nvidia in trouble. Jensen Huang had an extramarital affair with a young tech industry manager who was also suspected to be a Chinese spy. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is said to have warned his government about the woman in the spring (more on that here).

The matter is extremely unpleasant. First of all, for the 63-year-old Huang himself, who likes to appear as a super-cool tech boss in a black leather jacket and is now making embarrassing public apologies. And for the company, whose board says there is “no reason to believe that Nvidia’s national security or trade secrets have been compromised.” Which actually only needs to be emphasized explicitly if there is perhaps reason to make this assumption.

For the astonished audience, the matter at least brings a reassuring realization: AI does not yet commit the greatest stupidities; men can still do it all on their own.

More background here: How dangerous will the Nvidia boss's affair be for him - and for the world?