The 19-year-old main suspect in the alleged foiled terrorist plot to attack Taylor Swift concerts in Austria this week had grown a long beard and became a “bit unusual” in the leadup to his arrest, his neighbors are revealing. 

The suspect, identified in Austrian media as Beran A., hailed from Ternitz, a town about 50 miles southwest of Vienna, according to Reuters. Locals there told the news agency that he had started to become more serious in recent weeks and was growing out his facial hair. 

“Only recently did he become a bit unusual,” Nicole Morgenbesser, a 33-year-old mother who lived near him, explained to Reuters. 

Morgenbesser said the suspect with North Macedonian roots always said hello to her on the street or waved to her from his car until about a few weeks ago, when “he stopped greeting me.” 

TAYLOR SWIFT TERROR PLOT INVESTIGATORS DETAIN THIRD SUSPECT, AN IRAQI 18-YEAR-OLD LOYAL TO ISIS 

On Wednesday morning, the suspect was arrested by police before his home was raided, Reuters reports. 

Neighbors told the news agency that the suspect’s parents were not around at the time of the operation and that locals were informed by police that there was a gas leak so they would leave their homes.

Inside the house where the suspect lived, officials say they found chemical substances and technical devices. 

TAYLOR SWIFT TERROR PLOT SUSPECT WHO PLEDGED ALLEGIANCE TO ISIS HAD CHEMICAL SUBSTANCES, DEVICES AT HOME 

A view of the area where the main suspect lived in Ternitz, Austria, following the cancelation of three Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna after the government confirmed a plot to attack the venue. (Reuters/Elisabeth Mandl)

“He wanted to carry out an attack in the area outside the stadium, killing as many people as possible using the knives or even using the explosive devices he had made,” Omar Haijawi-Pirchner, the head of the Directorate of State Security and Intelligence, said on Thursday. 

Haijawi-Pirchner added that the suspect was “clearly radicalized in the direction of the Islamic State and thinks it is right to kill infidels.” 

Franz Ruf, the public security director at Austria’s Interior Ministry, told public broadcaster ORF on Thursday that the 19-year-old suspect had uploaded an oath of allegiance to ISIS on an internet account a few weeks ago.  

Ternitz Mayor Christian Samwald told Reuters that “you always hear about these sort of things, but it’s something else when this happens on your own front door.” 

Taylor Swift performs onstage during The Eras Tour at Olympiastadion on July 27, in Munich, Germany.  (Thomas Niedermueller/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management)

“The lesson is it’s difficult to prevent someone from being radicalized on the Internet,” he added. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Hundreds protest outside the Supreme Court calling for Obaidul Hassan, seen as loyal to ex-PM Hasina, to step down.

The chief justice of Bangladesh’s top court has said he agreed “in principle” to resign after an ultimatum from protesters, days after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled to neighbouring India.

Obaidul Hassan, who was appointed to helm the Supreme Court last year and is seen as a loyalist to Hasina, was told to step down on Saturday by protesters who gathered outside the court in the capital, Dhaka.

Al Jazeera’s Tanvir Chowdhury, reporting from Dhaka, said students decided to take to the streets when they heard reports that Hassan was holding a meeting with justices of the Appellate Division.

“They viewed this as a judicial coup in the making, so they quickly gathered at the Supreme Court and demanded that he immediately resign,” Chowdhury said.

A formal letter confirming Hassan’s decision to step down was expected after consultations with President Mohammed Shahabuddin. The students believe the Supreme Court to be highly politicised and want the other seven members to also resign, according to Chowdhury.

Awami League party leader Hasina, 76, fled by helicopter to India on Monday. Her government was accused of widespread human rights abuses including the extrajudicial killing of thousands of her political opponents.

Hassan oversaw a much-criticised war crimes tribunal that ordered the execution of Hasina’s opponents, and his brother was her longtime secretary.

Cabinet ministers left blindsided by her sudden fall have gone to ground, while several top appointees have been forced out of office, including the national police chief and the central bank governor.

On Friday, the bank’s governor, Abdur Rouf Talukder, resigned from the post, citing personal reasons. Protesters had stormed the central bank’s headquarters amid the political upheaval that led to the end of Hasina’s 15-year rule.

Muhammad Yunus, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his pioneering work in microfinance credited with helping millions of Bangladeshis out of poverty, is leading a transitional government, another demand by the student leaders.

The economist took office on Thursday as “chief adviser” to a caretaker administration comprised of civilians bar one retired brigadier-general. He said he wants to hold elections “within a few months”.

