Vienna- While Austria tapped into its natural gas stocks amid the recent stoppage of Russian gas supplies, engineers in the Austrian town of Guessing were busy producing an alternative: natural gas from wood.

With the help of Swiss and Austrian scientists, the European Centre for Renewable Energy Guessing produced so-called synthetic natural gas for the first time outside a laboratory in December.

Vienna - The price for oil produced by the Orga

Vienna - Austria is set to extend the humanitarian mission of its troops in Chad until the end of 2009, the foreign ministry said Monday.

Austrian troops are currently deployed as part of the European Union's peacekeeping operation which helps refugees and maintains security in the region.

In mid-March, when the mandate of the current 3,300 EU peacekeepers expires, a United Nations peacekeeping operation is set to take its place, the UN Security Council decided last week.

Vienna  - Three human rights organizations said Friday they were "deeply alarmed" about the killing in Vienna of a Chechen refugee who had filed human rights complaints against Chechnya's leadership.

Police are searching for two unknown men in the shooting of Umar Israilov, 27, near his Vienna home on Tuesday.

The victim's father, Ali Israilov, said his son had unsuccessfully asked for Austrian police protection and that Umar Israilov had been told of a death list containing the names of 50 Chechens exiles in Austria.

Vienna - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is concerned about a possible credit crunch in Central and Eastern Europe, in case Austrian banks start pulling out funds from stalling economies in the region, the daily Der Standard reported Friday.

Austrian banks have issued around a quarter of total foreign loans in CEE countries, trailed by Germany and Italy, according to the still unpublished report by the Washington-based IMF.