the three question marks today:
Masks, distance, tests: What new corona measures is the government planning?
After Pelosi visit: is China taking revenge on Taiwan?
Chat trap: What does "Fortnite" have to do with the death of Ayleen?
1.
The mask stays - except...
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A mask hangs on the tap of a bar in Berlin
Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
After a long dispute, Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD) and Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (FDP) have agreed which corona rules will apply from autumn, for example with the mask requirement.
Your draft for a new infection protection law determines which instruments the federal states can use.
Here are the key points:
First: The mask requirement indoors should apply again from October.
The federal government continues to prescribe the wearing of FFP2 masks on buses and trains, trains and planes.
Children under the age of six and exceptional medical cases are excluded.
Secondly, the federal states can make masks compulsory in restaurants, bars and public transport or at sporting events.
However, this can be omitted if a current test or proof of recovery or vaccination that is no more than three months old is presented.
Third: Test concepts can be prescribed in schools and day-care centres;
from the 5th grade, students must wear medical masks.
Fourth: Should the Bundestag determine the "epidemic situation of national importance", stricter conditions are possible: distance requirements, restricted or canceled major events, closed restaurants and shops.
Should the functionality of the health system or critical infrastructure be threatened, exit restrictions would even be possible again - the state parliaments of the federal states would then have to decide that.
Fifth: There is no talk of school closures.
What do you think of the plan?
The Minister of Justice from the FDP will see it as a success that the 2G or 3G regulation has been removed from the toolbox.
The SPD Minister of Health, on the other hand, can hope that more people will be vaccinated again if the mask requirement is partially eliminated for those who have just been boosted.
My colleague Milena Hassenkamp from the capital office assesses the draft as follows: “It is undisputed that masks protect against infection, so it makes sense to wear them indoors.
It would have been safer to combine them with tests or vaccination.
Offering masks, tests and vaccinations as an alternative: This should lead to quite a chaos when checking in the restaurant.
And the federal states are likely to be annoyed that they now have an even more limited set of instruments, many of which still have to go through the state parliament."
Read the full story here: Countries may reintroduce mask requirements in the fall
2.
China rages and threatens
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Anti-Pelosi protest in front of the US consulate in Hong Kong: The posters flirted with the death of the top politician
Photo: Jerome Favre/EPA
Nancy Pelosi's Taiwan visit is over, but China's grudge against the US House Speaker is not.
The Chinese leadership announced far-reaching consequences.
In a few days even warships could cruise in Taiwanese territorial waters.
My colleague Christoph Giesen is currently in the coastal city of Xiamen on the South China Sea.
He reports a storm of indignation from officials, on Chinese television and on social media.
China's foreign minister called the US the biggest destroyer of peace in the Taiwan Strait.
A deputy foreign minister said: 'The step is unprecedented and the consequences are extremely serious.
China will not stand by.” There were new economic sanctions against Taiwan.
Germany's Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock also got her fat for criticizing Beijing's threatening gestures against Taiwan.
Beijing said it would not interfere in "internal affairs."
Is there a threat of escalation, even an armed conflict?
That is unclear.
High-ranking military officers announced drills with live ammunition.
Some of the practice areas overlap with Taiwan's territorial waters.
As of Thursday, for example, Chinese warships could cross less than twelve miles from the port city of Kaohsiung.
The Chinese army warned civilian ships and planes should avoid the zones at all costs.
My colleague Bernhard Zand is in Taiwan, he reports concern and unrest about the so-called retaliatory strikes that China has announced.
Was Pelosi's visit to Taiwan a mistake, an unnecessary provocation some critics argue?
I don't think so.
Because of course it is China that has been increasingly aggressive towards Taiwan for years, and not the other way around.
Read more here: Days of Wrath
SPIEGEL correspondent Bernhard Zand in the video: Pelosi has left Taiwan again - but what comes next?
3.
"Fortnite" and the Ayleen case
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Young "Fortnite" player (symbol image): The online game has many millions of users worldwide
Photo: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
A few days ago, the body of 14-year-old Ayleen was found near Frankfurt.
She was killed, allegedly by a 29-year-old man she met online playing Fortnite.
A shocking news, also because "Fortnite" is so widespread with its chat functions.
The game has around 20 million users worldwide every day.
Many parents ask themselves: Where is my child actually hanging around?
My colleague Markus Böhm researched what role "Fortnite" played in the Ayleen case - and what parents can do to protect their children from fatal acquaintances.
Because "Fortnite" is often played in teams with randomly assigned players, with so-called randoms, it's easy to get in touch with strangers.
The player names are usually fictitious, the real age remains unknown.
Nevertheless, parents can prevent their children from randomly chatting with strangers, because "Fortnite" has a parental control.
Here you can limit the acceptance of friend requests or switch off the entire chat function.
Another option is to make your name invisible to everyone beyond your team.
This makes it difficult for third parties to contact you.
Some platform operators have started to search the chats for suspicious phrases, Vice magazine recently reported.
It's about sentences like "I wish you were younger" or the question of whether "someone else is at home right now".
But Markus also writes: »Many youth protection functions can be tricked or have weaknesses.
Therefore, it would be naïve to rely on technology alone to protect children.« Parents must make it clear to their children that they should not give out private data or photos in chats.
And that it's not always cool when you suddenly have a "grown-up friend" online or when an older game partner often compliments you.
