Angela Merkel Appears To Tap Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer As Christian Democratic Union Successor

Angela Merkel Appears To Tap Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer As Christian Democratic Union Successor

The woman basking in the limelight, standing before an adoring crowd having won nearly 99% of the vote for a top post in the most powerful political party in Germany was not Angela Merkel. It was Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, writes The New York Times, who was elected secretary general of Germany's Christian Democratic Union. Dubbed “mini-Merkel” by the German news media, Ms. Kramp-Karrenbauer assumes a post once held by the Chancellor. " In tapping Ms. Kramp-Karrenbauer, she found a candidate widely seen as having the mix of liberalism and conservatism to unite a restive party base," writes The Times.

Severely weakened by a national election held five months ago, Merkel has struggled to cobble together a governing coalition. One of A.K.K.'s first challenges as general secretary will be to restore calm and discipline in a party divided between those who support Merkel's centirst course and those who want to move right.

Kramp-Karrenbauer supported Merkel's decision to open Germany's border in 2015, but took a stronger stance on handling the roughly 7,000 refugees who arrived in her small western state of Saarland, where she has been the governor. The Times writes:

"She had unaccompanied minors arriving without documents undergo medical screenings to help determine their age, and lobbied for Berlin to deport anyone whose application for asylum had been rejected. Male Muslim refugees who refused to accept food from female volunteers should go hungry, she said."

Cologne Attacks Raise Major Questions About Arab Men & Women's Safety In Western Countries

Cologne Attacks Raise Major Questions About Arab Men & Women's Safety In Western Countries

Over the New Years holiday, Germany experienced significant attacks of a wide-ranging nature on women living there. Writing for The New Yorker, Amy Davidson describes the scene -- NPR estimates that 1000 men gathered by Cologne's famous cathedral and central hub train station -- on New Year's Eve in Cologne as reported in Der Spiegel:

That night, as revellers filled the station platforms and—following a dubious German tradition—tossed firecrackers, they were pushed out into already crowded streets. There, groups of men who, according to eye-witness accounts and subsequent police investigations, were primarily foreigners from nations in North Africa, the Middle East, and the Balkans, targeted women and surrounded them. Some of the men groped and taunted them, while others stole their wallets and their cell phones. Women, accompanied or not, literally ran a ‘gauntlet’ through masses of heavily intoxicated men that words cannot describe.” The atmosphere was “chaotic and shameless.” Women reported men grabbing at their breasts and between their legs, among other violent and sexual assaults. With the press of the crowd, there was nowhere for the women to go and, although they screamed for help, the police had no effective response; the report described them as overwhelmed, and some witnesses said that they seemed to stand by in confusion. The police report expressed relief that no one was killed, but that appears to have been a matter of luck, not the result of any actions on the part of law enforcement. The chief of police has already been pushed into early retirement.

"A lot happened on New Year's Eve in Cologne, much of it contradictory, much of it real, much of it imagined," wrote the staff of Der Spiegel, who obtained an internal police document about the night's events. "Some was happenstance, some was exaggerated and much of it was horrifying."