TheChek News Flow

DAX:

MDAX:

SDAX:

Projections suggest they are on course to win almost a quarter of the 720 seats in bloc’s legislature

Far-right parties have made significant gains in the EU elections, performing well in Germany and comfortably winning the vote in France, prompting Emmanuel Macron to call a snap parliamentary election.

Early results suggested that far-right and hard-right parties were on course to hold almost a quarter of the seats when the European parliament next sits, up from a fifth in 2019.

The French president shocked his allies on Sunday by calling an immediate election for the National Assembly after exit polls gave France’s Rassemblement National more than double the vote share of Macron’s centrist alliance.

“I’ve decided to give you back the choice,” Macron said in an address to the electorate from the Elysée palace.

The results delivered a stinging blow to the domestic standing of the French president and Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, and are expected to help tilt the European parliament towards a more anti-immigration and anti-green stance.

But parties of the centre retained a majority in the new parliament.

Early results showed the centre-right European People’s party on track to win 184 seats, leaving the Socialists and Democrats in second place with 139 seats, with the liberal Renew group on 80, holding on to third place. The Greens are set to fall from 71 seats in 2019 to 52, the estimates show.

In France, the RN party led by Marine Le Pen won 31.5 per cent of the country’s vote, according to early results. “This result is emphatic. Our countrymen have expressed a desire for change and a path for the future,” said Jordan Bardella, who led the RN’s campaign list.

In Germany, the three parties in Scholz’s coalition were all overtaken by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which came in second behind the conservative CDU-CSU opposition. Ultraconservative and nationalist parties also won or made significant gains in Austria, Cyprus, Greece and the Netherlands, exit polls showed.

The AfD defied recent scandals to take 15.6 per cent of the vote — one of its best results in a nationwide election, although lower than the 22 per cent share that polls had suggested in January.

“This is a super result . . . a record result,” said party co-leader Tino Chrupalla. “Our voters remained loyal to us and we beat the party of the chancellor, the Greens and the liberals.”

Its success came despite a flurry of negative headlines, many of them concerning its lead candidate in the election, Maximilian Krah. His staffer was arrested on suspicion of spying for China, and he sparked outrage by downplaying the crimes of the SS under the Nazis. The number two on the AfD’s list is being investigated for corruption.

The result was a disaster for the three parties in Scholz’s fragile coalition — the Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and the liberal FDP. The Greens saw their share of the vote slump by more than 8 percentage points while the SPD garnered just 14 per cent — its worst-ever result in a nationwide vote.

The opposition centre-right CDU-CSU won the election with 29 seats. The SPD won just 14, the Greens 12 and the FDP 5.

In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s hard-right Brothers of Italy has clinched some 28.6 per cent of the vote, improving on its tally of 26 per cent in the 2022 general elections, late results showed. The strong performance cemented Meloni’s position as the dominant figure in her governing coalition and will strengthen her hand in negotiations with other European leaders. 

In a brief appearance to supporters early on Monday, an ebullient Meloni  hailed the growth in her party’s popularity after nearly two years in power and declared that “Italy presents itself at the G7 and in Europe with the government that is strongest of all”.

“Kiss goodbye to the European Green Deal,” said Simon Hix, politics professor at the European University Institute in Florence, referring to the ambitious plan to hit net zero emissions by 2050.

He said the centre-right EPP of European commission president Ursula von der Leyen had become even more powerful, since it could work with parties to its left or right.

But the result, at the expense of liberal and Green parties, could complicate von der Leyen’s bid for a second term as head of the EU’s executive.

In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’ far-right Freedom party (PVV) won six seats, up from one seat last time, although still slightly fewer than a Labour-Green party alliance.

Parties belonging to the EPP had performed strongly in Germany, Spain, Poland, Greece and some other countries, the data forecast.

“There remains a majority in the centre for a strong Europe. The centre is holding,” von der Leyen said after the preliminary results. “We all have an interest in stability,” she added, appealing to other centre parties to back her for a second term as commission president.

