longers that germany has ever gone after an election without a new government. at c.d.u. party headquarters in berlin reporters wait for information on the progress of talks to form a grand coalition one hundred thirty four days after germany's general election the country is still without a government. updates from the parties have been few and far between. believe me when we can so we live in ten times what people want from the mainstream policies the conservatives on social democrats is that we form a reliable government if it gets off the population it will be for this people even under mounting pressure the leader of the center left s.p.d. is full of confidence. so i have good reason to think we're in the final stretch i'm hoping for a positive spirit to the talks and a good result for our country on this rules are on. and the leader of chancellor

merkel's more conservative sister party the c.s.u. from the state of bavaria sounded more upbeat then earlier in the day listen it's good for. everyone has to get out of the trenches digging in our heels won't work anymore the moment of truth is upon us. but the wait goes on in the meantime the coalition partners in waiting are hashing out their differences over health care reform and labor laws hopes are high that this will be the last night of suspense and that a new grand coalition government is within sight or one of the many reporters waiting outside the c.d.u. headquarters here in berlin is our chief political correspondent with the crane good evening melinda it's almost time to say good morning it is so late on this tuesday into wednesday is there any movement behind you can we expect a deal before sunrise. there is movement behind me but not quite

of the sort that you me and in fact a lot of the reporters who have been waiting here are packing up now and so are a number of the politicians the negotiations are going on in two different rounds there's a kind of an advance team of fifteen people that do the initial work and then what they come up with gets gets essentially the stamp of approval from a larger ninety person team all of those ninety a lot have now taken leave for the evening they've told us they're going home to get a few hours of sleep but they are on standby and will come back if and when the agreement really is in its final stretches so going into the morning hours here and hard to say how long it will still take most of those who have gone home for the evening though say they are optimistic and progress has been made so

a matter of time but but still time is passing by you that's true we've been saying that now for quite a few evenings i think and of course once there is an agreement on the table the battle will not be over then right. no that's correct whatever they do come up with here in the course of the night will ultimately be put to a vote by the entire s.p.d. party membership and that membership has swelled to twenty four thousand new members have joined the party in the last few weeks not least because the party's youth wing which is adamantly opposed to a renewal of the grand coalition with the chancellor's conservatives has been recruiting new members solely for purposes of saying no to a grand coalition now the reason for that is that a number of s.p.d. members have the feeling that their party has kind of lost its identity in the course of the past four years of working together with

a chance to conservatives as a junior coalition partner it's always difficult to keep a clear profile in fact the s.p.d. got a lot of its key issues through during the past coalition the past four years but many of many of its members feel that that hasn't been adequately recognised so there's a lot of ambivalence on the part of the s.p.d. it could be that the membership doesn't agree to what is signed off on here this evening and you know melinda you and i we sat here at this table almost five months ago on election night back in september and you know we've never seen a stretch of time in german history where the country has gone without a new government after an election is the german public is it basically is losing its patience with the pardons. well the german could the public is also ambivalent about the renewal of the grand coalition it's not only

a speedy members in fact a majority of germans say they can't work up too much positive feeling about this prospect i think there's a certain sense that we've been here before we've done all this we've seen all these faces and are they really going to come up with something new with initiatives that perhaps address challenges like digitalisation like germany's demographic challenges as an ageing nation so there's a fair degree of skepticism going forward about about whether there's a real sense of renewal here. our chief political correspondent melinda crane finishing what has been a very long day and what promises to be another long night for the people to go shooting for this new grand coalition belinda thank you very much you're welcome an earthquake off the coast of taiwan has killed two people and injured around two hundred more the quake measured six point four on the richter scale and hit

taiwan's east coast about one hundred twenty kilometers south of the capital taipei . a resident captures the moments people spill out of that buildings the houses of collapsed he says and we're trying to evacuate the six point four magnitude quake struck just before midnight most people here and while the end city would have been told us. in the off the mouth of the trauma people rushed to help a woman on the street. the building next to her one of several in the city the quake crippled at this hotel rescue workers scoured the windows and balconies for people as they pull more than one hundred to safety several residents are trapped inside. authorities say a major highway and two bridges was damaged and hundreds of households left without power. the sound of sirens since ground familiar in this

