Social Democratic Party News

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was  Wednesday elected by parliament to her fourth and likely final term.

With the Social Democratic Party already ruling out returning to a coalition with Merkel, and the veteran leader herself refusing a minority government, Germany would likely be forced to hold new elections.

Challenger Martin Schulz of the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) is leading his campaign with "more social justice", promising reforms to tax, unemployment benefits and childcare after having just succeeded with a push to legalise same-sex marriage.

Five persons were injured in a clash between two groups here on Wednesday over transporting cattle in a lorry, allegedly in violation of norms, police said.

The SPD's call for gay marriage comes just a week after the Greens set a similar condition, while Merkel's CDU has so far refused to allow same gender couples to wed. 

Germany`s Social Democratic Party (SPD) is making legalisation of gay marriage a condition for its participation in any coalition government after September`s national election, party Secretary General Hubertus Heil said.

Austria`s Chancellor Christian Kern said the Freedom Party (FPO) must leave the far-right faction in the European Parliament if it wants to enter a coalition government with his centre-left party.

But surveys ahead of the vote showed the centre-left party running neck-and-neck with Merkel`s Christian Democratic Union, with some even placing the CDU ahead.

Romania's biggest party, the Social Democratic Party, is expected to come first and will likely try to form a majority with smaller parties.

Brazil`s largest political party, the PMDB, looks set to quit the government of leftist President Dilma Rousseff on Tuesday.

Portugal voted on Sunday in an election seen as a test of four years of austerity, with the centre- right coalition that pushed through the punishing bailout seen as the favourite - but unlikely to win a clear mandate.

Kyrgyzstan went to the polls on Sunday for a hotly-contested parliamentary vote, but the results are unlikely to change the ex-Soviet country's firmly pro-Russian trajectory.