Von der Leyen needs a majority of the 720-seat parliament to back her. Final results are expected early on Monday.

In a few hours, we’ll learn what Apple has in mind for an AI-infused version of iPhone software. We expect AI to deliver quality-of-life improvements to iOS over the next year. In recent history is any indication, AI will advance such that iOS 19 and iOS 20 are as influenced by AI as iOS 18. We’ll see.

In the meantime, I want to set a marker for how generative AI is working for me prior to Apple’s anticipated contribution.

ChatGPT and Claude

85% of my AI usage consists of ChatGPT on the Mac. First as a pinned tab in Safari, then as a first class Mac app.

ChatGPT is the first app I’ve positioned between Finder and Safari. I think that’s because of how it changes my relationship to the web, especially Google Search.

Another 10% of usage happens on ChatGPT for iPhone, especially ChatGPT Voice in hands-free situations. Anthropic’s Claude, another large language model-powered AI, has the other 5%.

I keep Perplexity installed on my iPhone, but I’m not convinced that I need it with premium ChatGPT. I’m aware of Google’s AI, but not its current name.

And I subscribe to X Premium (to avoid rate limits on the Mac app), but I have not invested time with Grok. Perhaps Grok gives X a reason to revive its Mac app.

Anyway, back to AI.

Math

A large language model doing sophisticated text prediction shouldn’t be good at math on its own. Neither am I. But ChatGPT is capable of recognizing when a conversational response isn’t enough. Using natural language input, ChatGPT detects when analysis is required.

Here’s a real world example. My best friend won a Cybertruck for free. He wanted to sell his Tesla Model 3 to me. I suggested a 36-month payment agreement between us, and he agreed. Simple enough.

However, his auto loan had 19 monthly payments remaining. Plus we wanted to include insurance coverage, registration, the extended warranty, and a little APR.

Explaining this in those words to ChatGPT gave us a dynamic payment plan that met all of those needs while showing its work. I’m certain that my friend could have crunched the numbers, but I appreciated being able to present the terms myself.

I’ve also use ChatGPT for setting realistic financial goals, creating budgets, and educating myself more on financial literacy. I value the conversational nature without burdening someone else.

Writing

Many think of having essays written for you when ChatGPT and writing are discussed. But I’m not inviting AI to replace me. Instead, my focus has been on using generative AI to sharpen my skills.

I enjoy and appreciate writing as a form of communication and storytelling such that I’ll never ask ChatGPT to write a first draft for me.

Instead, I prompt ChatGPT to be my second set of eyes on what I actually write myself. I use the Mac app Rocket Typist to expand the text shortcut ;edit into this:

Any spelling, grammar, or punctuation errors? If so, concisely list in bullets, please:

Then I paste in a sentence, paragraph, or full text of my writing. I’ve been writing on 9to5Mac for 11 years and counting. Still, it’s a bit nerve-racking to push publish knowing that readers around the world will consume it.

ChatGPT has helped mitigate that anxiety, making publishing more enjoyable. If I were specifically tased with copy editing text, I would similarly use generative AI as a tool to sharpen my skills.

I also use ChatGPT to quickly answer queries that come up as I’m writing a story. The trick, for me, is to treat the results like Wikipedia. Never rely on the text that it returns. Instead, use it as a signal for where to point your own research. This narrowing feature certainly keeps me on my train of thought more than anything.

Health

Lastly, and perhaps most profound personally, is how I use ChatGPT for health. Specifically, my mental health.

I spend an hour with my therapist every other Monday morning. This greatly helps navigating life as a single father of two children under age 12. My goals are always simple: process experiences, assess my perspective, and celebrate each milestone.

With permission, I record each session with Voice Memos on my iPhone. Afterwards, I transcribe the text on my MacBook Air using the audio file and MacWhisper. Then I use a series of prompts to take my therapy session further.

