Vienna’s coordinator for psychiatry, addiction and drug issues, Ewald Lochner, blamed what he called a “societal backlash”. A city study found that the share of LGBTIQ+ people who regularly experienced discrimination in public rose from 28 per cent in 2015 to 38 per cent ten years later. Lochner said people were more likely to face hostility, for example, when a gay couple walked hand in hand through the city.

HOSI chair Ann-Sophie Otte also pointed to the political climate and what she described as a sharp shift to the right across Europe. One quarter of queer school pupils, university students and apprentices are not out, she said, while one in five reported explicitly negative experiences. Trans people are affected most often.

Vienna’s First Level Support service, a low-threshold contact point run by the city’s psychosocial services, has received more calls from queer people, particularly young people. Otte said fears and requests for counselling rose sharply this summer after a 29-year-old gay man from Vienna was allegedly murdered in Langenzersdorf for homophobic reasons.

Discrimination and violence affect not only their direct targets but also create fear among others, Lochner said. He cited a University of Bielefeld study that found people in the LGBTIQ+ community were two and a half times as likely to develop depression as people in the heterosexual community.

So-called “pedo hunters” have also been active in Austria for some time, the article said. Often radicalised online, they contact gay men, falsely accuse them of paedophilia and lure them to meetings where they attack them. Otte urged the federal government to investigate these networks and introduce stronger rules, saying the online space must not be “a lawless zone”.

Otte said psychosocial care works well in Vienna but is lacking in rural areas. The city’s services are not specifically for queer people, she said, but have a well-trained team to which HOSI can refer people. Promoting a city or region as queer-friendly would not require a large budget, she added, but depends on whether local authorities support the approach.

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The AYA-Bad opened for outdoor swimming on 17 April. The city’s other two outdoor pools, the Lepi in Leopoldskron and Volksgartenbad, closed on 20 September.

The three pools recorded more than 249,000 visits this season, a new record. They counted 177,541 visits in 2025 and 207,741 in 2024.

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The network capacity charge is a one-off payment made when an electricity tariff is agreed. Erwin Smole, a board member of Klagenfurt municipal utility Stadtwerke Klagenfurt, said customers face an additional bill if they use more electricity than their contract allows. The threshold is 10,000 kilowatt-hours a year.

About 150 of the utility’s 88,000 customers are affected each year, Smole said. ORF Kärnten has seen a bill sent to one household that exceeded the threshold and now owes just over €1,200.

Smole said the charge funds upgrades to the electricity network, including stronger or new power lines and reinforced transformer stations. Customers whose higher consumption is temporary can request a refund if they fall below the threshold during the following three years. Otherwise, they remain in the higher charge category, he said.

Carinthia’s largest energy provider, KELAG, said in a written statement that Kärnten Netz charges the fee only when legal and contractual conditions are met, and that customers receive a separate bill.

E-Control board member Alfons Haber said households with electric cars, heat pumps or pools could save money through their own electricity generation and energy management. He cited charging electric cars overnight at low power as one way to ease pressure on the grid.

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Admont Abbey, the developer, plans to build more than 130 privately financed apartments on the site beside the Salzach River. Most will be in the upper price range, with a price cap agreed for only a small share. Plans also include a kindergarten and a cafe in the former school chapel.

The educational institute moved to a new building in Salzburg-Parsch in autumn 2025. The last classes of the private primary school are also based there. Run by the Franciscan Sisters since 1905, the school will close once all its pupils have completed primary school.

The sisters announced in 2019 that they could no longer run the two schools and sold the site to Admont Abbey. After lengthy negotiations, the Archdiocese of Salzburg took over the educational institute and built its new premises with financial support from the federal and state governments. No investor was found to fund a new primary school, and its closure was confirmed in 2025 despite protests from parents, pupils and teachers.

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Getting boats out of the water at the end of the season has become especially difficult. In Rust, nearly 80 per cent of the boats handled by one yacht and boat service have run aground in the silted water in Rust Bay, said Isabella Bendi, who works for the business. The area in front of its boat-lifting facility had been dredged weeks earlier.

Boat-service businesses have also suffered from falling water levels over the summer. The heat kept people away from the lake and reduced sailing, Bendi said, meaning fewer boats were damaged and there was less work. Philipp Kolla, one of the few certified boat electricians at the lake, said his business was down about 30 per cent this year. He said the situation reminded him of 2022, when many people went to Lake Balaton in Hungary instead and he lost customers. Kolla warned that without more water, water sports might not be able to continue next year as people are used to them.

The lake’s low water level also affects tourism, trades, fishing and food retail, Kolla said. To retain as much water as possible, Seemanagement GmbH, a company working on the lake’s management, is among other measures cutting reeds. At Purbach on Wednesday, crews used new machinery to cut old reeds. The aim is to remove broken and bent reeds from the hinterland, the company’s managing director, Erich Gebhardt, said, adding that “today’s reed is tomorrow’s mud.”

Pipes are being laid for sludge suction in the harbours and access channels of the lake’s 14 municipalities, with work due to start at the end of October. A new sludge-settling basin is being built at Weiden am See; it will be the sixth around the lake. Gebhardt said Seemanagement GmbH operates as a commercial contractor and can be commissioned by municipalities and yacht-harbour operators. He said permission for controlled reed burning would also help, but no approval has been granted despite ongoing talks between the state and the responsible ministry.

