Vienna - Mexican star tenor Rolando Villazon has again cancelled performances for a period of several months, as his management said Wednesday he will have to undergo vocal chord surgery. The opera singer is not expected to perform until 2010, according to the press release.

The Vienna State Opera said it would have to replace Villazon for his title role in Jules Massenet's Werther in May.

The tenor has been troubled by health problems since 2006, which have forced him to pause in past years. He currently suffers from a cyst on his vocal chords.

Vienna - The search for a successor to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Mohamed ElBaradei officially entered its second round Wednesday as the nuclear watchdog confirmed its list of five candidates. The Japanese and South African candidates, Yukiya Amano and Abdul Samad Minty, re-entered the race after a deadlock in a first round of voting.

The three new candidates are the nuclear industry executive Jean-Pol Poncelet from Belgium, the Slovenian constitutional judge Ernest Petric, and Luis Echavarri of Spain, who heads the nuclear branch of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Vienna - The search for a successor to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Mohamed ElBaradei officially entered its second round Wednesday as the nuclear watchdog confirmed its list of five candidates. The Japanese and South African candidates, Yukiya Amano and Abdul Samad Minty, re-entered the race after a deadlock in a first round of voting.

The three new candidates are the nuclear industry executive Jean-Pol Poncelet from Belgium, the Slovenian constitutional judge Ernest Petric, and Luis Echavarri of Spain, who heads the nuclear branch of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Vienna - Austrian leaders called on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to use his country's influence to stabilize the wider Middle East region on Tuesday, the second day of his visit to Austria. At the outset of a bilateral business forum, Austrian President Heinz Fischer called on Syria to use its influence on Iran.

The aim was to get Tehran to react constructively to proposals from the international community for resolving the nuclear stand-off and resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, Fischer told the forum.

Vienna - An Austrian hospital put a woman in quarantine Tuesday on suspicion that she was the country's first patient with swine flu, a spokeswoman of the hospital in Steyr said. A laboratory in Vienna was running additional tests after initial results showed no infection with the virus.

The 28-year-old woman recently returned from Mexico, the centre of the outbreak.

When she was admitted to the hospital in the town of Steyr with flu-like symptoms on Tuesday, she set into motion an emergency plan, spokeswoman Christine Doerfel said.

Vienna - Polish politician Marek Nawara returned to his home country Monday after being hospitalized in Austria with severe head injuries from a skiing accident in February, according to his hospital in the town of Klagenfurt.

The premier of the Malopolska province is set to continue his rehabilitation treatment in Poland.

"It is remarkable how well he has recovered after his accident," said Eberhard Uhl, the head of the neurosurgical unit of the hospital.