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/ 31 January 2008
The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) on Thursday looked set to rebuff consumer calls for more crude oil, saying it was powerless to help stave off recessionary pressures in the West. Enjoying a sixth year of crude price gains, Opec argues it can do little to help avoid a slowdown in the United States, its leading customer.
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/ 29 January 2008
Opec is widely expected to resist consumer calls for more oil when it meets on Friday, worried by a slowing United States economy and the onset of seasonally lower demand in the spring. Oil has fallen to around a barrel from a record ,09 on January 3, easing pressure on Opec to pump more.
A dog was admitted to a veterinary clinic in Austria on the weekend, barely able to stand on his own four paws and reeking "like a beer hall", a newspaper reported on Monday. Dingo, a three-year-old Labrador weighing 40kg, was a pitiful sight when his owner, a hunter, brought him in to the surgery, a newspaper quoted vet Karl Hofbauer as saying.
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/ 7 November 2007
Oil prices jumped to a new trading record above $98 a barrel on Wednesday amid expectations of declining United States supplies. The weak dollar and the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’s apparent reluctance to pump more crude into the market also boosted prices.
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/ 5 November 2007
Oil prices fell more than a barrel on Monday as traders pocketed gains from the previous session’s record settlement. The release of eight Turkish soldiers by Kurdish rebels on Sunday also contributed to the decline, easing some concerns about whether Turkey will launch attacks on guerrilla bases in northern Iraq.
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/ 29 October 2007
A mob of about 300 greedy Austrians forced its way into a hotel in southern Austria for a pillaging spree after a newspaper report on free giveaways, local media reported on Monday. The hotel had prior to its being closed down asked interested parties to pre-register and pick up the remaining furniture and equipment.
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/ 17 October 2007
An Austrian baker who made his staff pay for the time they spent in the toilet has been forced to end the practice to avoid a court case, a lawyer said this week. The owner of the bakery in Eisenstadt recorded toilet visits on a computer and took the value of the bathroom time off their annual holiday bonus.
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/ 16 October 2007
The body of a 76-year-old woman found dead in her Vienna flat was left there for nine days because a doctor who registered the death forgot to notify a removal service, officials said on Tuesday. The oversight was noticed when neighbours of the deceased woman, who lived alone, complained of a worsening stench.
A Pakistani man broke the world-record for "ear-lifting" in Vienna on Sunday, carrying almost 62kg from a cord attached to his right ear. Zafar Gill’s feat earned him a place in the <i>Guinness World Records</i>, as part of a day of record-breaking attempts in the Austrian capital, organised under the slogan "Vienna — Recordbreaker".
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/ 25 September 2007
Pictures flicker across a computer screen. A little girl, no more than five or six. Bound and tortured. Raped. Begging Daddy to stop. Horror fiction? No — an ever more alarming reality. ”Eighty percent of the abuse seen in online child porn is done by people the children know,” said Leila Ben Debba, of the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children.
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/ 19 September 2007
South Africa is holding off joining a United States-led initiative to spread atomic power because it does not want to give up its right to enrich uranium, a senior South African official said on Tuesday. Exporting uranium only to get it back refined, instead of enriching it in South Africa, would be ”in conflict with our national policy”, said Minerals and Energy Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica.
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/ 11 September 2007
Parts of a global nuclear-smuggling ring initiated by the disgraced father of Pakistan’s atom bomb may remain active and nations must do more to crack down on the network, South Africa said on Tuesday. The plea followed last week’s conviction by a South African court of a German engineer for his part in the network run by Abdul Qadeer Khan.
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/ 11 September 2007
Opec was meeting on Tuesday to consider a modest rise in oil output proposed by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states in a gesture to consumers worried by the economic impact of oil and rapidly diminishing stocks. But the plan to add 500 000 barrels per day of oil had yet to convince all Opec ministers.
Mankind is to blame for climate change but governments still have time to slow accelerating damage at moderate cost if they act quickly, a draft United Nations report shows. Underlining the need for speed, it says a European Union goal of holding temperature rises to a maximum two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times is almost out of reach.
Climate negotiators from more than 150 nations assembled in Vienna on Monday with calls for a global deal beyond 2012 to replace the United Nations’s Kyoto Protocol and include outsiders such as the United States and China. ”Climate change is already a harsh reality, a massive obstacle to development,” Austrian Environment Minister Josef Proell said.
