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MINISTER

Austrian minister steps down over plagiarism accusations

Austrian minister Christine Aschbacher resigned from her cabinet post in charge of labour, families and youth on Saturday following allegations some of her university work was plagiarised.

Austrian minister steps down over plagiarism accusations
Austrian minister Christine Aschbacher has resigned in the face of plagiarism accusations. Photo: Helmut Fohringer/APA/AFP
A conservative from Chancellor Sebastian Kurz's OeVP party, Aschbacher said she had stepped down to “protect my family”, complaining of “hostility, political agitation and attacks… with unbearable force”.
   
Aschbacher's 2006 master's thesis displayed “plagiarism, incorrect quotations and lack of knowledge of the German language”, alleged blogger Stefan Weber, who specialises in sniffing out academic fraud.
   
At the time, she graduated with high marks from the University of Applied Sciences in Wiener Neustadt, south of Austrian capital Vienna.
   
Weber has levelled the same allegations at a thesis she submitted in May last year — in the depths of the first wave of coronavirus — to the Technical University of Bratislava in neighbouring Slovakia.
 
   
He claimed the work contained “never-before-seen depths of gobbledygook, nonsense and plagiarism” and that more than one-fifth of the text had been lifted from other sources without citations, in particular an article from Forbes magazine.
   
Under attack by the opposition, Aschbacher “rejected” what she called Weber's “insinuations”.
   
Kurz wrote on Twitter that he “respected” her decision to resign, after the scandal piled pressure on a government facing criticism for its management of the second wave of Covid-19, widely seen as chaotic.
   
The chancellor added that he would name a successor on Monday.
   
Academic plagiarism is a regular charge levelled at politicians in the German-speaking world, where leaders often brandish postgraduate qualifications.
   
In Germany, two conservatives, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg and Annett Schavan, stepped down from the defence and education ministries in 2011 and 2013 over similar scandals, while current centre-left Families Minister Franziska Giffey has been dogged by plagiarism allegations for years.

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MINISTER

Denmark’s finance minster ill with suspected coronavirus

Denmark's finance minister, Nicolai Wammen, has fallen ill and will be tested for coronavirus, the country's finance ministry has said in a statement sent out to Danish journalists.

Denmark's finance minster ill with suspected coronavirus
Nicolai Wammen as he presented local government funding reforms on Tuesday. Photo: Philip Davali/Ritzau Scanpix
“The Finance Ministry states that the finance minister has become sick and displayed symptoms which mean that he, on his doctor's advice, will not be tested for Corona,” the statement read. “The minister hopes to return to work as soon as possible.” 
 
Wammen is one of the most heavyweight politicians in Denmark's Social Democrat government, having served as both EU minister and Defence Minister under Helle Thorning-Schmidt from 2011 until 2015. 
 
His department in March and early April launched a succession of  bold and far-reaching measures to limit the impact of the coronavirus shut down on Denmark's economy, winning it praise internationally. 
 
On Tuesday, Wammen announced a significant funding reform for Denmark's municipalities, in one of the first actions his department has taken unrelated to coronavirus in more than a month.
 
 
Kristian Jensen, who served as finance minister, in the previous government, wished Wammen a swift recovery on Twitter. 
 
“Despite our political differences, we need to have the finance minister back at work as soon as possible,” he said. 
 
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