I find that these prompts help fuel reflection, provoke new ares of thinking, and provide closure to a given period. I value having a defined endpoint and not getting lost of the depths in introspection.

More generally, ChatGPT has also been useful for prioritizing tasks and making decisions.

Analysis paralysis is real. ChatGPT helps. The trick for me? ChatGPT shows its work. Just like with natural language math prompts, ChatGPT provides reason to how it sorts tasks and suggests decisions.

These use cases and many more have amplified the usefulness of my iPhone and Mac. I’m eager to see what integrating generative AI at a system level does for Apple.

French-born and highly cultured, he originally wanted a career in theater but a part-time job at a luxury store in Paris led to a several key positions in fashion and retailing.

Georges Wichner, a leading fashion executive instrumental in building U.S. businesses for several top European designer brands, died May 10 at home in Miami with his family at his side, after a bout with cancer. He was 73.

Wichner was a highly sought after specialist in running U.S. subsidiaries for top European fashion houses including Valentino and Yves Saint Laurent. In addition, for many years he lectured on fashion and marketing at Kent State University’s fashion program in New York City, which he helped develop.

“He touched us in ways we will never forget,” said his son David-Nicolas Wichner. “He loved the finer things in life — design, wonderful meals, cars and tennis. I remember he was always so busy traveling for work, but in his later years, he found such joy spending more time with his family.” A year ago, when he retired, Georges Wichner moved from New York to be with his family.

“I am heartbroken now,” said Nicole Fischelis, the former Macy’s creative director and forecaster, Saks Fifth Avenue fashion director and Ferragamo senior vice president of fashion. “Georges was an amazing character, extremely cultured, a classy man with a great spirit and a lot of humor, and he possessed an amazing knowledge of the history of fashion. He was superb at connecting with people. He was a strong businessman but at the same time understood creativity and promoted it. He supported every single designer that he worked with.

“I have known Georges since I came to this country in 1991 to become the fashion director of Saks,” Fischelis added. “He was like a brother to me.”

Wichner was born and raised in France and served in the military. According to his biography listed on the Kent State University website, much of Wichner’s education centered around studying theater, where early on he wanted to build a career. He was also a philosophy student. While studying, to support himself he worked part time in a Paris luxury boutique which led to a full time job, which in turn led to wholesale positions, and eventually into running retail operations for Charles Jourdan.

Subsequently, he joined Yves Saint Laurent, where he opened and managed the designer’s store on the Champs-Élysées. Wichner worked for Saint Laurent for about nine years and developed a network of YSL boutiques in the U.S. He also became an American citizen.

After YSL, Wichner was named president and chief executive officer of Valentino USA Inc. in 1999. At the time, it was a new post, signaling the fashion house’s intent to grow substantially in America. After Valentino, Wichner served as president of Thierry Mugler for seven years. “Thierry Mugler was the most avant garde designer my father worked with,” his son said.

It was also one of Wichner’s toughest assignments. Wichner once told WWD he did no formal studies in the U.S. to gauge consumer awareness of the Mugler name. But informally, his impression was that people knew the designer’s fragrance, Angel, more than the fashion designer. “Angel, that’s easy to remember,” he said. “Thierry Mugler is not such an easy name to remember in a foreign language.”

Wichner also had stints as managing director of Revillon, the French furrier, as well as at Leonard, the French house known for its colorful prints, and Vivienne Tam. Late in his career he worked as a consultant doing what he was widely known for, helping European companies develop U.S business.

According to Kent State, he got involved with the school decades ago when he met designer Shannon Rodgers, who was developing the designer collection of the schools’ museum, the Shannon Rodgers & Kent State University Museum, and was seeking Valentino dresses from him. One thing led to another, and Wichner said he was willing to give lectures to the students and also advise Rodgers on French couture houses. Wichner joined the school’s advisory board, when Kent State developed its New York City program and created a course on luxury and marketing and how they interact.

