Drab, functional, housing stressed-out and overworked bureaucrats in pin-striped suits are the usual images one associates with the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt, a less than hip institution with little international glamour. Nonetheless, the design selected for the new bank by Coop Himmelb(l)au, a Viennese architectural firm, is sophisticated and provocative - the kind of cool abstraction that is the home of corporate power and symbolizes Europe's growing financial stature in an emerging globalized world - one portending dynamic things to come.

The Vienna School of Fantastic Realism was an art movement founded in post-war Austria by a group of young, mostly Austrian artists. These artists attended the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts together, and their teacher and mentor was Albert Paris Gütersloh, a dazzling, larger-than-life personality (1887-1973). Born in Vienna, Gütersloh, whose real name was Albert Conrad Kiehtreiber, studied with the painter Gustav Klimt. When he started his teaching career in 1930, he had already acquired an extraordinary amount of varied experience: he had been a journalist, a writer, an editor, an actor and a film director. Among his friends were some of the most outstanding writers of the early 20th century, including Heimito v. Doderer, Hugo v. Hofmannsthal, Robert Musil and Hermann Bahr.

Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, people behind the Iron Curtain looked back on decades of dismal, grey stores with empty windows and little to buy. With the momentous turn of events in the early 1990s, hoards of Czechs, Slovaks and Hungarians streamed across the borders into Austria, eager for Western goods after so many years of doing without, preferring shopping sprees to visiting Vienna's cultural treasures.

During her visit to the United States from February 26 - March 3, 2005, the Austrian Federal Minister for Health and Women, Maria Rauch-Kallat, attended the 49th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York, prompted by the 10th Anniversary of the World Women's Conference in Beijing, China. The session was strongly represented by ninety-three high-ranking delegations from around the world. She addressed the UN Plenum on Austria's planned initiatives for 2006 and conducted bilateral talks with other delegates including Rigoberta Menchú, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992.

Some describe it as a narcissistic broadcasting station that differs only marginally from other private radio stations. Others characterize it as a "window to the outside world," providing a universal appeal. But all agree, that if FM4 did not exist, it would be a catastrophe. This station for young people offers a varied program - from chilled-out cosmopolitan radio to news, from special features to music considered outside the mainstream. FM4 was launched ten years ago and is the fourth, newest national network of the Austrian Broadcasting Company (ORF). Starting as an evening and overnight service on the frequencies of the English language network, Blue Danube Radio, FM4 was extended to a full-time program in 2000.

On the occasion of his 70th birthday, the Executive Board of the Committee 400,000 bestowed the Austrians Abroad Award upon the former Secretary General of the Socialist International, Hans Janitschek.

Skiing is more than a century old. The year 1905 saw the first organized downhill competition in Austria when the ski pioneer, Mathias Zdarsky, organized a slalom race with eighty-five flags on the slopes of the Muckenkogel near the town of Lilienfeld in Lower Austria.