DPA, Vienna
Austrian politician and populist Joerg Haider, 58, the man behind the resurgence of the country’s right wing parties, died in a car crash yesterday.
With his death, Austria’s right loses its most important figurehead, a man both reviled and admired by many Austrians.
The crash occurred near Klagenfurt in Carinthia province, where Haider was a popular governor.
Shortly before his death, he had made a successful comeback to the national political scene when his Alliance for the Future of Austria won 11 percent in parliamentary elections late last month.
Although Haider was trying to shed his image as a right-wing firebrand, he and his party won votes not only by railing against the governing centrist coalition but also with rethoric directed against immigrants and asylum seekers, often portraying them as criminals.
This summer, he proposed that all asylum seekers should be made to wear electronic tags on their ankles to be able to monitor their movements.
Haider was born in 1950 in Bad Goisern in Upper Austria. His parents were devoted members of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Party.
Haider’s political career started at university as the leader of the youth movement of the right-wing Freedom Party, a party formed after World War II by liberals and former Nazis.
Haider appealed to disaffected voters by building a young, fashionable image and employing extremist rethoric.
His first stint as Carinthia governor was cut short unexpectedly in 1991 when he had to step down over a revisionist comment.
During a debate on unemployment, he said: “Well, that didn’t happen in the Third Reich, because in the Third Reich they had a proper employment policy, something that the government in Vienna can’t accomplish.”<
Also See: Fear and loathing in European vote
People with missing teeth might be able to grow new ones, said Japanese dentists, who are testing a pioneering drug they hope will offer an alternative to dentures and implants. Unlike reptiles and fish, which usually replace their fangs on a regular basis, it is widely accepted that humans and most other mammals only grow two sets of teeth. However, hidden underneath our gums are the dormant buds of a third generation, said Katsu Takahashi, head of oral surgery at the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital in Osaka, Japan. His team launched clinical trials at Kyoto University Hospital in October, administering an experimental
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency and the Pentagon on Monday said that some North Korean troops have been killed during combat against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk border region. Those are the first reported casualties since the US and Ukraine announced that North Korea had sent 10,000 to 12,000 troops to Russia to help it in the almost three-year war. Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said that about 30 North Korean troops were killed or wounded during a battle with the Ukrainian army at the weekend. The casualties occurred around three villages in Kursk, where Russia has for four months been trying to quash a
FREEDOM NO MORE: Today, protests in Macau are just a memory after Beijing launched measures over the past few years that chilled free speech A decade ago, the elegant cobblestone streets of Macau’s Tap Seac Square were jam-packed with people clamouring for change and government accountability — the high-water mark for the former Portuguese colony’s political awakening. Now as Macau prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of its handover to China tomorrow, the territory’s democracy movement is all but over and the protests of 2014 no more than a memory. “Macau’s civil society is relatively docile and obedient, that’s the truth,” said Au Kam-san (歐錦新), 67, a schoolteacher who became one of Macau’s longest-serving pro-democracy legislators. “But if that were totally true, we wouldn’t
ROYAL TARGET: After Prince Andrew lost much of his income due to his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, he became vulnerable to foreign agents, an author said British lawmakers failed to act on advice to tighten security laws that could have prevented an alleged Chinese spy from targeting Britain’s Prince Andrew, a former attorney general has said. Dominic Grieve, a former lawmaker who chaired the British Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) until 2019, said ministers were advised five years ago to introduce laws to criminalize foreign agents, but failed to do so. Similar laws exist in the US and Australia. “We remain without an important weapon in our armory,” Grieve said. “We asked for [this law] in the context of the Russia inquiry report” — which accused the government
RSS