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/ 9 November 2005
The United States and other nations have frozen more than $150-million of "terrorist assets" in the global anti-terrorism fight, a senior US official said on Wednesday. "Key financiers have been detained, over $150-million of terrorist assets have been frozen and millions more blocked in transit or seized at borders," said US State Department counterrorism co-ordinator Henry Crumpton.
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/ 24 October 2005
Crude slid below on Monday as Hurricane Wilma crashed ashore in Florida, avoiding already battered Gulf of Mexico oil-producing and -refining facilities. Analysts said perceptions of relatively plentiful supply and revised assessments showing less damage from previous hurricanes also contributed to the downward trend.
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/ 24 October 2005
Living in the shadow of the Tyrol mountain range for nine centuries, inhabitants of the village of Rattenberg in western Austria now plan to beat their winter blues with the help of dozens of giant mirrors. The 910m Stadtberg mountain blocks low winter rays from reaching Rattenberg from November to February.
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/ 19 September 2005
Vacationers in Tirol can now visit the world’s first beer baths at Starkenberg Castle near Imst. Of course, these pools are less about recreation and more about health. The seven pools have been filled with beer byproducts — the yeast that settles at the bottom of the vats during cold storage — to tackle a wide range of skin ailments.
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/ 15 September 2005
Opec has cut its estimate for the expected increase in global oil demand this year for the fifth time in a row, with the increase now expected to be 1,7% from the 2004 figure, its monthly report showed on Thursday. Global demand is now forecast to be an average 83,5-million barrels per day.
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/ 5 September 2005
Oil prices fell on Monday after industrialised nations agreed to release 60-million barrels of crude from their strategic stockpiles to help avert a severe fuel shortage in the United States. The US refinery system is struggling to recover from Hurricane Katrina.
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/ 2 September 2005
The United Nations atomic watchdog was on Friday finalising a report expected to say that Iran has failed to suspend nuclear fuel work and which could trigger UN Security Council sanctions over fears Tehran is developing nuclear weapons, diplomats said. ”As far as we know, they have not suspended [nuclear fuel work],” a diplomat said.
Europe’s weather crisis eased on Thursday as fires were put out in Portugal and flood waters receded in central Europe, but the death toll rose in Romania and Austria after heavy rains. Since June, the flooding in central and eastern Europe has caused 103 deaths, while fires in drought-stricken Portugal, Spain and France killed 37.
Oil futures held above a barrel on Tuesday amid lingering global supply concerns despite resumed crude flows from Ecuador and Nigeria. The rise came amid expectations that Wednesday’s United States petroleum inventories will show declines in both crude and gasoline stocks with little indication that high prices are slowing demand.
Amid intense diplomacy, Britain, France and Germany circulated a draft resolution on Tuesday, ahead of a key meeting of the United Nations atomic watchdog, urging Iran to stop nuclear fuel work that has raised concerns of a possible weapons programme. But diplomats warned the tactic is running into opposition.
The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency said on Monday he regrets that Iran began conversion activities before the agency’s surveillance system could be tested on site. Iran on Monday resumed uranium conversion at its nuclear facility in Isfahan.
Vienna’s Leopold Museum has invited the public to come in the nude on Friday to view an exhibition of erotic works by Austrian masters such as Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, a spokesperson said on Wednesday. The exhibition is titled <i>The Naked Truth: Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka and Other Scandals</i>.
Oil prices swung sharply upward on Friday as traders shrugged off the shock of the London bomb blasts and focused on a drop in United States crude stocks and possible supply disruptions because of Hurricane Dennis. Light, sweet crude for August delivery was up 84 cents at ,57 a barrel by midday in Europe.
They size you up, offer you a hand, raise and lower the seat and flush when you’re finished. Researchers at Vienna’s Technical University have begun production on what they’ve dubbed a ”toilet with brains” — a high-tech commode designed to help multiple-sclerosis patients and other disabled or elderly people.
North Korea may have enough weapons-grade plutonium to make up to half a dozen nuclear bombs, the head of the United Nations atomic agency said on Sunday in another warning about the regime’s secretive nuclear programme. He described the latest developments as a ”cry for help” on Pyongyang’s part.
An elderly man who mistook firefighters for burglars as they arrived to douse a small blaze at his apartment complex threatened to shoot them with a gas-powered pistol, police said on Wednesday. Authorities confiscated the pistol and two other loaded gas weapons after Tuesday’s incident in St. Poelten, about 80km west of Vienna.
Crude futures rose on Monday ahead of a meeting between United States President George Bush and Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah that will focus in part on possible ways to bring down high oil prices. Analysts said that a rash of refinery outages in the US and Venezuela underpinned the bullish market.
