Friedrich Merz, the newly inaugurated German chancellor, will take a seat in the Oval Office on Thursday for his first in-person meeting with US President Donald Trump.

The meeting comes as a series of high-stakes international issues once again come to the fore. Trump has issued another round of warnings to the European Union on tariffs; the war in Ukraine appears no closer to ending; and pressure is mounting on Israel over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza.

Since taking office, Merz has been on a tour of European capitals, meeting with France’s Emmanuel Macron, Britain’s Keir Starmer and Poland’s Donald Tusk – before they all appeared in Kyiv alongside Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in a show of European unity.

The one major omission has been a meeting with Trump. While there have been phone calls between the two, the handshake accompanied by the frantic clicks of camera shutters will mark the start of the new German-US relationship.

Germany’s status as the economic powerhouse of Europe and Merz’s repositioning of the country as a leader in European security – which includes a commitment to beef up its military and fall in line with Trump’s demands for NATO members to increase defense spending – underscore the importance of a successful encounter.

There is also the chance of an explosive diplomatic broadside, as seen with President Zelensky and, more recently, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Both Vice President, JD Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have recently criticized Germany’s decision to classify the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) political party, as “certainly right-wing extremists”, and therefore expanding surveillance on the party.

Both took to X, to express their anger at what they called the German “establishment” for the designation. Secretary Rubio said, “that’s not democracy – it’s tyranny in disguise”.

Vance followed up by saying Germany is trying to redivide the country, “the West tore down the Berlin Wall together. And it has been rebuilt — not by the Soviets or the Russians, but by the German establishment.”

The German Foreign Ministry, for its part, said on X, the decision was democratic, “the result of a thorough & independent investigation to protect our Constitution & the rule of law.”

Merz, a few days later, also rejected the statements, saying “Germany was liberated from tyranny by the US; Germany is stable, liberal, and democratic today. We don’t need a remedial lesson in democracy.”

The expectation though, is that this will be a cordial meeting.

“He doesn’t mince his words… That’s not Friedrich Merz’s style. He says what he thinks. He’s transparent. He’s direct. And I would imagine that that is something which Donald Trump will hopefully learn to appreciate.”

That directness, particularly as regards Europe’s relationship with the US, has already raised eyebrows in some quarters.

In the minutes after Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister party won the largest share of the vote on February 23, making him the likely next chancellor, he said, “the utmost priority is strengthening Europe as quickly as possible, so that we achieve independence from the US step-by-step.” He added that the Trump administration “doesn’t care much about the fate of Europe.”

Merz also had a few other choice words for the US in the days following the election.

And only last week, he delivered a riposte to comments made earlier this year by Vice President JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference in which he accused European allies of backsliding on freedom of expression – a speech which at the time Merz described as having disturbed him.

Vance posed a question to which we “have the strongest and best answer imaginable,” Merz said in Berlin on Thursday, “namely, the conviction that freedom and democracy are worth standing up for resolutely and, if necessary, fighting to preserve them.”

These comments notwithstanding, Claudia Mayor, senior vice president at the German Marshall Fund, a think tank focused on US-German relations, assessed that since the election “the tone has been turned down” by Merz.

She noted that on May 8, Merz held a phone call with Trump in which he said, “the United States remains an indispensable friend and partner of Germany.”

At a business summit a few days later, Merz revealed that he had invited Trump to Germany. As part of that trip, he would accompany the US president to the rural town of Bad Dürkheim, the childhood home of Trump’s paternal grandfather.

And recently there has been Germany’s alignment with the US on NATO defense spending.

Merz and his government have indicated that they are ready to comply with, and push others to agree to, the long-stated Trump demand that members of the alliance increase spending on defense to 5% of GDP.

Building up a positive working relationship, though, is likely to be Germany’s major ambition for the White House meeting. And Merz’s previous roles and experience could play a big part in bringing that about.

Formerly the head of “Atlantik Brucke,” or Atlantic Bridge, a think tank that promotes German-US ties, Merz is known in Germany as being an ardent proponent of the transatlantic relationship.

He was a huge advocate for a US-EU trade agreement while at Atlantic Bridge and has spoken openly about his admiration for former US President Ronald Reagan. He also understands the corporate world, having served on numerous boards, including that of US global investment firm BlackRock.

Ischinger, now the chairman of the board of trustees of the Munich Security Conference, said: “If Donald Trump feels that he can trust Friedrich Merz, that’s very important, and vice versa… because, these are dangerous times, and there must not be any misunderstanding.”

The conundrum, she said, is that Germany “can’t afford the Americans leaving,” because despite European commitments to increase spending on security, building up those capabilities takes years. “At the same time, we don’t want them to leave, because we think we are better off together,” she added.

She points to the German coalition agreement, (essentially a contract between the two coalition parties, the CDU and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), on how they will govern Germany) and a major change in the constitution that could unlock half a trillion dollars of spending on the military, as indicators of the conflicting sentiment.

The revision of Germany’s constitutional debt brake, pushed through by Merz in March before he even formally became chancellor, was a “revolutionary change by German standards,” Mayor said. But it was forced through because “international relations have changed so much” that it appeared essential, she said.

At the same time, she said, the coalition pact reads as if everything about the transatlantic relationship is in fine working order. “If you’re such great partners, why did we need a constitutional change?” Major asked.

The source said Merz sees Germany as “(needing) to grow up and take care of (itself),” adding that the chancellor does not see that as possible “in the next three years,” and thus it is still in Germany’s interest to have a good relationship with the US and find a way to work together.

Ischinger, too, sees pragmatism at play, suggesting that Merz could seek to replicate the personal relationship built by Macron with Trump.

The German chancellor will want to ensure that “Donald Trump understands that if Friedrich Merz is a committed European, that does not mean that Friedrich Merz is going to make the Atlantic wider,” he said.

