LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Austria
built 213 days ago
For South Africa's Raynard Tissink, a win at Karnten Ironman Austria was the continuation of not only a magical year, but an impressive three-year run that has seen him become one of the best in the sport. For Olympic Champion Kate Allen, Ironman Austria simply continued the seemingly endless media attention her athletic exploits have created.
Source:
Austria is a constitutional democracy with a federal parliamentary form of government. The Austrian president convenes and concludes parliamentary sessions and under certain conditions can dissolve Parliament. However, no Austrian president has dissolved Parliament in the Second Republic. The custom is for Parliament to call for new elections if needed. The president requests a party leader, usually the leader of the strongest party, to form a government. Upon the recommendation of the Federal Chancellor, the president ... appoints cabinet ministers.
Source:
Austria has a well-developed social market economy with a high standard of living in which the government has played an important role. The government nationalized many of the country's largest firms in the early post-war period to protect them from Soviet takeover as war reparations. For many years, the government and its state-owned industries conglomerate played a very important role in the Austrian economy. However, starting in the early 1990s, the group broke apart, state-owned firms started to operate largely as private businesses, and the government wholly or partially privatized many of these firms. Although the government's privatization work in past years has been very successful, it still operates some firms, state monopolies, utilities, and services. The Schuessel government's privatization program further reduced government participation in the economy.
Source:
Austria has one of the highest mobile penetration levels in Europe and mobile growth has continued at about 9% during 2005. The country has a fiercely competitive mobile market, and although the population is only eight million it is served by four GSM network operators and five UMTS licence holders. The oversupply of capacity has lead to some of Europe’s lowest tariffs. Advanced wireless data services have been launched, including SMS, WAP, GPRS and 3G. The mobile operators have expanded beyond the relatively small market, to include more lucrative neighbouring markets such as Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Croatia and Slovenia. This Paul Budde report addresses these features of Austria’s wireless market in 2005 and early 2006, providing historical and current subscriber statistics, and an overview of key operators, technologies and data services.
Source:
For the first 20 years after 1867, Austria-Hungary enjoyed a measure of security both at home and abroad. Hungary was calm for the first time in decades. Under the guidance of Kálmán Tisza, Hungary's prime minister from 1875 to 1890, the Hungarian liberals in power were loyal to the compromise. The Magyars encountered strong resistance... when they tried to impose the Magyar language and Magyar culture on the non-Magyar peoples of Hungary. Austria experienced a period of reform and prosperity under German liberal governments from 1867 to 1879. After 1879, a coalition of conservative, aristocratic, clerical, and Slavic elements managed to neutralize the contending nationalities by setting one group against another so that no one group would ever become too powerful.
Source:
German-speaking Austrians, by far the country's largest group, form roughly 90% of Austria's population. The Austrian federal states of Carinthia and Styria are home to a significant indigenous Slovenian minority with around 14,000 members (Austrian census; unofficial numbers of Slovene groups speak of up to 50,000). About 20,000 Hungarians and 30,000 Croatians live in the east-most Bundesland, Burgenland (formerly part of the Hungarian half of Austria-Hungary). The remaining number of Austria's people are of non-Austrian descent, many from surrounding countries, especially from the former East Bloc nations. So-called guest workers
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Austria