1.
The shutdown, next part
Let us look the enemy in the eye, then the facts.
The enemy is called
Sars-CoV-2
, we have known him for a year as a strange ball with knobs.
Now researchers have succeeded
in generating
real 3D images of the coronavirus
.
This is how it looks:
Icon: enlarge Photo: Peter Mindek / dpa
Now to the facts:
The shutdown will last until mid-February
, the Chancellor and the country leaders agreed on this at the corona summit.
The goal is to reduce the number of vaccinations, contain the virus mutants, prevent the health system from being overloaded, but the country will remain in a twilight state for weeks.
Icon: enlarge
The country to and through?
Photo: Steffen Kugler / Federal Government / dpa
In addition, the federal and state governments have agreed to tighten the
home office rules
and to introduce "an
obligation to wear medical masks in public transport"
.
Schools and daycare centers were still being negotiated that evening.
When you are finished at some point, you should definitely explain your decisions better and not just read them out, thinks my colleague Martin Knobbe from our capital city office: "You need constructs of hope if the citizens are to continue to participate in the next few months."
Read more here: Federal and state governments tighten home office rules
2.
Chat who can
Yes, the Corona shutdown is keeping people busy, but it seems to me that the
WhatsApp discussion
is almost even more intense
.
Daycare parents, sports clubs and work groups are wondering whether they should switch to another chat app.
The
new terms of use
scare them: What happens to photos of children and blasphemous messages if you agree?
What does WhatsApp pass on to Facebook?
What is Facebook doing with it?
Nothing different than before, WhatsApp assures, at least that applies to the EU (details here).
Icon: enlarge Photo: AP / dpa
But apparently WhatsApp's back and forth created more awareness of data protection than Edward Snowden and Peter Schaar.
First the deadline was February 8th, then May 15th.
However, it remained unclear what would happen if the new conditions were rejected.
Today, WhatsApp announced in response to a request from SPIEGEL: If you want to continue chatting, you have to agree.
"WhatsApp was so fussed about with this update
that some certainly hoped there could be a compromise," says my colleague Patrick Beuth from our network world department.
He himself never used the app, except for testing purposes on friends' devices, for two reasons:
The professional: »I always found it unclear what exactly happened to the numbers in my address book.
And not all of them belong on a US server. "
The not entirely professional: "What I hear from family or other WhatsApp groups of madness, in which the members shoot each other day and night with hair-raising false reports, ridiculous jokes and nonsense updates, sounds extremely off-putting."
His alternatives:
Threema
and
Signal.
I've tried both: the apps can also do ridiculous jokes.
Read more here: No WhatsApp without consent to new terms of use
3.
Chat chat bike chain
On Facebook and WhatsApp, the frustration of many Christian Democratic
Merz fans from East Germany
also discharged
, as my colleague Timo Lehman researched.
"There are pictures circulating in the CDU that show Laschet's face mounted on Angela Merkel's body," he reports.
"Another photo shows Laschet and his team partner Jens Spahn - but as the characters Laurel and Hardy from the cult comedy series" Dick und Doof "." Above it stands: "The team of the hour ... and they want to save us !! ! «.
Icon: enlarge
Photo montage shared by Merz fans
In an
internal chat
from the CDU parliamentary group in Saxony-Anhalt, it was therefore particularly violent to the point: "Chance lost," wrote one member.
The CDU continues to open the flank on the conservative side "and we'll get the receipt in the East."
Laschet could not bring back a single AfD voter.
"This threatens the fate of the SPD." The MPs also considered whether Merz could not be brought to Saxony-Anhalt as Minister of Economics.
It wasn't meant to be a ridiculous joke.
Read more here: »This is the downfall in the east.
That's it guys! "
(Would you like to receive the »Situation in the evening« conveniently by email in your inbox?
Here you can
order the daily briefing as a newsletter.)
What else is important today
Navalny imprisoned in the »Sailors' Rest« prison:
The Russian opposition leader Alexej Navalny is being held in a notorious prison in Moscow.
There have been several puzzling deaths there in the past.
Left discusses radical change of course in foreign policy:
Left defense expert Matthias Höhn shakes old beliefs.
Make way for an alliance with the SPD and the Greens?
Resistance in one's own party is likely to be enormous.
The federal government is
spending
almost 90 billion less than planned:
Although the debt brake was relaxed in the corona crisis, the hole in the German budget in 2020 was significantly smaller than expected.
This is both good news and bad news.
What we recommend today at SPIEGEL +
The mood in Japan is changing:
Despite Corona, the Japanese government has so far insisted on catching up for the Tokyo games this summer.
But 85 percent of the population now see it differently.
It's good that we're rid of you:
Dear Donald, at some point you have to break up, even with you.
And as with every broken relationship, mixed feelings are brewing up here too.
Time for a farewell letter.
The lurking bastard is not a yoga exercise:
the gyms are closed, but digital work-out offers for at home are booming.
But not all are suitable for everyone.
Which is not so important today
Icon: enlarge Photo: Axel Heimken / dpa
Investigative
:
Til Schweiger,
57, will not play the Hamburg "crime scene" character Nick Tschiller this year, as the news agency dpa reports, the viewers "have to do without".
An NDR spokesman is quoted as saying: "The corona pandemic has set the plans back."
Typo of the day
, now corrected: "Because of the Corona mutation, the men's Slamon was relocated to Flachau."
Cartoon of the day:
lockdown yoga
Icon: enlarge Photo: Thomas Plaßmann
And tonight?
Photo:
Mario Anzouni / REUTERS
Even if you're not a country fan, you could
hear
a little
Dolly Parton
, preferably the song
"Just because I'm a woman."
The singer and entrepreneur turns 75 today.
The US magazine "The New Republic" recognized her a few weeks
ago
as the
"Voice of America"
and recalled how much her role has changed over the decades: In 1996 serious scientists did not shy away from the sexist flat joke, their clone sheep To give name to Dolly.
After all, they had taken the donor cells from an udder, so one researcher said: "We couldn't think of any more impressive glands than Dolly Parton's."
Since then a lot has changed, writes the New Republic author.
Parton has become an icon for entrepreneurial daring, female self-expression and "sex posititivity" (I thought about how to translate that for a long time and then left it).
My colleague Viola Schenz writes that Parton's success (3000 composed songs, more than 100 million albums sold, 9 Grammys, 25 number 1 hits in the country charts, probably half a billion dollar fortune) »is rooted in talent, hard work, luck "Intelligence, optimism and curiosity", plus "high doses mixed in: eloquence, activity, good spirit, that is, their self-irony, and a fabulous good mood".
A lovely evening.
Sincerely,
Oliver Trenkamp
Here you can order the "Lage am Abend" by email.