UK citizenship testing to start

From Tuesday, people seeking to become British will take a citizenship test at one of 90 centres across the country, before taking part in a formal citizenship ceremony.

The Home Office says that it wanted to create a new more meaningful way of becoming a citizen in an effort to help people integrate and share in British values and traditions.

See how you fare in a UK citizenship test via a link at ELSOKAI >

Horror stories on Hallowe'en

It’s Hallowe’en tonight. And if you want horror, there’s no shortage.

Three teenage Christian girls were beheaded while walking to school in Indonesia and another girls’ school has been torched in Afghanistan.

And as the UK is about to celebrate a bit of religious terrorism, had Guy Fawkes been successful the blast would have been audible five miles away and anyone in the vicinity would have been killed instantly.

Meanwhile, in the States, a “Christian” group is terrorising teenagers into following Christ.

Talking of whom…most bosses in the UK are planning to cancel their office Christmas parties this year because of the cost.

But in a charitable act, the government of Pakistan has decided to issue temporary passports to 20,000 illegal Pakistani immigrants to help them to avail themselves of an amnesty offered by the Greek government.

In the last week of Ramadan celebrations in Mecca, seven Muslims were crushed to death while clamouring for charity coins.

Getting back to Hallowe’en, a charity pumpkin competition in the UK has been cancelled due to sour grapes.

And anyone selling a house in the UK could be loosing pounds from their HIPs.

In the Greek news:

Good and bad news for Hios: A new earthquake shook the Aegean this morning but it’s been confirmed that the suspected bird-flu case was a false alarm.

More details on all these stories in the ELSOKAI Forums >

Happy Hallowe’en – got a little bit of fun for you too at ELSOKAI

UK bird flu quarantine scandal

It seems that the parrot that sparked the bird flu scare in the UK wasn’t the first to die of it at the so-called quarantine centre which, in fact, “consists of a group of ramshackle sheds in the garden of a semi-detached house”. I say “so-called” because it has emerged that the owner of the ‘quarantine centre’ made up to £4m from secretly importing thousands of exotic birds using fake documents in a bird-smuggling operation.

The Prince of Wales will try to persuade George W Bush and Americans of the merits of Islam this week because he thinks the United States has been too intolerant of the religion since September 11.

In the States, the government is going to be looking in to whether free MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) that were intended for victims of hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma are being sold on eBay.

And eBay addicts have helped turn around the fortunes of the Royal Mail with a huge increase in the volume of parcels now sent through the post each week.

More details on these stories at the ELSOKAI Forums >

Clocks go back, winter is here

Depending upon what time you read this, the clocks either go back or fell back on Sunday morning, 04:00 becomes/became 03:00 - an extra hour in bed, oh bliss!

And so winter is here, with snow predicted in parts of Greece. And just crap weather for the rest. More details in the ELSOKAI Forums >

www.guns2thugs.prat

A man was arrested late last night in the centre of Athens, accused of selling unavailable drugs, e.g. Tamiflu, through the Internet, without ever delivering the orders to his customers. Police appealed to ‘net users to avoid purchasing drugs through the Internet.

And, in the UK, three Romanians who conned eBay customers out of thousands of pounds have been sentenced to a total of eight years' imprisonment. The "cell" tricked customers into paying for £300,000 worth of fictitious goods which never arrived.

Representatives from 13 central and southeast European countries on Friday signed a joint declaration in Slovenia, binding them to continue cooperating in combating organized crime, illegal migrations, corruption and terrorism, said reports from Slovenia.

Emily, a young cat from Wisconsin, has earned herself a place in feline history by wandering from her American home and turning up three weeks later 4,200 miles away in France.

The Ford Anglia that was used in Harry Potter’s movies has magically disappeared!

Prat of the week: A computer technician who set up a website called "Guns2Thugs" to sell imported firearms was jailed for three years yesterday.

More news in the ELSOKAI Forums >

OXI day

Well, seems it’s almost OXI news day.

