German Election: Angela Merkel's Lead Tightens

Will There Be Victory For 'Mutti'?

Updated: 11:19pm UK, Friday 20 September 2013

By Robert Nisbet, Europe Correspondent, in Berlin

The elections in Germany this weekend could produce a Pizza, a Jamaican or a Lebanon, but "Mutti" is still likely to be in charge.

With a system of proportional representation, two ballots per person and little difference between the main parties, political analysts have been focusing on the possibility of a new coalition.

Although the CDU/CSU alliance, led by Chancellor Angela Merkel is likely to take the largest share of the vote, the collapse in support for its liberal coalition partner FDP means the existing government may not survive.

That has thrown up a number of possible coalition permutations, which have been given bizarre names mostly based on the combination of the party colours.

So a combination of the CDU, the Free Democrats and the Greens has become known as the "Jamaica coalition", echoing the various hues on the national flag.

A "traffic light" would be a link up between the main opposition Social Democrats, the FDP and the Greens, and so on.

It just hints at the complexity of the German electoral system which allows each voter to make two choices: one for a local representative and another for their choice of party.

The second vote has become known as the vote for chancellor, but it increases the scope for tactical voting, especially as the FDP has been fading at the polls.

For a party to be represented in the Bundestag, it must achieve at least 5% of the overall vote.

At a recent local election in Bavaria - admittedly a conservative heartland - the FDP saw its vote disintegrate, leading some to predict it could come perilously close to being kicked out of the national parliament.

Meanwhile another new party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), has been stealing support from disaffected CDU voters, who have tired of the euro crisis and want to see a return to the Deutsche Mark.

If it gains a foothold in the national parliament, it could make it nearly impossible for the CDU to govern without a Grand Coalition between Ms Merkel's CDU and the opposition SPD.

That was the outcome after the election in 2005 when Ms Merkel first became chancellor, but her relationship with the SPD leader Peer Steinbrueck has soured since he was her first finance minister.

That red/black combination is the one most favoured by German voters, but not by the parties' top brass.

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North Korea Halts Family Reunions With South

North Korea has indefinitely postponed a series of reunions for families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War.

Six days of meetings between relatives still separated six decades after the conflict had been due to start on Wednesday in Mount Kumgang resort, situated just north of the militarised border.

The last time families were allowed to see each other was at a similar series of gatherings three years ago.

Two relatives dance and sing during the last temporary reunion

North Korea said this year's meetings would not go ahead as planned, accusing the South of a "reckless and vicious confrontation racket" against Pyongyang.

It also vowed to "take strong and decisive counteractions against the South Korean puppet regime's ever-escalating war provocations".

This year's reunions were set to take place again at Mount Kumgang resort

The postponement was announced by a spokesman for the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, in a statement broadcast by the KCNA news agency.

"The reunions of separated families and relatives between the North and the South will be postponed until there can be a normal atmosphere where dialogue and negotiations can be held," he said.

A North Korean man feeds his South Korean father during the last gathering

South Korea's Ministry of Unification, which is responsible for ties with the North, denounced the decision to postpone the reunions for political reasons as "inhumane" and unacceptable.

A delegation responsible for the reunions is currently in the North, the ministry said. It was not immediately clear when it would return.

The setback comes amid a period of improving relations between the two neighbours, with Pyongyang tempering its threats and pursuing talks with Seoul to restart various inter-Korean co-operation projects.

A South Korean woman cries on a bus as she bids farewell to loves ones

The Korean War separated millions of families, with vast numbers of refugees moving both north and south.

Past reunions have been the scenes of intense emotion, bringing together weeping family members desperate for details and news.

Many South Koreans have had little or no word about their loved ones for decades.

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Taliban's Mullah Baradar Released From Custody

By Neville Lazarus, Sky News Asia Producer

The most senior leader of the Taliban in Afghanistan has been released from custody in Pakistan to help the struggling Afghan peace process.

