One in four Austrian weddings involve foreigners

Categories
General News

Almost a quarter of all the weddings in Austria are binational according to the latest statistics from Statistik Austria. It said that 23.5 percent of marriages fall into this category were either one partner is an Austrian and the other a foreign national – or both are foreign nationals. In 2010 that represented 8,823 binational […]

Minister worried by labour obstacles for women

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Business

Women’s Minister Gabriele Heinisch-Hosek promised to keep fighting gender disparities on the labour market as a survey shows that men earn significantly more than women of the same social background. Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU) researchers compared the careers of 250 graduates to find out that the pay gap between the male and […]

Pope condemns Austrian priests

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General News

Pope Benedict XVI has sharply condemned a group of dissident Austrian priests and laymen for questioning key teachings of the Catholic Church. The group, known as the Pfarrer Initiative, has challenged the church on topics such as priestly celibacy and its ban on female priests. Speaking during a Maundy Thursday mass in the Vatican, the […]

FPÖ protests against pension age project

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Politics

The Freedom Party (FPÖ) has attacked the People’s Party (ÖVP) over its plan to increase the pension age in the coming years. ÖVP Vice Chancellor Michael Spindelegger announced yesterday (Thurs) his party aimed at raising the actual pension age by four years by 2020. He said a bonus system should ensure that people worked longer. […]

Warm weather lowers jobless rate

Categories
Business

The latest labour statistic has dished up good and bad news for Austria’s lawmakers and employees. Around 360,500 people had no job last month, according to Statistik Austria. The agency said yesterday (Mon) this was a decline of 0.8 per cent compared to December 2010. It pointed out that the number of people sitting re-education […]

Austrian teens exposed as xenophobic by study

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General News

Young Austrians’ views are strongly influenced by hostility to strangers and concerns caused by the economic crisis, according to researchers. The Institute for Youth Culture Research spoke with 400 residents of Vienna aged between 16 and 19 to find that 43.6 per cent of them agreed with the claim that “there are way too many […]

Slalom World Cup given the go ahead

Categories
Sports

The Slalom World Cup in Flachau in Austria has been given the go ahead. The FIS (International Ski Federation) declared the Hermann-Maier-World Cup course ready for the slalom competition at the start of next week this morning (Weds). Almost 70 centimetres of snow now lies on the course which will be sprayed over the coming […]

Police carry out prostitution crackdown

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General News

Viennese police arrested five people in the first night of a new law regulating prostitution. A spokesman for police forces in the city said today (Weds) that five people were put in custody last night. He added that 40 men and women could face charges for breaching various regulations of the legal initiative which was […]

Austrians divided about IVF

Categories
Politics

Four in 10 Austrians oppose a recent suggestion to allow single women and lesbian couples to undergo in vitro fertilization (IVF). Social Democratic (SPÖ) Health Minister Alois Stöger said last month single women should get the green light to undergo such a procedure. Federal law keeps them from opting for the treatment. Stöger claimed the […]

16-year-old groper’s heartbroken revenge

Categories
General News

A 16-year-old groper from Wiener Neustadt, Lower Austria, sexually assaulted four women after his girlfriend left him. For a month the “grope phantom” kept Wiener Neustadt apprehensive, now the teenager is facing two and a half years in prison. Investigator Michael Heyderer said: “The youth is facing sexual assault charges in two cases and sexual […]