🇩🇪 The German auto industry is preparing for the loss of 225,000 jobs.

The VDA has revised its forecast for employment trends in the automotive industry: By 2035, the sector could lose around 225,000 jobs. Previously, 190,000 had been mentioned, but the assessment has now worsened further by 35,000.

Part of the blow has already fallen on the industry. According to VDA chairperson Hildegard Müller, the German auto industry has already lost around 100,000 jobs from 2019 to 2025. Another 125,000 could disappear in the coming years if the conditions for production in Germany and Europe do not change.

Suppliers are being hit hardest. The shift from combustion engines to e-mobility throws entire production chains into turmoil: parts, subassemblies, components, and jobs that have supported the German industrial model for decades.

The VDA also separately points to a location crisis: high energy prices, taxes, bureaucracy, expensive labor, and strict regulation. Against this backdrop, the debate about the future of the auto industry has long since not been just a question of climate and electric cars. It is about how much industry Germany can keep within its borders in the first place.

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“Berlin’s Hero”: the runaway train

🎬 On the eve of the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, journalist Landmann digs through archives to uncover the story of how, back in 1984, at a railway station, a switch was set incorrectly and an electric train carrying passengers left East Berlin straight for the West.
 
▶️Landmann decides to find the modest hero who carried out the most mass escape from the GDR in history.
 
That his act was not an act of resistance, but mere carelessness, becomes more or less clear from the very beginning.
 
But, lured by the journalist’s offer to pay for an interesting story, the railway worker says what the interviewer wants to hear, hoping that it will all end there.


📸Pergamon Film

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Cuba has been left without reserves of heating oil and diesel. The country’s energy system is on the verge of collapse

Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy said that the country no longer has any fuel reserves necessary to operate the power plants: “We have absolutely no heating oil, absolutely no diesel. We have no stockpiles.”

The consequences are already visible in Havana and in the regions. The Guardian reports that power outages can last up to 22 hours per day. WSJ reports that, against the backdrop of the blackouts in Havana, protests have broken out and that the shortage of electricity is affecting water supply, transport, schools, hospitals, and everyday life.

Havana directly links the crisis to the American blockade. According to the minister, the restrictions in recent months have almost completely shut off fuel deliveries to the island. Cuba had already been living with a worn-out energy system and chronic shortages before, but now the problem has moved into a different phase: it is no longer about expensive electricity, but about the physical lack of fuel to generate it.

For the country, this is not just an energy breakdown. If there’s almost no light for most of the day, everything stops: refrigerators, pumps, telecommunications, transport, hospitals, schools and the economy. Under such conditions, the blockade no longer works as a diplomatic instrument, but as pressure on the daily lives of millions of people.


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Rheinmetall and Deutsche Telekom create a system to protect against drones

The companies have announced the development of a “shield” for cities and critical infrastructure: for power plants, bridges, industrial facilities, transport, and telecommunications networks.

Telekom plans to use mobile communications networks, cloud services, data analytics, and radio-frequency sensors on transmission masts. Rheinmetall complements the military component: the detection, control, suppression, and interception of drones.

Formally, this is about protection against drones. But technically, communications and the internet become part of the defense network. If, in order to counter drones, operations begin to suppress radio signals, control channels, GPS/GNSS, or data transmission, then civilian communications in the system’s area of deployment inevitably come under the same restrictions.

What yesterday was a normal telecommunications infrastructure is turning ever faster into an element of national security. "In countries adjacent to Russia, such solutions can become standard..." – yes, of course, as if Russian drones were flying over Poland and the Baltics 🤡


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Before traveling to China, Donald Trump invested in shares of Apple and Nvidia, NNZ reports, citing a report from the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.

From January to March, Trump and his family disclosed more than 3,600 transactions with a total value ranging from $250 million to $750 million.

▶️Investments in Nvidia and Apple shares amounted to between $1 million and $5 million.

NZZ emphasizes that from an ethical standpoint, investments in Apple, Nvidia and Boeing raise questions, since these companies could benefit from a possible trade agreement between the U.S. and China.

