Austrian and Slovene foreign ministers to meet next month

Categories
Politics

Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger and his Slovene counterpart Samuel Zbogar will meet on 16 March in Vienna, it was announced yesterday (Weds).Slovene news agency STA said yesterday that Zbogar would raise the situation of the Slovene minority in Carinthia at the meeting, including failure to put up bilingual place name signs […]

Czech prime minister wants full investigation of Steyr deal

Categories
Business

Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer called yesterday (Mon) evening for a full investigation of the Czech Defence Ministry’s purchase of 107 Austrian Pandur II light wheeled tanks in 2009.The ministry bought them from Upper Austrian firm Steyr-Daimler-Puch Spezialfahrzeuge (SSF) for 559 million Euros. The Czech newspaper Mlada fronta Dnes has reported that SSF bribed Czech […]

Young Dutch skiers rescued by helicopter

Categories
General News

Two Dutch boys aged 13 and 14 were rescued by helicopter as darkness was falling yesterday (Sun) near Loser in Styria’s Liezen district.The boys were skiing off piste down to the valley floor when they became stranded at 4pm in a steep, rocky area at an elevation of 1,400 metres and called rescuers.In another incident […]

Truck with 11 tonnes of blood-plasma stolen en route to Austria

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General News

A truck carrying 11 tonnes of blood-plasma stolen in Berlin while en route to Austria has been found in Poland and safely returned to the country.Police said yesterday (Thurs) that the driver of a Lower Austrian freighter’s truck with Mödling license plates had picked up the load of plasma from the USA on 5 February […]

Jewish community slams FPÖ’s contact with Jobbik

Categories
Politics

The Austrian Jewish Community (IKG) yesterday (Weds) condemned a recent Freedom Party (FPÖ) meeting with the far-right Hungarian Jobbik party.IKG said it was angry that “democratic parties had said nothing” about the FP֒s contact with “the openly neo-fascist Hungarian Jobbik party.”FPÖ foreign affairs spokesman and MP Johannes Hübner admitted yesterday that Jobbik members had visited […]

Teen baseball attack as card game turns nasty

Categories
General News

A teenage gambler has been arrested after he invited pals around for a card game – and then attacked them with a baseball bat.A 49-year-old man told cops he and a 19-year-old girl had been playing with the teenager when he suddenly stopped, picked up a baseball bat and started to attack them.Police said the […]

Closure of Vienna Ring causes political firestorm

Categories
Green Austria

By Lisa ChapmanPoliticians have hit out after Vienna’s Ringstraße was shut down yesterday (Tues) to mark an EU-wide car free day.They blasted the move – organised by the Greens and environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) – which saw the Ring between Operngasse and Bellariastraße shut and covered with artificial grass for people to picnic on during […]