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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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/ 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
The United Nations atomic agency’s call on Iran to suspend fully uranium enrichment goes against the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a senior Iranian official said in Vienna on Monday. Uranium enrichment is not banned by the NPT, Iranian atomic energy chief Reza Aghazadeh said.
Iran threatens to halt UN access
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/ 16 September 2004
The United States and Europe appeared to be closer toward agreement on Thursday on setting a deadline for Iran to clear up questions about its nuclear programme, diplomats said, although differences remained over what to do afterwards. Iran could face being taken before the United Nations Security Council for possible sanctions.
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/ 15 September 2004
Opec oil cartel ministers began formal deliberations on Wednesday amid supply fears in world oil markets that sent prices higher prior to the start of the ministerial session. Oil for October delivery had risen 0,47% prior to the meeting to ,60 per barrel on New York’s Mercantile Exchange.
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/ 14 September 2004
You do the math: can 1 000 firefighters pump 104 000 liters of water from one alpine lake over an 800m-high mountain into another lake 24km away? Helmut Auerbach isn’t sure, either — but he and other organisers of the stunt hope to pull it off and secure a place in the Guinness Book of Records.
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/ 14 September 2004
The United States appears headed for a showdown with Iran over the Islamic republic’s alleged nuclear weapons programme, with both sides taking hardline positions on Tuesday at the United Nations atomic agency. Iran has said it will not agree to an unlimited suspension of uranium enrichment.
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/ 3 September 2004
Austrian historians are ridiculing California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for telling the Republican National Convention that he saw Soviet tanks in his homeland as a child and left a ”socialist” country when he moved away in 1968. ”I saw tanks in the streets. I saw communism with my own eyes,” Schwarzenegger said.
A special Vatican inspector began his inquiry on Wednesday into the discovery of a vast cache of child pornography at a seminary where candidates for the priesthood photographed themselves kissing and fondling each other. Austrian Bishop Klaus Kueng was appointed on Tuesday as Pope John Paul II’s ”apostolic visitor” to deal with the scandal.
President Thomas Klestil, who died overnight on Tuesday, is to receive a state funeral in the capital Vienna on Saturday, his office announced on Wednesday. Klestil died late on Tuesday aged 71 after suffering a heart attack only two days before he was due to leave office. He had served as head of state for 12 years.
Austrian President Thomas Klestil was hospitalised in a critical condition on Monday after suffering a heart attack three days before the end of his term, his office said. The president was revived by a bodyguard who used a defibrillator to jolt his heart back into action after he collapsed as he prepared to leave for his office.
A boat carrying American, British and Canadian tourists on a sightseeing trip down the Danube River in Vienna rammed a landmark bridge on Thursday, smashing windows on the vessel and leaving 19 with minor injuries. The collision damaged the restaurant deck of the boat, which was packed with tourists enjoying the scenery.
The United States and the big European countries buried their deep differences over Iran’s nuclear projects this week, drafting a tough statement that comes close to having the United Nations accuse Tehran of pursuing a secret bomb programme. Iran is urged to undertake proactive cooperation to ‘resolve all outstanding issues on an urgent basis’.
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/ 16 February 2004
Drawings of a nuclear warhead that Libya surrendered as part of its decision to renounce weapons of mass destruction are of 1960s Chinese design, but likely came from Pakistan, diplomats and experts said on Sunday.
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/ 12 February 2004
In another apparent link to the nuclear black market emanating from Pakistan, United Nations inspectors in Iran have discovered undeclared designs of an advanced centrifuge used to enrich uranium. The revelations came a day after United States President George Bush acknowledged loopholes in the international enforcement system.
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/ 6 February 2004
The UN’s top nuclear official called for a new international regime to destroy the flourishing black market in nuclear technology on Thursday, describing current controls as ”kaput”. Mohammed ElBaradei, the head of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, said the trade in the technology was now a dangerous ”supermarket”.
The Austrian opposition Greens demanded an inquiry on Thursday into the death of a 33-year-old African man in police custody this week.
An Austrian doctor working in Basra described a ”disastrous humanitarian and security situation” in Iraq, the Catholic press agency Kathpress reported on Thursday.
In what appears to be a critical step in the countdown to war, the US government has asked United Nations weapons inspectors to withdraw from Iraq, the UN’s chief nuclear inspector said on Monday.
Iraq: the final 24 hours
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/ 30 January 2003
The International Press Institute on Wednesday condemned plans by the South African government to evict journalists from their offices in the national parliament.
China has them. The United States, Britain, France and Russia have them. So do India and Pakistan. Israel likely does, and North Korea may be trying to get them.
A planned ordination ceremony of ten women as Catholic Priests at an undisclosed site this Saturday has shaken the male-dominated Catholic Church to its foundations.
The Supreme Court has overturned Austria’s homosexuality law, banning male homosexual relations between adults and young people aged under 18.
The divide between rich industrialised and poor developing countries has widened over the last two decades, says the UN.
Iraqi officials were to meet with UN arms experts in Vienna on Monday to discuss resuming inspections, under the shadow of US threats to enforce disarmament if necessary.