In addition to his son David-Nicolas, Wichner is survived by his daughter in law, Pom; two grandchildren, Malineige and Mandarine; his brother, Alain, and his ex-wife Marie-Claire.

“One of the last things my father said to me was, ‘If we were at sea, we would have marines,'” his son said. “He was telling me he was so grateful that I helped keep him strong while he was sick.”

Chemena Kamali continues to mine Karl Lagerfeld's early years at the Paris house — to winning effect.

“Becoming Karl Lagerfeld,” the six-part TV series now streaming on Hulu, is sure to fan interest in the fashions of the early ’70s, which have proven a winning starting point for Chloé’s new creative director Chemena Kamali.

The mood board for her resort 2025 collection for the house captivated with photos of Lagerfeld’s Saint-Sulpice apartment, whose shell-shaped sofa and other Art Deco furnishings served as the set for many a fashion shoot, including one for Italian Vogue by David Bailey that focused on a 1975 Chloé collection.

Kamali cross-pollinated the colors and textures of that sumptuous apartment with Andy Warhol’s Factory universe, which collided with Lagerfeld’s clan in his underground movie “L’Amour.” She’s been a fanatic for the bohemian glamour of the period, exemplified by models Pat Cleveland, Jane Forth and Donna Jordan, also pinning photos from Billy Mane’s 1997 book “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” a favorite of hers since forever.

She applied just the right dose of all that eccentricity, decadence and eclecticism into covetable Chloé archetypes — frothy blouses, billowing Empire dresses, wispy camisole tops and groovy jeans — and tossed in a few outliers, including leather knee shorts, knit Bermudas, gold lamé tunics and used-car salesman checkered blazers.

“I wanted it to look really like a girl’s closet, not too merchandised, to give a personal feeling,” she said as racks of opulent black-and-gold fil coupé fabrics yielded to punchier colors, and quirkier styles like fringed leather jackets and extreme bell-bottoms. Buttery-soft Henleys, a logo T-shirt and squishy sneakers resembling boxing boots grounded ensembles in contemporary times.

Despite all the razor-sharp references plucked from Chloé’s vast visual archive, you can tell Kamali also designs instinctively, and with practicality in mind. The former is evident in her sudden penchant for accumulations of busy costume jewelry, which brought Loulou de la Falaise to mind, and the latter in her nifty leather bucket bag, which seals up when a gold ring is tugged down over the handles, and those distinctive sneakers in makeup colors and the suggestion of broderie anglaise in the mesh sections.

There’s humor, too, in the little pineapple and banana charms sprinkled on ballerina flats, bracelets and dangling from day bags. “There’s always a banana,” Kamali said with a laugh. “There is something spirited about this collection that is relatable rather than escapist.”

Mainstream parties look set to keep majority in EU Parliament, but nationalist parties perform strongly

Right-wing parties put on a show of strength in European Union elections, prompting French President Emmanuel Macron to call national elections and underscoring German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s position lagging behind two rival parties, according to initial projections.

Sunday’s results still appeared to leave the mainstream pro-EU parties with a lock on power in Brussels. The center-right EU political grouping that now leads the bloc looked set to win the most seats in the European Parliament, boosting European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s hopes of keeping her job for a second term. She has forged a close working relationship with the Biden administration.

Still, France’s far-right opposition party National Rally looked set to be among the pan-European election’s biggest winners. Marine Le Pen’s party appeared on target to become the largest single party in the European Parliament. Projections based on early ballot counts on Sunday evening suggested National Rally had gained roughly 31% of the vote, twice the support for Macron’s Renew Party.

After the French results, Macron announced that he was dissolving parliament to call fresh elections. His party already lacked a majority in the National Assembly. The first round of the elections will take place June 30, followed by a second on July 7, Macron said.

“I have decided to give you back the choice of our parliamentary future through an election,” he said.

National Rally leader Jordan Bardella said Sunday’s results marked an “unprecedented rout for the powers that be,” adding that it was “day-one of the post-Macron era.”

