Austrian

SESTRIERE, Italy -- There is one piece of good news for Bode Miller. He can't ski in any more events. Miller was disqualified from the slalom yesterday for straddling a gate, meaning the impetuous American finished the Winter Olympics without any medals. It was a disappointing end to a dreadful Olympics for the World Cup champion, who some predicted would medal in all five of the events he entered. Miller's disqualification occurred just a few seconds into his run. After that, he skied off course.

No evidence of doping was detected in samples from 10 Austrian skiers who had to submit to surprise drug tests last weekend, the International Olympic Committee said yesterday. Urine tests conducted on the skiers - six cross-country skiers and four biathletes - turned up no evidence of the use of stimulants, anabolic steroids or even micro-doses of the synthetic blood-doping hormone called erythropoietin, or EPO, the IOC said. Follow-up blood tests either have been conducted or will be conducted on members of the Austrian team, the chair of the IOC's medical commission, Arne Ljungqvist of Sweden, said.

SAN SICARIO, Italy -- Usually in ski racing, the important numbers are first, second and third. Yesterday, though, at the women's Olympic downhill, the stories were first, eighth and 28th: First: Michaela Dorfmeister won Austria's first alpine gold of these Games -- and wasn't it about time? -- by racing the race of her life when she needed it most. Her winning time was 1 minute, 56.49 seconds. Martina Schild of Switzerland won the silver, with Sweden's Anja Paerson claiming bronze. Dorfmeister, 32, can retire now, at the end of this season, after having won everything in ski racing including an Olympic gold.

SESTRIERE, Italy -- The opening ceremony is over and it's downhill from here, starting today with alpine skiing's signature event atop Kandahar Banchetta Giovanni Nasi. Super-Gs are super, the combined is a kick and slaloms are slick, but "Olympic downhill champion" is a designation you take to your grave. Alpine skiing 7 p.m. to 11:30 p.m., chs. 11, 4

The Nobel Prize in literature was awarded yesterday to Austrian novelist, poet and playwright Elfriede Jelinek, a feminist writer with an uncompromisingly dark, disturbing and occasionally brutal vision of human nature. Jelinek, a little-known author on this side of the Atlantic but one of the most celebrated voices in the German language, was lauded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for "her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's cliches and their subjugating power."

An elderly Los Angeles woman who has fought for years to recover six paintings worth an estimated $150 million that were seized by the Nazis from her family in Vienna, Austria, in 1939 is entitled to proceed in court against the government of Austria, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled yesterday. Austria, supported by the U.S. Justice Department, had argued that it was immune under a federal law designed to block most lawsuits against foreign governments in U.S. courts. But the justices, in a 6-3 ruling, disagreed, siding instead with 88-year-old Maria V. Altmann, a former dress-shop owner in Los Angeles who arrived in the United States as a refugee in 1942.

Tomorrow at 8 p.m., John Waters is showing the undeniably artful Austrian slice-of-misery, Ulrich Seidl's Dog Days (2002), as part of his annual presentation at the Maryland Film Festival -- a yearly invitation to test Waters' unique sensibility and sample his runaway wit. But I really hope it's just a run-through for him to record a special-edition DVD commentary track in the satiric manner of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I'm always engaged less by Waters' favorite movies than by his affection for them.

HANOVER, N.H. - One by one, Howard Dean read through the placards as they were held behind the camera, stumbling at times, his voice low and scratchy from a bad cold. "Solution No. 10," he intoned, "Switch to decaf. ... No. 8: Marry Rachel on the final episode of Friends. ... No. 6: Show a little more skin." At that point, the production people directing the taping urged Dean to remove his suit jacket, but he protested dryly, "Our guys say no - it's not presidential." Instead, he flipped open the jacket, but it caught on the microphone wire taped to his back.

My pansies were buried in the recent snowfalls and look kind of pitiful. Will they come back, or should I pull them out and plan on replacing them in early spring? Pansies have weak branches and appear to be wimpy plants, but they are very resilient and can tolerate most winter weather. If your only problems were snow and cold, I would expect that your plants will slowly recover from the piles of snow and will come back strong in the spring. On the other hand, there are several fungal diseases that thrive in cool, wet weather and can kill pansies.

CHRISTKINDL, Austria -- It is a tiny little hiccup of a place. The wee dot that it is on a map shows not even the faintest squiggly line of road going there, and, thus, it takes a resident to guide foreigners to the exact spot. No problem, he says. Go up the mountain, then left, left and right. He pat-pats the hood of the car for emphasis and sends the foreigners trundling up the mountain. No problem. Grown-ups may find themselves losing the way, but the children of the world have never had a problem finding the hamlet of Christkindl.