December 2020

The school cancellation fund will also be extended

Students who are in dire straits through no fault of their own can be funded with up to 800 euros through a new Corona hardship fund. Half of the fund, endowed with 450,000 euros, is provided by the Ministry of Education and the Austrian Students' Union (ÖH). The Ministry of Education's school cancellation fund, which supports schools and parents in the event of cancellation costs for school events, is also being extended.

Requirements for support from the new Corona hardship fund for students are, on the one hand, adequate academic success and, on the other, an emergency. The latter is the case when the monthly expenses exceed the monthly income and that is not the responsibility of those concerned. The fund replaces its own ÖH fund, which was endowed with 700,000 euros in the summer semester.

The ÖH has not yet been able to specify when and how students are entitled to numbers as long as the guidelines are not known. However, the old regulation was followed.

School Cancellation Fund

In contrast, the school cancellation fund managed by the Austrian Exchange Service (OeAD) is being extended. This replaces cancellation fees for multi-day school events (ski courses, sports weeks, language trips, etc.) that were canceled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Travel and accommodation costs, meals or admissions are eligible for compensation. Matura trips are not school-related events.

First of all, the schools, as collective applicants for the parents, must try to achieve a free cancellation or more favorable cancellation conditions with their contractual partners. Only if this fails can a replacement be requested from the fund.

Cancellation costs of 80 percent will be reimbursed if the booking was made before March 11, 2020. 70 percent will be refunded for bookings made after March 11, 2020 until the end of the 2019/20 academic year. The submission deadline is July 30, 2021. The fund is endowed with a total of 13 million euros for both rounds – so far, almost eight million euros have been paid out.

Austria's cities are very livable

Austria's cities are attractive places to live and work. The supply of jobs and services of general interest is “typically in the upper middle field or even in the top field” of the EU, shows an analysis by the WIIW. Above all, the costs for public transport, water, energy and especially housing are low compared to the total expenditure. This leaves significantly more money for leisure and culture in Austria than in other cities.

When it comes to early childhood care, Austria's cities are in the European midfield and Vienna in the top third. When it comes to the density of hospital beds, the large Austrian cities are among the leaders and Vienna is among the European average. Public transport in the large Austrian cities is “in the good European midfield”, but if you take into account the low costs, then the Austrian cities do “extremely well”.

According to the WIIW report, the quality of the apartments in terms of living space is comparatively high compared to other European cities. The fact that housing costs in Austria are relatively low is due to the “generous welfare state system combined with a less commercialized housing market and an active social housing policy”. The housing costs of Austrian city dwellers are more than a third lower than those of residents of large German cities. Conversely, Austrian city dwellers can consume more than 5 percent more leisure activities and spend more than 13 percent more in restaurants.

The comparison with large cities in Italy, where there is even less welfare state system, a commercialized housing market and hardly any social housing, is “even more dramatic”. Compared to cities in Italy, Austria's city dwellers have almost a third lower housing costs and can spend almost three times as much on leisure and culture and over 60 percent more on restaurants and hotels.

The WIIW deduces from the results of its study that the subsidized housing should be expanded with cooperative and community housing in order to keep housing costs low in the long term. This also applies to the expansion of public transport and health care. The WIIW sees “potential for improvement” in (early childhood) education, where local cities are currently not in the top group.

After a shopping tour in Bavaria, Germany, several Austrians now have to pay a hefty fine.

Several Austrians – for example from Upper Austria – went on a shopping tour in Bavaria last weekend and bought Christmas gifts as well as groceries. Unfortunately, due to the quarantine regulation, this is currently not permitted. The people concerned must now expect fines between 500 and 5,000 euros.

“Even higher fines are possible for repeat offenders and those who cannot be instructed,” the police told the “Passauer Neue Presse”. During a traffic control, the officials became aware of a couple from Braunau, among others. When asked, the 38-year-old Romanian admitted that he and his wife only went shopping for a short time. This was also confirmed when the trunk was checked.

