Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has announced he is stepping down after being accused of corruption.
The 35-year-old and close associates allegedly tried to secure his leadership of the conservative Austrian People's Party, and of the country, with the aid of manipulated polls and friendly reports in the media, financed with public money.
He denies any wrongdoing and said he will "refute and disprove the accusations that have been made".
Mr Kurz added that the allegations, revealed by prosecutors on Wednesday, are "false and I will be able to clear this up - I am deeply convinced of that".
He will remain very active in politics, staying on as his party's leader while also heading its parliamentary grouping.
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Image:Mr Kurz says he wanted to 'prevent chaos'
His departure from the top job was precipitated by his party's junior coalition partner, the Greens, who said on Friday that he could not stay on, while demanding that his party nominate someone "irreproachable" to replace him.
Austria's three opposition parties had all demanded his resignation, and there were plans to bring a no-confidence motion against him in parliament on Tuesday.
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Mr Kurz has suggested that foreign minister Alexander Schallenberg replace him as chancellor - something the Greens are yet to respond to.
He told reporters that Austria needed "stable conditions", adding: "So, in order to resolve the stalemate, I want to make way to prevent chaos and ensure stability."
Mr Kurz's first coalition, with the far-right Freedom Party, collapsed in 2019. He decided to break the agreement after a video emerged showing the Freedom Party's leader at the time, Heinz-Christian Strache, appearing to offer favours to a purported Russian investor.
Mr Kurz assumed office again in January 2020 after snap elections.
Deir Ammar and Zahrani power plants stop functioning as a result of running out of diesel, prompting sporadic protests.
Beirut, Lebanon – The two main power plants in crisis-hit Lebanon have gone out of commission, effectively stopping all state electricity in the country.
The shutdown on Saturday of the Deir Ammar and Zahrani plants, which have generated very limited electricity in recent months, took place due to a diesel fuel shortage, sources said.
Residents of Halba in the northern Akkar province protested at the regional office of the state-run producer Electricite du Liban (EDL). In nearby Tripoli, angry residents blocked roads with cars and burning tyres after power cuts worsened water shortages.
“There is no fuel and limited generation, so the variation in frequency is ruining the grid,” Marc Ayoub, energy researcher at the American University of Beirut’s Issam Fares Institute, told Al Jazeera. “It’s happened about 16 times over the past two weeks because generation is too little compared to what is needed for the grid to reach stability.”
EDL has been generating less than 200 megawatts of electricity.
Local media reported the authorities were scrambling to secure fuel from their reserve stock to partially resupply state electricity to several affected areas.
EDL said in a statement that a fuel shipment will arrive Saturday night and will be unloaded early next week to raise power plant capacities to 500 megawatts. Another fuel shipment from an Iraq deal will arrive later this month. In the meantime, EDL said it is communicating with oil facilities in Tripoli and Zahrani to purchase a limited amount of fuel to supply the power plants for the next few days.
The development in Lebanon’s ongoing electricity crisis comes about a week after two floating Turkish power barges off the coast stopped generating power after the expiration of a government contract.
EDL continues to struggle financially to secure fuel to run its power plants. Throughout the year, it has relied on cash advances from the central bank and other stopgap measures to stay functional.
Lebanon’s ongoing electricity woes have exacerbated a crippling economic and financial crisis that plunged three-quarters of the population into poverty and devalued the Lebanese pound by almost 90 percent.
The fuel crisis has paralysed much of public life, forcing much of the population to rely almost entirely on expensive private generators to keep the lights on. Hospitals have struggled as well, fearing the safety of their patients.
Iran-backed Hezbollah has delivered shipments of Iranian fuel into the country via Syria through illegal border crossings. Meanwhile, the Lebanese government continues to talk with their Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian counterparts to implement a plan that would provide the country with electricity through Egyptian natural gas.
Lebanon has also secured a swap deal with the Iraqi government for high sulfur fuel in exchange for medical services, where Lebanon would then exchange the fuel with a supply that is compatible with its power plants.
