Austria An Austrian cabinet minister has resigned after she was accused of sinking to “unprecedented depths” of plagiarism and shoddy handiwork in two of her academic papers.Christine Aschbacher, 37
NICOSIA
Politis journal in an interview. More.
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BERLIN
Heightened security at the Bundestag. Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble has organised an increase in security for the German parliament building according to a report in the Bild am Sonntag. Read more.
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PARIS
France mobilising to avoid ‘catastrophic’ situation with new COVID variant. “We are doing everything we can to prevent the spread of this variant,” Health Minister Olivier Véran told Europe 1/CNews/Les Échos on Sunday morning in reference to the new coronavirus variant that recently emerged in the UK. Read more.
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BRUSSELS
Belgium asks for ‘fair share’ of vaccines. Belgium will apply for ten million additional Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccines, Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke announced over the weekend. At the same time, there is still no official database on vaccination efforts. More.
ZURICH: Austria’s Labour Minister Christine Aschbacher has resigned after allegations that she plagiarised some of her university work, but denied any wrongdoing and said she was stepping down to protect her family.
Aschbacher, a member of the conservative Austrian People’s Party which leads the coalition government, allegedly copied at least one fifth of her doctoral dissertation from other sources, as well as chunks of her diploma thesis, according to academic Stefan Weber who specialises in detecting plagiarism.
Aschbacher said she had written her dissertation and thesis “to the best of her knowledge and belief,” Austrian news agency APA reported.
This is the overview of news that happened in Slovakia on Monday, January 11, 2021. For a deeper insight into current affairs, see our Last Week in Slovakia, published earlier today.
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Mass testing to break the curve
Given the critical situation in Slovakia, affected by the high number of hospitalised patients and new coronavirus mutation, the current lockdown measures may not be enough to contain the disease. As a result, the cabinet has proposed holding mass testing from next weekend at least until the end of February.