About 60 vehicles slammed into each other today in heavy snowfall on an autobahn in northwestern Austria, killing one person and injuring at least 30 others, police said.

Up to 100 cars were involved in a huge pile up on an Austrian autobahn today.

HURRICANE-force winds across Europe at the weekend killed 13 people and left a trail of destruction, as cars were blown off the road, roofs were ripped offand trees fell like matchsticks.

A mystery triggered this week by the bizarre discovery of the carcass of a shark in a freshwater river in northern Austria ended today when the man who put it there confessed it had been a joke.

IRELAND is in the midst of an energy crisis and it has to be called what it is, according to an alternative energy expert.

Authorities today announced Austria’s fourth case of mad cow disease and said all other cows at the affected farm had been destroyed.

Lightning struck and killed a 50-year-old married father of four after he and a friend were caught in a sudden thunderstorm as they were cutting wood in a forest, authorities said today.

A woman was arrested today over the grisly killing of her 21-year-old daughter, whose charred body – its head and hands chopped off – was fished out of the Danube River earlier this month, Austrian authorities said.

PLANTING of GM crops worldwide is estimated to have increased by 9 million hectares (22 million acres) in 2005.

The Austrian army evacuated 500 guests – half of them schoolchildren on a ski course – from an alpine village isolated by avalanches today.

A biplane drifted off a runway while landing and killed a man riding a bicycle at an airfield in Upper Austria, police said today.

Police cordoned off Prague’s Old Town today and ordered residents to evacuate as emergency workers tried to save the historic district.

Czech police have evacuated the Old Town of Prague due to the fears of flooding.

As many as 40,000 residents fled low-lying parts of Prague before dawn today, hours before the worst flood in more than 100 years was expected to hit the Czech capital.

Europe’s flood death toll has swelled to at least 74 as torrential rains unleashed raging waters that swept away Russian tourists, triggered landslides in Germany and Switzerland and shut down shipping on the Danube River in Austria.

At least 72 people have died across Europe as floods swept away Russian tourists, triggered landslides in Germany and Switzerland and shut down shipping on the Danube River in Austria.