In Germany, Scholz’s Social Democratic Party also apparently faced a drubbing. According to national exit polls, it was running third behind the far-right Alternative for Germany and the clear winner, Germany’s opposition center-right alliance.

The elections, held from Thursday through Sunday, were for the 720 members of the European Parliament. Up to 370 million voters were eligible according to EU figures, although turnout in the elections is usually modest.

While the European Parliament’s main powers are to approve or amend EU rules, laws and trade deals, the twice-decade vote offers a potent indicator of Europe’s political mood. The legislature also gets to approve the EU’s new leadership team.

Sunday’s results point to trouble for the EU leadership’s ability to pursue its environmental goals and indicate that pressure will mount to tighten migration rules. The vote is also likely to give a greater voice, at least within the parliament, to nationalist and left-wing critics of EU support for Ukraine.

Despite pro-EU parties’ setbacks, they appeared to hold enough seats to cobble together a majority of lawmakers to approve their priorities. An assessment from exit poll-aggregator Europe Elects suggested that center-right, centrist and center-left political blocs would secure 407 seats in the new parliament, or 57% of the chamber, according to the European Parliament press service based on provisional national results. Right-wing nationalist parties look set to secure roughly 155 votes.

While the results push European politics to the right, divisions among the nationalist and far-right EU parties are likely to blunt the impact of their gains. Some right-wing leaders have called for an alliance across the movement, but that appears unlikely.

The solid performance of the center-right EU bloc will bolster the chances of von der Leyen remaining at the EU’s helm. The first woman to hold the position, she needs backing from the bloc’s 27 national leaders and approval in the European Parliament to stay in power.

“We are the strongest party,” von der Leyen said at a rally as results came in. “We are the anchor of stability and voters acknowledged our leadership during the last five years.”

The German result looks set to inject fresh instability in the coalition government, which has become increasingly fractious as national elections approach in 2025. There have been some voices in the three-party coalition calling for early elections. The government will face further tests of its political fortunes in regional elections later this year.

Macron’s decision to call legislative elections is a big gamble, which depends on Le Pen’s victory on Sunday producing a backlash among voters who fear the National Rally taking power. In the past, centrist, leftist and center-right have forged winning alliances against Le Pen in the final round of presidential elections.

Thibault Francois, a National Rally lawmaker and the party’s European affairs spokesman, said Macron’s decision was inevitable.

“He was unable to rule after such a defeat,” he said.

Among other successful results from nationalist parties, exit polls suggested Austria’s Freedom Party came first. In the Netherlands, the party of Geert Wilders, an antimigrant firebrand who won last November’s national elections, picked up several seats in the Parliament, final results showed, although his party finished second to a center-left Green alliance.

One of the EU’s most powerful conservative leaders also performed well: Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party is expected to come first, with around 28.5% of the vote, according to the European Parliament, based on provisional results.

Meloni, who won power in 2022 on a strong antimigration platform but has repositioned herself as a mainstream conservative, playing down her far-right roots, is being courted by the center-right and the hard right to form an alliance in Brussels.

In Poland, the current centrist government scored another win over the previous right-wing conservative government following national elections last year. Nationalist forces performed weakly in Sweden, Finland and Denmark. Spain’s two center-left and center-right parties were far ahead of more radical parties, according to exit polls.

And while veteran Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party came first in his country’s vote, with 44%, a new opposition party formed by a former Orban ally scored well, at 31%, according to exit polls. After most results were in, Orban claimed victory.

“Stop migration, stop gender, stop war…stop Brussels,” Orban said.

Among the evening’s biggest losers were Europe’s green parties, which performed well five years ago on the back of mounting concerns about climate change. Continent-wide protests from farmers and rising voter concerns about the costs from green policies have since shifted the political mood.

The continent’s most powerful Green Party, the junior coalition party in Scholz’s government, picked up just 12% of the vote, down from over 20% in 2019.