Vienna - Malaysia is considering fielding top nuclear official Noramly Muslim as a candidate to lead the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) after a first vote last week brought no decision, Malaysia's ambassador in Vienna said Thursday.

But the government had not yet taken a final decision on whether to nominate Professor Muslim, who currently chairs Malaysia's Nuclear Energy Licensing Board, Ambassador Arshad Manzoor Hussain told the German News Agency dpa.

Vienna - Some 3,700 Austrians injure themselves every year while spring-cleaning, a safety watchdog organization said Thursday, urging the population to do chores at a more leisurely and safer pace.

Among those involved in such accidents between March and April, a third suffered broken bones and a quarter sustained open wounds in 2007, said the Austrian Road Safety Board, which also campaigns for other safety issues.

Vienna - The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei on Thursday welcomed the agreement between the United States and Russia to draw up a new deal on nuclear disarmament.

US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev pledged after a meeting in London on Wednesday to pursue additional reductions of their nuclear arsenals, by building on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) arms limitation programme.

Vienna  - Julius Meinl V, the owner of Austrian private bank Meinl Bank AG, was detained on charges of defrauding investors, Austrian media said Thursday.

Meinl, 49, was detained Wednesday evening after being interviewed by prosecutors over irregularities regarding three companies set up by the bank, Format, a weekly business magazine, reported.

"Julius Meinl was detained because of the danger of flight" Gerhard Jarosch, the spokesman of Vienna's prosecution office, was quoted as saying.

Vienna  - Disgraced Austrian cyclist Bernhard Kohl on Tuesday publicly named his former manager Stefan Matschiner as his supplier of a wide range of doping substances, following Matschiner's arrest Monday night.

Kohl was stripped of his third place in the 2008 Tour de France for using the blood booster CERA, also known as third-generation EPO.

Since 2005, Matschiner had sold Kohl EPO, growth hormone, testosterone and insulin, as well as carrying out performance- enhancing blood transfusions, the athlete told reporters Tuesday evening.