Angela Merkel's party picks Armin Laschet as next leader

BERLIN: Chancellor 's conservative CDU party picked her ally as its next leader on Saturday, in a vote for "continuity" as Europe's biggest economy heads into a key election year with the deadly coronavirus pandemic still raging. In the close race, Laschet, the state premier of Germany's most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, triumphed over old Merkel nemesis Friedrich Merz, after a first round that saw Merz leading by just five votes. A third hopeful, foreign affairs expert Norbert Roettgen, was knocked out of the race. Merz had campaigned on a promise to shift away from Merkel's centrist path and steer right, writing in a column for Der Spiegel that a...