Lebanon’s ineffective electricity sector is also extremely expensive. In a May 2020 presentation to international donors, the government estimated that the electricity sector costs about $1.6bn in public funds every year, though some reports say it can bleed up to $2bn. That is about 3 percent of the country’s entire economy, and experts have told Al Jazeera it makes up for almost half of the cash-strapped country’s public debt.
However, any serious reform has been obstructed by corruption and vested interests among the country’s handful of political parties, according to the experts.
Lebanon’s recently-appointed Prime Minister Najib Mikati said one of his priorities was to resolve the country’s crippling fuel crisis, and to resume negotiations for an International Monetary Fund-approved programme to recover the country’s battered economy.
ISIS has claimed responsibility for the Afghan mosque attack that killed at least 50 people (Pictures: AFP)
A suicide blast ripped through a packed Shiite Muslim mosque in northern Afghanistan yesterday, killing 50 people and injuring dozens.
The so-called Islamic State group has already claimed responsibility for the explosion, according to a statement released by the group’s news agency, Amaq.
It added that a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest among Shia worshipers inside a mosque during Friday Prayers in the city of Kunduz.
The explosion tore through the mosque during noon prayers, the highlight of the Muslim religious week.
It blew out windows, charred the ceiling and scattered debris and twisted metal across the floor.
Area resident Hussaindad Rezayee said he rushed to the mosque when he heard the explosion, just as prayers started.
He said: ‘I came to look for my relatives, the mosque was full.’
People carry the body of a bombing victim in Kunduz province, northern Afghanistan (Picture: AP)
People view the damage inside of the mosque following the explosion (Picture: AP)
The worshippers were Hazaras, who have long suffered from double discrimination as an ethnic minority and as followers of Shiite Islam in a majority Sunni country.
IS has been behind a rise in attacks, including against the Taliban, since the departure of US and Nato forces from Afghanistan at the end of August.
IS and the Taliban – who seized control of the country with the exit of the foreign troops in August – are strategic rivals, and IS militants have even targeted their positions.
In the past, the Taliban managed to contain the IS threat in tandem with US and Afghan air strikes.
Without these, it remains unclear whether the Taliban can suppress what appears to be a growing IS footprint.
The militants, once confined to the east, have penetrated the capital of Kabul and other provinces with new attacks.
In Kunduz, police officials were still picking up the pieces on Friday at the Gozar-e-Sayed Abad Mosque.
Afghan men carry the dead body of a victim to an ambulance after the bomb attack (Picture: AFP)
Citing preliminary reports, the deputy Taliban police chief of Kunduz province, Dost Mohammad Obaida, said more than 100 people had been killed or wounded, and that he believed the dead outnumbered the wounded.
An official at the Kunduz provincial hospital said at least 46 people had been killed and 51 wounded.
He said the figures were preliminary because casualties were being transferred to private hospitals as well, however, this is already the highest death toll in an attack since foreign troops left Afghanistan.
The United Nations mission in the country condemned the attack as ‘part of a disturbing pattern of violence’ targeting religious institutions.
Mr Obaida pledged to protect minorities in the province and added: ‘I assure our Shiite brothers that the Taliban are prepared to ensure their safety.’
Taliban members inspect the site of the bombing (Picture: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock)
A prominent Shiite cleric, Sayed Hussain Alimi Balkhi, condemned the attack and called on the Taliban to provide security for the Shiites of Afghanistan.
He said: ‘We expect the security forces of the government to provide security for the mosques since they collected the weapons that were provided for the security of the worship places.’
The new tone struck by the Taliban, at least in Kunduz, is in sharp contrast to the well-documented history of Taliban fighters committing a litany of atrocities against minorities, including Hazaras.
The Taliban, now feeling the weight of governing, employed similar tactics to those of IS during their 20-year insurgency, including suicide bombings and shooting ambushes, and they have not halted attacks on Hazaras.