For anyone using Spybot Search and Destroy (and if not, why not???), seems they’ve moved their official support forums to a new server.

And a new web browser has been born – we’ll have to see if folk flock to it in the way so many (??) did to Firefox.

More news in the pc section at the ELSOKAI Forums >

More email scams / bird flu computer virus

Just two days after the Alpha Bank scamming, whereby fake emails asking for personal account details were sent to users, a new case has surfaced involving the National Bank of Greece. Undoubtedly, other banks will also be targeted.

More details at the ELSOKAI Forums >

Hackers are also targeting fears about bird flu. Roche, the manufacturers of Tamiflu, have issued a warning about bogus adverts for ‘Tamiflu’ which are appearing on the internet.

And a new ‘virus’ has appeared, in the form of a Word attachment, which plays on people’s concerns over bird flu. Once opened, it installs a Trojan which gives the hacker complete control of the pc.

More details in the pc section.

Oh, and a woman in Belgium has been arrested for calling her husband lazy - more in Weird, Wild & Wacky, at ELSOKAI.

Turkey still threatening war ???

Turkey's National Security Council has decided not to repeal its threat of war against Greece. WTF?

Football legend George Best's condition has deteriorated and he is fighting for his life, his consultant has confirmed.

Beavers are being reintroduced to the UK, 500 years after they were hunted to extinction for their fur.

A new internet television service that will allow millions of viewers to download films and television programmes over a telephone line was unveiled yesterday - in the UK.

Meanwhile, “Our aim is to increase broadband penetration to 7% of the population by 2008 from 0.7% today.” That's from the Greek Finance Minister - check out the article at Phylax, link on the right >

And widespread ignorance about basic computer security is putting millions of people at risk from net-savvy criminals. 83% of 1,000 people questioned were not doing enough to protect themselves online, with 53% saying they did not know how to improve security... well, the good news is that registered users can find more information on the new Get Safe Online campaign, at the ELSOKAI Forums >

Skype hacked

Another quiet day in the news, but for those of you using Skype to make phone calls, have a peek in the pc section at the ELSOKAI Forums - seems someone's hacked in to Skype.

The Church of Hate

The BBC’s Greek service is to close down after 66 years.

A supermarket was found to have on sale an item with an expiry date of 1995.

And, in the US, a Church preaches that the US and UK deserves terrorist attacks and that natural disasters are God’s punishment for tolerating homosexuality.

More details at the ELSOKAI Forums >

Internet scam hits Greece

A North Yorkshire food producer has revealed her disappointment after an EU ruling stopped her using the name "feta" on her locally-produced cheese.

The world's first biogas-powered passenger train is taking its first passengers between the Swedish cities of Linkoping and Vastervik. And the biogas comes from the entrails of dead cows.

An effective male contraceptive pill, being developed by a Ioannina scientist and Japanese researchers, may be on the market in the next few years,

A study into the spread of HIV, the virus that leads to Aids, has found that male circumcision significantly protects men from picking up the infection.

According to a nationwide online poll in China, published at the weekend, while only 10 per cent of men are unhappy with the quality of marital sex, nearly 25 per cent of wives are disappointed with service between the sheets.

And a woman from Brazil resorted to Justice, demanding that her partner fulfils his conjugal duties.

So young, so dumb: America's white supremacist movement has an angelic new face: twin teenage pop stars whose songs preach messages of racial hatred. Their songs have titles such as Sacrifice, a tribute to Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess, that praises him as a "man of peace who wouldn't give up".

Scammers have come up with a new Internet fraud by pretending to send emails from banks asking for clientele data. This new scam, which was traced today in Greece, sends emails, supposedly coming from Greek banks' Security Departments, asking clients to send back their account details, in order to locate accounts supposedly used for money laundering.

And there’s a link to a picture of the world’s biggest souvlaki.

All at the ELSOKAI Forums >

Super-size souvlaki

A Patras taverna owner will today attempt to set a new world record by making a super-size souvlaki weighing some 1,850 kilos.

