Morning briefing

Germany’s election ended with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), led by Olaf Scholz, winning 25.7% of the vote, nearly two percentage points ahead of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union of the outgoing chancellor, Angela Merkel, now led by Armin Laschet, and its ally the CSU.

Leaders of both the CDU and the SPD claimed a mandate to begin talks with the Greens (14.8% of the vote) and the pro-business Free Democrats (11.5%). Mr Laschet might lead a “Jamaica” coalition or Mr Scholz a “traffic-light” one (the names derive from the parties’ colours, and Jamaica’s flag). Both would enjoy clear majorities. A left-wing coalition that would unite the SPD, Greens and the hard-left Die Linke does not seem on the cards. Preliminary results show it would fall just short of a majority.

“I wanna dance,” sang BTS, a Korean boy band, in a video made at the UN’s headquarters in New York before a week of speeches by global leaders, ending on Monday. Climate change was the refrain of the General Assembly, with a drumbeat of pledges and pleas. President Joe Biden promised to double America’s climate finance for developing countries. President Xi Jinping said China would stop financing coal power abroad. Boris Johnson, Britain’s prime minister who will host the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in November, called for bold commitments (while invoking both Kermit the Frog and Sophocles).

Small countries sang together too. “The difference between 1.5° and 2° is a death sentence for the Maldives,” said that country’s president. Fellow leaders of the Alliance of Small Island States urged big emitters to end fossil-fuel subsidies by 2023.

Attention will now turn to COP26. BTS’s lyrics seem apt: “Don’t need to talk the talk, just walk the walk”.

From Monday New York state will require hospital and care-home staff to be vaccinated against covid-19. Thousands who refuse will get sacked. In anticipation of staffing shortages Kathy Hochul, the new governor, may import vaccinated workers from other states. But those who object on religious grounds will keep their job for now: they sued the state officials in protest, and a court said they need not comply while the case is pending.

As vaccine mandates proliferate, many people want such religious exemptions. They cite scripture, which says “your body is a temple” and warns against contaminating it. Others dislike the fact that the vaccines were developed using cell lines from aborted fetal tissue.

Under anti-discrimination law, firms must “reasonably accommodate” employees with “sincerely held” beliefs unless it would cause “undue hardship” to the business. They could offer vaccine-objectors remote work, for example. More disagreements between firms and staff will end up in the courts, and judges will have to decide what counts as reasonable.

Sri Lanka faces a new economic threat this week. A European Union investigation, beginning on Monday, could cut its preferential access to EU markets. Sri Lanka currently benefits from a system which removes import duties for vulnerable developing economies, subject to good-governance clauses.

In June, the European Parliament adopted a resolution noting that Sri Lanka’s preferential access depended on its replacing a controversial anti-terror law, which is still in place, and adhering to international conventions on human rights. The European Parliament expressed “deep concerns” about human rights in the country.

The garment industry is most at risk. The sector accounts for more than a third of Sri Lanka’s total sales abroad. And Europe is the country’s most important market: collectively, Belgium, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands buy about 16% of Sri Lanka’s exports. The pandemic-driven collapse of tourism revenue has already driven the country into an economic crisis.

Before becoming a film-maker, Ry Russo-Young was the object of a lawsuit that revolved around the definition of “family”. She examines this experience in “Nuclear Family”, a documentary which had its premiere on HBO on Sunday.

In the early 1980s, sperm banks would not serve lesbian couples. So Ms Russo-Young’s mothers solicited sperm from two gay acquaintances with the hope that they would maintain only peripheral ties with the children. Years later one of the men, who helped conceive Ms Russo-Young, sued her parents to be recognised as the legal father. The idea of an LGBT family was unthinkable to most, most of all the courts, which sided with the donor.

Some following the case agreed with the decision, wondering why Ms Russo-Young could not have three parents. Others were indignant at the idea that a family required a father. The case raised important questions about what constitutes familial ties; the film seeks to do the same.