USA: New Orleans police are investigating an armed robbery in which the assailant walked away with only 35 cents. Two men, aged 33 and 29, were robbed by a man armed with a semi-automatic gun in the city’s Carrollton area.

RTÉ has been criticised for its decision not to provide a sign language option for tonight’s Eurovision Song Contest final.

USA:  A sailor who was woken by snoring found a baby sea lion asleep on a bunk in his boat.

It is called Eurovision, but organisers of the famous singing competition have invited Australia to take part in this year’s show.

Europe showed a willingness yesterday to give Athens more time to pay its debts, but little sign that it would yield to the new Greek government’s demands for debt forgiveness.

AUSTRALIA: A long-running war of words between an Australian and the official Scrabble body has finally been declared a draw by a state court.

Conchita Wurst is to present the Eurovision Song Contest in 2015.

Appy ending as iPhone helps end crime spree

George Michael's doctors are "optimistic" about his recovery.

AUSTRIAN prosecutors investigating suspicions that an 80-year-old sexually abused his two mentally disabled daughters for 41 years said no children were born of the alleged incestuous relationships.

Austrian police say they are investigating allegations a man locked up his two mentally disabled daughters and sexually abused them for 41 years.

EUROPEAN Central Bank Governing Council member Christian Noyer ruled out a restructuring of Greece’s debt, calling it a “horror story” that would leave the nation shut out of financing for years.

Paul McCartney’s ex-wife, Heather Mills, has left a hospital after being treated for a shoulder injury she suffered during a skiing accident in Austria.

Hidden among dense underbrush on an Austrian hillside, a great-great “grandparent” of one of the world’s most popular white wines survived wars, winters and insect pests for 500 years.

All rafters missing after their boats capsized in an Alpine river in western Austria have been found, the Red Cross said today.

Ten people were missing after their rafts capsized today on a river in western Austria, police said.

An outdoor concert in Vienna that had been billed as the major global tribute to Michael Jackson has been moved to London and postponed until June, organisers said today, saying they needed more time to put together the show.

CLOSE to 600 journalists, TV crew members and international commentators are expected to focus the world’s attention on Ireland during voting on the Lisbon treaty referendum in six week’s time.

MORE than 340 journalists from around the world will be reporting from Ireland tomorrow on the Lisbon treaty, including several media groups from as far away as Japan and the US.

A woman was held captive in a cellar for almost 24 years by her father, who repeatedly raped her and fathered at least six children, police said.

A father kept his daughter captive in a cellar for 24 years, Austrian media reported today.

A fire that engulfed a home for the elderly in western Austria killed 11 people and injured six others.

A man suspected of murdering a fellow homeless person and eating his entrails is in psychiatric care at a special facility, an official said today.

Police in the Austrian capital today said they were interrogating a young German citizen suspected of murdering a fellow homeless man and possibly eating his entrails.

Former UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, who was elected Austrian president despite an international scandal about his secretive Second World War military service, died today, Austrian media reported. He was 88.

A helicopter and a small plane collided in the air and crashed near a ski slope in Austria, killing eight people, police said.

THE young Austrian woman imprisoned for eight-and-a-half years in an underground cell told journalists that she “thought only of escape” during her entire ordeal, and once tried to jump out of her captor’s car.

Repeatedly shutting her eyes against the glare of TV cameras, the Austrian teenager imprisoned for more than eight years described in a nationally-broadcast interview today the horror of being locked into her dark underground cell for the first time.

The young Austrian woman imprisoned for eight and a half years in an underground cell “thought only of escape” during her entire ordeal, she told a magazine in an interview published today.

The Austrian woman who was kidnapped and held captive for more than eight years, spending much of her time confined to a windowless underground cell, will give her first interview this week.

Austrian police today said they were "quite sure" a young woman found this week was Natascha Kampusch who vanished on her way to school on March 2, 1998, when she was 10.

Several cats have tested positive for the H5N1 strain of bird flu, Austrian state authorities said today, in the first reported cases there of the disease spreading to an animal other than a bird.

Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel says he’s “proud” of the tough position Austria staked out in crisis talks on the launch of negotiations with Turkey to join the European Union.

Flood victims waded into their homes to shovel out mud and clean-up crews cleared the debris from streets after heavy rains deluged central and southern Europe, killing 34 people.

THE bodies of four slain infants have been found at an apartment complex in southern Austria.

In a gruesome discovery that stunned usually tranquil Austria, police said today they found the bodies of four newborns – two stuffed in a freezer and two entombed in paint buckets filled with cement – at an apartment complex.

A cable car gondola carrying as many as four people crashed to the ground in eastern Austria today, injuring passengers, state broadcaster ORF reported.

Police are investigating an email claiming admission for a grenade attack on an Austrian nightclub which wounded 27 teenagers.