Austrian far-right kicks out scandal-hit ex-leader

Austria's far-right Freedom Party (FPOe) announced Friday it has ousted its former leader Heinz-Christian Strache, who was caught in a corruption scandal that saw the party ejected from government in May. High-profile FPOe leaders called a press conference in which they said "the Strache chapter was being definitively closed" for the party, dogged for months by the fallout from the so-called "Ibiza-gate" scandal. In May sensational hidden-camera footage of Strache emerged which had been filmed on the Spanish island of Ibiza in 2017.  In it Strache appeared to offer public contracts to a woman posing as the niece of a Russian oligarch, in return for campaign help. Fifty-year-old Strache immediately stepped down as party leader but the scandal led to the collapse of the FPOe's coalition government with the centre-right People's Party (OeVP). Friday's expulsion is the latest episode in a spectacular fall from grace for Strache, who had led the party into government and became Vice-Chancellor after elections in autumn 2017 in which the party won 26% of the vote. In that administration, the FPOe gained control of several high-profile cabinet posts, including the coveted position of...