Ever since the German Parliament building reopened in Berlin in 1999, its second-largest meeting room has been occupied by what had often been Germany’s second-largest party, the Social Democrats. Even the room’s name, the Otto Wels Hall, bears the party’s imprint: Wels led the Social Democrats from 1919 until the Nazis drove him to exile….
Friedrich Merz became Germany’s 10th postwar chancellor on Tuesday after a historic stumble that could complicate his efforts to revive the nation’s slumping economy, tighten its borders and rebuild its military, at a time when an isolated Europe is hungry for strong German leadership. After 10 weeks as the nation’s leader-in-waiting following his party’s victory…
Friedrich Merz, the leader of Germany’s Christian Democrats and its leader-in-waiting for the last 10 weeks, failed in his first parliamentary vote to become chancellor on Tuesday morning. The setback was likely temporary: Mr. Merz’s party, its sister party, the Christian Social Union, and their coalition partner, the center-left Social Democrats, still have enough votes…
Exactly six months after Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition imploded, Friedrich Merz, a conservative Christian Democrat, will be sworn in as Germany’s next chancellor on Tuesday. The swearing-in comes after less than two months of negotiation between the Christian Democratic Union, or C.D.U., which came in first with 28.5 percent of the vote, and the incumbent…
A Kenyan lawmaker was gunned down on a busy Nairobi street by a motorcycle-riding assassin on Wednesday evening, in what the police described as a “targeted and premeditated” attack. The lawmaker, Charles Were, who was serving a second term in Parliament, was in a vehicle stopped at a traffic light when he was killed, the…
Emboldened by President Trump, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary on Monday escalated his culture war against what he calls “gender madness,” after his governing party voted to amend the Constitution to mandate that all Hungarians are either male or female. The amendment proposed by the government was endorsed by Parliament, where the prime minister’s…
The Indian Parliament passed a controversial bill on Friday that increases government oversight of properties held by Muslim trusts, despite vocal protests that the religious minority was being singled out for interference. The bill would allow the appointment of non-Muslims to panels administering the trusts, called Waqf boards, and empower state officials to be adjudicators…
When the verdict from a Paris criminal court flashed across screens in Hénin-Beaumont, many customers in the Café de la Paix received it with the outrage and disappointment Marine Le Pen predicted. The far-right political leader was found guilty of embezzlement, sentenced to four years in prison — two years suspended, two in a form…
The head of an airline advocacy group warned officials at Heathrow Airport of the threat posed by potential substation failures days before a fire forced the shutdown of the airport last month, he told British lawmakers on Wednesday. “I’d actually warned Heathrow of concerns that we had with regard to the substations,” Nigel Wicking, the…
Marine Le Pen, the French far-right leader, was found guilty of embezzlement by a criminal court in Paris on Monday and immediately barred from running for public office for five years, setting off a democratic crisis in France. The verdict effectively barred the current front-runner in the 2027 presidential election from participating in it, an…