Angela Merkel backs fellow conservative for chancellor ahead of tight German vote
CBC
Germans vote in a national election on Sunday that looks too close to call, with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) mounting a strong challenge to retiring Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives.
Merkel has been in power since 2005 but plans to step down after the election, making the vote an era-changing event to set the future course of Europe's largest economy.
A fractured electorate means that after the election, leading parties will sound each other out before embarking on more formal coalition negotiations that could take months, leaving Merkel, 67, in charge in a caretaker role.
Campaigning in his home constituency of Aachen alongside Merkel, conservative candidate Armin Laschet said on Saturday that a leftist alliance led by the SPD with the Greens and the hard-left Die Linke (The Left) party would destabilize Europe.
"They want to pull us out of NATO, they don't want this alliance, they want another republic," said Laschet, who is 60. "I don't want the Linke to be in the next government."
Running against Laschet is Olaf Scholz of the SPD, the finance minister in Merkel's right-left coalition who won all three televised debates between the leading candidates.
Scholz, 63, has not ruled out a leftist alliance with The Left but said NATO membership was a red line for the SPD.
As Vladimir Putin and his large entourage touch down Thursday in Beijing for a two-day state visit, there were be plenty of public overtures about cooperation, but with China facing increasing pressure from the U.S. over its trade relationship with Russia, China's President Xi Jinping will have to figure out how far the country is willing to go to prop up what was once described as a "no-limits" partnership.
Israel ordered new evacuations in Gaza's southern city of Rafah on Saturday, forcing tens of thousands more people to move as it prepares to expand its military operation closer to the heavily populated central area, in defiance of growing pressure amid the war from close ally the United States and others.