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The situation in the morning - what does "as big as a small car" mean here?

2023-02-11T05:33:35.474Z


What was that new flying object over the US? What do Christian Drosten and Karl Lauterbach see as their biggest mistakes? And what actually is a »failed state«? This is the situation on Saturday morning.


What was that flying object?

What's going on in the sky over America?

Less than a week after the alleged espionage balloon from China, the Pentagon has now had

another unmanned flying object

shot down.

It flew lower than the balloon, so there would have been a

risk of collision with civilian aircraft

, the US government said.

The flying object had previously crossed the

airspace over Alaska , among other things, so

Republican and ex-presidential candidate Sarah Palin

could possibly

see it from her house, who usually keeps an eye on Russia from Alaska.

However, this flying object was smaller than the China balloon, said a US government spokesman, namely

"about the size of a small car

," which of course is an annoyingly imprecise description for car lovers.

What to do with it?

And it sounds like a mini car is

somehow worth less than a big one

, which I can vehemently deny without going into advertising details here.

In the case of the Chinese balloon, at least it was known to

be the size of "three tour buses

. "

Based on experience from many holiday trips on the A3, you can imagine them side by side.

What if this new flying object turns out to be a self-propelled Chinese balloon again?

With the crises, wars and catastrophes of the present day,

an escalation between the US and China would be the last thing anyone would wish for.

  • Alleged espionage system: what we know so far about the balloon and China's plans 

What went wrong, Mr. Lauterbach?

Did politicians make mistakes in the corona pandemic?

Yes, and not even the politicians responsible then and now dispute that.

The question is where the mistakes were

, how they came about, how their consequences can be undone, and whether they can be prevented in the future.

A particularly painful point is the

closure of schools.

Family Minister Lisa Paus (Greens) and Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) have just presented a report that shows

how devastating this policy was

: three out of four school children are still suffering from the psychological consequences.

In retrospect, Lauterbach sees the duration of the school closures as a

"mistake"

.

The "knowledge" of the researchers was

"not good enough"

.

How do these words affect Christian Drosten, one of the most important German virologists?

My colleagues Markus Feldenkirchen and Rafaela von Bredow

were able to win over Lauterbach and Drosten for a double discussion

.

In it, Drosten speaks unusually openly about his experiences as a political advisor.

That he himself never promoted nationwide, only local school closures, namely where

the number of infections got out of control

.

From Drosten's point of view, an attempt is now being made to "reinterpret" the entire corona measures in retrospect, and

"that upsets me"

: "How derogatory is that to the many people who have tried to find out and act responsibly from the start?"

Lauterbach, on the other hand, describes how he sees himself in a “defensive struggle”

for the past year

: “Once a scientific topic has become political, there is hardly anything that can be gained with scientific arguments.”

The impression remains of two men who are reasonably comfortable with their role in the pandemic, but

deeply frustrated

by the public perception of this role - and partly also by us media.

  • Lauterbach and Drosten in the SPIEGEL interview: "It was a horrible time" 

Lucky who is allowed to live in Berlin

When it comes to Berlin, where tomorrow, Sunday, elections have to be held for the second time since 2021, there is often

talk of a

»failed state« .

Even if this label is mostly misjudged, a look at the desperate situation in the earthquake region in Syria and Turkey is enough to recognize the absurdity of such designations.

Yes, an above-average number of things go wrong in the capital state.

But compared to the conditions in a

country devastated by civil war like Syria

or the

suppression of the opposition and

the media in Turkey, Berlin is one of the happy islands on earth.

That's why I'm glad that our editorial team doesn't sing the usual lament for the capital

on this Berlin election

, but instead gives 25 reasons to love or hate Berlin, not only from colleagues in the editorial team, but also from celebrities like him Actress Liv Lisa Fries or fashion designer Wolfgang Joop.

Nevertheless, our editorial team does not lose sight of the situation in the disaster areas of the earthquake.

