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With hindsight, it was always going to be a liability to put forward a man with a negative popularity rating to become German chancellor.

So it shouldn’t have been a surprise when Friedrich Merz failed to win election as federal chancellor in a parliamentary vote in Berlin today.

It still came as a shock.

There was a celebratory atmosphere in the chamber as the new Bundestag came together for the first time since the coalition deal was signed after Merz’s conservative CDU/CSU bloc won February’s snap elections. Former leader Angela Merkel and other dignitaries sat in the stalls for the occasion as the new intake of lawmakers soaked up the historic moment.

History will instead record this as the first time a chancellor fell at the first hurdle.

Within minutes the pomp fell flat as Merz failed to muster the 316 votes he needed, despite fielding a combined — theoretical — majority of 328 of the 630 Bundestag lawmakers.

While another vote can and will be held, it’s very unlikely to come today. Merz’s appointment with the president to be sworn in was postponed, as was the planned cabinet meeting that was intended to allow his new coalition with the Social Democrats to immediately set about tackling Germany’s myriad problems.

What happens now is unclear. What is evident is that Germany’s goals to resume leadership in Europe will have to wait.

Merz has long been a polarizing figure — a poll last week found 56% of respondents said he’d be a bad chancellor. What few appreciated is that the level of discord extends to his own parliamentary group.

The right-wing nationalist AfD party — already leading in some polls — looks like the immediate winner.

Co-leader Alice Weidel called on Merz to step down and for fresh elections to be held.

Neither course is likely. But given today’s debacle, it’s hard to fault her logic. — Alan Crawford

Lawmakers at the Bundestag in Berlin today. Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg

Global Must Reads

Israel’s security cabinet voted to intensify military operations in Gaza and call up tens of thousands of extra reservists, while also deciding on a means of distributing aid in the Palestinian territory. The block on supplies will only be lifted after the new military operations begin and more Gazan civilians have been moved to the area of Rafah in the south of the strip, one official said.

Israeli soldiers clean the gun of a tank at a position near Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip on Sunday. Photographer: Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images

Within months of ChatGPT’s release in late 2022, research labs in the United Arab Emirates claimed to have developed credible rivals. Today, a growing number of once-promising artificial-intelligence ventures in the Middle East and Europe have fizzled out or all but given up, increasingly leaving the global race for supremacy in the field of generative AI to the US and China.

Explosions rocked the airport and port at Sudan’s main coastal city today, the latest escalation in two years of conflict between the North African nation’s army and the Rapid Support Forces militia. Footage aired by pan-Arab TV channel Al-Arabiya showed massive smoke clouds billowing from the waterfront of Port Sudan, the de-facto seat of the military-aligned government since the civil war erupted.

The bus station in Port Sudan in October 2024. Photographer: Eduardo Soteras/Bloomberg

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said she’s appointing a group to negotiate with the federal government in Ottawa on removing laws that restrict energy production, and that a referendum on the province separating from Canada may be on the ballot as soon as next year.

President Donald Trump said he spoke with Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and that his counterpart would visit Washington. Erdoğan had sought a meeting as he seeks to strengthen ties between Ankara and the US, and as Turkey looks to become a power broker on issues ranging from Ukraine to Syria.

Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake swept to power last year with an unprecedented super-majority government. Now, he arguably faces an even more crucial election for 339 municipal and rural council leaders, which puts the island nation’s entire grassroots administration up to a vote.

Romania’s prime minister announced his resignation after a Trump-aligned far-right leader scored a resounding first-round presidential victory, throwing the Black Sea nation into a fresh round of political turmoil ahead of a runoff ballot later this month.

Peru is assigning the military with the task of regaining control of a mineral-rich area of the country’s northern highlands after 13 gold-mine workers were kidnapped and murdered.

A gold miner displays a piece of gold along the Madre de Dios River near Puerto Maldonado, Peru. Photographer: Mario Tama/Getty Images

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Chart of the Day

Saudi Arabia’s progress in securing investment in two oil refineries in India is being held back by a lack of consensus around supply, sources say. The nations agreed last month to collaborate on the plants, as the largest crude exporter seeks to tap a massive market that will help drive global demand growth. But discussions have stalled as Saudi negotiators push to supply half of the oil needed at official selling prices that are often above market rates.

And Finally

Caroline Biddle thought she was doing the right thing when she opened up to her employer about her need for fertility treatment. Then she got her next paycheck and saw her salary had been docked for every time she had attended an appointment. Her employer — a high school near Birmingham, England — wasn’t breaking any rules. The law in the UK, like in most places, doesn’t afford any protection to people who take time out of work for in-vitro fertilization, which can involve dozens of appointments for scans, blood tests and procedures, alongside self-administered hormone injections that commonly cause mood swings, brain fog and intense fatigue.

A medical technician performs an intra cytoplasmic sperm-injection process in Paris in September 2019. Photographer: Philippe Lopez/AFP/Getty Images

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And Finally

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