WorldcrunchAustrian daily Salzburger Nachrichten poses the question “Sealed border?” on its front page Thursday, after the government announced plans to limit the number of migrants allowed in the country. An estimated 90,000 asylum seekers registered in 8-million-strong Austria last year, with tens of thousands more crossing the country for Germany. Austrian authorities revealed plans Wednesday […]
I took this photo of the Vienna State Opera only seven years after it was reopened, having been badly damaged by a U.S. bombing raid toward the end of World War II. Still, Austria’s singular standing in the world of classical music was as strong as ever back then, with genius conductor Herbert von Karajan […]
Kurier, Sept. 7, 2015 “They reached safety — what now?,” Vienna-based daily Kurier asks on its front page Monday, as at least 15,000 refugees crossed the border from Hungary over the weekend into Austria. After days of confrontation between refugees — mostly fleeing violence in Syria and Iraq — and authorities in Budapest stopping them […]
MIGRANT BOAT SINKS OFF LIBYA More than 200 people are feared to have drowned off the Libyan coast after two boats sank early Thursday, the BBC reports. The Libyan coast guard said it had rescued some 200 from the two separate boats carrying some 450 people in total . The victims are said to include […]
“Dead refugees in parked truck — Only profit matters to smugglers” reads the front page of Austrian daily Salzburger Nachrichten“s Friday edition, following the discovery of 71 migrants found suffocated to death in a truck along a main highway in the country’s eastern Burgenland province. Chief of police Hans Peter Doskozil revealed at a news […]
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From Hungary to Switzerland, fortifications are rising in the heart of Europe, where the once-heralded borderless zone is being diminished by the day.
After winning last year’s show with Conchita Wurst’s performance, Austria has the pleasure of organizing this year’s Eurovision. According to Oikotimes, a website on which “Eurovision becomes a passion,” it will cost Vienna a total of €35 million to host the event, for a revenue of €10 million for the host broadcaster ORF. So much […]
What should be done with the house where Adolf Hitler was born? It’s a difficult question facing the Austrian city of Braunau as the 500-year-old building slowly falls apart.
These good old-fashioned haystacks in the Ötztal valley, in the Austrian state of Tyrol, remind me of haymaking in the village of my ancestors in eastern France, before mechanized balers and tractors became commonplace.
It’s in this picturesque town hall of St. Gilgen, on the shores of Lake Wolfgangsee, that the birth of Anna Maria Walburga Pertl was registered in 1720. The name rings no bell? Well then, you’ll recognize her son’s: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Beautiful mountains, colorful wooden houses, costumed Mädchen … The village of Schoppernau, in the state of Vorarlberg’s Bregenz Forest, is a living, breathing Austrian postcard. I guess my wife and I liked this kind of scenery: We went to Austria 23 times!
One hundred years ago, the Archduke of Austria was assassinated by a Serbian ideologue. Today, the threats are different but, like in 1914, conflicts are multiplying and leaders failing.
Sure to be the leading candidate in August’s first-ever direct election of Turkey’s president, the current prime minister is touring Europe to woo Turks living abroad. Not all are convinced.
The social network measures up worse than other Internet sites. Part of the problem is that people’s expectations are unrealistically high that Facebook can improve their lives, for real.
The St. Varena Hermitage is trying to recruit a new hermit to oversee see its chapels, but the job description raises a dilemma: how to find a recluse who can schmooze with visitors.
After rejections by Austrian and French ski-lift companies, a Swiss competitor was set to supply Pyongyang the means to realize his Alpine fantasy. But then the state stepped in.
Here, the cheese is so pure that if the wheel is yellow, you know the cows have been eating dandelions…
IMST – It’s seven o’clock in the morning, and what’s left of the night’s thunder clouds sit perched wispy white above the rocks. Despite the cool temperature, Andreas Riml sits wearing a T-shirt on the terrace of his hut, drinking coffee and looking out over the breadth of the alpine valley that opens out toward […]
VIENNA – It’s 11:45 a.m. on March 5, 2004 when two men enter the Maki diamond and jewelry store in Tokyo, set to commit the biggest theft in Japanese history. One of the men has brown leather gloves and a bag with the Cartier logo, the other is in all dark clothes. They are shown […]
ABC.AU, SYDNEY MORNING HERALD (Australia), REUTERS Worldcrunch PRAGUE – Meet Karel Schwarzenberg, the bow-tied, 75-year-old prince who channels the Sex Pistols and wants to be president of the Czech Republic. Born into a family that owned large amounts of Czech and Austrian lands, the Schwarzenbergs fled when the Communists took over in 1948, writes Reuters. […]
PRAGUE – A few minutes before the concert starts, Riccardo Sahiti says he can’t believe all this is real, that it’s not a dream. He’s standing in the ornate conductor’s room of the Rudolfinum in Prague – one of Europe’s premier concert halls. All around him are photographs of his idols – conductors such as […]
LIBERO (Italy), DIE WELT (Germany), HEUTE, KLEINE ZEITUNG (Austria) The tiny Greek island of Icaria is considering a referendum to break away from debt-saddled Greece, and become part of Austria, according to several European press reports. Icaria, which has a population of 8,000, could decide to become independent after its 100-year treaty with Athens expires […]
Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, who has close ties with Pope Benedict XVI, has overruled a local decision that had blocked a gay man from taking his place on a parish council in a northern Austrian town. Are the winds changing for gays in the Cath
Noldi, an eight-month-old domesticated ass, was born blind on a Swiss farm, and was never accepted by his herd, as he struggled to avoid running into obstacles. Farmers considered putting him down, until an outcry from animal rights groups led to a happy
Shock is spreading across Austria where allegations are emerging of systemic violence, sexual abuse and child prostitution dating from the 1970s in Schloss Wilhelminenberg, a Vienna foster home. Some Austrian leaders want to change the statute of limitati
Hundreds of Austrian priests are challenging the standing leadership of Pope Benedict XVI and the local bishops, demanding modern-day answers to issues like communion for divorced people, women in the church hierarchy, and the taboo of priests who have a
Long before Fukushima, or even Chernobyl, Austrians pulled the plug on nuclear power with a 1978 referendum. The physical legacy of that narrow vote is a completed – but never used – power plant called Zwentendorf, now open to the public.
The Kneipp spa-hotels in Austrian offer wellness holidays with a difference: the resorts are run by an order of nuns and base their holistic treatments on a tradition founded 100 years ago by a Roman Catholic priest.
Jovan Divjak, who led Bosnia’s defense in the 1992-95 siege of Sarajevo, has been arrested in Austria on a Serbian warrant. Top French intellectuals demand his release, calling European policy on the Balkans a continuing “affront to reason.”