Friedrich Merz, the winner of Germany’s election, vowed to give Europe “real independence” from America as he prepared to cobble together a coalition. His centre-right Christian Democratic alliance won 29% of the vote. The hard-right Alternative for Germany received 21% of the vote, its best-ever result. Mr Merz has ruled out governing with the AfD, and is likely to open coalition talks with the Social Democrats.
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, offered to “leave my post” in exchange for peace or the country’s admission to NATO. Speaking at a press conference the day before the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion, Mr Zelensky also dismissed the insults of Donald Trump, America’s president, who called him “a dictator without elections”. Earlier Russia launched a “record” 267 drones at Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s air force.
Alibaba pledged to invest at least 380bn yuan ($53bn) in cloud-computing and artificial-intelligence infrastructure over the next three years—more than it has spent on it in the past decade. Last week Eddie Wu, the Chinese e-commerce giant’s boss, said artificial general intelligence—hypothetical programs that could match or surpass human thought—would become the group’s primary focus.
Some federal agencies, including the FBI, advised employees to ignore an email sent by Elon Musk on Saturday that gave them 48 hours to explain what they had worked on in the past week or face dismissal. In his effort to make deep cuts in government spending, the DOGE boss has already offered federal employees the chance to resign.
Hundreds of thousands of mourners gathered in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, for the funeral ceremony of Hassan Nasrallah. Nasrallah, who led Hizbullah from 1992, was killed by an Israeli air strike in Beirut in September. Israeli jets flew across Lebanon’s capital during the proceedings. Hizbullah began firing rockets at Israel in 2023, one day after the October 7th attack by Hamas.
The Vatican said that Pope Francis’s blood tests showed early kidney failure after he suffered a “respiratory crisis” on Saturday. However it also said the 88-year-old pontiff remained alert and had attended Mass. Francis was admitted to hospital on February 14th. He has pneumonia in both lungs, one of which was partly removed by surgeons when he was young.
Police from Cambodia and Thailand freed 215 foreign nationals from a scam centre in north-western Cambodia. Thailand’s government said that the foreigners, who had been forced to work at the centre, would be returned to their home countries. Thailand has been cracking down on scams after its citizens lost some 60bn baht ($1.8bn) to the schemes over the past two years.
Figure of the day: 37%, the share of young Africans polled by the Africa Youth Survey who want to move to America. Read the full story.
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