8. juli 2003

Italian-German relations at a low The relationship between Germany and Italy is worse than it has been in years. In fact, I read one commentator who seriously said it had not been this bad since Italy switched sides in WWII. Even as Berlusconi tries to save face and sort-of-apologise at the same time for his "nazi guard" statement, one of his junior ministers, Stefano Stefani, characterised German tourists in less than flattering words: "We know the Germans well, these stereotyped blondes with a hyper-nationalist pride who have always been indoctrinated to be first in the class at any cost." I am sure his local tourist board is happy about those words. German chancellor Schröder is threatening to cancel his planned vacation in Italy. Wonder when all these clowns with overblown egos will stop whining and try to do the job they are elected for, namely to work together? 9:41:02 PM    comment []

Sorry, wrong number Sometimes I get search engine hits that are simply the result of different words from different entries combining. Somebody searched Yahoo for "norway single mother blonde Bergen" (how's that for a wishlist?) and was actually directed to a page in my blog where all those words appear, but not together, I hasten to add.  After some thought, I suddenly realised that the search aimed at a particular 22 year old single mother from Bergen, nicknamed Vikki (picture), who has advertised for the love of her life on a web page. This attracted emails from 5,000 men, including eight marriage proposals. She is shocked at the attention, and proclaims she really wants a local man, as she could never leave Bergen (and the ad is in Norwegian only). Note that those 5,000 emails arrived before the story was picked up by Ananova, which often works as a bridge between news sources in the the rest of the world and English-language papers. PS: I suspect this is the site in question, but it is a crappy geocities site and has exceeded its allowed bandwidth for the day. You can still get a messed-up (at least I hope it is!) cached version through Google, though. 7:52:10 PM    comment []

New suicide attack next-to-last straw for Abbas A suicide bombing that killed a 65-year old Israeli woman threatens to throw the peace plan into further turmoil, and it's not the Israelis that pull back or retaliate this time. A statement claiming to be from Islamic Jihad takes responsibility for the attack, but the organisation's senior leadership says it stands by the truce and have no knowledge of the attack. Israel on its side reiterated that PA prime minister Mahmoud Abbas has to crack down on militants, but has so far restrained from a violent response. Mahmoud Abbas is furious with this attack, and also with continued criticism coming from his own Fatah movement's hardline fractions. He has fired off letters to the Fatah Central Committee where he resigns from the committee, and at the same time sent a letter to President Yasser Arafat (picture), where he demands to know what plans exactly the movement has related to the confidence-building steps outlined in the roadmap. If Abbas cannot accept the answer he receives, he will resign immediately as prime minister, sources say. Abbas has also postponed a planned meeting with Ariel Sharon. Yasser Arafat is widely believed to be backing both horses inside the Palestinian leadership. He certainly has had no intention of cracking down on the terror groups — on the contrary he sees continued suicide bombing as an important bargaining tool — and the Israelis and the US directly accuse him of personal responsibility for a number of terror acts. Mahmoud Abbas, who lacks street credibility among Palestinians, has now forced Arafat to commit, to him personally, to actually do concrete steps towards peace, or he's resigning. If he does, the peace plan is pretty much in ruins. Yasser Arafat on his side may realise that if the US-Israeli plan to sideline him fails, Bush may actually conclude that the only way to move forward towards peace is to have him removed, an extremely risky step. 4:40:48 PM    comment []

White House admits Niger-Iraq uranium link flawed The White House has for the first time publicly admitted that key evidence that Saddam Hussein tried to build a nuclear arsenal, claims he had tried to buy uranium in Niger, 'turned out to be incorrect.' Bush mentioned this specific case in his State of the Union address, and refered to British sources. While Mr. Bush cited the British report, seemingly giving the account the credibility of coming from a non-American intelligence service, Britain itself relied in part on information provided by the C.I.A., American and British officials have said. Curcular reference :- see Reference, circular Reference, Circular :- see Circular reference 4:17:50 PM    comment []

Consumers baffled by technology jargon "Only slightly more than half correctly identified the definition of megahertz - a measurement of the processing power of a computer chip." (BBC News) The BBC journalist obviously doesn't have much of a clue, either. 12:58:43 PM    comment []

Spam sues anti-spam It's hardly a secret that it annoys the producers of the luncheon meat Spam, Hormel Foods, that the name has become synonymous with junk email. Maybe not all advertising is good advertising. Still, it took a rather parodic turn when Hormel sued the company Spam Arrest for trademark infringment. The name "spam" has struck to junk email as a result of a famous Monty Python sketch, where a group of vikings drowns out all conversation in a cafe by singing "Spam spam spam spam. Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!" (etc) contunously, loudly and annoyingly. 11:54:51 AM    comment []

What happened on 9/11 - again Interest in the events of 9/11-01 has not been waning; quite the opposite. On message boards, mailing lists and "alternative" news sites, conspiracy nuts post endless amounts of detailed articles that is out to prove that the US government somehow knew about the terrorist attacks in advance. Here is an interesting article debunking one of the well-used conspiracy articles. 9:24:36 AM    comment []

Norway still on top The United Nations Development Index for 2002 is being released today, officially, but the report has already been leaked by Canadian media. For almost a decade, Canada resided on the top of the composite list, who ranked quality of life based on life expectancy, education, health, income, poverty and the environment. Then, in 2001, Norway kicked Canada down from the #1 spot. The newest edition is even worse, as Canada slips behind their neighbours in the south, the USA, which occupies the #7 slot. Norway is still the best place to live, at least according to this index, followed by Iceland, Sweden, Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium and the United States. It must be noted that the differences between the top countries are small, and the changes from last year have been very marginal. Life in Canada hasn't become worse, quite the opposite, but it is starting to slowly lag behind countries where the development is more positive. The index ranks 175 countries, and all the bottom 25 are in Africa. Sierra Leone is last, a war-torn country where the life expectancy is only 34 years. 8:29:16 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.08.2003; 01:51:37.