Monday's top story: CDU wins in Rhineland-Palatinate
After 35 years of an SPD-led government in Rhineland-Palatinate, the change of power is imminent. The conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has won the state election.
This means that CDU top candidate Gordon Schnieder is likely to become the state's new minister president, probably at the head of a coalition with the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD).
According to preliminary results, the CDU improves to 31 percent compared to the last election (in 2021 the party got 27.7 percent).
The SPD plummeted to 25.9 percent (2021: 35.7). While the centre-left party got the second most votes, it was a historic low for the party in state elections in Rhineland-Palatinate.
Meanwhile the far right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has more than doubleed its share of the vote compared to the last election in 2021 with 19.5 percent (2021: 8.3) - marking its best result in a West German state so far.
The Greens lost slightly and end up with 7.9 percent of the vote (2021: 9.3). The FDP, previously part of the traffic light government in the state, flies out of parliament with just 2.1 percent (2021: 5.5).
The Free Voters and The Left Party both also missed out on re-entering the state parliament, with 4.2 and 4.4 percent respectively.
Green candidate wins Munich mayoral election
In Bavaria's state capital, the runoff vote for mayor proved to be a wild election finale: the SPD suffered a historic defeat there, with the Greens set to provide the mayor in Munich for the first time.
The outcome in Munich was awaited with particular interest. Incumbent Dieter Reiter (SPD) had already received less votes than expected in the first round two weeks ago.
In the run-off election, challenger Dominik Krause created a sensation: According to preliminary results, the 35-year-old Green achieved 56.4 percent, Reiter only got 43.6 percent.
Krause studied physics, has been a member of the city council for twelve years and is engaged to a man. He felt very honoured and thanked the people of Munich for their trust. He suggested the city is experiencing "a new beginning".
There was also a change of power in Augsburg, as SPD candidate Florian Freund is set to take over from the CSU's Eva Weber.
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German court to rule in climate case against automakers
Germany's Federal Court of Justice is due to rule on Monday in a landmark climate case brought by environmentalists against auto giants BMW and Mercedes-Benz.
Campaigners with the group Environmental Action Germany (DUH) argue that the car manufacturers should be forced to stop selling combustion engine cars after 2030.
The case builds on a landmark 2021 ruling by Germany's Constitutional Court that the state has a duty to protect future generations from the effects of climate change and seeks to apply the principle to companies.
The European Union had originally planned to phase out fossil-fuel-powered cars by 2035, but weakened those rules late last year following intense lobbying by automakers to allow some sales to continue.
DUH campaigners Barbara Metz, Sascha Mueller-Kraenner and Jürgen Resch argue that continued combustion-engine car sales after 2030 would be a violation of the German Basic Law or constitution.
"Corporations must operate their business models in a way that is compatible with a future worth living for all people," Resch said last year.
The legal action is part of a wider trend of activists turning to the judiciary to enforce climate action.
A key question in the case is whether the auto giants could be forced to stop selling polluting cars without the government directly legislating on the issue.
In a statement, BMW told AFP that "the debate over how to achieve climate targets must take place within the political process through democratically elected parliaments".
Thousands demonstrate against sexual violence in Berlin
Several thousand people took to the streets in Berlin on Sunday to demonstrate against sexualised digital violence.
This comes amid an increase in non-consensual deepfakes – synthetic images and videos, mostly of women and girls – and last week's Der Spiegel report of actor Collien Fernandes alleging her husband had distributed fake pornographic images of her.
Police said 6,700 people took part in the protest at Brandenburg Gate.
The SPD's Saskia Esken and several well-known Green politicians, including Ricarda Lang, Lisa Paus and Katrin Göring-Eckardt, also participated.
In line with the coalition government's agreement to reform cybercriminal law, a draft bill closing loopholes around issues, such as "image-based sexualised violence", is due to be presented this spring.
Speaking to broadcasters RTL and ntv, Federal Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig said on Friday that she wanted the new law to "ensure that perpetrators are no longer able to feel safe, and instead that they must expect to be identified and effectively prosecuted".
Further demonstrations are planned across Germany, including one in Hamburg on Thursday.
German scientist awarded Leibniz Prize for research into brain's navigational system
A neuroscientist in Leipzig, Psychologist Prof. Dr Christian Doeller, has discovered how the human brain's inner orientation system works.
For this discovery, the Max Planck Institute researcher was awarded the Leibniz Prize, which is endowed with 2.5 million euros, even higher than the Nobel Prize.
Our brain has a navigation system which helps us find our way through a city, avoid objects in our apartment in the dark or remember where the milk is in the supermarket.
Doeller explained in an ARD WISSEN documentary called "My Body. My Memory" that he and others assume this system is not only used to get from A to B "but also to store non-spatial information."
In some of his research on the topic, Doellner has test subjects play computer games in a scanner to watch how their brain operate while navigating.
IEA chief warns of possibly worst energy crisis in decades
The head of the International Energy Agency (IEA), Fatih Birol, has warned of what may be the most serious energy crisis in decades in view of the Iran war.
During the two consecutive oil crises in the 1970s, the world "lost about five million barrels of oil per day," Birol said in Sydney on Monday.
"To date, we have lost eleven million barrels a day, which is more than two major oil shocks combined," he added.
Germany initially saw fuel prices rising even faster than in other surrounding countries at the outset of the war, a trend which political leaders have tried to ease with limits on how often gas stations can increase their prices.
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