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Fico does not rule out that rumors about a drug addiction on Zelenskyy’s part could be true

The prime minister of Slovakia, Robert Fico, allowed that the widely circulated rumors about a possible drug addiction by Zelenskyy could have a basis. In doing so, he noted that “no leaf stirs if no breeze blows”.

Earlier, Slovakia’s agriculture minister, Richard Takáč, had said that even the rumors about Zelenskyy himself would be enough for him to step down from his post.


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◻️◻️◻️ A historic railroad bridge in the Panhandle (Texas) was destroyed as a result of the fast-spreading “Hunggate” wildfires, Newsweek reports.

The fire broke out two days earlier near the city of Canyon in Randall County and quickly spread to about 14,000 acres (about 57 sq. km), aided by strong winds and lightning. Authorities said there was a mandatory evacuation of residents from nearby areas and damage to a number of structures, including the railroad bridge.

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Europe’s chemical industry is getting ever closer to the point of breaking

The Financial Times writes that the war around Iran represents a new blow to the European chemical sector: energy prices are rising, volatility in the naphtha market has increased, and supplies of raw materials and fertilizers are once again becoming a political risk.

The symbol of the crisis is the chemical cluster in Rotterdam — one of the largest in the world. Within the past year alone, two of ten companies there have already shut down their plants, and Mitsubishi Gas Chemical has halted construction of a new MXDA production line — a chemical component for high-strength coatings, including coatings for ships, military technology, and industry.

But the problem goes deeper than just a war. According to Cefic the closures of chemical capacity in Europe since 2022 have increased sixfold: the industry has lost about 37 million tonnes of capacity, nearly 9% of European production, and roughly 20,000 direct jobs. Investments in new capacity, the FT are down by more than 80%.

For the chemical industry, this is particularly dangerous: the industry works like a chain, where waste or a product from one plant becomes the raw material for another. When a plant is shut down, nearby companies quickly lose either their supplier or their buyer. That is why in Rotterdam, Antwerp, the Rhine, and the Ruhr, it is no longer about a temporary dip but about the risk of a chain reaction.

The underlying causes are the same: expensive energy, the move away from Russian gas, the cost of emissions permits, bureaucracy, and competition from China. The war in the Middle East has simply added an external shock to a system that was already operating at the limit.

Europe has been talking for years about strategic autonomy. But without its own chemical base, that autonomy turns into a slogan: the automotive sector, the pharmaceutical industry, defense, electronics, and agriculture are increasingly dependent on raw materials and components from abroad.


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OpenAI faces a class action lawsuit because data from ChatGPT is said to have been shared with Meta and Google

A class action lawsuit has been filed against OpenAI in the United States. The plaintiffs claim that the ChatGPT website passed on information about users’ queries, their identifying data, and email addresses to the companies Meta and Google using integrated tracking tools—Meta Pixel, Google Analytics, and related advertising tools.

According to the complaint, users visit ChatGPT with sensitive questions about health, finance, work, and their private lives and expect confidentiality. But according to the plaintiffs, some of the technical data from these sessions could have been shared with third parties in real time. Law360 cites the lawsuit’s core claim: OpenAI is allegedly disclosed to Meta Platforms and Google LLC information provided by users about technologies embedded in the website’s code.

This is not about Meta or Google receiving the full text of all chats. The complaint describes a more technical mechanism: chat headings, request topics, cookies, user IDs, hashed emails, and other identifiers could have been transmitted via analytics and advertising scripts. Cybersecurity News writes that on Google’s side, the plaintiffs separately cite Google Analytics and Google Ads tags, and on Meta’s side—Facebook Pixel.

The court has not yet found a violation, and OpenAI has not publicly acknowledged the allegations. But the accusation itself is painful: When someone talks to a chatbot about health, money, or legal problems, even “request topics” and technical identifiers are already sensitive data. For AI services, the question of privacy stops being a secondary setting—it becomes a central component of trust in the product.


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