Yunus appealed for religious unity on Saturday as he embraced the weeping mother of the first student shot dead by police during antigovernment protests last month.

“Don’t differentiate by religion,” he told reporters. “Our responsibility is to build a new Bangladesh.”

Speaking of Abu Sayeed, Yunus said the slain 25-year-old was now “in every home”.

“The way he stood, we have to do the same,” he said as he paid his respects alongside members of the advisory cabinet.

“There are no differences in Abu Sayeed’s Bangladesh,” he added.

Susan Wojcicki, who served as CEO of YouTube for nine years during a period of massive growth for the video platform and was one of Google‘s first hires, died on Friday, Aug. 9. She was 56.

Wojcicki’s death after a two-year fight with cancer was announced by her husband, Dennis Troper, in a public post Friday evening on Facebook.

“It is with profound sadness that I share the news of Susan Wojcicki passing. My beloved wife of 26 years and mother to our five children left us today after 2 years of living with non-small cell lung cancer,” Troper wrote in the post. “Susan was not just my best friend and partner in life, but a brilliant mind, a loving mother, and a dear friend to many. Her impact on our family and the world was immeasurable. We are heartbroken, but grateful for the time we had with her. Please keep our family in your thoughts as we navigate this difficult time.”

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, in a tribute posted on X said, “Unbelievably saddened by the loss of my dear friend @SusanWojcicki after two years of living with cancer. She is as core to the history of Google as anyone, and it’s hard to imagine the world without her.” Pichai continued, “She was an incredible person, leader and friend who had a tremendous impact on the world and I’m one of countless Googlers who is better for knowing her. We will miss her dearly. Our thoughts with her family. RIP Susan.”

Wojcicki joined Google in 1999 as the 16th employee, becoming the search engine’s first marketing exec. Co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin initially ran the company out of her garage in Menlo Park, Calif., which Wojcicki had rented out to the duo. Among her other accomplishments, she cut the company’s first deals to license search technology and led the initial development of Google’s image search.

In 2005, Wojcicki led the launch of Google Video — and in 2006 she oversaw the internet company’s $1.65 billion purchase of YouTube, a then-fledgling rival video-upload website.

In February 2014, Wojcicki was named YouTube’s CEO. Google’s appointment of Wojcicki, one of the company’s most senior execs, reflected how important the video platform had become to its advertising business. She stepped down as CEO of YouTube in February 2023, while remaining an adviser to the company. In a memo to staff at the time, Wojcicki said she was exiting as head of YouTube to “start a new chapter focused on my family, health, and personal projects I’m passionate about.”

Wojcicki was a vocal advocate for employers to offer generous family benefits, particularly paid maternity leave. “At YouTube, it’s been an opportunity for me to be able to help other women,” she told Variety in 2015. “I see the potential that women have. And I enjoy being a mentor, figuring the best way for them to balance work with family.”

As head of YouTube, Wojcicki pushed to build out the platform’s expansion onto TVs, angling to win a bigger share of ad dollars from traditional television networks. “At a time when TV is losing audiences, YouTube is growing in every region, on every screen,” she said in 2016 at YouTube’s Brandcast event for marketers. Wojcicki also was forced to navigate an advertiser boycott the following year in response to ads on YouTube that ran in objectionable content, including terrorism and hate-speech videos, which prompted the platform to implement stricter brand-safety policies.

Neal Mohan, who succeeded Wojcicki as YouTube CEO, said he’d had “the good fortune of meeting Susan 17 years ago when when she was the architect of the DoubleClick acquisition,” the ad-tech company where he had been an executive. “Her legacy lives on in everything she touched @google and @youtube,” Mohan wrote on X. “I am forever grateful for her friendship and guidance. I will miss her tremendously. My heart goes out to her family and loved ones.”

In her multiple stints at Google, Wojcicki had overseen product management of AdSense, Google Book Search and Google Video as well as the syndication of the company’s products. Prior to Google, she worked at Intel, Bain & Co. and R.B. Webber & Co.

Wojcicki was born on July 5, 1968, in Santa Clara, Calif. Her father, Stanley Wojcicki, was a physics professor at Stanford and her mother, Esther Wojcicki, was a teacher. She graduated from Harvard in 1990 with a bachelor’s degree in history and literature before earning a master’s in economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1993. She received an MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Management in 1998. Wojcicki married Troper, who currently works at Google as a director of product management, on Aug. 23, 1998.