Friedrich Merz once said long before he took office as Chancellor that he was confident that his policies would halve the AfD's election results. Today he appeared somewhat contrite at the CDU headquarters in Berlin after the election in Saxony-Anhalt, in which voters gave the AfD a result of 43.8 percent. “Of course I ask myself how it could have come to this,” said a thoughtful Merz – and defended his government’s reform policy.
"You can tell from Merz's appearance in the Adenauer House that the election debacle is hitting him hard," writes my colleague Philipp Wittrock in the analysis of the appearance. He had to expect the defeat, but the extent of it surprised the CDU leader. »Merz tries with a mixture of measured self-criticism and demonstrative determination. He wants to stick to the reform course he has chosen, and he expressly emphasizes how agreed he is with the Vice Chancellor and SPD leader on this. He wants to call on his coalition partner to exercise discipline as a precautionary measure, because the first distancing tones are already coming from there.
The Chancellor, who is so often accused of lacking empathy, spoke of wanting to “reach people emotionally” in the future. But according to Philipp, it wasn't clear today what the "better narrative" that Merz is now promising should sound like: "One takes away from the Chancellor his concern, as well as his desire and will to do something different and better," he judges. »But in the end you are left at a loss. And I have to fear that the Chancellor is actually at a loss too.”
My colleague Jens Glüsing reports that Trump indicated in an interview with a British internet portal that he would not necessarily come to the aid of the United Kingdom in a possible conflict over the archipelago in the South Atlantic. Since then, Milei has reiterated that the islands, which Argentinians call Malvinas, are Argentine soil.
"With his Falklands remark, Trump is ostensibly reacting to what he sees as a lack of support for the British in the Iran war, as he himself confessed," says my colleague Jens. At the same time, it fits into the “Donroe Doctrine” with which Trump underpins his claim to dominance over the entire continent. "The Monroe Doctrine from the 19th century, to which the term alludes, was directed against interventions by the former European colonial powers on the American continent - from Argentina's point of view, the islands are a prime example of this."
Police and public prosecutors in Brandenburg and North Rhine-Westphalia published a search call at the weekend with two photos of suspect V. and are asking the public for information. On Sunday there was a major operation in the Hambach Forest near Cologne, but no evidence of the man was found there.
“According to current findings, the person we are looking for appears to be a lone perpetrator with no solid ties to any left-wing extremist group,” says my colleague Ulrich Kraetzer. So far there is no evidence that he could have been guided by a “foreign power”. “That can all change,” says Ulrich. "But if things remain as they are now, then the case shows that not every act of sabotage necessarily has to have been carried out by an extremist group or a secret service."
Today it was announced that the police in Saxony have found additional homemade explosive devices. Special forces defused the finds. The explosive devices were presumably set up for attacks on the power supply. They were located directly on high-voltage lines near the Graustein substation near Görlitz, as the State Criminal Police Office and the Public Prosecutor General's Office in Dresden announced.
Another great pop album from Sofie Royer. Why isn't she a star by now? Sofie Royer actually has everything it takes to be a pop star. The songs of the 35-year-old daughter of an Iranian man and an Austrian woman are catchy tunes, often in a pleasant synth sound format. She mostly sings them in English, but sometimes also in French and a few songs in German. Their fourth album has just been released, and there is a clear development: the new one, titled “Before/After,” is the best.
Boney er: Liz Mitchell, singer, 74 and former lead vocalist of the pop group Boney M., has sharply distanced herself from a performance by another version of the group at the party conference of Nigel Farage's right-wing populist Reform UK party. A Boney M. formation led by Maizie Williams, 75, performed at the event in Birmingham at the weekend. "They knew that they were only invited so that these songs could be used for party purposes," said Mitchell when asked by the German Press Agency. »Performing in front of the whole world at an event that does not welcome people in need means selling your own soul and origins for money.«