According to a Sky News source, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who is second to Taliban chief Mullah Omar, will have to remain in the country, although he is free to move around any city.

He will be provided with high security, although the source claimed this is a way for authorities to keep him under watch.

Before his release, preparations had been made for Baradar to be taken to Qatar or Saudi Arabia where he could actively work on the peace process.

But the source said Pakistan objected to such a move because it wants to remain pivotal and influential in any future peace talks between Hamid Karzai's Afghan government, the Taliban and western powers.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has pushed for Mr Baradar's release

Sartaj Aziz, advisor on foreign affairs and national security to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, said: "Handing over the key Taliban commander to Afghanistan will sabotage the purpose behind the decision of releasing him."

Pakistan authorities have resisted immense pressure for his release since his arrest in Karachi in February 2010.

Many believe the arrest was made to stop him negotiating with the Afghan government and cutting Pakistan out of the talks.

His arrest infuriated Mr Karzai, who last month reiterated demands for his release when he travelled to Pakistan for talks with Mr Sharif.

Baradar, 55, was born in the southern province of Uruzgan and fought the Soviet forces in the late 1980s.

He co-founded the Taliban and became a trusted friend of Omar, rising to become his top military strategist.

After the fall of the Taliban, he fled to Pakistan and became the most senior leader in the organisation's Quetta Shura branch after Omar.

He is credited with bringing together all factions of the Taliban under one umbrella and commands great respect and influence in the movement both in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Even before his detention, he had reached out to the Karzai government and steps to begin peace talks had been taken.

Baradar is the first Taliban prisoner released under the mechanism agreed by the two sides at the Chequers summit in the UK earlier this year.

Pakistan has released at least 33 Taliban inmates over the last year at the request of the Afghan government.

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Syria Completes Chemical Weapon List Handover

Syria has completed the handover of its chemical arsenal inventory, the world's chemical weapons watchdog says.

Confirmation of the handover came ahead of the Saturday deadline issued to Syrian president Bashar al Assad's regime in a US-Russian disarmament plan.

The Hague-based Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said in an email: "OPCW has confirmed that it has received the expected disclosure from the Syrian government regarding its chemical weapons programme.

"The Technical Secretariat is currently reviewing the information received."

It came as the chief of staff for Russian President Vladimir Putin said the country could abandon support for the Assad regime if it learnt Syria was not committed to handing over its chemical weapons.

Sergei Ivanov reiterated Russia's longstanding opposition to Western military intervention in Syria, saying such action would only aid militants linked to al Qaeda.

Around 1,400 people were killed in the chemical attack on August 21

"In the event of external military interference the opposition ... would entirely lose interest in negotiations, considering that the US would bomb the regime to its foundations as in Libya, giving them an easy path to victory," he said.

Mr Ivanov made the comments reported by Russian media to a Stockholm conference organised by the British-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

He said Russia expected to know the whereabouts of all the Assad regime's chemical weapons within a week, although it would take two to three months to decide how long would be required to destroy them.

"I'm talking theoretically and hypothetically, but if we became sure that Assad is cheating, we could change our position," he said.

United Nations inspectors released a report this week saying there was "clear and convincing evidence" that chemical weapons were used in an attack in Damascus on August 21. It said 1,400 people were killed in the attack.

The attack prompted an international diplomatic crisis over Syria, with US airstrikes appearing likely before a plan to prevent military action was put forward by Russia.

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Nairobi Shopping Mall: Gunmen Kill 'At Least 22'

At least 22 people have reportedly been killed in a suspected terrorist attack on a shopping mall in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

Gunmen opened fire and detonated grenades inside the Westgate centre, a mall popular with expatriates.

Police chief Benson Kibue described the incident as a terrorist attack, telling the AP news agency up to 10 men exchanged gunfire with police.

A spokesman for Kenya's Ministry of Interior added: "It is a possibility that it is an attack by terrorists, so we are treating the matter very seriously."

