he s giving up the s.p.d. presidency to andrea nonis it s been a tense day in berlin but the next decisive phase is now beginning the s.p.d. membership will begin voting in a few days the result should be no no march the fourth only then will it be clear whether there really will be a new grand coalition. or and i m joined now here in the studio by our chief political correspondent linda crane finally after a series of late night stakeouts waiting for a deal to be reached it s good to have you here in the in the war. i mean we are we see today we saw a lot of statements we heard there will be more party negotiations but we can t forget this deal is not done yet i mean the rank and file of the social democrats they have to give their blessing that s right this will go to a vote by the full party membership that s a lot of people and and the fact is that many of them entered the party are not
according to the police there have been a couple of terror attacks and foiled attacks over the last year what is the state of alert in the country at the moment. authorities have repeatedly said to germans that they are very much a potential target for terrorists and of course many people here in berlin are thinking today about the attack on the christmas market just a little over a year ago here in this city the fact is though as you rightly point out there have been many attacks that have been for wielded by police work as in this case so yes the threat is high but clearly the all of the intelligence and police services are very much aware of that and are working hard to prevent it being carried out linda crane thank you now to some of the other stories making news around the world
into achieving this is dana ball development goals and there s kind of a back story to this as well in the whole debate about how much countries should be spending on defense particularly within nato germany has consistently made the point that expenditures on development on the long term improvement of people s prospects in places like africa our expenditures that contribute to peace and security and in essence should be counted as that so that also is a message here to read between the lines or we will have more analysis and discussion of sigma gabriele s speech in the hours and days to come from linda crane thank you and in new york i found a phenomenal thank you. i don t miss chancellor angela merkel out a number of other politicians have received threatening letters written in arabic
solve the tough issues that they need to be working on. did have you chief political correspondent linda crane thanks very much. now for some of the other stories making the news at this hour the british prime minister theresa may is chairing a cabinet meeting today amid growing pressure to ditch her bracks of plan she s defended the blueprint despite your leaders rejecting key proposals it has at a summons allsburg last week may s conservatives are holding their annual party conference later this week with arrivals pushing for a hard. old francis is in latvia on the third day of his baltics tour the roman catholic leader celebrating mass at a shrine in the town of glow which is popular with pogroms because of an icon there believed to have healing powers the pope also praised the cooperation between latvia s mix of catholic distant and orthodox communities. well now we
this summit in two weeks why not wait the two weeks frankly there is no urgency here we heard that that sound bite from the c.s.u. leader saying we need to restore order on the border there s no disorder on the border refugee numbers actually have been going down for quite some time but the chancellor is looking at some very fundamental principles if she were to give in to the c.s.u. demands she would be essentially taking the unilateral nationalist path that she has repeatedly condemned that it path is on the rise in a number of other european countries she does not want to set that president nor does she want to allow her interior minister to essentially reimposed border control sacrificing the essential principle of open borders with in the year of the european union so there s a lot at stake here it is a path that she has time and time again condemned and it will be very interesting to see if she is forced to compromise linda crane our chief political correspondent