Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
Olaf Scholz has some big shoes to fill.
The German Finance Minister has the best shot at forming a new German government after leading his Social Democratic Party (SPD) to a narrow victory in Sunday's parliamentary elections.
The SDP won 25.7 per cent of the vote, while Angela Merkel's center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) took 24.1 per cent, according to the federal returning officer.
While the tight result means Scholz is far from certain to become Germany's next chancellor, he is in the strongest position to start coalition talks with the Green Party, which took 14.8 per cent of the votes, and the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) with 11.5 per cent of the vote.
Scholz has positioned himself as a pragmatist and a safe pair of hands. In fact his political style is not dissimilar to that of Merkel -- the two are alike in many ways, despite hailing from rival parties.
"He comes across as calm, measured, steady," said Corinna Hoerst, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) in Brussels.
Hoerst said that as a moderate, Scholz is an outlier within his party. "The SPD leadership are mostly leftist leaning and initially didn't support him. So we don't know yet who he will gather around him and who will influence his leadership style," she added.
Hoerst's colleague and the deputy director of GMF's Berlin office, Sudha David-Wilp, said this centrism is another trait Scholz shares with Merkel.
"She always governed from the center and I think he will also try to do that if he does become chancellor, but it will also depend of course on what coalition parties demand," she said.
The 63-year-old -- a life-long member of the SPD -- was born in what was then West Germany, a detail that sets him apart from Merkel, who grew up in East Germany.
Scholz served as the Labor and Social Affairs minister in Merkel's first coalition government in the late 2000s. In 2011 he was elected mayor of Hamburg, a position he held -- with high levels of support -- until 2018.
Since then, he has served as the vice-chancellor and finance minister in Merkel's grand coalition government, a powerful position in German national politics.
His profile rose even further when he oversaw Germany's generous coronavirus compensation programs for businesses, employees and those who lost income because they had to quarantine during the pandemic.
"He has been [Merkel's] right hand man when it comes to leading the country over the past four years ... he [played] second fiddle to Merkel, but he has tremendous power within the German government, and also in Europe [where he] represents Germany when it comes to Euro policies," David-Wilp said.
Unlike Merkel, who has become a household name across the world during her long tenure, Scholz is not well known abroad -- beyond Brussels' political circles.
Speaking on Monday he said forming a stronger and more sovereign European Union, as well as working on the good relationship between Germany and the United States, would be his key foreign policy goals if he does become chancellor.
He added that as the world "becomes more dangerous," democratic countries must cooperate. "It is important that we work together, even if we do have conflict in one or the other question," he said.
Scholz has had his share of political problems in the past.
As mayor of Hamburg, he was criticized for his mishandling of violent protests that unfolded during a G20 meeting his city hosted in 2017.
Hamburg descended into chaos during the summit, and hundreds of police officers were injured in clashes with protesters. Scholz had underplayed the potential risk from demonstrations, and so was blamed for the city's lack of preparation.
As the coalition talks begin, Scholz will try to lure in the Greens and the FDP, but such negotiations can last months.
Until then, the jury is still out on what kind of chancellor Scholz might be.
"It will be a shift because there is no longer Merkel," Hoerst said, before adding: "I doubt it will be big."
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.