region she states quake is one of dozens to strike the area in recent days and as the cleanup begins people favor now the major trauma could strike again and for more now let's bring in safety and security expert ross feingold he is in taipei this evening hi ross so this earthquake it struck in the middle of the night tell us about the damage that it's done well as you indicated several buildings have partially collapsed and there's apparently a lot of road damage as well and in recent hours we've learned that there's a number of water main breaks which has led to localized flooding as well as power outages where power lines have been cut so the overall damage toll seems to be increasing as the hours go by partially that's because the earthquake struck close to midnight and also the initial rescue efforts were focused on those larger

buildings that collapsed and now rescue workers are getting into a more broad area and seeing a further extent of what the damage actually is how well prepared are taiwan's authorities for in a bit like this. the response is generally good rescue workers here in taiwan have a lot of experience with natural disasters specifically with earthquakes and tie foods one of the problems that often happens in earthquakes though is older buildings that were built before the building codes were improved in recent decades do collapse when the earthquake is of the magnitude of the one that happened a few hours ago which in the center of the end has been reported to be over six on the richter scale so the fact that an older building would have partially collapsed is not unusual for taiwan earthquakes there were triggers in the region over the weekend people nervous that there could be a big aftershock. well what happened was there was

a large earthquake near where tonight's earthquake was on sunday night that's been followed by several days of constant aftershocks felt throughout taiwan island even several hours away from while yet and experts here were saying that there is a possibility of another large earthquake and one did happen tonight what's unclear now though is whether that was the one in only large one that's going to occur or if there is going to be another one so that'll be something to watch in the coming days as the seismologists here in taiwan do further analysis cross-line gold giving us the latest on the aftermath a better earthquake in taiwan ross thank you very much. and here's some of the other stories now that are making headlines around the world the president of the says the country's supreme court is attempting a coup against him abdulla yomi made the comments defending his recently declared

state of emergency as well as the arrest of a former president and two supreme court justices he's currently defying a supreme court order to release imprisoned opposition leaders a british court has rejected an attempt by wiki leaks founder julian assange to invalidate an arrest warrant against him the warrant stemmed from a sexual assault case in sweden that has since been dropped voiding the warrant could have paved the way for a song to leave the ecuadorian embassy in london where he's been holed up since two thousand and twelve aerospace firm space x. has launched the world's most powerful rocket the falcon heavy roared off the watch pad at florida's cape canaveral it's carrying a sports car into orbit around the sun shortly after takeoff the rockets side boosters peeled off and made a synchronized landing back on earth. south africa's jacob zuma has been forced to cancel his state of the nation address due to fears that

lawmakers would disrupt the speech it's an embarrassing climbdown for zuma and a sign of the intense pressure on him to step down in the wake of a string of scandals. jacob zuma future hangs in the balance as pressure to resign mounts the opposition says zuma has no right to address the country in an annual speech that was set for this week south africa wants to close a chapter in the story writing a new future with actors to do the specter of what he's done to our economy to our party of politics and to politics is is a must own party is also raising doubts about his future party members or such to discuss his fate at a meeting next week and a vote of no confidence is not. most important consideration is that we don't believe. should we.

of of that. this week protesters have already been sending messages to the a.n.c. as the party weighs its options on zuma son are convinced his time is up. others say hands off the president until his term ends next year. you're tensions running high in south africa and to put this into context i'm joined here at the big table by on the surfing team she is a south african journalist a familiar face to our viewers it's good to have you back on the show and lead so you know we've been here before haven't we i mean we've had the a.n.c. trying to convince president zuma to step down before and they're now doing it virtually every night they did it sunday night and they did it today and vice president from oppose us just left him zuma and what came out of that meeting is that the national executive committee meeting which was due to take place tomorrow in cape in johannesburg has been in pretoria so rich has been postponed to the seventeenth and eighteenth of january so they sort of reading the tea leaves

a sense of maybe he'll go this time but it's not a president that is it's not in his nature to be quietly what do you doing. the thinking is the seventy's early eighty's this month of february so that between now and then he's going to voluntarily resign the main thing is that if and if. african culture is today it seems that if you keep his face not to lose face by and to get in and in a good way without sort of pushing him out but he's very stubborn and he didn't want to resign on sunday night. say they hope that he would hopefully by tomorrow. but they also also.