Vienna - Heavy snowfalls in Austria caused large-scale power cuts

Vienna - International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei has cancelled interviews with the BBC, reacting to the British broadcaster's refusal to air a charity plea for people in the Gaza Strip, his spokeswoman said Wednesday.

"He believes this decision violates the rules of basic human decency which are there to help vulnerable people irrespective of who is right or wrong," IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said.

Vienna - Austrian police arrested six Chechens on Wednesday for possible involvement in the murder of a Chechen refugee earlier this month, the Vienna public prosecutor's office said.

Prosecutor Gerhard Jarosch confirmed a report by Austrian broadcaster ORF that the six suspects were arraigned and that several house searches were conducted in Vienna and other provinces.

The shooting of Umar Israilov on January 13 in Vienna was likely politically motivated, as he had brought a torture case against Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov before the European Court of Human Rights.

Vienna- Austrian legal scholars questioned their government's opposition to hosting former Guantanamo inmates on Tuesday, but cabinet members shrugged off their opinions and suggested that the detainees could pose a public danger.

The Austrian government has argued that welcoming the terrorism suspects would cause a "systemic break" in Austrian law, but it has kept open the possibility for former prisoners to seek refugee status on an individual basis.

Vienna - Austria's tourism sector grew by 4.7 per cent in arrivals in 2008, with large gains from Central and Eastern European visitors, according to data released by the statistics office on Monday.

With 48.1 per cent, Russian tourists showed the biggest increase. But Poles (36.4 per cent), Czechs (26.8 per cent) and Hungarians (7.3 per cent) also increasingly chose Austria as a travel destination.

Visitors from these four countries made up some 7 per cent of Austria's 21.9 million foreign tourists in 2008.