World

BERLIN — German politicians in talks to form a new coalition government under conservative chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz voiced hope Tuesday that they might reach a deal as early as this week.

Since winning February elections, the CDU/CSU block of Merz has been in negotiations with the centre-left SPD of caretaker Chancellor Olaf Scholz to form a new government by late this month or early May.

The talks to hammer out a joint policy platform for the next four years have gained urgency as US President Donald Trump has shaken up security ties and now sparked global trade chaos, and as Germany's far-right AfD has surged further in the polls.

Speaking on Tuesday, CDU parliamentary leader Thorsten Frei said that in the talks, being held behind closed doors in Berlin, "we are making good overall progress, we have been able to clear many stumbling blocks".

He said the timing of a definitive agreement "depends on the dynamics of the final hours".

SPD negotiator Manuela Schwesig, state premier of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, also expressed confidence, saying she was hopeful "we can conclude this by the end of the week".

And the CDU's former health minister Jens Spahn said there was significant consensus on the need to revitalise the economy as US President Donald Trump has sparked market turmoil with the announcement of swingeing tariffs.

Given "what is happening in the global economy and what the USA is doing, there is great agreement here," Spahn told public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk.

Lack of trust 

Scholz's three-party coalition government collapsed in early November, and Merz has vowed a strong right-ward shift, a crackdown on immigration and steps to build up Germany's long underfunded armed forces and its economy, which has shrunk for two years in a row.

Merz has secured major financial firepower for his ambitious plans after the outgoing parliament green-lit hundreds of billions of euros in extra spending and a softening of Germany's strict debt rules.

However, this has already exposed him to internal party criticism and charges by the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany [AfD] party that he has broken campaign pledges and caved in to key demands of the left-leaning SPD.

The AfD scored a record vote result of over 20 percent in the February 23 elections, making it the second-strongest party, and has gained more support since, according to polls which this week have placed it neck-and-neck with the CDU/CSU at 24.5 per cent.

Personal approval ratings for 69-year-old Merz have meanwhile suffered, heaping further pressure before he even takes power.

"There has never been a chancellor who started their term with so little trust," political scientist Wolfgang Schroeder, of Kassel University, told AFP.

While the SPD plans to ask its members to sign off on the final coalition deal, the CDU only plans to seek the approval of senior party figures.

CDU lawmaker Inge Graessle called for a grassroots survey to "pacify the CDU internally", in comments to the Tagesspiegel daily, and urged her party "to embrace democratic processes instead of fostering a presidential approach".

PARIS — Four years of World War I left more than 50,000 French soldiers without arms or legs. By comparison, around 100,000 Ukrainians have endured amputations since Russia launched a full-scale invasion three years ago.

In Ukraine, "amputation rates are absolutely monstrous," a French officer recently told a briefing in Paris, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Western countries including France have been closely studying battlefield medicine in Ukraine as they aim to prepare better for any possible future conflict with Russia.

"The lessons coming out of Ukraine are fundamentally changing how military medicine is going to be practised for every country," said the Lancet medical journal, quoting Aaron Epstein, president of the Global Surgical and Medical Support Group which provides medical care in conflict zones.

Western medical services do not have the ability to treat so many injuries.

"The losses are massive and way above NATO terms of reference, what we are used to handling," said the French officer, referring to Ukraine.

"And, what's more, there are multiple injuries."

Delayed evacuations 

The war in Ukraine is also starkly different from NATO or unilateral military operations seen in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Africa where injured soldiers are rapidly airlifted.

The intensity of the fighting in Ukraine often makes it impossible to evacuate the wounded fast.

According to the US Department of Defence, in Iraq and Afghanistan medical teams followed the "golden hour" policy by getting the troops off the battlefield and into military hospitals within about an hour, which guaranteed best survival rates.

Due to delayed evacuation Ukrainian authorities have set up a network of medical stabilisation points, sometimes less than a kilometre from the front line.

"In Ukraine, there are delays that easily exceed 24 hours," said the French officer.

In future conflicts, large numbers of injured troops might have to be evacuated by hospital trains or boats, said the French officer.

Military medics and hospitals have been among prime targets in Ukraine.

Around 70 per cent of healthcare personnel "deployed in the field at the start of the war have now died or are unfit for combat," said chief physician Pierre-Antoine of the French Military Health Service, the SSA.

He was identified by his first name only in line with French military policy.

Wounded soldiers must rely on themselves or buddy aid to dress wounds and place tourniquets to stop massive bleeding, the primary preventable cause of death. But prolonged tourniquet times often lead to amputations.

"It is assumed that the critically wounded do not survive, while the less seriously wounded must extract themselves independently," wrote chief physician Paul Balandraud in the SSA's in-house magazine, referring to high-intensity large-scale hostilities.

Use of robots 

Western armies are looking into ways to prolong care on the battlefield.

"We are working to provide telemedicine" and deploy "very light ultrasound scanners" to assess bleeding, said Michael, chief physician with the French Special Operations Command (COS), who was also identified by his first name in line with military policy.

