‘Disaster’ Vote For Merz, ‘Very Successful’ US-China AI Talks, More
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AI is entering its most consequential phase where scale, safety, and sovereignty will determine who leads and who lags. Join Bloomberg Tech in London on November 2nd and 3rd as global leaders across business, finance and policy examine the defining trade-offs shaping the future of AI. Thank you to our presenting sponsor Salesforce and supporting sponsors IDA Island and Schneider Electric. Learn more at BloombergLive.com slash. Slash Tech London. News When You Want It with Bloomberg News Now. I'm Caroline Hepke. Pressure is mounting on Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz after an historic election defeat. For the first time since World War II, his Christian Democratic Union failed to win a single seat in a state election.
The CDU took just 4.9% in Mecklenburg, Western Pomerania, while the far right AFD. In another election in Berlin, the governing CDU was defeated by the anti-capitalist left party. Merz insists that he will stay on as Chancellor, but offered this frank assessment of the defeat, his words are spoken by a translator.
Heute haven wir today we saw two elections with very different results. We can't sugarcoat the result in Mecklenburg Western Pomerania. It's a disaster. The CDU fought hard, but in the end it was crushed in the escalating confrontation between the SPD and the AFD.
Mertz will hold crisis talks with party leaders today as some in the CDU question how long he can remain in power. The AFD has now won two German state elections in two weeks with attacks on the political establishment and calls to deport migrants. Well, with practically no genuine opposition on the ballot, Vladimir Putin's ruling party is heading for a landslide parliamentary election victory. Russia's election commission says that United Russia had fifty seven percent support with a quarter of votes counted. The vote was tightly controlled by the Kremlin, with every party on the ballot supporting Putin's war in Ukraine. Sam Green is a professor of Russian politics. at King's College London.
What the Kremlin needs is for ordinary Russians to look around and see not just that it gets the right result, but that result has to feel credible, which means they have to feel that the vast majority of people that they know participated in this election and voted the way that the Kremlin is showing that they voted. The task for the Kremlin is really to get out the vote as much as it is to make sure that United Russia, the Kremlin's favorite party, does win these elections. It's leaning on employers, it's leaning on local governments, it's leaning on universities and some. cases, particularly in the occupied territories of Ukraine, it's leaning on the security forces.
Sam Green spoke as the final day of voting saw Ukraine's biggest drone attack against Russia this year. Russia's defence ministry says that more than one thousand one hundred drones were intercepted across nineteen regions. Several still hit a major oil refinery near Moscow which can process almost two hundred and fifty thousand barrels of oil a day. The US and China have agreed to open a new dialogue on AI ahead of this week's summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. The talks come amid an intensifying AI rivalry between the two nations, which are already at odds over trade, security, and geopolitical flashpoints. Speaking to reporters following the discussions, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described talks as very successful.
We think that uh just just like with any cross border activity that moving from opaque uh to more transparency between the the number one and the number two AI powers in the world very important.
Why is Germany’s CDU facing a disaster after the Mecklenburg‑Western Pomerania election?
That was Treasury Secretary Scott Bessend. China's Xinhua news agency described the talks as quote candid, in-depth and constructive. Presidents Trump and Xi will now have to decide whether that progress can translate into a broader easing of tensions between the world's two largest economies. Meanwhile, Qatar's energy chief says that the US Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, who just heard, is wrong to suggest that the Strait of Hormuz will become, quote, worthless.
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