Iran has slowed the installation of centrifuge machines that enrich uranium for its controversial nuclear programme, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Monday. Western powers have condemned Tehran’s expansion of enrichment work in defiance of United Nations demands.
North Korea has agreed to wide-ranging United Nations measures to verify a shutdown of its atom-bomb programme, nuclear inspectors said on Tuesday, but doubts arose about when disarmament would begin. Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency, said he would recommend its governing board ratify a new inspector mission.
Kurt Waldheim, the former United Nations secretary general and president of Austria whose reputation was tarnished by revelations over his Nazi past, died on June 14 at the age of 88, his family said. The former statesman suffered a heart attack in May and had been ailing ever since.
Iran persists in defying United Nations demands to stop enriching uranium and is expanding the work, the UN nuclear watchdog said in a report on Wednesday that could open the door to new sanctions against Tehran. "Iran has not suspended its enrichment-related activities," the International Atomic Energy Agency said.
An 87-year-old man accidentally drove the wrong way for 7km down an Austrian motorway before being stopped, police said on Thursday. No accident resulted from the ride on Wednesday night. The man said the rain and darkness had caused him to go in the wrong direction.
South Africa proposed a compromise on Friday to prevent a global meeting on the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty from collapsing over Iranian objections to the agenda, and Tehran said it would consider the idea.The proposal resembled a gesture by Japan made earlier in the day but was dismissed by Iran as not good enough.
With the precision of a surgeon, Andreas Rupp carefully wraps sensor strips around a 21-tonne bell in Vienna’s famous St Stephen’s Cathedral. Europe’s second-largest bell, nicknamed ”Pummerin”, is one of several famous bells across the continent being checked to determine their life spans, and unlock the secret of the optimum chime.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Monday the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was suffering a crisis of confidence as member states met to debate how to prevent the pact from falling apart. The NPT binds members without nuclear bombs not to acquire them via diversions of peaceful nuclear energy know-how.
Oil prices rose on Monday ahead of the expected restarts at United States refineries and Nigerian presidential elections that some fear could spark violence that may disrupt oil supplies. The 10th consecutive week of draws on US gasoline inventories last week also had potential to exert upward pressure on prices.
An independent organisation that keeps tabs on glacial melting in Austria’s Alps said on Friday its latest survey confirms that the ice sheets continue to shrink significantly and predicted most will vanish by the end of the century. In a new report, the Austrian Alpine Association said experts measured 105 of Austria’s 925 glaciers last year and found they had receded by an average of 16m.
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/ 22 February 2007
Iran has failed to comply with a United Nations Security Council demand to halt its uranium-enrichment activities, according to a UN atomic agency report issued on Thursday. ”Iran has not suspended its enrichment-related activities,” the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report.
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/ 21 February 2007
Iran vowed on Wednesday to press on with its nuclear-fuel programme, ignoring a United Nations deadline to freeze uranium enrichment or face broader sanctions, but offered to guarantee it would not try to develop atomic weapons. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad remained defiant as a 60-day grace period Iran had been given was expiring.
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/ 27 November 2006
A group of Santa Clauses was on strike on one of Vienna’s main shopping avenues on Saturday in honour of "Buy Nothing Day", an international initiative to counter consumerist attitudes ahead of the Christmas season. "Today is Buy Nothing Day; allow yourself a break," 10 Santas, in full garb, told shoppers.
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/ 23 November 2006
The United Nations nuclear watchdog’s 35-nation board of governors on Thursday indefinitely shelved Iran’s bid for technical aid for a reactor project due to fears it could yield bomb-grade plutonium, diplomats said. But the ruling left open the possibility of revisiting Iran’s request in the future.
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/ 22 November 2006
Most Western and developing nations in the United Nations nuclear watchdog tentatively agreed on Wednesday to shelve Iran’s request for aid to a nuclear project over fears it could yield bomb-grade plutonium, diplomats said. But the deal left open the possibility of revisiting Iran’s case later.
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/ 10 November 2006
Oil prices fell on Friday after jumping above a barrel the previous day in reaction the leadership change in the United States Congress and amid reports of an increase in fourth-quarter global energy demand. The International Energy Agency forecast a 2,6% jump in fourth-quarter global energy demand.
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/ 30 October 2006
Oil prices slipped below a barrel on Monday on doubts that the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) would pursue proposed production cuts and as geopolitical concerns lifted. Light, sweet crude for December fell by 89 cents to ,86 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.