Merkel's bloc stumbles badly in Germany; horse-trading ahead
CTV
Germany's centre-left Social Democrats and outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel 's centre-right bloc both laid claim Sunday to lead the country's next government as projections showed the long-time leader's party heading for its worst-ever result in a national election.
The outcome appeared to put Europe's biggest economy on course for lengthy haggling to form a new government, while Merkel stays on in a caretaker role until a successor is sworn in. A three-party governing coalition, with two opposition parties that have traditionally been in rival ideological camps -- the environmentalist Greens and the business-friendly Free Democrats -- would provide the likeliest route to power for both leading candidates.
Only one of the three candidates to succeed Merkel, who chose not to run for a fifth term, looked happy after Sunday's vote: the Social Democrats' Olaf Scholz, the outgoing vice chancellor and finance minister who pulled his party out of a years-long slump.
Scholz said the predicted results were "a very clear mandate to ensure now that we put together a good, pragmatic government for Germany."
The Greens made their first bid for the chancellery with co-leader Annalena Baerbock, who fell well short of overtaking Germany's two traditional big parties after a gaffe-strewn campaign. Armin Laschet, the governor of North Rhine-Westphalia state who outmaneuvered a more popular rival to secure the nomination of Merkel's Union bloc, struggled to motivate the party's base and made missteps of his own.
With their Los Angeles-area homes still smoldering, families return to search the ruins for memories
Since the flames erupted in and around Los Angeles, scores of residents have returned to their still smoldering neighborhoods even as the threat of new fires persisted and the nation's second-largest city remained unsettled.
A fast-moving fire broke out in the Hollywood Hills on Wednesday night, threatening one of Los Angeles' most iconic spots as firefighters battled to get under control three other major blazes that killed five people, put 130,000 people under evacuation orders and ravaged communities from the Pacific Coast to inland Pasadena.