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"Horst Seehofer and the CSU have preformed a cheap bit of theater. The back and forth and the cancellation of his resignation as interior minister were all staged." Alternative for Germany Party co-leader parliamentary leader Alice Weidel comments even before the 'deal' was reported in Germany Alice Weidel of the AfD Party broke into a bit of a laugh when she spoke the words above to the media in Germany today and perhaps in the end, she got the story right even before it broke late tonight. The deal between the CDU and CSU parties involves 'transit centers' for migrants...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has reportedly secured agreements with 14 European Union countries to rapidly return some asylum seekers as she seeks to end a schism in her government over migration policy. The countries included Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, which have all been harsh critics of Merkel's welcoming stance to migrants, as well as Belgium, France, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden. Top CSU lawmaker Markus Soeder, Bavaria's governor, on Saturday praised the EU agreement as more than his party had expected, but at the same time suggested that it left open the...

a CSU official told The Wall Street Journal that Mr. Seehofer, addressing senior party colleagues in Munich on Sunday, had labeled Friday’s deal as insufficient and not meeting the conditions he had set to postpone his proposed closure of Germany’s borders. While the deliberations continued, Mr. Seehofer’s comments appeared to steer Europe’s largest country toward a full-blown government crisis. Should Ms. Merkel fire Mr. Seehofer and end their respective parties’ seven-decade alliance, she would find her coalition without a majority in parliament. Mr. Seehofer would make an announcement later Sunday, the CSU official said, declining to say whether the party...

GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel could lose her powerful seat in the heart of Europe as soon as next week amid clashes within her coalition Government over EU migration policies, claimed German MP Kai Whittaker.Speaking on BBC World at One, the German politician claimed clashes between Angela Merkel and German interior minister Horst Seehofer could result in a "new political situation" in Germany by the end of next week. The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) politician said it was still unclear in Berlin what the essence of the disagreement between the Chancellor and Mr Seehofer was and that other members of the...

A glaring rift has emerged between Angela Merkel's conservative CDU and its Bavarian CSU sister party over how to deal with asylum-seekers. The days of Germany's coalition government could be numbered.

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer has invited Italian populist leader Matteo Salvini to Berlin in order to discuss Europe’s border crisis. The pair has already spoken on the phone and are in “full harmony” on migration and security policies, according to a statement from the Italian Interior Ministry. Mr Seehofer is the leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU) party of Bavaria, which has pushed for a cap on asylum seeker numbers and disagrees with ruling coalition partner Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) on the issue. Mr Salvini serves as Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister...

On Thursday, the Colorado State athletic department officials announced they want to interview Becky Hammon for their men's basketball head-coaching job. The 40-year-old Hammon, a former WNBA star, played college basketball at Colorado State. She's currently an assistant coach for the NBA's San Antonio Spurs. She became the first full-time female assistant coach in the NBA in 2014. Some NBA observers believe San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich is grooming her to be his replacement when he retires. In terms of Hammon's ability to control boys and young men once they get on campus and develop them into a successful unit,...

As a language, German has a near-unique quality to sum up a combination of feelings, conditions and elements in a single word. Add “umbehagen” to a list that would most certainly include zeitgeist, leitmotif and doppelganger. Umbehagen describes the angst, discomfort and malaise being experienced by Germans at changing social and political scenes — the arrival and settlement of more than a million refugees from Syria, Iraq and elsewhere would be one strand of this. And so too would be the rise of the right and Alternative for Germany (AfD), concerns over security and terror, or unsettling and disjointed noises...

The feeling of relief in the room was palpable as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Christian Social Union boss Horst Seehofer, and Social Democratic Party Leader Martin Schultz walked up to the stage to announce a breakthrough in their coalition government talks after 24 straight hours of haggling.  For Germans used to quick and smooth transitions of power after parliamentary elections, the announcement from the three leaders was taken as the beginning of the end of four months of political uncertainty.Some of the most significant public policy issues in German politics today were included in the 28-page draft agreement, from refugee...

Horst Seehofer -- the leader of the Christian Democrats (CDU) ally, the Christian Social Union -- is calling on Angela Merkel and Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader Martin Schulz to make sure that the talks between Merkel's CDU and Schulz's SPD are successful. Seehofer says the Social Democrats shooting down the results of the talks on Sunday would absolutely be a "catastrophe" for Germany. When asked by German newspaper Bild whether he has faith in the SPD -- which seems to be internally divided on the question whether or not it should form a coalition with the CDU -- Seehofer...