First, these parrots learned to open trash cans to forage for food. Now, they’ve taken it a step further – and have figured out how to turn on water fountains for a sip along with their meal.

These are Australia’s iconic sulphur-crested cockatoos – white birds with a yellow tuft on their heads, known for their loud, grating screech. But they’re also incredibly intelligent, with large brains and nimble feet that have allowed them to pick up new habits in urban environments.

The cockatoos in western Sydney, in particular, caught scientists’ attention with their latest trick of drinking from public fountains. After researchers first noticed this phenomenon in 2018, they tagged 24 birds and set up cameras near fountains in the area – then sat back and watched.

Throughout two months in the fall of 2019, they recorded most of the tagged birds attempting to drink from the fountains. Also known as bubblers, these fountains are operated by a twist handle – easy enough for a person to operate, but complex for an animal to figure out.

Yet, the cockatoos did. They used different techniques: some would stand with both feet on the handle, while others would put one foot on the handle and one foot on the rubber spout. Then, they’d lower their body weight to turn the handle clockwise – holding the handle in place while twisting their head to take a drink.

They weren’t always successful – it worked about half the time, and five of the 10 drinking fountains in the area had “chew marks” indicating cockatoos had been there before. But the success rate also meant that the cockatoos had likely been doing this for some time, said the researchers in their study, published Wednesday in the journal Biology Letters.

The team had studied Sydney’s sulphur-crested cockatoos before; in 2021, they published another paper examining the birds’ newly observed ability to lift closed trash bin lids with their beaks and feet to access the food inside.

These innovative behaviors aren’t just animals being amusing or clever – they show the birds’ ability to adapt to urban environments, and the power of social learning among animals, the researchers said.

There are some questions still unanswered. The researchers don’t know why exactly the cockatoos are flocking to drinking fountains, instead of other easily accessible natural water sources in the area. At first they thought the fountains might be a backup option on especially hot days when local creeks run dry – but that wasn’t the case.

Other theories are that the birds feel safer drinking from fountains in public areas where there are fewer predators, or that they simply prefer the taste of fountain water – but that would need further study to determine.

Now, the researchers want to know what else cockatoos can do – and any habits they may have already developed that just haven’t been studied yet.

“We’ve had some really interesting innovations reported to us, and some examples include unzipping school backpacks and stealing school lunches,” Aplin told ABC Radio. “It has become such a problem in some areas that they have to bring the school bags into the classroom rather than leaving them outside!”

More than one in three men in Australia reported using violence with an intimate partner in a first of its kind study which shows gender-based abuse is rising, despite years of national attention on the issue.

The research was part of a longitudinal study called Ten to Men by Australia’s Institute of Family Studies, which began in 2013 and now involves around 24,000 boys and men. Intimate partner violence is defined as emotional, physical and sexual abuse.

The study found that the number of men using violence with their partners has risen over the past decade. Last time the survey was conducted in 2013-2014, roughly 1 in 4 (24%) men had committed intimate partner violence. That figure rose to 1 in 3 (35%).

That equates to about 120,000 men using intimate partner violence for the first time each year, pointing to a worrying trend in a country which has long grappled with how to combat gender-based violence.

In 2022, the Australian government launched its 10-year National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children with a majority priority of advancing gender equality.

But since January last year, 100 women have been killed in Australia, according to Counting Dead Women. Recent protests have called for the government to do much more to end gender-based violence.

“The fact that one in three men in the study reported using intimate partner violence should shake every Australian,” said Tarang Chawla, a violence against women advocate and co-founder of Not One More Niki.

Chawla’s siter, Nikita, was killed by her ex-partner in 2015.

“She was one of the women these numbers speak to,” Chawla said. “We’ve known this is a crisis, but now we have the data to back what victim-survivors, families and advocates have been saying for years: this is widespread, and it’s preventable.”

Study shows father figures matter

Emotional abuse was the most common form of intimate partner violence reported in the Ten to Men study, with 32% of men reporting they had made an intimate partner “feel frightened or anxious,” up from 21% in 2013-2014.

And around 9% of the men reported they had “hit, slapped, kicked or otherwise physically hurt” an intimate partner.

Men with moderate or severe depressive symptoms were 62% times more likely to use intimate partner violence by 2022 compared to those who had not had these symptoms, while men with suicidal thoughts, plans or attempts were 47% times as likely, the study found.

The findings of the Ten to Men study not only underscore the extent of the problem – they also offer key lessons for policymakers looking to tackle the issue, said Sean Martin, a clinical epidemiologist and program lead for the study.

While much of the existing research in Australia on intimate partner violence has rightly focused on survivors and their stories, Martin said, this study takes a new approach by studying perpetrators to better understand how to prevent violence.

It’s the first Australian study to examine how affection in father-son relationships during childhood relate to later use of intimate partner violence.

The study found men with higher levels of social support in 2013-2014 were 26% less likely to start using intimate partner violence by 2022, compared to men who had less support.

Men with strong father-son relationships were also less likely to become violent. Men who strongly agreed that they had received affection from a father or father figure during childhood were 48% less likely to use intimate partner violence compared to men who strongly disagreed.

These findings lend strong support for initiatives to support men’s mental health in Australia, as well as community supports and programs for young dads, Martin said.

Susan Heward-Belle, a professor at the University of Sydney, said the study shows the importance of fathers modeling respect for women, emotional intelligence, empathy and compassion to their children.

“For a very long time, a lot of that emotional, social, nurturance-type work has been seen as women’s responsibilities within families.”

Heward-Belle, who was not involved in the Ten to Men study, said it is crucial to explore further how feelings of entitlement and anger can develop.

“We also know that there are some men who perpetrate domestic and family violence who arguably have had good relationships with both parents.”