A new law designed to reform the way state-controlled utilities are run, and to minimizes waste and corruption, is set to be approved by the government this week.

And an American team has set out to determine if the Greeks used ‘death rays’ to sink ships.

All in the ELSOKAI Forums >

Yeah, some day the news is more interesting than others days… just the way it goes.

Don’t forget – the clocks fall back one hour this Sunday.

Conflicting news on bird flu

Conflicting news on bird flu after it was confirmed that the parrot held in quarantine in the UK did die from the deadly H5N1 strain. While experts have played down the threat to people from the disease, as it does not spread easily among humans, the Health Secretary has said that a human flu pandemic in the UK is inevitable. Armed police are to guard stocks of drugs used to fight bird flu as part of emergency measures, if a pandemic hits Britain.

One manwas killed after violence flared in Birmingham, UK, last night following a week of racial tension after it was claimed a 14-year-old Jamaican girl had been raped by an Asian gang.

When the acclaimed Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk recalled his country's mass killing of Armenians, he was forced to flee abroad.

One of the biggest car insurance companies in the UK is to launch a new type of policy. ‘Black box’ devices will log – and report - details of all journeys. Civil liberties groups are concerned about the ‘Big Brother’ aspects of the system

More news in the ELSOKAI Forums >

Weird, Wild & Wacky

OK, so sometimes we come across stuff that’s a little (!?!) bit bizarre and so I’ve set up a new heading, simply titled ‘WWW (Weird, Wild & Wacky)’. Just as an example, here’s a brief outline of the first four posts:

A motorcyclist with a helmet-wearing corpse strapped to his back crashed his bike and fled on foot, setting off a police murder hunt.

A 93-year-old driver from Florida was stopped by police as he was driving along, without having realised that there was a dead body stuck to his windscreen.

The Land Spring Garden, in Sunhe, near Beijing, is China's first speciality restaurant serving what the government hopes will one day feed its enormous population: mutant giant vegetables from space.

And if you think we’re all taking mad chicken disease far too seriously, here’s one for you:

The Choke-A-Chicken flaps and waddles around doing the Chicken Dance, clucking and flapping its wings in sync with the Chicken Dance melody. Grab him by the neck and he will squawk and cluck like mad, flapping his wings and feet wildly as if he is really being choked. Put him down and he will waddle off, singing and dancing as he goes.

(Actually, I think it’s sick but, hey, that’s just me).

Registered users can log on and read all about it in the new Weird, Wild & Wacky section in the Temple of Athina at the ELSOKAI Forums >

Fun finding a free registry cleaner

OK, maybe not the hot topic of the moment but look at the time I’m posting it – if you’ve got trouble sleeping, this should help!

And what fun I’ve been having (NOT!). I happened to flick on to Yahoo!’s ‘Technology Weekly’ section and came across an article which recommended a free registry cleaner - great, just what I’d been looking for!

So I checked it out… it won’t be released until 2006 (nice one, Yahoo!) Presumably when Microsoft’s new operating system, Vista, is released. And the fun and mystery didn't stop there.

However, I did find an interesting review of registry cleaners (some free, some to buy), you can get more details in the pc section at ELSOKAI >

Bird flu found in the UK

A parrot that died in quarantine in the UK has tested positive for avian flu, the government has said.

The EU has ordered restrictions on bird shows and urged governments to vaccinate the birds in their zoos as part of the continent's defence against a possible bird flu pandemic.

More at ELSOKAI >

“Our quality of life may have improved, but our spirit has withered”

Parents and guardians’ association of a primary school in the Athenian suburb of Aspropyrgos want to separate Gypsy children from their “normal” counterparts.

European Union experts arrived in Greece yesterday to help investigate a suspected case of bird flu on an Aegean island as initial test results from England proved negative for the disease being present in the country, indicating that the whole issue may have been a false alarm. However, there are serious doubts as to whether the sample sent was from the correct bird.

Chinese police are investigating an offer of babies for sale on the e-Bay online auction company.

And a teenager in the UK has filmed a police officer dumping his friend in a dustbin.