Earlier this week, a report by Amnesty International found the Taliban unlawfully killed 13 Hazaras, including a 17-year-old girl, in Daykundi province, after members of the security forces of the former government surrendered.
In Kunduz province, Hazaras make up about 6% of the population of nearly a million people.
The province also has a large ethnic Uzbek population that has been targeted for recruitment.
Lebanon's electricity grid has shut down entirely after the country's two main power stations ran out of fuel, according to reports.
The al Zahrani and the Deir Ammar power stations stopped working after supplies of diesel were apparently exhausted, and energy production dropped to below 200 megawatts.
The outage will continue for a few days, at least, Reuters news agency has said, quoting an official source.
Image:Violence has broken out at petrol stations in the country. Pic AP
"The Lebanese power network completely stopped working at noon today, and it is unlikely that it will work until next Monday, or for several days," the official said.
The thermoelectric plant stopped at Zahrani power station just one day after the Deir Ammar plant stopped on Friday due to a fuel shortage.
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The state electric company will try to use the army's fuel oil reserve to operate the power plants temporarily but this will not happen anytime soon, the official said.
It comes as Lebanon struggles with a fuel shortage that has forced many businesses to close and left people relying on the black market.
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People have queued for miles to fill up their vehicles, with the chaos sometimes resulting in violence.
Image:A fuel shortage has triggered an electricity outage in Lebanon
At the end of September, a man died after swallowing petrol he was siphoning out of his vehicle's tank, the country's national news agency reported.
The UN estimates that 78% of the country's population is living in poverty, with soaring unemployment and a currency that has plummeted in value.
It is part of a wider crisis, compounded by corruption and bad governance, which affects almost every part of life in Lebanon and has seen the Lebanese currency sink by 90% since 2019.
The country remains in political turmoil following the appointment of a temporary government following last August's catastrophic Beirut explosion that killed more than 150 people and injured 6,000 while destroying large parts of the city.
It happened after 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate - used as a fertiliser and in explosives - caught fire after being stored unsafely at a port warehouse.
A US appeals court has temporarily reinstated Texas's near total ban on abortions.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to a request from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that an injunction imposed against the law be lifted.
On Wednesday, a lower court had temporarily blocked the bill for the "offensive deprivation" of the constitutional right to an abortion.
The restrictive law bans all abortions at about six weeks of pregnancy.
It gives any individual the right to sue anyone involved with providing or facilitating an abortion after foetal cardiac activity is detected, and makes no exceptions for pregnancies caused by rape or incest.
On Wednesday District Judge Robert Pitman granted a request by the Biden administration to prevent enforcement of the law while its legality was being challenged. He held that women had been "unlawfully prevented from exercising control over their lives in ways that are protected by the Constitution".
However, Texas officials immediately appealed against the ruling, which the New Orleans-based, conservative-leaning Fifth Circuit court has agreed to set aside. It ordered the justice department to respond to its ruling by Tuesday.
In a statement following the latest ruling, Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, called on the Supreme Court to "step in and stop this madness".
"Patients are being thrown back into a state of chaos and fear, and this cruel law is falling hardest on those who already face discriminatory obstacles in health care, especially Black, Indigenous, and other people of colour, undocumented immigrants, young people, those struggling to make ends meet, and those in rural areas," she said.
"The courts have an obligation to block laws that violate fundamental rights."
Meanwhile, Attorney General Ken Paxton said the court's decision was "great news" and added that he would "continue to fight to keep Texas free from federal overreach".
Several clinics in Texas had resumed providing abortions to patients who were beyond the six-week limit following Wednesday's order.
They may now face some legal risk, as the law includes a provision that says clinics and doctors may still be liable for abortions carried out while an emergency injunction is in place, legal experts say.
However, it is unclear whether such a provision can be enforced, with Judge Pittman saying in his ruling that it is "of questionable legality".
Some women have reportedly been travelling to other states where the procedure is legal.
