Vienna  - Shares traded on the Vienna stock exchange fell by 3.9 per cent in the first hour of trading Monday, following the news that the US investment bank Lehman Brothers was bankrupt.

Vienna  - Austrian political parties introduced 50 social and welfare bills worth around two billion euros (2.8 billion dollars) in parliament on Friday, in order to sway voters ahead of the September 28 general elections.

Most of the bills were initiated by Austria's ruling Social Democratic Party (SPOe), in a bid to sharpen its social profile.

Werner Faymann, the party's new leader, has proposed an anti- inflation programme consisting of raising several government subsidies, including home care for patients and family support, as well as a bill on retirement payments for manual labourers and a cut of sales tax on food.

The SPOe also seeks to make education at public universities free.

Vienna- Before stopping its nuclear weapons programme in 2003, Libya obtained more sensitive technical information than was previously known, a confidential report by the UN nuclear agency shows.

According to the report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which was obtained by Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, Libya had acquired design information for a nuclear reprocessing plant capable of making 10 kilogrammes of plutonium per year.

The nuclear bomb that the United States dropped on Nagasaki in 1945 contained 6.1 kilogrammes of plutonium.

Vienna, The Philippines and Australia signed agreements to receive tsunami warning information from the Comprehensive Nuclear- Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) on Friday.

These countries can now use CTBTO data from the organization's 232 seismic monitoring stations that were set up all over the globe to detect nuclear weapons tests.

"This will improve the capability of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology to determine the occurrence of a tsunami in the archipelago and issue public warnings," Alberto G Romulo, the Philippines' Secretary of Foreign Affairs, said after signing the agreement.

Vienna - Falling 1.51 dollars on Thursday, the price for cru

Vienna - The UN nuclear agency has raised its long-term projections for nuclear power growth, as countries are seeking stable energy prices and energy security.

Global nuclear electricity production capacity will rise to between 473 and 748 gigawatts in 2030, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in its latest annual outlook on nuclear power, which it released in Vienna on Thursday.

In 2007, 439 nuclear reactors operated worldwide, with a capacity of 372 gigawatts.