Smoking in or near forests is now banned in Lower Austria to prevent forest fires in drier-than-usual forests - with fines of more than €7.000

Austria has experienced an early winter surprise as a cold front swept across the country, bringing snow to both mountainous and lowland areas; passes in Tyrol that had been closed for some hours due to heavy snowfall have been reopened

A group of Jewish students on Friday prevented the first speaker of Austria's far-right parliament from laying a wreath at the Holocaust memorial, accusing him of 'spitting in the face of our ancestors'

Austria's largest construction group, STRABAG SE, has been fined 2,79 million euros due to cartel allegations; the German Federal Cartel Office has target its subsidiary based in Cologne for illegal bidding with the renovation of the Zoobrücke bridge

Austria is one of the EU countries with strictest rules for foreigners wishing to obtain citizenship; more than 750.000 people who have been legally resident in the territory for more than ten years still do not hold an Austrian passport