At the end of a long night, Horst Seehofer, the head of the Bavarian conservative party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), said: "Thank you Angela Merkel for these four weeks." Despite the fact that coalition negotiations aimed at slapping together a government of Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), its sister party the CSU, the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP) and the Greens had just failed, the chancellor managed a smile. And the two dozen CDU and CSU politicians present in Berlin late on Sunday night stood and applauded. By the time Merkel received her standing ovation, Germany had had about an hour to ... (full story)