- Mozambique vote: no suspense but some disillusion
- Austrian rapper channels anti-racist rage in Romani hip-hop songs
- Ohtani magic powers Dodgers over Padres in MLB playoff thriller
- Five of the best: Pakistan-England Test thrillers
- Man sets arm on fire as marches across US mark Gaza war anniversary
- Vietnam's young coffee entrepreneurs brew up a revolution
- Trump rallies at site of failed assassination: 'Never quit'
- Too hot by day, Dubai's floodlit beaches are packed at night
- Is music finally reckoning with #MeToo?
- Fans hail Trump's 'guts' as he returns to site of rally shooting
- Lebanon state media says 'very violent' Israeli strikes hit south Beirut
- Guardians maul Tigers, miracle Mets rally in MLB series openers
- Lebanon state media says Israeli strikes hit south Beirut
- Miami on track for MLS record points after win in Toronto
- Madrid beat Villarreal but Carvajal suffers knee injury
- Madrid beat Villarreal to move level with Liga leaders Barcelona
- Monaco take top spot in Ligue 1 with win at Rennes
- French rugby player on rape charge whistled but 'serene' on return
- Madrid beat Villarreal to level Liga leaders Barca
- Thuram treble fires Inter past Torino and up to second
- 'Fight': defiant Trump jets in to site of rally shooting
- Toddler among 3 dead in migrant Channel crossings
- Mexico City's new mayor sworn in with pledges on water, housing
- Israel on alert ahead of Hamas attack anniversary
- Guardians maul Tigers in MLB playoff series opener
- Macron criticises Israel on Gaza, Lebanon operations
- French rugby player whistled but 'serene' on return amid ongoing rape case
- Kovacic stars as Man City sink Fulham to get title bid back on track
- Retegui hat-trick fires five-star Atalanta to hammering of Genoa
- Heavyweights Australia, England off to World Cup winning starts
- Visiting UN refugee agency chief decries 'terrible crisis' in Lebanon
- Spinners come to party as England defeat Bangladesh at T20 World Cup
- Search continues for missing in deadly Bosnia floods
- Man City sink Fulham to get title bid back on track
- France's Auradou whistled on Pau return in Perpignan loss amid ongoing rape case
- A 'forgotten' valley in storm-hit North Carolina, desperate for help
- Arsenal hit back in style after Southampton scare
- Thousands march for Palestinians ahead of Oct 7 anniversary
- Hezbollah heir apparent Safieddine out of contact after strikes
- Liverpool stay top of Premier League as Arsenal, Man City win
- In dank Tour of Emilia, Pogacar shines in rainbow jersey
- DR Congo launches mpox vaccination drive, hoping to curb outbreak
- Trump returns to site of failed assassination
- Careless Leverkusen held to Bundesliga draw
- O'Brien's 'superstar' Kyprios posts landmark win on Arc weekend
- Toddler crushed to death in migrant Channel crossing
- Liverpool suffer Alisson injury blow
- Habosi helps Racing beat Vannes before Auradou's playing return
- Thousands march in London in support of Palestinians, 1 year after Oct 7
- Israel readying response to Iran missile attack
Young feminist, Iran-born old hand to lead German Greens
Germany's Green party elected fresh leadership Saturday just a month after joining its first national government in 16 years, crowning a duo mixing new blood with outspoken policy experience.
Feminist Ricarda Lang, 28, and Iranian-born foreign policy expert Omid Nouripour, 46, are taking the reins of the ecologist party as it attempts to keep supporters onside while maintaining a tricky coalition in Berlin.
The Greens and their chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock scored their highest ever result in last September's general election with 14.8 percent of the vote.
But they fell short of even bigger expectations that they could name Angela Merkel's successor.
The party wound up joining Germany's first three-way national coalition, under Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the Social Democrats and alongside the pro-business Free Democrats.
Baerbock, now foreign minister, and her Greens co-leader Robert Habeck, the new vice chancellor, have stepped aside as chiefs of the party, whose flagship issue is fighting climate change.
- 'Fairness' -
Lang has become a rising star in German politics since being elected as a lawmaker last year and is now one of the youngest party leaders in post-war history.
Speaking just after her election, she promised to link protecting the environment to social progress.
The climate crisis "is particularly hitting those who have the least", she said.
Hailing from a small town in Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany's only Greens-led state, Lang joined the party at 18 and became its deputy leader in November 2019 as well as its spokeswoman on women's affairs.
Before entering politics, the daughter of a single mother broke off her law studies to become a social worker in a home for abused women.
Coming to see government as the place to exact systemic change, she took over the leadership of the Greens' youth group from 2017 to 2019.
"I believe in fairness," she told local media, "so that people like my mother can have it easier in the future."
The Greens traditionally strive for gender balance in the leadership, and choose a pragmatist and an idealist, in this case Lang, at the top.
As an outspoken, openly bisexual woman in the public eye, Lang has faced a deluge of hate speech online, the most egregious of which she has fought with criminal complaints.
She has pledged to keep the party's often unruly ranks loyal "by making the Green profile apparent and ever stronger" even as it forges the compromises necessary to keep the coalition in Berlin together.
- 'Organic kebabs' -
Omid Nouripour, who was born in Tehran in 1975, has made his name chiefly on foreign policy in debates in the Bundestag, where he has served as an MP for over 15 years.
Particularly after its relative success of last year's election, he has said he wants to keep the party firmly in the mainstream while tending to its activist roots.
"We will become the leading force of the centre-left in Germany," he has pledged.
That includes keeping its eyes on the top prize -- the chancellery -- in the 2025 election, he said Saturday.
And that can only work, he argues, "if we think beyond the day-to-day of governing" with the Social Democrats and the FDP.
Nouripour has strived to sharpen the Green profile on human rights, calling most recently for a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics in Beijing.
He strongly criticised Merkel while still in office for speaking directly to Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko by telephone, calling it a "disastrous signal".
Nouripour moved with his family as refugees from Iran to Germany in 1988 and started school in Frankfurt as a teenager.
After breaking off his studies in philosophy and law, Nouripour stood for parliament, winning the seat of Joschka Fischer when the Greens grandee left politics in 2006.
The avid football supporter and observant Muslim has won fans for his playful approach to multiculturalism, not least in a 2009 campaign video rapping about more renewable energy and "organic kofta kebabs for everyone".
P.Stevenson--AMWN