Vienna  - The world economy will grow slightly in 2009, Luxembourg premier and euro group chief Jean-Claude Juncker predicted Friday, one day after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned that the global recovery could last more than three years.

Instead of choosing the path of massive lay-offs, European economies should "look trustingly to the year 2010, which will see a recovery, if only a slight one," Juncker told reporters in Vienna after meeting Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann.

Vienna - Countries should do more to combat financial and cyber crime, UN drugs and crime office (UNODC) chief Antonio Maria Costa said Thursday, warning that there were signs of increased crime amid the global economic downturn.

"We can palpably already verify that the economic crisis is causing an additional dose of crime," Costa told reporters in Vienna.

Vienna- The price for oil produced by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) hover

Sydney - An Australian previously jailed in Germany and Austria for expounding his view that there were no mass killings of Jews in World War II was convicted Thursday of contempt of court in Melbourne for continuing to publish anti-Semitic material on his website.

German-born former high school teacher Frederick Toben, 65, was the subject of a civil action by Jeremy Jones, a former president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, for defying a court order to stop publishing claims that the Holocaust never happened.

Vienna - Austrian officials and politicians on Wednesday protested comments by US economist Paul Krugman that Austria risked bankruptcy owing to its large exposure in Eastern Europe.

There was no need for "unqualified statements based on inadequate information, which can put a country under massive pressure if they are uttered carelessly," Vice Chancellor and Finance Minister Josef Proell said, according to Austrian press agency APA.