The Romanian and his wife from Thailand were then told “that they are not allowed to buy groceries in Germany at the moment,” the police said. “This purpose is not permitted within the meaning of the Entry Quarantine Regulation,” the report said. The couple is now expecting a fine.

Two hours later, another couple from Braunau was caught there who had also bought groceries in Bavaria. They too now have to expect a fine. The police counted a total of 14 reports on Saturday afternoon alone – but not all of them had already been completely recorded.

According to the police, “increased surveillance measures” will continue to be carried out to comply with the entry quarantine regulation. On Friday, the police had already caught several Austrians who had violated the quarantine regulations when entering the country.

The Apple executive who was in charge of the show has left the company.

Tim Cook

Apple has been working on a new series called Scraper for its Apple TV + service. When Tim Cook got wind of it, the series was canceled, reports the New York Times.

The Dramedy series was supposed to be about the rise and fall of Gawker Media. According to insiders, Apple CEO Tim Cook sent an email to those responsible when he heard about it. In it he is said to have made “very clear his negative position towards Gawker”.

Apple TV + has finished working on Scraper. Apple manager Layne Eskridge, who brought the series to Apple TV +, has left the company. The authors of Scraper, some of whom are former Gawker employees, are now trying to sell the series to other streaming services and TV stations.

Tim Cook outed

It is astonishing that Apple even started working on this series without first speaking to Tim Cook. Gawker came out Tim Cook in 2008 when he was number 2 at Apple behind Steve Jobs. It wasn't until 6 years later that Cook spoke openly about his sexuality.

In 2010 Gizmodo also leaked the iPhone 4. The technology portal belonging to Gawker had bought a prototype lost in a bar for 5,000 US dollars. The leak is said to have led Steve Jobs to burst into anger. The result was a house search at the Gizmodo editor who wrote the article on the leaked iPhone 4.

Hulk Hogan Sex Tape

Gawker also regularly messed with other Silicon Valley personalities. This also included Peter Thiel. He finally took revenge by supporting Hulk Hogan financially in his lawsuit against Gawker. Gawker had previously released a sex tape from the former wrestler.

In 2016, Gawker filed for bankruptcy and ceased operations at gawker.com. In 2018, the domain was bought by media owner Bryan Goldberg for $ 1.5 million at the bankruptcy estate auction.

Only 6.4 percent of the population of the 10th district had themselves tested. Strongest participation in new construction.

A total of 234,889 people took part in the corona mass tests in Vienna. That is only around 13.5 percent of all Viennese aged six and over who are eligible to take a test. The three test centers in the town hall, the trade fair and the Marx hall were designed for up to 1.2 million people.

In the Ö1 morning journal, City Councilor for Health Peter Hacker (SPÖ) put the numbers into perspective: in November alone, around 200,000 people would have been tested in the capital, and they “will certainly not” have gone to mass tests again.

Tactical stay away

In addition, unlike other countries, Austria carried out the mass test immediately after a lockdown. Because of this, and because of the tense labor market situation, many people would have considered “whether it is good at the moment that they risk being quarantined if they have no symptoms,” said Hacker.

In the town hall one sees this thesis supported by the evaluation of the participation according to district. This shows that in districts with a higher proportion of blue-collar workers, fewer people tended to go to the mass tests than in better-off socio-economically.

However, a connection between willingness to test and a migration background cannot be established. Rudolfsheim-Fünhaus, the district with the highest proportion of people of foreign origin, is represented above average. In Liesing, which has the second lowest proportion of people with a migration background, fewer people went to test than in the Vienna average.

A possible migration background was of course not recorded in the mass tests, since the factors involved were epidemiologically irrelevant.

City Councilor for Health Peter Hacker

591 infected people without symptoms were discovered during the tests in Vienna. A total of 1,515 gargle tests were carried out after a positive antigen test, 725 were negative. The evaluation was still pending in 199 cases.

The fair was the most popular. Almost 117,000 people did the corona check there – which is also attributed to the fact that in the city council office, after the very poor start from Monday, testing was also possible without registration. A good 80,000 people were checked in the town hall, and a little less than 38,000 in the Marxhalle.