An injured woman is carried to an ambulance inside a shopping trolley

At least 22 people were killed in attack, according to a Kenyan Red Cross official who spoke to AP.

Earlier, Abbas Guled, a spokesman for the charity, said: "The casualties are many and that's only what we have on the outside. Inside there are even more casualties and shooting is still going on."

Staff at a supermarket and a jewellery store were among a number of people taken hostage by the attackers, according to Nairobi-based journalist Abdi Osman Adan.

Cars and shopping trolleys were left abandoned outside the mall

He told Sky News witnesses reported seeing the attackers "firing at any police officers who tried to approach the building".

Security forces were still trying to rescue those trapped inside the mall hours after the start of the siege, going from shop to shop to evacuate shoppers and staff.

Graphic photographs taken at the scene showed people with serious injuries being treated at a makeshift hospital inside a food court.

An ambulance arrives as a woman flees from the shopping centre

Other images showed injured people being carried out of the mall in shopping trolleys, as well as upturned tables and chairs from where people had fled the shooting.

Elijah Kamua, who witnessed the attack, said the gunmen asked Muslims to stand up and leave and that non-Muslims would be targeted.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, although the Somali militant group al Shabaab had previously threatened to attack the mall.

Satpal Singh, who was in a cafe when the attackers struck, said he ran downstairs and was shot near the main exit of the mall.

Shoppers leave the mall, which is situated in an affluent area of Nairobi

"A Somali guy shot at me," he said. "He was carrying a rifle, an AK-47."

Another witness, who gave only his first name, Jay, added: "They were not speaking Swahili. They spoke something that seemed like Arabic or Somali."

In a message posted on Twitter, Kenya Police urged the public "to remain calm" and not to speculate about the attack.

"We urge you to stay away (from the mall)," they added.

The shooting happened in Kenya's capital city Nairobi

Westgate is situated in western Nairobi and is popular with both foreigners and rich Kenyans.

According to the centre's website, it is the city's "premier shopping mall" and offers a "serene and safe enviornment away from the city centre hubbub".

It has more than 80 stores and features a waterfall with tropical gardens.

A spokesman for the Foreign Office said: "We are looking into whether any British nationals have been caught up in the incident and are ready to provide consular assistance.

"We are advising British nationals to avoid the area."

More follows...

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Boy's Broom Attack On Teacher Caught On Video

Footage of a boy violently attacking a teacher at a South African high school has led to government calls for the youngster to be punished.

A video posted on YouTube shows the student kicking and hitting the male teacher with a broom in a classroom of the Glenvista school in Johannesburg.

Other pupils can be heard cheering, laughing and egging the boy on during the assault, which reportedly happened on Wednesday.

"Get him," one boy is heard saying.

The teacher is seen walking away from his attacker and leaving the building, but the pupil - still armed with the broom - follows him into the street.

The boy chases the teacher

Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga said she was "disturbed" by the attack.

She has called for the boy and those cheering him on to be punished.

"This incident must be condemned in the strongest possible terms and the relevant punishment must be met out," she said.

"The student responsible together with the other learners who were cheering him on should all be disciplined accordingly."

Mrs Motshekga has recommended that anyone who was there during the attack receive trauma counselling.

She said such violence would "not be tolerated" by either pupils or teachers in South African schools.

"Schools should remain a no-violence zone where educators and learners can feel safe and secure in order for teaching and learning to take place," she said.

Sky News has tried to contact Glenvista school about the assault.

The attack comes as South African police unveiled crime statistics which lobby groups say are the worst in a decade.

The figures showed increases in some of the crimes that most frighten and upset South Africans.

Murder and attempted murder rates were both up - albeit minimally (0.6% and 6.5%) despite a decline over the past nine years - and car-jacking is up alongside residential robberies (2% and 3.6% respectively).

The statistics prompted criticism from Gareth Newman at the Institute of Security Studies (ISS), who said: "This shows that government's approach to crime is not working."

But the police took a different view, saying the statistics showed that police interventions were having the desired results, although there was still a long way to go to rid South Africa of crime.

