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Dutch police used dogs, horses and water cannon to attack two thousand anti-coronavirus lockdown protesters in The Hague today... The Netherlands the latest nation to suspend use of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine... Earlier Ireland suspended use of the AstraZeneca vaccine over blood clot concerns... Dr. Anthony Fauci says he's disturbed by polling data showing large numbers of Republicans will not get vaccinated. Fauci urging President Trump to promote vaccination... The vaccination stats for the US expressed in percentages... Saturday evening in London British police grabbed women and led them away in handcuffs for violating coronavirus restrictions...Now there's outrage being expressed...

Chancellor Angela Merkel won a landslide personal victory in a German election on Sunday, putting her within reach of the first absolute majority in parliament in half a century, a ringing endorsement of her steady leadership in the euro crisis. Partial results put her conservative bloc - the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) -- on 42.5 percent, which if confirmed would be their strongest score since 1990, the year of German unification. The outcome could give Merkel an edge of a few seats over the combined opposition in the Bundestag lower house for the first...

Voters in Germany's most populous state handed a resounding victory to the centre-lefton Sunday, dealing a heavy blow to Angela Merkel's conservatives in what was interpreted as a backlash against the chancellor's European austerity campaign. Exit polls on Sunday night in the North Rhine-Westphalia election showed Hannelore Kraft, who had led the state's centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) in a coalition with the Greens, had soundly beaten her Christian Democrat (CDU) rival Norbert Röttgen, Merkel's environment minister. The SPD secured 39% of the vote to the CDU's 26% in what amounted to the worst result in the state for the conservatives...

Tomorrow's formal election of Angela Merkel as Germany's chancellor will not mark a new era in economic policy. But in one respect there is a cause for guarded optimism. German foreign policy towards both the European Union and the US may become more stable and predictable. Ms Merkel intends to return to the foreign policy doctrine that prevailed under Helmut Kohl, the last Christian Democrat chancellor. Mr Kohl managed to combine unwavering support for European integration - often in seeming contradiction to the national interest - with a firm commitment to transatlantic relations. It was this policy that made Germany,...

THE German conservative leader Angela Merkel appeared to be gaining the upper hand this weekend in the struggle to become the next chancellor, after an inconclusive election result produced one of the most extraordinary weeks in the country’s post-war politics. Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), narrow winners of last Sunday’s poll, insisted yesterday that she must lead a “grand coalition” with Gerhard Schröder’s Social Democratic party (SPD) — the only combination that looks able to secure a majority in Germany’s fractured parliament. “We went into the election with Angela Merkel as our candidate for chancellor, the CDU is the strongest...

Moscow is a city that likes men who make history. Angela Merkel has never gotten good press here. Russian observers are hoping Schröder will enjoy a breakthrough -- indeed, some are even hoping the Social Democrats will form a coalition with the Greens and the Left Party/PDS, the successor to East Germany's communists. Angela Merkel's solid knowledge of Russian gets her few points in Moscow. Even the pro-market paper Wedomosti gives the CDU candidate the thumbs down. Her "low personal popularity," says the paper, reduces her chances of becoming chancellor. To have the "pro-American Merkel" in office, writes the likewise...

Schröder could stay as chancellor until poll in new yearThe chances of Angela Merkel becoming Germany's next chancellor suffered a setback yesterday when the Greens appeared to rule out joining a coalition with her conservative CDU party.With the country in political gridlock after Sunday's inconclusive general election, speculation was growing last night that the chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, would try to force new elections early next year. A day of political horse-trading left Europe's most populous country facing months of confusion. No government is likely to emerge until November at the earliest. Both the main party leaders announced that they had...

ON SEPTEMBER 18, THE Germans will go to the polls. The extraordinary elections are being held a year before the end of the Bundestag's regular four-year legislative term, thanks to an elaborate and, to many Germans, distasteful charade. That price would be well worth paying if it produced a government with the will and mandate for much-needed political and economic reforms. Germany "confronts monumental tasks," President Horst Köhler observed in a televised address on the need for fresh elections. "Millions of people are unemployed, many for years. Federal and state budgets are in an unprecedented, critical condition. The existing federal...

THE German election campaign was becoming predictable. Chancellor Gerhard Schršder's leftist administration was wheezing and puffing to a halt after a dismal few years of rising unemployment with few ideas about how to solve the country's economic malaise. The conservative candidate, Angela Merkel, seemed certain to romp to easy victory, although her insufficiently radical policies to turn around the economy have convinced few. What the campaign needed was controversy and last week it got it. Former finance minister Oskar Lafontaine chose this moment for his political resurrection. The vociferous man from the Saar - whose strident political rhetoric and old-style...

Schleswig-Holstein premier quits after Kiel vote debacle 18 March 2005 KIEL/BERLIN - The only woman ever to head a German state, Heide Simonis, announced Friday she is stepping aside as a consequence of her failure to be confirmed in office after four deadlock votes in the Schleswig-Holstein parliament. Simonis, a Social Democrat (SPD), informed her party faction on Friday that she was withdrawing her name as a candidate for the premiership. The move appeared to increase the likelihood of a grand coalition between the SPD and the opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in the state, a prospect which party leaders...

<p>BERLIN (AP) — Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder handed the leadership of Germany's governing party to a trusted aide Sunday in a bid to heal party division, but he warned that he would continue efforts to trim the welfare state.</p> <p>Acknowledging he was "not an easy party leader," Schroeder highlighted his popular opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq but insisted he would not change his little-loved reform course in an emotional final speech as party chairman.</p>

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Monday criticized the anti-U.S. tone of Germany's elections, saying it had the effect of "poisoning" U.S. relations with a longtime ally. "I have no comment on the German elections outcome, but I would have to say that the way it was conducted was notably unhelpful," Rumsfeld told reporters after meeting with President Aleksander Kwasneiwski in the presidential palace. "And as the White House indicated, has had the effect of poisoning the relationship." Rumsfeld apparently was referring to comments published Saturday in The Financial Times newspaper by Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser. She...