The final exam for African Studies 161 asked students whether Donald Trump's campaign rhetoric was "anti-Mexican,” “anti-Muslim,” “anti-woman,” or “all of the above.” Another question described Hillary Clinton's 2016 concession speech as being focused on "breaking down barriers and bringing people together," asking only that students identify which groups her overtures addressed.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel confirmed on Saturday she would start talks with liberals and Greens to try to form a new coalition government after last month's election.Merkel won a fourth term in the September 24th vote but the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) poached one million votes from her conservative bloc, leaving her without an obvious coalition to lead Europe's largest economy. She has already said she would seek exploratory talks on forming an alliance between her CDU/CSU bloc and two smaller parties, the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and the ecologist Greens. Merkel said in a speech in the eastern...

Angela Merkel has won a fourth term, but official results have shown she'll have a "tough road" for coalition talks. While the CDU remains the largest party, the far-right AfD will be the third biggest political force. With all 299 constituencies reporting, Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party the CSU came out ahead in Germany's national election on Sunday, with 33 percent of the vote. Rival Social Democrats (SPD) led by Martin Schulz tumbled to a mere 20.5 percent, while the Green and Left parties remained about the same as they did in 2013,...

Thread for German Election: Polls close - first projections Polls have closed. The first ARD projection by Infratest dimap is: CDU/CSU: 32.5 SPD: 20 AfD: 13.5 FDP: 10.5 Green: 9.5 Left: 9

A poll published by public broadcaster ZDF on Friday shows that both the major parties are likely to suffer major losses, while the small right-wing parties are on the rise. The ZDF Politikbarometer poll shows Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) on 36 percent support, with the Social Democrats (SPD) on a miserable 21.5 percent. Germany’s two largest parties have been united in a “grand coalition” since 2013, a fact which appears to have led to an erosion in support for both of them. If the ZDF figures are accurate, Merkel’s party will suffer a 5.5 percent drop in the vote....

The Central Council of Muslims in Germany, as well as the German Muslim League (Deutsche Muslim Liga) and the Islamische Zeitung newspaper on Monday published the results of a survey sent to the parties expected to be voted in to the next Bundestag. Of the 61.5 million eligible voters in Germany’s nationwide elections due to be held September 24, about 1.5 million are Muslim. The survey’s publishers Aiman Mazyek, Belal El-Mogaddedi and Sulaiman Wilms wrote that, like all citizens, these voters were interested in issues surrounding pensions, climate protection and education — parties’ positions on these were well-covered. “However, a...

The German election has two faces. Most observers consider the race at the top over, with conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel running around 15 percent ahead of her Social Democratic (SPD) rival Martin Schulz. Yet skepticism remains about the accuracy of pre-election opinion surveys. After all, the overwhelming majority of pollsters failed to predict victories for the pro-Brexit camp in the UK and Donald Trump in the US. The methodologies used by German pollsters range from the telephone interviews employed by established organizations like Infratest dimap and Forsa, which have standing contracts with major news outlets, and online surveys used by...

Michaella Surat was thrown to the ground outside Bondi Beach Bar in Fort Collins on Thursday night after allegedly hitting one of the officers.

A professor at a California university believes President Donald Trump should be hanged and other Republicans summarily executed. “To save American democracy, Trump must hang. The sooner and the higher, the better,” California State University at Fresno professor Lars Maischak tweeted in February. (TWEET-AT-LINK) The Daily Caller News Foundation first reported the existence of the mind-boggling tweets. Though the account isn’t verified by Twitter, its bio and its interactions indicate that Maischak is its owner. According to his professor profile on the university’s website, Maischak teaches American history with a focus on 19th century, including the intellectual history of socialist...

Social Democrats want to put marriage equality on the table, and over 80 percent of Germans support expanding the right to marry to same-sex couples. But many Christian Democrats are still pushing back. Marriage equality is legal in 22 countries, including Argentina, South Africa and the United States. Germany is not one of them. But now members of the junior governing Social Democratic Party (SPD) are pushing to change that. They are calling on their coalition partners, the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU), to go along with a change of law that would grant same-sex couples...