Oil prices rose on Thursday as traders digested United States government figures showing a large increase in crude inventories but a drop in gasoline stocks ahead of the driving season. Light, sweet crude on the New York Mercantile Exchange was up 15 cents at ,14 a barrel by midday in Europe.
Austrian authorities are investigating whether a university committed a crime when it used corpses as part of research to develop better crash-test dummies, a prosecutor said on Tuesday. Authorities suspect that researchers at the Technical University of Graz might have violated the dignity of the dead by using bodies in tests.
Africa remains the world’s weak spot in the fight against drugs because most countries on the continent lack the means to combat trafficking, the International Narcotics Control Board has warned. It said while cannabis remains ”a major issue of concern” throughout Africa, the trade in cocaine and heroin was also on the rise.
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/ 27 January 2005
Fouling traffic and tempers, heavy snow fell on Thursday on much of Europe that had been spared winter’s full fury for weeks, giving Rome and the Mediterranean island of Mallorca a rare white blanket and playing havoc with Switzerland’s famously efficient trains. In Switzerland, winds of 172kph were clocked on Wednesday.
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/ 11 January 2005
Bears in Slovakia are awakening early from hibernation. So are barmaids in Bavaria, unseasonably busy in outdoor beer gardens. Forgoing a white Christmas was one thing, but the utter absence of snow for weeks on end has many Europeans pining for what seems — so far, anyway — like The Winter That Wasn’t.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-InternationalNews&ao=177751">Europe’s storm toll rises to 17</a>
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/ 15 December 2004
Austrians present their nearest and dearest with small ”lucky pigs” around Christmas time in a custom thought to date back to a spinster’s success in finding a husband. The ”Gluecksschweinchen”, made out of plastic, pewter, brass, or as a cuddly toy or even in bronze, is supposed to bring its recipient good fortune in the year to come.
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/ 21 November 2004
Gale-force winds dumping heavy snow caused havoc across Austria on Saturday, blowing cars across roads and into deadly collisions, knocking out power to thousands of homes and tearing a balcony off a building that critically injured a man below. In neighbouring Slovakia, the winds were clocked at 173kph.
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/ 15 November 2004
A major Austrian narcotics ring dubbed the ”Grandpa Gang” because of the advanced age of its members sold about €5,2-million-worth of drugs in recent years, police said on Monday. Police have dubbed the ring the ”Grandpa Gang” because most of its members were in their fifties and sixties.
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/ 3 November 2004
Vienna got a touch of Christmas on Wednesday with the arrival of a giant, 27m-high tree that will adorn the capital’s central Rathausplatz during the holiday season.
Rathausplatz, the square in front of Vienna’s ornate, neo-gothic City Hall, is home to one of the city’s most popular Christmas markets.
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/ 1 November 2004
DNA tests soon may solve a century-old mystery — whether a skull held by the International Mozarteum Foundation is part of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s remains. Archaeologists have opened a grave in Salzburg thought to contain the remains of Mozart’s father and other relatives.
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/ 25 October 2004
Several hundred tonnes of conventional explosives are missing from a former Iraqi military facility that once played a key role in Saddam Hussein’s efforts to build a nuclear bomb, the United Nations nuclear agency confirmed on Monday. The explosives include HMX and RDX, which can be used to demolish buildings and down jetliners.
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/ 21 October 2004
Austrian police evacuated hundreds of people from Linz’s main train station on Thursday after finding a large, unexploded World War II bomb — the second such discovery in two weeks, authorities said. The bomb was found at about 8.30am near the newly opened station in Linz, about 200km west of Vienna.
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/ 22 September 2004
An Austrian invention to save lives in skyscraper fires is being marketed all over the world, said the mass circulation Kronen Zeitung on Wednesday. The method is simple but effective, said the report. It consists of special parachutes that could be used from the 15th storey of a skyscraper upwards.
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/ 21 September 2004
Defying a key demand set by 35 nations, Iran announced on Tuesday that it has started converting raw uranium into the gas needed for enrichment, a process that can be used to make nuclear weapons. "Tests are going on successfully" to make the feed stock for enrichment, said Iranian Vice-President Reza Aghazadeh.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-InternationalNews&ao=122488">UN nuclear call on Iran ‘invalid'</a>
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/ 20 September 2004
Police shot a man in the thigh after he wrapped himself with two deadly cobras and threatened to commit suicide, then swung the snakes at officers who had rushed to his home in southern Austria, officials said on Monday. One of the cobras bit the 40-year-old man in the hand during Sunday afternoon’s stand-off.