Police in Upper Austria province said the four were laying white roses at Nazi dictator’s birthplace Four Germans were caught laying white roses in memory of Adolf Hitler at the house where the Nazi dictator was born in western Austria on the anniversary of his birth, and one gave a Hitler salute as they posed for photos, police have said. Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn. After lengthy wrangling over the future of the house where he was born, work started last year on turning it into a police station – a project meant to make it unattractive as a pilgrimage site ..read more

Group of 17 were ski touring near resort of Sölden when 80-metre wide avalanche hit An avalanche near the Austrian ski resort of Sölden has killed three skiers from the Netherlands. Another person was rescued and taken to hospital. The victims were part of a 17-person ski touring group that was on an ascent with four Austrian guides. Ski touring involves using skis with special bindings and skins that make moving uphill possible ..read more

The horror author on stealing from other writers, why she can’t stand pathos and how Mickey Mouse has inspired her new short-story collection Minihorror In Vienna, every second building looks like it was built for a king, the waiters who serve your coffee wear tuxedos, and public transport is not just efficient and cheap, the council pays musicians to play Mozart in the carriages. But in the stories of Serbian author Barbi Marković, set in the Austrian city and its surroundings, there’s something not quite right about the place. In Minihorror, the 44-year-old’s very strange and very addictive ..read more

My mentor and friend Roy Bridge, who has died aged 85, was the foremost authority on the foreign policy of the late Habsburg empire. He became a leading expert with his first book, From Sadowa to Sarajevo: The Foreign Policy of Austria-Hungary 1866-1914 (1972), later expanded as The Habsburg Monarchy Among the Great Powers, 1815-1918 ..read more

Met police seize vehicle, stolen in Italy in 1995 and worth £350,000, in London as it was about to be sold to a US buyer The wheels of justice may move painfully slowly compared with the speed of Formula One, but Scotland Yard has recovered a special edition Ferrari belonging to the racing driver Gerhard Berger 28 years after it went missing. The red F512M Testarossa, worth £350,000, was stolen in Imola, Italy, in 1995 as crowds gathered for a grand prix ..read more

Three women found with fatal knife wounds in brothel, while bodies of another woman and daughter discovered in apartment Austrian authorities are investigating the killings of four women and a 13-year-old girl in Vienna within a day, including three found stabbed to death in a brothel. The bodies of three young women were found with fatal knife wounds in a brothel in the Austrian capital’s Brigittenau district on Friday night after a witness alerted police ..read more

In the hamlet of Fontanella in the Grosses Walsertal valley, ‘leave-no-trace’ pop-up chalets offer an alternative for skiers looking for a back-to-nature stay in the Alps On a steeply pitched road in Grosses Walsertal valley, it was snowing – heavily – as if the heavens had shattered. I was two hours west of Innsbruck, deep in the Alps in midwinter, but the view was free from the rows of snow-laden hotels, après-ski bars and resort chalets that I was used to seeing on previous ski trips. I’d come to the hamlet of Fontanella, halfway between Sonntag and Faschina in Vorarlberg – a place few skie ..read more

Borger’s account of how pleas in the Manchester Guardian by Viennese parents trying to rescue their children – one of them his father – from the Holocaust is gripping and powerful When he was growing up, recalls Julian Borger, it felt as if his family “had painted layer after layer of tasteful off-white over the top of something garish, more visceral and unsettling”. His difficult and dissatisfied psychologist father Robert had never managed to overcome “the refugee’s curse” of being “from two places and none at the same time”. His grandmother Erna, when invited over, “would typically arrive l ..read more

‘Defend democracy’ events were planned for Innsbruck, Salzburg and in front of parliament building in Vienna Thousands of Austrians have taken to the streets of the country’s three largest cities, in a spillover of protests over the rise of the far right in neighbouring Germany. Under the slogan “defend democracy”, gatherings organised by a broad alliance of civil society organisations, NGOs, political groups, church communities and trade unions took place in Innsbruck, Salzburg, and in front of the parliament building in Vienna ..read more

Research finds 14 different types of PFAS chemicals commonly used in ski wax on slopes in Austrian ski resorts Skiers are leaving “forever chemicals” in the snow on ski slopes, a study has found. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) – a group of 10,000 or so human-made chemicals widely used in industrial processes, firefighting foams and consumer products – are colloquially known as “forever chemicals” due to their persistence in the environment; they do not easily break down ..read more