Category: General Interest

The sum of all Christmas sales is facing an unprecedented decrease this year in the corona crisis. According to a forecast by the location consultant RegioPlan, which is available to the APA, the separate expenditures made around Christmas will decrease by 17 percent from 2.1 to 1.75 billion euros compared to 2019. The only winners in retail are online and food retailers. The giving away of non-trade-relevant vouchers and money is also expected to increase strongly. An important part of the business has already been missed due to the current…

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On Wednesday the government wants to communicate concrete steps on how things will continue after the lockdown. There are already fierce debates and wish lists on this. In a letter to Health Minister Rudolf Anschober (Greens), the heads of the nine public hospital operators warn against opening steps that are too rapid. After the end of the lockdown on December 6, measures should be taken to “reduce the incidence of infection and keep it at a low level,” the “Kleine Zeitung” reported on Monday in advance. The letter, which is…

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On December 7, school operations are to be resumed – but many details are still open. In addition to the possible gradual opening, there is a space problem at many locations. When all classes start teaching again next week, Bernd Vogel, director of the Parhamergymnasium in Hernals, for example, has a “space problem”. He has been looking around for a few weeks now to see where rooms could be rented. The Kleinbühne Kulisse would have been willing to provide the room for lessons free of charge. But there were legal…

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To protect the elderly population from the corona virus, all persons over 65 years of age are to receive ten free FFP2 protective masks. The Minister of Health is to be authorized to make these masks available, according to an amendment submitted to the APA. The cost of this is estimated at 24 million euros in the turquoise-green amendment, which will be discussed in the Health Committee on Tuesday. The aim of the masks action is to provide the elderly population group, which is in need of special protection, with…

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The small village Fucking in Upper Austria – world-famous bacause of its name – will get the name Fugging, starting January 2021. The inhabitants and the mayor have finally had enough of the worldwide hype about their village. During the past days, it has been reported that souvenir hunters stole the coveted boundary sign by night. Some thieves were caught red-handed, they even came specially from neighboring Bavaria. Now fucking signs are popping up on the Internet: At a sales exchange, a community sign can be bought for 2,499 euros.…

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According to critics, several corona rules have been broken during the visit of newly appointed cardinals to the emeritus Pope Benedict XVI. Eleven new purple bearers went with Pope Francis to the monastery “Mater ecclesiae” in the Vatican Gardens on Saturday. It has been said that the cardinals, hardly any of whom wear a protective mask, keep little to no distance from each other. The pontiff even kisses the hands of his predecessor as if there was no pandemic at all. Pope Franziskus, who very rarely wears a mask in…

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The US pharmaceutical company Moderna wants to be the first company to apply for approval of a CoV vaccine in the EU. The application for a conditional approval is to be submitted to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) today, the company now announced. An application for emergency approval in the USA is also to be filed today in parallel, the company said. “We believe that we have a vaccine that is highly effective. We now have the data to prove it,” said Tal Zaks, Chief Medical Officer at Moderna. “We…

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Schools and retailers will be allowed to open their doors again in just over a week. The leisure industry will probably have to wait even longer. While across Europe there is fierce debate about a skiing ban, the employment market service continues to do its job unperturbed. It calls on job seekers to apply for open positions in winter tourism. Corresponding initiatives made the round in social networks in the last days. Particularly since waiters for après-ski restaurants are also being sought, which even in the case of an opening…

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The organizers of the Olympic Games in Tokyo, which have been postponed until next summer due to the coronavirus, will face considerable additional costs. According to the Japanese news agency Kyodo, the organizing committee estimates the cost of measures to protect against the corona virus at around 100 billion yen (around 802 million euros).Comprehensive tests for athletesOn December 2, the Japanese NOK, the city of Tokyo and the Japanese central government plan to present an interim report on the measures, as the Japanese newspaper “Nihon Keizai Shimbun” reported today. According…

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