Vienna - Countries should do more to combat financial and cyber crime, UN drugs and crime office (UNODC) chief Antonio Maria Costa said Thursday, warning that there were signs of increased crime amid the global economic downturn.

"We can palpably already verify that the economic crisis is causing an additional dose of crime," Costa told reporters in Vienna.

Vienna- The price for oil produced by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) hover

Sydney - An Australian previously jailed in Germany and Austria for expounding his view that there were no mass killings of Jews in World War II was convicted Thursday of contempt of court in Melbourne for continuing to publish anti-Semitic material on his website.

German-born former high school teacher Frederick Toben, 65, was the subject of a civil action by Jeremy Jones, a former president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, for defying a court order to stop publishing claims that the Holocaust never happened.

Vienna - Austrian officials and politicians on Wednesday protested comments by US economist Paul Krugman that Austria risked bankruptcy owing to its large exposure in Eastern Europe.

There was no need for "unqualified statements based on inadequate information, which can put a country under massive pressure if they are uttered carelessly," Vice Chancellor and Finance Minister Josef Proell said, according to Austrian press agency APA.

Vienna - The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) stopped stopped monitoring North Korea's nuclear facilities on Wednesday, a diplomat in Vienna said one day after the country announced it would kick out the IAEA inspectors.

IAEA inspectors have removed all seals that were in place to verify that North Korea's nuclear programme remains turned off, said the diplomat who did not want to be identified.

In addition, all of the agency's surveillance cameras have been turned to face the wall, he said.

Vienna - Austrian prosecutors said Tuesday they had ended their investigation of Joerg Haider's fatal car crash, concluding that the accident was caused by the right-wing leader, and putting to rest conspiracy theories. The head of the Alliance for the Future of Austria died on October 11 last year at the age of 58, when he drove drunk at a high speed and his car veered off the road and flipped over.