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The school, in the Tulln district, has 143 pupils. VOSÖ has operated it since 2022 and attributes the decline in enrolment to demographic changes. It has stopped accepting new registrations.

VOSÖ is in talks with the city of Klosterneuburg and the education directorate about a solution. Parents have been informed, and the association says it hopes existing pupils can complete primary school there. The future of the teaching staff is also under discussion with the education directorate.

Klosterneuburg Mayor Christoph Kaufmann said the talks were at an early stage and that the city had been surprised by the announcement. He said the city was working on possible solutions, with taking over the property as a municipality his preferred option. Any takeover would depend on funding and agreement with VOSÖ.

Kaufmann called closure the worst outcome, saying it would be difficult to accommodate the school’s eight classes in the regular school system and that pupils might have to be split up from their friends. He said the city hoped to find a solution by the end of the year. The education directorate said all parties were working towards a good outcome for pupils but had no further details.

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The chamber said it faced several crises from 2015, including the Covid pandemic, the war in Ukraine and a shortage of skilled workers. It said these increased the need to communicate members’ concerns and interests, leading it to hire external advisers.

Contracts obtained by ORF through a court case under Austria’s Freedom of Information Act show that PR adviser Rudolf Fußi received a monthly flat fee of 2,000 euros for weekend and public holiday availability under a 2017 agreement. The chamber said the service was regularly used and that a flat fee cost less than billing by the hour.

Fußi’s agency also provided personal advice to Ruck and the chamber’s management. The monthly fee for that package was most recently 15,394 euros.

A separate agreement covered advice from an agency associated with Wolfgang Rosam. The chamber sought to establish itself as a political agenda-setter and place its positions in Austrian media. The monthly fee for strategic advice on policy interests and topics was most recently 6,500 euros. The chamber said the two firms had different areas of focus. Rosam said he had advised the chamber for many years, including presidents Nettig and Jank before Ruck.

The Vienna branch of the Freedom Party of Austria called in August for a special audit of the chamber’s PR spending. Based on published contracts, it estimated the total value since 2019 at 18.579 million euros. The exact spending is difficult to establish because framework agreements were not always used in full and the published figures also include third-party costs, such as advertising and poster space.

Rosam’s agency agreements were renewed annually from 2015 to 2025. They were either awarded directly or the process received only one bid. The chamber did not answer questions about whether it sought competing bids or why the work was never put out to tender as a single package. It said the contracts had ended and that future work would be tendered on a project-by-project basis.

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The second phase of testing is expected to begin on December 15. The Austrian-Australian company intends to examine at least two deeper layers and says it is optimistic about finding more gas.

The well reaches about 1,700 metres underground. ADX says it has encountered eight gas-bearing zones so far, while data suggest three more could also contain gas.

ADX describes the drilling as promising and says it is targeting deposits at relatively shallow depths. The company says pressure and flow rates indicate a good supply of gas from the rock. It estimates the area has a mean resource potential of about 226 million cubic metres. Further tests will determine whether production is economically viable and at what scale.

ADX is also planning work at existing oil and gas fields in the Vienna Basin, which the company says could increase daily production by about 40 per cent.

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Parking there previously cost nothing. A day ticket now costs 6.30 euros. About 1,400 students attend the HTL technical college and the sports gymnasium nearby. Student representatives estimate that around one-third regularly drive to school and want to park close by.

HTL student representative Luka Kolanovic said free parking should be restored. He said public transport was not a feasible option for some students travelling from the Bregenzerwald or Montafon. Sports gymnasium student representative Sophia Thoma said the fees were too much for some students and that they should be able to drive to school.

The student representatives have launched a petition for free parking and have collected nearly 160 signatures. The schools are served by a bus stop directly outside, and the railway station is a few minutes’ walk away.

Dornbirn Mayor Markus Fäßler said the decision to charge for parking at Birkenwiese had been made years ago and that he could not support reduced fees for students. He encouraged them to use public transport.

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Speculation about changes to the Federal Council’s departments began after Parmelin announced his departure last Friday, even though the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) has yet to name a candidate to succeed him.

Jans has been justice minister for less than three years, but the SVP and the FDP have repeatedly criticised his asylum policy. Both centre-right parties are also wary of him taking charge of economic affairs. The head of business association Economiesuisse has said the department should remain in centre-right hands.

Vatter said opponents want to prevent a left-wing minister from setting his own priorities in areas such as housing and labour-market policy.

The SVP has also raised the possibility of two department changes, saying it would consider whether its candidate could take leadership of either the justice or defence department. That has fuelled speculation that Defence Minister Martin Pfister, a member of the Centre Party, could move to economic affairs. Vatter said centre-right parties and business groups would support such a move, but it would require a majority decision in the Federal Council.

By convention, the council’s longest-serving members can choose their departments. If Jans and Pfister could not agree, the council would have to vote, which is rare. Pfister took over the defence department about 18 months ago intending to stay, while the justice department is generally considered an unpopular portfolio that ministers have often held only briefly.

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