A litter of five rare white tiger cubs make their first public appearance in Kernhof zoo in Austria. The cubs, four female and one male, were born on 25 April and are thought to be Europe's first litter of five white tiger cubs. The zoo director Herbert Eder, who has helped monitor the cubs over the past month, says all of them are healthy Continue reading... ...
Milan opera house tears up Alexander Pereira's original contract and replaces it with shorter one following controversy Alexander Pereira, the incoming director general of La Scala, has vowed to show the world's most famous opera house he is "not a dunce" after a humiliating controversy between Milan and his current employers, the Salzburg festival, resulted in his original five-year contract...
Austria's first Eurovision song contest winner since 1966 vows to continue fight against discrimination Bearded drag act Conchita Wurst, who secured Austria's first Eurovision win in 48 years, received a jubilant welcome home to Vienna on Sunday as she pledged to promote tolerance. The singer, whose real name is Tom Neuwirth, was greeted at the airport by more than 1,000 fans, some wearing painted...
Conchita won out over prejudice, but Eurovision still has songs that make you stick matchsticks between your eyelids It was always going to be up to the voting, half of which was done, late on a Saturday night, by people phoning in, expensively, and possibly, for which read probably, drunk. We had heard 50 minutes of technically-listenable songs (I'll wilfully exclude Iceland, Italy and France) cunningly...
Euro-MPs from across the continent and political spectrum describe their weekly routine At the beginning I found it unbelievably difficult to get things moving in the European parliament, and to get people's attention. No one listens to you automatically. Continue reading... ...
Austrian artist who concentrated on the depiction of the human body, particularly her own The Austrian artist Maria Lassnig, who has died aged 94, represented the naked body with startling honesty. Fluid strokes of bright paint vividly suggested the colour and texture of her own ageing skin, although the personas that she adopted were often extremely ambiguous. Lassnig achieved recognition from the...
Forty years after the Rubik's Cube was invented, competitors from around the globe still gather to solve the puzzle On a low stage, a young man examined a Rubiks Cube. Around him, an audience stood, precariously, on tables and chairs, or peered down from skyboxes. In one fluid motion, he activated a timer on the table before him and his fingers disappeared in a blur of activity. When he set the puzzle...
Postmodern Viennese architect who mixed forms and materials with promiscuous abandon From inflatable offices to volcanoes: maverick architect Hans Hollein - in pictures Hans Hollein, the maverick Viennese architect who brought his unique brand of witty historicist collage to everything from buildings and landscapes to sunglasses and tea trays, has died aged 80 after a long illness. One of the earliest...
Man from West Bromwich complained of chest pains before collapsing on first day of Snowbombing festival A British man has died after collapsing at a dance music festival in Austria, police said. The 25-year-old from West Bromwich complained of chest pains before collapsing at about 4pm local time on the first day of the Snowbombing festival in the Alpine region of Tirol. Continue reading... ...
My stepmother, Trude Holmes, who has died aged 102, fled Austria in 1938, the year of the Anschluss, and came as a refugee to Britain, where she first worked as a domestic servant. She was born Trude Falk in Vienna, to middle-class parents who were Jewish but not religious. Her father, Berthold, played chess in the Café Central, which was famously frequented by Trotsky, Freud and Lenin. Her...
More paintings found in Austria, including one by Monet, as lawyer says some may be Nazi loot A recluse who hoarded a priceless art collection at his homes in Germany and Austria including works possibly looted from Jewish owners by the Nazis has for the first time agreed to hand back a piece of art, his representatives said on Wednesday. The unidentified artwork belonged to a trove of some 1,400 works...
Apartment in former residence of the Habsburgs is available to tourists who wish to experience one of Austria's top attractions Vienna's opulent Schönbrunn Palace, the former summer residence of the imperial Habsburg family, will open its doors to tourists looking to spend the night like Emperor Franz Joseph and Empress Sisi. An apartment once reserved for close relatives of the court can be booked...
Karlheinz Essl, 74, owner of Austrian DIY firm bauMax, hopes to sell 7,000 artworks in effort to safeguard 4,000 jobs The owner of one of Europe's largest private collections of contemporary art is hoping to sell all 7,000 pieces to the Austrian state in an effort to inject capital into his struggling business and save 4,000 jobs. The collection belonging to Austrian businessman Karlheinz Essl, 74,...
As Scotland debates splitting from the UK, some of its islands are now demanding the right to their own independence vote. Where will it all end? Alex Salmond should always have expected it. Once you stir the nationalist pot, you can never know where it will lead. Residents of Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles are petitioning the Scottish parliament at Holyrood for the right to hold their own...
Administrator who sought to revolutionise opera, putting his stamp on three major institutions The Belgian opera administrator Gerard Mortier, who has died aged 70 of pancreatic cancer, was a self-confessed Machiavellian, described entirely without malice by his younger colleague and supporter Peter Sellars as "a little Napoleon, who knows exactly what he wants to do, and then does it". That ambition...
Coroner also says snow machines should be padded after Aleksander Owens-Thurston, 23, killed in St Anton A coroner has called for safety improvements at an Austrian ski resort after a man was killed when he crashed into a snow machine while not wearing a helmet. Aleksander Owens-Thurston, 23, of Surrey, died last month after he lost control on a steep run in St Anton during a family holiday with his...
s adventures with a family that would go on to become one of the world...
s brother, Johannes von Trapp, said she died on Tuesday. He called her a "lovely woman who was one of the few truly good people". The family won acclaim throughout Europe for their singing and escaped from Nazi-occupied Austria in 1938. Their story was turned into the film and Broadway musical. Maria von Trapp was the third child and second-oldest daughter of Austrian naval captain Georg von Trapp...
s trim and cosmopolitan young leader. Ragger speaks good English and excellent Italian and, before joining the regional government, was a partner in a law firm that has branches in Milan and Florence. When Haider's party joined the Austrian government after winning 27% of the vote in the 1999 general election, other European Union countries were so horrified that they took the unprecedented decision...
s biggest robbery has been billed as a modern-day Robin Hood after telling police he stole the cash to give to the poor. Gabriel Einstein, 49, said he had already deposited bundles of cash in the mailboxes of poor Austrians and he intended to use the rest of the €4m (£3.3m) that he stole last month for a charity project in Africa. "He wanted to send the money to Africa in a container full of cheap...