43% young voters back Merkel – poll

Obama visit set

BERLIN, April 11, (Agencies): Almost half of Germany’s first-time voters back Chancellor Angela Merkel, a poll by the Forsa Institut showed on Tuesday, providing a strong backbone of support as she prepares to bid for a fourth term in September.

Among all potential voters, conservative Merkel had 43 percent support, compared to 32 percent for Martin Schulz, the chancellor candidate for the centreleft Social Democrats (SPD). But that lead extended to 47 percent against 29 percent among those aged 18 to 21, the poll showed.

“Young people know Chancellor Merkel, with whom they grew up,” said Manfred Guellner, who heads the Forsa institute. He said the poll showed that “especially young people are looking for stability and continuity in these uncertain times.”

The elder stateswoman of western European politics, Merkel has come under fire at home for initially opening Germany’s doors to more than one million refugees. Ahead of what is likely to be a closefought ballot, she has toughened her stance on immigration in recent months.

She faced criticism on Tuesday from the SPD, the junior partner in her coalition government, after giving her chief of staff, Peter Altmaier, a leading role in drafting the election programme for her Christian Democrats (CDU).

The appointment of Altmaier, who coordinates policy on migrant issues within the coalition, “violates the established political rules,” SPD general secretary Katarina Barley told the RND newspaper chain.

Merkel

Poll

Measured by party, the Forsa poll - conducted for Stern magazine and broadcaster RTL - put Merkel’s CDU and their Bavarian sister party (CSU) at 36 percent, 6 percentage points ahead of the SPD of former European Parliament president Schulz.

A second survey by INSA for the mass-circulation Bild newspaper ahead of the Sept. 24 national election gave the CDU/CSU a 1.5 point lead

In the Forsa poll, the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which had seen its support weaken in recent months, was steady at 8 percent. The AfD added 1 point to 10 percent in the INSA poll.

Both Merkel and Schulz are hoping to form new governments with smaller partners, but the two polls suggested another “grand coalition” of their parties is likely.

Former US President Barack Obama will join German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin in May as part of celebrations to mark 500 years of Protestantism in Europe, officials said on Tuesday.

They will discuss “shaping engaged democracy and taking responsibility at home and in the world” in front of the historic Brandenburg Gate, the officials with Germany’s Protestant church said.

The May 25 meeting is being organised by a church group and Obama’s charitable foundation.

It will be a centrepiece of the biennial gathering of the church, which is this year focusing on commemorations of the Reformation, launched in 1517 when Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on the door of Wittenberg Cathedral.

Obama’s visit to Germany will also coincide with a NATO summit in Brussels on May 25, which his successor Donald Trump plans to attend.

Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, who heads the Protestant church in Germany, sharply criticised Trump in February when he imposed a travel ban on people from some majority-Muslim countries.

A court in western Germany has found a 16-yearold Syrian refugee guilty of planning to carry out a bomb attack.

The Cologne regional court sentenced the teenager, who wasn’t identified due to German privacy laws, to two years in prison.

He was arrested in September. The defendant’s lawyers had asked for an acquittal.

In its ruling Monday, the court accepted the prosecution’s claim that the teen received bomb-making instructions from a person in Israel with ties to the Islamic State group.

Danger

Judges said the teen’s plans were at a very early stage and the public never was in concrete danger.

They also noted that the refugee was extremely lonely when he reached out to radical Islamic jihadists.

The ruling can be appealed.

German authorities say a Ghanaian man arrested on suspicion of raping a camper at knife-point had been denied asylum days earlier.

The dpa news agency reported Monday that regional authorities in Cologne confirmed the 31-year-old suspect had arrived in Germany from Italy in February after being denied asylum there.

German authorities also rejected his asylum request, on March 23.

Prosecutors allege that on April 2 he attacked a couple camping near the western city of Bonn with a branch saw, and raped the 23-year-old woman in front of her boyfriend.

The suspect was arrested six days later. Prosecutors say genetic material from the crime matched the suspect’s DNA.

Details of the case prompted outrage in Germany, where high-profile crimes committed by asylum-seekers have drawn particular public scrutiny in recent years.

German police say they’ve found what they believe to be 384 kilograms (847 pounds) of cocaine in cases of bananas shipped from Ecuador.

An employee at a wholesale company in Leverkusen, just outside Cologne, alerted police on Saturday to the suspected drugs. Police said Monday that they found the substance in hundreds of one-kilogram packages hidden in 26 cases of bananas.

They say samples tested so far show that the powdery substance was cocaine. The cases were shipped to Hamburg and then taken by truck to Leverkusen.

Police found a GPS transmitter in one of the cases. They believe that traffickers planned to use it to locate the drugs quickly in large warehouses.

There was no immediate word on the haul’s street value.