Conservative leader Angela Merkel took a last step toward becoming Germany's first female chancellor when she and other party officials signed a hard-won agreement to form a left-right coalition government.
A smiling Merkel put her signature on the blue-bound, 143-page document that spells out everything from an increase in value-added tax to targets for renewable energy supplies.
"It is our job is to make sure that the paper doesn't remain just paper, but that in the coming days, weeks and years we bring it to life," said Merkel, the head of the Christian Democratic Union.
Merkel joined with Edmund Stoiber, leader of the Christian Democrat's Bavaria-only sister party, the Christian Social Union, and Social Democratic Party chairman Matthias Platzeck in putting their names to the deal in a ceremony on Friday before hundreds of journalists and public officials in a parliamentary office building in Berlin.
The signing, largely a formality after congresses from each party voted overwhelmingly to support the agreement last week, is the final hurdle before parliament meets on Tuesday to elect 51-year-old Merkel as the country's eighth post-World War II chancellor -- and first woman to hold the office.
The former scientist would in addition be the first chancellor to have grown up under communism in the former East Germany.
The accord, titled "Together for Germany -- with courage and humanity," was concluded on Nov. 11 after weeks of negotiations between politicians who have spent the past few years criticizing each other's policies as partisan opponents.
The alliance of former rivals emerged after an inconclusive Sept. 18 election in which voters ousted the government of Social Democratic Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, but left neither side with a parliamentary majority to govern with their preferred small partners.
The new government, however, should be able to count on a crushing parliamentary majority, with the coalition partners holding 448 of the 614 seats in the lower house. The new government's difficulty will instead be in forging internal unity as it confronts the country's thorny issues.
TIT-FOR-TAT: The arrest of Filipinos that Manila said were in China as part of a scholarship program follows the Philippines’ detention of at least a dozen Chinese The Philippines yesterday expressed alarm over the arrest of three Filipinos in China on suspicion of espionage, saying they were ordinary citizens and the arrests could be retaliation for Manila’s crackdown against alleged Chinese spies. Chinese authorities arrested the Filipinos and accused them of working for the Philippine National Security Council to gather classified information on its military, the state-run China Daily reported earlier this week, citing state security officials. It said the three had confessed to the crime. The National Security Council disputed Beijing’s accusations, saying the three were former recipients of a government scholarship program created under an agreement between the
Sitting around a wrestling ring, churchgoers roared as local hero Billy O’Keeffe body-slammed a fighter named Disciple. Beneath stained-glass windows, they whooped and cheered as burly, tattooed wresters tumbled into the aisle during a six-man tag-team battle. This is Wrestling Church, which brings blood, sweat and tears — mostly sweat — to St Peter’s Anglican church in the northern England town of Shipley. It is the creation of Gareth Thompson, a charismatic 37-year-old who said he was saved by pro wrestling and Jesus — and wants others to have the same experience. The outsized characters and scripted morality battles of pro wrestling fit
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SUSPICION: Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing returned to protests after attending a summit at which he promised to hold ‘free and fair’ elections, which critics derided as a sham The death toll from a major earthquake in Myanmar has risen to more than 3,300, state media said yesterday, as the UN aid chief made a renewed call for the world to help the disaster-struck nation. The quake on Friday last week flattened buildings and destroyed infrastructure across the country, resulting in 3,354 deaths and 4,508 people injured, with 220 others missing, new figures published by state media showed. More than one week after the disaster, many people in the country are still without shelter, either forced to sleep outdoors because their homes were destroyed or wary of further collapses. A UN estimate