MERKEL PARTY EASILY WINS STATE VOTE IN GERMANY
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative party easily won an election in Germany’s western Saarland state Sunday, an unexpectedly strong performance as Merkel prepares to seek a fourth term in a national vote this year, projections showed.
The outcome was disappointing for her center-left rivals, the Social Democrats, who faced their first electoral test since nominating Martin Schulz in January as Merkel’s rival for the chancellery.
The Social Democrats, which saw a boost in poll ratings after Schulz’s nomination, looked to have won too little support for a new left-wing government in the region of nearly 1 million people on the French border.
JUDGE: PULSE LAWSUIT MAY BE TOSSED OUT OF COURT
A judge says a lawsuit brought by victims of the Orlando nightclub massacre against the gunman’s employer and wife may be tossed out of federal court.
U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra last week issued an order raising questions about whether federal court was the proper jurisdiction for the lawsuit. The judge gave the plaintiffs 10 days to file a revised lawsuit or he said he would dismiss the complaint.
Attorneys for the Pulse victims didn’t immediately respond to an email Sunday seeking comment.
LONDON ATTACKER USED WHATSAPP BEFORE RAMPAGE
Minutes before the terrorist rampage in London on Wednesday, attacker Khalid Masood sent a WhatsApp message to an unknown person, authorities said Sunday.
The message’s contents — and its intended recipient — can’t be accessed by police because the popular messaging service encrypted them, a top British security official said.
Masood used the popular messaging service, which is owned by Facebook, just minutes before the attack that left three pedestrians and one police officer dead and dozens more wounded, the Associated Press reported.
Police have arrested 12 people in the investigation, including a 30-year-man who was detained in Birmingham on Sunday on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts, the BBC reported. Masood lived in Birmingham.
A WhatsApp spokeswoman said the company was “horrified at the attack” and was co-operating with the investigation, the BBC reported.
Communist China’s favored candidate was elected as Hong Kong’s chief executive Sunday in a vote assailed by pro-democracy activists as neither free nor fair.
Carrie Lam was selected by a 1,194-member committee made up mostly of loyalists to the Chinese government to be chief executive, Hong Kong’s highest post. Lam, 59, who was widely expected to win, also becomes Hong Kong’s first female leader.
Lam, the former deputy to unpopular outgoing Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, received 777 votes to defeat her opponents, former finance secretary John Tsang, who got 365 votes, and former judge Woo Kwokhing, who had 21 votes. In public polls, however, Tsang was the more popular candidate and had the support of the pro-democracy bloc of electors, who make up more than 25% of the committee.
Sunday’s election was the first race for chief executive since the student-led pro-democracy protests of 2014 sparked by the “umbrella” movement. The movement protested Beijing’s decision to deny open nominations for the leadership post.
Lam, in remarks after the election, vowed to work on healing social and political divisions that have long gripped Hong Kong as it navigates a delicate relationship with mainland China.
“Hong Kong, our home, is suffering from quite a serious divisiveness and has accumulated a lot of frustrations,” she said after her victory was announced. “My priority will be to heal the divide.”
When Britain handed Hong Kong to China in 1997 after more than a century of rule, China agreed to a policy of “one country, two systems”: The communist regime would regain sovereignty, but the bustling Asian financial hub would maintain its open economic and political systems.
For advocates of greater democracy in Hong Kong, Lam’s election was predictable. “This result is a nightmare to Hong Kongers,” wrote Demosisto, the political party founded by prodemocracy activists Joshua Wong, Nathan Law and other student leaders.
“It is a selection rather than an election,” Wong, 20, said in an interview last week. “Who becomes chief executive is still under control of the Beijing government.”
On Sunday, pro-democracy groups held protests outside the election venue, and some prodemocracy electors raised chants for universal suffrage as the votes were tallied.
Lam’s five-year term will start July 1, a politically charged date that marks the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to China.
In recent years, many in Hong Kong have grown alarmed by China’s increasing influence, including the 2015 secret detention of five Hong Kong publishers and booksellers, plus the suspected abduction of China-born billionaire Xiao Jianhua from a Hong Kong hotel who later turned up on the mainland.
Beijing’s influence also is seen in an upcoming trial of four democratically elected members of the Hong Kong Legislative Council. The four legislators, including student leader Law, face being removed by Hong Kong’s Justice Department over charges that their swearing-in oaths were invalid because they did not repeat word-for-word a strict pledge of allegiance to mainland China.