Look ahead

As representatives of the armed forces, the Arbeiter-Samariterbund and the professional fire brigade reported on Monday, there are already considerations for the implementation of mass testing in the coming year. A new setting should therefore ensure that one can get by with a little less medical staff without restricting the overall capacities. Corresponding plans are currently being drawn up.

In any case, big clearing away is not the order of the day. “Much of the infrastructure will remain in place,” emphasized Vienna's military commander Kurt Wagner. They will be left in the halls. Only the control systems or barriers in front of the facilities will be dismantled.

“I think that we have succeeded in making an effective contribution to protecting the population,” said Wagner happily, despite the influx that fell short of expectations. The feedback from those people who had themselves tested was very positive, he said. The Armed Forces were deployed in Vienna with a total of 2,000 people – including civil and military personnel. Half of them came from other federal states.

Order volume around EUR 280 million

The Austrian construction group Porr is building the infrastructure of the British line for high-speed trains HS2. Between January 2021 and April 2029, the company will provide 453 kilometers of slab track with an order value of 260 million pounds (282 million euros). The client is High Speed Two (HS2) Ltd.

Specifically, the domestic construction company is supplying the major railway project with the Slab Track Austria technology, which is already widely used internationally, which it developed together with the Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) and first implemented in 1989. The new British rail line will connect the cities of London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds and improve the connection of eight of the ten largest cities in Great Britain.

Austria's largest construction company Strabag is already involved in the construction of the high-speed line as part of a three-party consortium, the order volume of which is at least £ 3.3 billion. Strabag accounts for 32 percent of this. The three-party joint venture was commissioned with the planning, calculation and work preparation in the summer of 2017.

After commissioning, the H2S will serve over 25 train stations and connect around 30 million people with each other. The trains can travel the high-speed line at an operating speed of up to 360 km / h. According to Porr, the line between London and Birmingham will be built in phase 1. In phase 2a the line will be extended to Crewe and continued in phase 2b to Manchester in the west and to Leeds in the east.

In addition to Austria (Koralmbahn), Porr technology is reportedly already in use internationally in Germany (including Stuttgart 21), Great Britain (Barking Riverside), Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Australia (Melbourne Metro Tunnel) and Qatar .

“With our technology, we enable almost maintenance-free rail operation at top speeds,” says Porr boss Karl-Heinz Strauss.

In the Causa Commerzialbank (Cb) Mattersburg, the ÖVP is in favor of an investigation at European level. “The RMB (Regionalmanagement Burgenland GesmbH, note) had invested 1.4 million euros, presumably European funding, at the Commerzialbank Mattersburg”, justified the MEP and designated ÖVP state party leader Christian Sagartz on Monday in a broadcast.

The RMB knew about the bank lock and made a transfer to withdraw the money. The Financial Market Authority (FMA) prevented this at the last second. Governor Hans Peter Doskozil (SPÖ) had to admit after an initial denial that this transfer had actually been made. “Obviously some of the customers here knew better than any other customer,” says Sagartz.

He was supported by MEP Angelika Winzig (ÖVP): “As a member of the Budget Control Committee, it is my job to monitor the correct use of European funding and the careful handling of EU citizens' tax money,” said Winzig. The Budgetary Control Committee is examining the lawful handling of EU subsidies across Europe, and the RMB must also be examined carefully.

This is European tax money and a special duty of care is required, stressed the MEP. The financing will either be carried out on a project basis or by means of annual funding agreements. It should therefore also be questioned “how such a high credit could come about in Burgenland”.

Winzig and Sagartz announced a parliamentary question to the Commission: “We have to ask ourselves: Has the European tax money been carefully handled here? What steps and investigations are planned by the Commission? If there have been these rumors for a year, why was it the RMB 1.4 million euros parked at the Commerzialbank Mattersburg? Who knew more here than all other customers and has benefited from this system? ” According to the two MEPs, there is a need for complete clarification in the interests of all European taxpayers.