Such ultrasound equipment can be operated by untrained personnel because it is remotely controlled by a specialist. But electromagnetic radiation emitted during such procedures can be detected by the enemy.

The use of drones is also being considered to deliver "blood, antibiotics and equipment" to a medical team in the field, said the chief physician with the French Special Operations Command.

Medics have been trying to retrieve the injured at night or under the cover of fog or rain.

"The evacuation procedure must be planned carefully and often requires the use of artillery," said the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a London-based defence think tank.

In order to avoid exposing troops, Ukrainian and Western armies are testing robotic vehicles that transport the wounded to secure locations.

"At present, however, the reliability of these systems is insufficient for forces to be confident in such methods," said RUSI.

BEIJING — China vowed on Tuesday to "fight to the end" against fresh tariffs of 50 percent threatened by US President Donald Trump, further aggravating a trade war that has already wiped trillions off global markets.

Trump has upended the world economy with sweeping tariffs that have raised the spectre of an international recession, but has ruled out any pause in his aggressive trade policy despite a dramatic market sell-off.

Beijing -- Washington's major economic rival but also a key trading partner -- responded by announcing its own 34 per cent duties on US goods to come into effect on Thursday, deepening a showdown between the world's two largest economies.

The swift retaliation from China sparked a fresh warning from Trump that he would impose additional levies if Beijing refused to stop pushing back against his barrage of tariffs -- a move that would drive the overall levies on Chinese goods to 104 percent.

"I have great respect for China but they cannot do this," Trump said in the White House.

"We are going to have one shot at this... I'll tell you what, it is an honour to do it."

China swiftly hit back, blasting what it called "blackmailing" by the US and vowing "countermeasures" if Washington imposes tariffs on top of the 34 per cent extra that were due to come in force on Wednesday.

"If the US insists on going its own way, China will fight it to the end," a spokesperson for Beijing's commerce ministry said on Tuesday.

In a mounting war of words between Beijing and Washington, China's foreign ministry also Tuesday condemned "ignorant and impolite" remarks by US Vice President JD Vance in which he complained the US had for too long borrowed money from "Chinese peasants". 

The ministry said that "pressure, threats and blackmail are not the right way to deal with China".

Beijing urged Washington to instead "adopt an attitude of equality, respect and mutual benefit" if it wanted to engage in talks.

Market turmoil 

A 10 per cent "baseline" tariff on US imports from around the world took effect Saturday, and a slew of countries will be hit by higher duties from Wednesday, including the levy of 34 percent for Chinese goods as well as 20 per cent for EU products.

Trump's tariffs have roiled global markets in the last days, with trillions of dollars wiped off combined stock market valuations in recent sessions.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng collapsed by 13.2 per cent on Monday -- its worst day since the Asian financial crisis -- before paring back some of those losses on Tuesday.

But stocks in Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam -- a key export hub -- sank on Tuesday, as they resumed trading after bank holidays.

In financial powerhouse Singapore, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong told parliament his government was "very disappointed by the US move".

"These are not actions one does to a friend."

Trump doubled down Monday, saying he was "not looking" at any pause in tariff implementation.

He also scrapped any meetings with China over tariffs, but said the United States was ready for talks with any country willing to negotiate.

After equities took a hammering in Shanghai, China's central bank issued a statement before trading resumed Tuesday to underline it was standing behind a sovereign fund as it buys up exchange traded funds to stabilise the market.

With investors seeking any relief from the ruinous trade war, stocks in Tokyo leapt Tuesday after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested in an interview with Fox News that Japan would get "priority" in negotiations over the US tariffs "just because they came forward very quickly".

Scores of countries have sought talks, Bessent said, adding "through good negotiations, all we will do is see levels come down".

 'Don't be Weak!' 

While meeting Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the first leader to lobby Trump in person over the levies, Trump said: "There can be permanent tariffs, and there can also be negotiations, because there are things that we need beyond tariffs."

EU trade ministers were in Luxembourg on Monday to discuss the bloc's response, with Germany and France having advocated a tax targeting US tech giants.

"We must not exclude any option on goods, on services," said French Trade Minister Laurent Saint-Martin.

The 27-nation bloc should "open the European toolbox, which is very comprehensive and can also be extremely aggressive", he said.

While markets continued its wild ride, Trump told Americans: "Don't be Weak! Don't be Stupid!".

The 78-year-old Republican believes the tariffs will revive America's lost manufacturing base by forcing foreign companies to relocate to the United States, rather than making goods abroad.

But most economists question that and say his tariffs are arbitrary.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon warned of coming inflation, adding "whether or not the menu of tariffs causes a recession remains in question, but it will slow down growth".

PARIS — Global temperatures hovered at historic highs in March, Europe's climate monitor said on Tuesday, prolonging an extraordinary heat streak that has tested scientific expectations.

In Europe, it was the hottest March ever recorded by a significant margin, said the Copernicus Climate Change Service, driving rainfall extremes across a continent warming faster than any other.