Several colleagues have traveled to Turkey

to report on the "last hours of hope" that tremor survivors could still be found in the rubble.

Traveling to Syria is hardly possible,

and the situation there is particularly desperate

.

"It's difficult to talk to those affected in Syria," says a report by a team led by my SPIEGEL colleague Monika Bolliger.

"Local contacts tell of

people in shock, disoriented and unable to cope with the force of this event

- after war, persecution and destruction." Many people have already lost their homes and loved ones in the war, now they are suffering the next catastrophe.

One of my colleagues' interlocutors is

Suhail Abu Jubran

, 49, a psychotherapist and nurse.

His appeal on the phone:

»Please tell the world what is happening.«

  • Syria after the earthquake: why is the aid not arriving?

Here's the current quiz of the day

The starting question today: What was the name of the operation that led to the killing of Osama Bin Laden?

Loser of the day...

...is BND boss Bruno Kahl.

For weeks, the foreign secret service has been shaken by a scandal: Ironically, an employee in a department that is extremely important for the Ukraine war

with access to sensitive documents

is said to have acted as a

suspected Russian spy

.

As a SPIEGEL team now reports, Carsten L.'s colleagues were

apparently not surprised by the revelations

.

L. is said to have been known in the technical reconnaissance department in Pullach near Munich for his right-wing extremist views and to have often blasphemed about his authority.

Among other things, he is said to have ranted that he preferred to

"shoot

by court martial" what he considered annoying evaders .

The problem, according to one of my colleagues' sources, is that many executives at L.

would agree with such slogans "regularly"

.

"When the case is being processed, BND President Bruno Kahl will have to answer the question of why Carsten L.'s alleged political attitude at the BND did not lead to consequences even before the espionage case was uncovered," says our report.

Could Bruno Kahl's authority basically

have an

attitude problem ?

  • Accused spy at the BND: right-wing slogans, fantasies of violence - and nobody intervenes 

The latest news from the night

  • Accused explains drunk driving with "fleeing from two angry women" - and gets right:

    Remarkable reason for drunk driving: A man argued in court in California that he had to flee from "two angry women" - his wife and his lover.

    He was acquitted.

  • French MP flies out of parliament after unworthy tweet:

    insults, tumult, heckling: the dispute over pension reform leads to ugly scenes in the French parliament.

    Now a member of parliament has been banned from the house for two weeks because of a tweet.

  • Another MEP arrested:

    Andrea Cozzolino, another MEP, has been arrested in the corruption case in the European Union.

    The Belgian Tarabella was arrested in Brussels on Friday afternoon.

The SPIEGEL + recommendations for today

  • Why Nathalia cannot leave the ghost town of Bakhmut:

    Thousands of people are holding out in the besieged Bakhmut, in the cellars, on which Russian shells are falling every minute.

    Some stay out of defiance, out of fear, and some because reason has betrayed them.

  • "If you want to understand how radical settlers tick, you should look at the Ku Klux Klan":

    Ethnocracy instead of democracy: under the right-wing government, Israel is facing one of the greatest crises since its foundation, says sociologist Eva Illouz.

    Anyone who is a friend of the Jewish state must now raise their voice.

  • My son died at the age of seven.

    I'll never know why:

    That evening he had a stomach ache.

    I held out the puke bucket to him, a little later my child's life was over.

    My husband and I, medical professionals and police officers asked a long time: Why?

    There is no definite answer.

  • This is how journalism is in danger:

    Anyone who runs a media company also bears responsibility for the success of democratic communication.

  • “Index leases make sense”:

    Inflation hits tenants with index leases particularly hard.

    Greens and SPD therefore want to limit increases.

    Real estate expert Michael Voigtländer thinks that's risky.

  • Rekindling a marriage after 25 years.

    Where do we start?

    They know each other inside out - and yet they lost their way a long time ago.

    A couples therapist explain how two people can turn quarrels and everyday stress into love.

I wish you a good start into the day.

Yours Melanie Amann, member of the editor-in-chief


Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2023-02-11

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