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Rhino Poaching Deaths Set For Record High

By Alex Crawford, Special Correspondent, in the Eastern Cape

The number of rhinos killed in South Africa looks set to exceed last year's record total.

With just three months left in 2013, the number of rhinos killed is more than 500 and appears almost certain to top 2012's death toll of 668.

The South African Government has already sent in the military to the country's flagship game reserve, the Kruger National Park, to help in the fight against poaching.

There is also a plethora of independently-funded efforts to save the animal which faces extinction for the second time in a century.

One man doing his fair share is veterinarian Dr William Fowlds who is the founder of Rhino Lifeline and managed to persuade the South African bank Investec to help financially support his efforts.

Veterinarians work with a rhino injured by poachers

The Investec cash has helped pay for helicopters and medical supplies so Dr Fowlds can track rhinos from the air, fire tranquilisers into them, then drill tiny holes in their horns into which chips are inserted so the rangers can keep track of them.

DNA is also taken and stored on the national database in Pretoria.

:: Warning: The video on this story shows animals in distress and receiving medical treatment.

Dr Fowlds was the first vet on the scene when three rhinos were attacked by poachers 18 months ago on the Kariega Game Reserve. One was so badly mutilated, he died hours later.

But somehow Dr Fowlds' prompt work managed to bring the other two back from the brink.

The rangers were traumatised by the sight of these animals with their horns and part of their faces ripped off by the poachers.

They were lying motionless, heavily tranquilised by the thieves. Dr Fowlds set about injecting them with antibiotics, pain-killers and vitamins and tidied their wounds.

Dr William Fowlds is the founder of Rhino Lifeline

They were named Thandi and Themba and the vet team worked frantically to save the two of them. But 24 days later, Themba was found drowned in a waterhole.

Internal injuries were to blame. The vet team was distraught. Dr Fowlds was determined he wasn't going to lose Thandi too.

He performed procedure after procedure on the animal, even performing pioneering skin graft operations on the rhino, snipping skin away from behind her ear and growing it over the bloody hole where the horn had been.

Less than two years on, Thandi is alive and has a new mate. Her mate's horn has had to be cut off to try to protect her from his amorous advances but they are both alive and far less of a poachers' target.

The story of Thandi's survival is well known to South Africans who responded in their hundreds with money and offers of help when the news of Thandi and Themba was first reported.

"Thandi's will to survive has been inspirational," Dr Fowlds told Sky News.

"We would never have put her through all those procedures if she hadn't shown us that. I don't think I have ever come across any animal with such a desire to live. And that's what the world needs to know. These animals want to live and we need to help them."

:: Read the second part of Alex Crawford's report this Sunday as she looks at the drastic protection measures introduced in an attempt to save rhinos from poachers in South Africa.

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Chicago Park Shooting: Child Among 13 Injured

A three-year-old boy who was among 13 people injured in a shooting in Chicago is said to be doing "okay" as he is treated in hospital.

The child and two others were earlier reported to be in a critical condition following the attack in a park in the Back of the Yards neighbourhood late on Thursday.

Authorities said the shooting was likely to be gang-related and no one was believed to be in custody.

Many of the victims - most in their teens, 20s and 30s - were shot in the arms, legs or feet and the attack reportedly targeted people playing basketball.

Detectives at a sealed off basketball court

One 24-year-old man was shot twice in the abdomen and was in serious condition, police said.

The three-year-old child was reportedly wounded in the cheek. Rev. Corey Brooks spoke to the boy's relatives and said the youngster was resting with his mother.

"He was talking when they first brought him in, but he's heavily sedated now," he said.

The youngster's grandmother Semecha Nunn said: "They say he's good. They're going to have to do a little plastic surgery on him, but he's okay."

The child's uncle Julian Harris told the Chicago Sun-Times that men with dreadlocks fired at him from a car before turning towards Cornell Square Park and firing at people.