The world meanwhile saw the second-hottest March in the Copernicus dataset, sustaining a near-unbroken spell of record or near-record-breaking temperatures that has persisted since July 2023.

Since then, virtually every month has been at least 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than it was before the industrial revolution when humanity began burning massive amounts of coal, oil and gas.

March was 1.6C (2.9F) above pre-industrial times, prolonging an anomaly so extreme that scientists are still trying to fully explain it.

"That we're still at 1.6C above preindustrial is indeed remarkable," said Friederike Otto of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London.

"We're very firmly in the grip of human-caused climate change," she told AFP.

Contrasting extremes 

Scientists warn that every fraction of a degree of global warming increases the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events such as heatwaves, heavy rainfall and droughts.

Climate change is not just about rising temperatures but the knock-on effect of all that extra heat being trapped in the atmosphere and seas by greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane.

Warmer seas mean higher evaporation and greater moisture in the atmosphere, causing heavier deluges and feeding energy into cyclones, but also affecting global rainfall patterns.

March in Europe was 0.26C (0.47F) above the previous hottest record for the month set in 2014, Copernicus said.

It was also "a month with contrasting rainfall extremes" across the continent, said Samantha Burgess of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which runs the Copernicus climate monitor.

Some parts of Europe experienced their "driest March on record and others their wettest" for about half a century, Burgess said.

Elsewhere in March, scientists said that climate change intensified an extreme heatwave across Central Asia and fuelled conditions for extreme rainfall which killed 16 people in Argentina.

Persistent heat 

The spectacular surge in global heat pushed 2023 and then 2024 to become the hottest years on record.

Last year was also the first full calendar year to exceed 1.5C: the safer warming limit agreed by most nations under the Paris climate accord.

This represented a temporary, not permanent breach, of this longer-term target, but scientists have warned that the goal of keeping temperatures below that threshold is slipping further out of reach.

Scientists had expected that the extraordinary heat spell would subside after a warming El Nino event peaked in early 2024, and conditions gradually shifted to a cooling La Nina phase.

But global temperatures have remained stubbornly high, sparking debate among scientists about what other factors could be driving warming to the top end of expectations.

The European Union monitor uses billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations to aid its climate calculations.

Its records go back to 1940, but other sources of climate data -- such as ice cores, tree rings and coral skeletons -- allow scientists to expand their conclusions using evidence from much further in the past.

Scientists say the current period is likely the warmest the Earth has been for the last 125,000 years.

NEW York — Boeing has reached a last-minute settlement to avoid a civil trial that was due to start Monday over the fatal 2019 crash of an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX plane, the plaintiffs' lawyers said.

The Chicago trial was to feature two plaintiffs who lost family members in the calamity, but both cases were settled on Sunday evening, the Clifford law firm told AFP.

The Boeing plane crashed on March 10, 2019, just six minutes after take-off from Addis Ababa on its way to Kenya, killing all 157 people on board.

Relatives of 155 of the victims had sued Boeing between April 2019 and March 2021 for wrongful death, negligence and other charges.

As of late last month, there were 18 complaints still open against Boeing, a source familiar with the case told AFP.

Sunday's deal meant that a further four cases had been settled since then, multiple judicial sources told AFP.

US Judge Jorge Alonso has split the Boeing lawsuits into groups of five or six plaintiffs, only annulling a potential trial if all the suits settle.

In November, the aviation giant reached a last-minute agreement with the family of a woman killed in the crash.

The Ethiopian Airlines disaster followed another fatal crash involving a MAX plane,that of a Lion Air jet that crashed in Indonesia in October 2018, killing all 189 people on board.

Boeing also faced dozens of complaints from Lion Air family victims. Just one case remained open, as of the end of March.

Long-running case 

Boeing's settlements with civil plaintiffs have been confidential.

The US manufacturer has "accepted responsibility for the MAX crashes publicly and in civil litigation because the design of the MCAS... contributed to these events," a Boeing lawyer said during an October hearing.

The MCAS [Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System] flight stabilising software was implicated in both the Ethiopian Airlines and Lion Air crashes.

The disasters led to congressional hearings, with irate lawmakers demanding answers, and to leadership shake-ups at the aviation company. The entire 737 MAX fleet was grounded for more than 20 months.

Boeing later revised the MCAS program under scrutiny from the Federal Aviation Administration [FAA], which ultimately cleared the jets to resume service in November 2020.

The latest settlements come as Boeing also faces a potential criminal trial in June in Texas over the MAX.

That trial follows on from a January 2021 deferred prosecution agreement between Boeing and the US Justice Department over the two MAX crashes.

In May 2024, the Justice Department notified the court that Boeing had violated terms of the accord. That came after a January 2024 incident in which an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX was forced to make an emergency landing when a panel blew out mid-flight.

US District Judge Reed O'Connor last month ordered a jury trial from June 23 after earlier throwing out a proposed settlement between Boeing and the Justice Department.