Read the whole story here: This is how games like »Fortnite« bring children into contact with strangers
News and background to the war in Ukraine:
“There are no reasons why this delivery cannot take place”
Chancellor Scholz visited a Siemens plant where the turbine for the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline is still stuck.
He does not consider Russia's justifications to be plausible – and politically motivated.
Which strategies Putin wants to use to destroy the EU:
Russia is not only concerned with destroying Ukraine.
Putin's propaganda apparatus is also trying to weaken liberal democracy in countries like Germany by influencing the public debate.
Defense company Heckler & Koch with significantly more profit:
The Black Forest company Heckler & Koch was able to generate 40 percent more than in the previous year.
War-related repeat orders do not even have an impact.
Find all the latest developments on the war in Ukraine here: The News Update
(Would you like to receive the "Situation in the evening" conveniently by e-mail in your inbox? Here you can order the daily briefing as a newsletter.)
What else is important today
US Senator Graham no longer wants to meet CDU boss Merz:
Friedrich Merz decided not to take part in a panel with US Senator Lindsey Graham – because of the AfD proximity of the other guests.
Conservatives shouldn't "cancel each other," the US politician now criticizes.
Left leader Schirdewan announces consequences for district chairmen:
Melanie Wery-Sims, head of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, also left the left because of sexist attacks by a district chairperson.
SPIEGEL has emails that reveal disrespectful behavior in the state association.
SpaceX space debris falls on Australian farm:
Sheep farmers in Australia had found debris - the national space agency now confirms that they should come from SpaceX.
More parts could show up in the coming weeks.
My favorite story today: What is your hidden talent?
I can do something that most of you probably can't.
I can bend the tip of my thumb very far back over the end joint.
By almost 90 degrees!
Yes, be amazed.
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to capitalize on my insular talent so far.
My colleague Maren Keller suggests that we should talk about our talents a lot more often.
Because, according to Maren: »The question of useless talent is one of those questions on which everyone can tell a lot.
This is probably also because even the smallest talents immediately lead to big questions: Why are we the way we are?
Why are we better at some things than others and worse at some things?
What exactly are talents?'
In her text, Maren also explores the question of what we can do to promote our talents.
She debunks the myth that each skill takes 10,000 hours of practice.
To this end, she introduces us to the phenomenon of »late bloomers«, people who only discover and live out their talents very late.
Like the American Anna Maria Moses, who switched from embroidery to painting at the age of 76 due to rheumatism.
A few years later her pictures hung in the Museum of Modern Art, and the then US President Ronald Reagan invited her to tea.
Painting career at almost 80: What a nice idea.
"The talents don't care whether we discover them early or late," writes Maren.
“Whether we find them useless or useful.
They patiently wait for us to pick up a brush or put the numbers together in our heads, move a chess piece, or smash a tennis ball.
And then we realize they've been there all along."
Read the full story here: How to unleash your talents (yes, you definitely have them!)
What we recommend at SPIEGEL+ today
Operation expulsion:
Because he does not break away from Putin, parts of the SPD want to get rid of Gerhard Schröder.
He remains unreasonable – now a party court decides.
The most important answers to a delicate procedure.
One turbine to take away, please!
In Mülheim an der Ruhr, the Federal Chancellor inspects the turbine on which Europe's gas supply depends.
"The thing is perfect," is Scholz's message - and the other: Russia can no longer be relied on.
"Voyager 1" suddenly transmits mysterious signals:
23.4 billion kilometers - no space probe is further away from Earth than "Voyager 1".
But recently she has only been sending gibberish.
IT experts at NASA are wondering: What's going on out there?
Which isn't that important today
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Brad Pitt in Los Angeles: "Telling Stories, In All Shapes and Sizes"
Photo: Image Press Agency / NurPhoto / IMAGO
Age: US actor Brad Pitt, 58, is looking for the meaning of life.
»The older I get, the more I deal with topics like spirituality and psychology.
That helps,” he told the dpa news agency in Berlin.
His role in his new film »Bullet Train« fits in well with this.
Pitt plays a man who returns to work after months of therapy determined to resolve conflicts peacefully.
Unfortunately, several sociopaths get in his way and thwart the plan.
Typo of the day
, now corrected: »A mask is hanging on the tap of a bar in Berlin«
Cartoon of the day:
Kita Kunterbunt
And tonight?
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Leslie Grace as Batgirl: A promo photo to remember
Photo: Screenshot / Instagram / Warner Bros.
You can't see the new »Batgirl« movie from Hollywood's superhero universe today, not tomorrow and probably not sometime in the distant future.
As reported by several US film portals, the Warner Bros. studio has already discarded the film.
Test screenings are said to have been disastrous.
The New York Post quotes a source as saying the film is "hopeless."
And so the $70 million production with a star cast (Leslie Grace, Michael Keaton, JK Simmons) is now disappearing into a Hollywood drawer.
When I read the news about the »Batgirl« movie, I realized how long I hadn't been to the cinema.
It must have been at least a year ago.
I haven't even seen the film portrait "Elvis" by Baz Luhrmann, that wouldn't have happened to me before Corona.
And to the chagrin of the cinema industry, I'm no exception.
Germany's projectionists complain about half-empty halls.
How can you stop cinema deaths?
Here you will find suggestions from our cultural editors.
If you noticed something about this evening situation, please write to me by e-mail (alexander.neubacher@spiegel.de ) or via Twitter (@Alex_Neubacher ).
I wish you a nice evening.
Yours sincerely,
Alexander Neubacher
Here you can order the »Situation in the Evening« by e-mail.