He said his nephew was wounded in the cheek.

Chicago has recently been named America's murder capital

"They hit the light pole next to me, but I ducked down and ran into the house," Mr Harris said.

"They've been coming round here looking for people to shoot every night, just gang-banging stuff. It's what they do."

Francis John, 70, said she was in her apartment when the attack happened.

She said she went down to see what was going on and "a lot of youngsters were running scared".

Ms John said she was surprised by what had happened, saying she has lived in the area for 30 years.

She told the Chicago Sun-Times there has not been much gun violence in the neighbourhood in recent years.

FBI figures have shown that Chicago has overtaken New York to become the murder capital of the US with 500 deaths in the last year.

President Barack Obama returned to his adopted hometown earlier this year to appeal for an end to the "senseless" gun violence ravaging Chicago.

He pressed for ambitious gun control measures, which so far have been stalled in the US Congress.

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Syria Hands Over Chemical Weapons Details

The Assad regime has given details of its toxic weapons programme to the world's chemical weapons watchdog.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the body tasked with dismantling Syria's stockpile of nerve agents, said that Syria had given an "initial declaration" outlining its programme.

It will not release the details of the declaration and is now seeking to verify what has been outlined.

OPCW is looking at ways to fast-track moves to secure and destroy Syria's arsenal of poison gas and nerve agents as well as its production facilities.

Mr Assad says the US should foot the bill for destroying chemical weapons

Under a US/Russia agreement brokered last weekend, under which Syria is expected to put its chemical weapons stocks under international control, inspectors are due to be on the ground in Syria by November.

However, on Thursday Russia's President Vladimir Putin conceded he could not be 100% certain that his Syrian counterpart, Bashar al Assad, would fully give up his deadly weapons stash.

OPCW postponed a meeting of its executive council, which was due to take place on Sunday, at which it was to discuss how to dismantle the country's chemical weapons programme.

The body said it would set another date for the meeting.

In an interview with Fox News earlier this week, Mr Assad said he was committed to destroying his stockpile of chemical arms - but warned it would take a year to do so and coast at least £600m ($1bn).

A man suffering the affects of the sarin attack on August 21

He said: "It needs a lot of money, it needs about one billion (US dollars). If the American administration is ready to pay those money, and to take responsibility of bringing toxic materials to the United States, why don't they do it?"

UN weapons inspectors on Tuesday released a report in which they said there was "clear and convincing evidence" that chemical weapons were used in an attack in Damascus on August 21.

According to reports and chilling pictures of the horrific attack, 1,400 people were killed, including scores of children.

In their 38-page report, the UN inspectors said chemical weapons had been used on a "relatively large scale".

Rockets tested at the attack site were found to contain sarin, while the area in which they landed was contaminated with the deadly gas.

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Coca-Cola Apologises For 'Retard' Bottle Cap

Coca-Cola has apologised to a family who found the message "You Retard" printed inside a bottle cap.

Blake Loates, from Alberta, Canada, found the offensive message after buying a bottle of Vitamin Water, which is owned by the drinks firm.

"We immediately thought, you have got to be kidding me?" she said.

"We thought it might have been a disgruntled employee or someone in a (bottling) plant playing a joke."

She took a picture of the bottle top and her father Doug wrote a letter of complaint to the drinks firm, mentioning his younger daughter Fiona, who has cerebral palsy and autism.

The message was printed on a Vitamin Water cap

In his letter, seen by the Huffington Post, he told the company: "The R word is considered a swear word in our family. We don't use it.

"We don't tolerate others using it around us. We ARE oversensitive but you would be too if you had Fiona for a daughter!"

Coca-Cola said it has been printing one random French word and one random English word on the inside of each Vitamin Water cap.

Shannon Denny, from Coca-Cola Refreshment Canada, said: "We did not mean to offend at all. We are certainly very apologetic for this oversight."

The company says it now has a system in place to review words printed on the bottle caps, and says it has recalled the remaining products.

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