BERLIN (Dispatches) - Germany’s center-left Social Democrats nudged ahead of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives in polling — the first time in 15 years the party has led and comes just ahead of next month’s general election. The Social Democrats (SPD) emerged one percentage point ahead of Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats, according to an opinion poll published Tuesday, DPA reported. It’s the first time since October 2006 that the center-left party has pulled ahead, and it comes a month ahead of Germany’s federal election. The poll by polling firm Forsa shows the SPD 2 percentage points up compared with a week ago — on 23% — while Merkel’s CDU/CSU union slipped to 22%.

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LONDON (The Independent) - Police must be trained to use Tasers only when “absolutely necessary”, a watchdog said after a review found the weapons were being used against children and mentally ill people. The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) reviewed around 100 of the most serious cases involving Tasers in England and Wales, including 16 where people died, The Independent reported. Inquests found that the use of Taser contributed to four of those deaths and inquiries are ongoing in others, including the killing of former footballer Dalian Atkinson by PC Benjamin Monk.

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WASHINGTON (France 24) - The U.S. Supreme Court has denied President Joe Biden’s bid to rescind an immigration policy implemented by his predecessor, Donald Trump, that forced thousands of asylum seekers to stay in Mexico awaiting U.S. hearings. The court, with three liberal justices dissenting, rejected the Biden administration’s effort to block a Texas-based judge’s ruling requiring the government to revive Trump’s “remain in Mexico” policy, formally known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program.

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LOUISIANA (AP) - Graphic body camera video kept secret for more than two years shows a state police trooper from the U.S. state of Louisiana pummelling a Black motorist 18 times with a flashlight – an attack the trooper defended as “pain compliance”. “I’m not resisting! I’m not resisting!” Aaron Larry Bowman can be heard screaming between blows on the footage obtained by The Associated Press. The May 2019 beating following a traffic stop left him with a broken jaw, three broken ribs, a broken wrist and a gash to his head that required six staples to close.

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MOSCOW (RT) - The Gazprom subsidiary involved in constructing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline has lost a court battle over exclusive access to the infrastructure, according to a ruling by Dusseldorf Higher Regional Court on Wednesday.
Nord Stream 2 AG, a Swiss-registered company, was seeking an exemption from the provisions of the EU Gas Directive adopted by the bloc in 2009. The set of rules designed to boost competition in the European energy market prohibits a single company from exclusive use of its own pipeline to transport the gas it produces.