Masks.

Weekend News Items.

1. German politics:

The frontrunner to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor suffered a double blow yesterday when he was forced to apologize for plagiarism as a new poll showed a sharp drop in his popularity.

Armin Laschet, 60, said he had ‘omitted to mention’ the source of a passage in a book he wrote about the integration of immigrants in 2009, and he pr…