Anti-euro party popular in German polls
BERLIN – A new party that has expanded its anti-euro platform into a broader appeal to voters won seats in two more German state legislatures Sunday.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the votes in Thuringia and Brandenburg, two eastern states, would make possible Germany’s first governor from the Left Party, which has ex-communist roots. It hoped to end the 24-year grip of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives on the Thuringia governor’s office.
The upstart Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party, which advocates the end of the euro, won around 10 percent of the vote in eastern Thuringia state and 12 percent in Brandenburg, which surrounds Berlin, according to ARD and ZDF television projections based on exit polls and partial counting.
AfD fell narrowly short of the 5 percent support needed to enter Germany’s national parliament last year. Since then, it has won seats in the European Parliament and, two weeks ago, its first seats in a state parliament in eastern Saxony.
U.S. man gets 6 years hard labor in N. Korea
PYONGYANG, North Korea – North Korea’s Supreme Court on Sunday convicted a 24-year-old American man of entering the country illegally to commit espionage and sentenced him to six years of hard labor.
At a trial that lasted about 90 minutes, the court said Matthew Miller, of Bakersfield, California, tore up his tourist visa at Pyongyang’s airport upon arrival on April 10 and admitted to having the “wild ambition” of experiencing prison life, so that he could secretly investigate North Korea’s human-rights situation.
Miller, who looked thin and pale at the trial and was dressed completely in black, is one of three Americans being held in North Korea.
Showing no emotion throughout the proceedings, Miller waived the right to a lawyer and was handcuffed before being led from the courtroom after his sentencing. The court, comprising a chief judge flanked by two “people’s assessors,” ruled it would not hear any appeals to its decision.
Associated Press
