but used to be martin short of a hard bargain and now he s slated to become potentially the foreign minister a good choice well i think that might be the right choice for him good choice from his perspective so does he of course is also very much a weakened figure through all this because you know he hasn t really looked good he struggled and don t forget the s.p.d. membership still holds a sword of damocles over the face of this new government released over the deal they re going to get their chance to vote all four hundred sixty thousand of them and a couple weeks time but assuming it goes through assuming not insurance becomes foreign minister that looks like the right job for him in the sense that it takes him away from this question of can he really need to the social democrat party it s pretty obvious that many within that party don t believe he can it plays to his core strengths is the former president of the european parliament he knows
you have to say even if twenty thousand new members have joined the party in recent times out of a total of four hundred sixty thousand that s still quite as quite a low percentage so i doubt that the new members are able to swing the vote but then again you have to say that there is some dollars about what the sentiment amongst the rank and file democrats really is going to be there has been a lot of reticence about joining another grand coalition because members of the party feel that this will damage the party that it will somehow make the party less effective and somehow dilutes party policies so the voters really something crucial and really very open of the moment and thank you for now the political correspondent there following those coalition negotiations here in berlin. now to taiwan where rescue efforts are underway after a six point four magnitude earthquake killed at least four people and injured
is expecting from us that it often ends up. expectations were high especially among martin schultz s social democrats the s.p.d. party base will have the last word over the next few weeks the parties roughly four hundred sixty thousand members will decide whether the agreement will stand as the foundation for a new grand coalition shields s message success he s a hop artist talk we had a big influence on this agreement and were grateful to the union parties for making compromises that were difficult for them but it chiva ball in the end just. one example in the coalition agreement fixed term employment would likely be the exception to the rule in future repeated contract extensions a thing of the past a clear concession to the social democrats another key demand from the s.p.d. made less headway little progress on a major overhaul of the german health care system. the conservatives knew they
today we learn of an unexpected rise in the weekly jobless claims number, 460,000 americans filed for first-time unemployment benefits, and that is according to the labor department, who puts these numbers out. that is 18,000 more than the week before. so that number rose unexpectedly, really, according to economists who are watching all this. let s get to stuart varney, anchor of varney p company on the fox business network. not a pretty number for us this morning. i d call it disappointing. the administration had been hoping to say look, we ve got job losses behind us, now we re into the new period of job creation, these numbers contradict that hopeful trend. we ve got 460,000 new faces appearing for the first time in those jobless offices, it was not expected to be this high. in fact we were looking for a decline in the number of new claims. didn t get it. four hundred sixty thousand has to be characterized as disappointing for the administration, and for everybody who is lookin
now whether that s going to convince the s.p.d. based on not that far and anybody s guess as we know they have to give their steel into the posse base so that they or the four hundred sixty thousand s.p.d. members can actually vote on that deal and there are also people who said whatever they negotiate i just don t want to be in a coalition government with uncle michael so we ll see that s right the legitimacy of the p.d. the credibility of the s.p.d. i should say is that state to some degree in these talks because they initially after the election said no no no you know the party leader martin shows never going to go in a coalition again with with chancellor merkel at this point and well it seems they are going to have to eat their words about that what s at stake for the s.p.d. going in to this coalition assuming that indeed they do. but the problem is that the other alternative is also not a good one if they don t go into they steal into the grand coalition then what we