News

Germany's Green Party nominates Robert Habeck as chancellor candidate

C.Nguyen47 min ago
Germany's Green Party delegates approved by 96.48% Economy Minister Robert Habeck as their chancellor candidate for the upcoming elections at the party's conference on Sunday.

Habeck is to lead the election campaign alongside Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.

"We will take on the election!" Habeck declared in his acceptance speech.

Shortly before his nomination, Baerbock praised Habeck as "super pragmatic," saying he had maintained Germany's course during times of crisis as economy minister and freed Germany from its dependency on Russia as an energy supplier.

Habeck was widely expected to win the nomination as he was not competing against other candidates for votes.

Germany is currently preparing for early elections, expected in February, following the collapse of the government coalition last week.

A government statement released in Berlin on Sunday revealed that the easing of immigration restrictions to attract skilled workers to Germany has led to a 10% increase in the number of visas issued for this purpose over the past year. "In the first year, around 200,000 visas for employment purposes were issued, according to preliminary figures," noted a joint statement from the Foreign Office, the Immigration Ministry and the Labour Ministry. The increase had been particularly marked in visas f

President-elect Donald Trump reached into his inner circle on Friday and chose his transition spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, as his White House press secretary, putting a 27-year-old firebrand in position to aggressively defend him. Leavitt has endeared herself to Trump by her ardent defense of him in news interviews and her take-no-prisoners style, Trump advisers said. The job of the White House press secretary typically is to help inform the American people about presidential activities without betraying the confidence of the boss.

U.S. Muslim leaders who supported Republican Donald Trump to protest against the Biden administration's support for Israel's war on Gaza and attacks on Lebanon have been deeply disappointed by his cabinet picks, they tell Reuters. "Trump won because of us and we're not happy with his secretary of state pick and others," said Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the Abandon Harris campaign in Pennsylvania and co-founded Muslims for Trump. Muslim support for Trump helped him win Michigan and may have factored into other swing state wins, strategists believe.

Pete Hegseth, the Army National Guard veteran and Fox News host nominated by Donald Trump to lead the Department of Defense, was flagged as a possible "Insider Threat" by a fellow service member due to a tattoo on his bicep that's associated with white supremacist groups. Hegseth, who has downplayed the role of military members and veterans in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack and railed against the Pentagon's subsequent efforts to address extremism in the ranks, has said he was pulled by his District of Columbia National Guard unit from guarding Joe Biden's January 2021 inauguration.

For their first "Weekend Update" segment after the recent string of controversial cabinet announcements from Donald Trump, co-anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che did not hold back. "This week, Donald Trump continued to announce everyone he's going to fire in six months," Jost said, adding, "On Wednesday, Trump nominated Matt Gaetz for attorney general. And Gaetz said the same thing he does when he sees a teenage girl: I'll do it." The joke comes after Gaetz's sudden resignation from Congress, whi

After one of the most chaotic and least productive sessions in modern history, voters made a surprising choice in elections for the U.S. House - they overwhelmingly stuck with the status quo. House Republicans will hold onto a thin majority, and while the chamber's exact partisan divide is still to be determined as votes are tallied in a handful of states, the results of 435 House races nationwide have produced hardly any change to the makeup of the chamber. In fact, it's more like a stalemate: Republicans and Democrats have each flipped seven seats, while just eight incumbents nationwide have lost their races.

0 Comments
0