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Iceman discoverer claims reward By Bethany Bell BBC correspondent in Bolzan Bones of contention: How much is Oetzi worth? A German man who in 1991 discovered the 5,300-year-old iceman, Oetzi, in the Alps is now demanding up to $250,000 as a finder's reward. The provincial government of Bolzano in northern Italy, where Oetzi is a star tourist attraction, says it is considering its response. The iceman was found in the Oetztal valley on the Austrian-Italian border by Helmut Simon and his wife Erika. At first the couple thought it was a mountaineer who had had an accident. It turned out...

VIENNA (Reuters) - The man who 13 years ago found the frozen remains of a prehistoric iceman in an Alpine glacier has disappeared in the snow-covered Alps with little hope of being found. A member of the mountain rescue team at Bad Hofgastein in Austria told Reuters on Monday that Helmut Simon, the German man who found the 5,300-year-old mummified body while hiking on the border of Austria and Italy in 1991 has been missing for three days. "There's a lot of snow up there," the rescuer, who did not want to be named, said about the 2,467-metre (8,000-ft) Garmskarkogel...

For 13 years, mountaineer Helmut Simon had basked in the glory of his unique encounter with history. In 1991, the 67-year-old German discovered Otzi the Iceman, the perfectly preserved body of a Neolithic hunter, emerging from the Similaun glacier, 3,200m (10,500ft) up the Austrian Alps. Wherever he went in his beloved Alps, Simon wore a badge identifying himself as 'Discoverer of Otzi'. But yesterday, Simon's body was found in a stream in these same mountains. On 15 October, the pensioner departed alone from the village of Bad Hofgastein, near Salzburg, up the 2,134m (7,000ft) Gamskarkogel peak. His wife, Erika, who...