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.
Around a dozen foreign leaders arrived in Kyiv on the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The visitors included Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, and his Spanish counterpart, Pedro Sánchez. They are set to discuss how to help Ukraine as Donald Trump pursues bilateral peace talks with Vladimir Putin.
Meanwhile Mr Putin held a call with Xi Jinping, in which he told China’s leader about Russia’s negotiations with America. China “expressed support” for a “peaceful resolution” in Ukraine, the Kremlin said. According to Chinese state media, though, Mr Xi also suggested that the “long-term” partnership between China and Russia would not be prised apart by “any third party”, a probable reference to Mr Trump.
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. Mr Musk warned that failure to respond would be “taken as a resignation”. The DOGE boss is aiming to make deep cuts in government spending.
Hundreds of thousands of mourners gathered in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, for the funeral ceremony of Hassan Nasrallah. In September an Israeli air strike on Beirut killed Nasrallah, who had led Hizbullah from 1992. 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.
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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