More on these stories at the ELSOKAI Forums >

Recognition

Giannis Varvitsiotis, head of the New Democracy European Parliamentarians, was barred from entering Turkey as authorities there stated that his European Parliamentarian passport was invalid.

An InterCity train was derailed at the station of Adendro, a village near Sindos, Thessaloniki today. Thirteen passengers were injured, including an infant.

MPs and computer experts will be meeting in London to discuss what can be done to combat computer spyware, programs which transmit information about the user back to the ‘mothership’.

It seems as though a lot of folks in the UK still aren’t aware of the threat spyware poses to their pc and their identity (possibly believing that an anti-virus program is all they need) - the UK has one of the highest rates of spyware-infected pc’s in the world.

Dr Nick Palmer, the MP who is sponsoring the meeting at Westminster, said,” "People were worried about spam but spyware is now the bigger danger. Previous ways of computer harassment, from viruses to spam, have been countered too slowly causing endless trouble for ordinary computer users. This time we need to stay ahead of the curve."

You can read the full news article in the pc section at ELSOKAI. I just hope he and they know where the curve is at. Consider this statement:

“An ugly trend is developing in the world of antispyware. It is my belief that, very soon, all current tools and methods used to detect and remove malware will become obsolete. Very soon, malware will be able to load at start up and run on the computer without being detected by any existing scanner.”

That’s a quote from Mike Healan, who runs one of the biggest, and longest established, anti-spyware websites. He’s talking about a new and aggressive form of spyware, sometimes dubbed ‘ghostware’, also known as root kits. More in the pc section at the ELSOKAI Forums >

Migrants "a great advantage"

“Migrants are not a problem, they are the great advantage of our age,” said Interior Minister, Prokopis Pavlopoulos, at a European immigration conference at Zappeion Hall in central Athens yesterday.

The National Bank of Greece said yesterday its cash machines will be out of service from 6 a.m. until 8 a.m. on Sunday as work gets under way to upgrade the bank's system.

Well, what a quiet day in the news!

Feel free to comment at the ELSOKAI Forums >

The internet - bad news, good news

In ELSOKAI today:

More sickening news on the internet child-porn scandal which is rocking Greece.

Tests, so far, on turkey samples from Oinouses have shown negative for the deadly form of the bird flu virus.

Greece was ranked the 47th least corrupt country among 159 states according to an annual report made public yesterday by graft watchdog, Transparency International.

Google won’t be hitting the g-spot for new UK email users anymore as it has to change it’s name.

And super-fast internet access may soon be possible, via airships.

More news in the ELSOKAI Forums >

Hardcore child-porn internet ring broken

Greek police have uncovered the biggest case of internet child pornography so far in the country and arrested five of 20 people suspected of being implicated in very hardcore child porn – this is sick. More at ELSOKAI >

Macedonian (FYROM) authorities said on Tuesday that one dead chicken found among hundreds in a village north of the Greek border had raised suspicions and samples were being sent to Britain for tests for possible bird flu. More later.

Too much sex?

David Beckham is a vain, arrogant and ranting Essex yob who has lost the plot. According to Victoria Beckham. Allegedly.

The BBC’s controversial autumn drama series Rome is so full of sex, violence and racy language that it will have to be toned down for viewing in Italy.

More than £2.4 billion is lying idle in the U.K. National Lottery's reserves.

Two strong earthquakes shook Zakynthos and Kefalonia early this evening.

More news at the ELSOKAI Forums >

So, what's your view on David (or Victoria) Beckham?

Greek islands quarantined

A quarantine was imposed on a string of Greek islands off the Turkish coast last night after preliminary tests indicated an outbreak of bird flu.

A soldier has murder a girl in a Corinth cafe after she refused his sexual advances.

Doctor Who is to be given a "dark, wild and sexy" spin-off for adults on the BBC (oh my!)

More later, more on these stories in the ELSOKAI Forums >

Bird flu confirmed in Greece

News at ELSOKAI Forums: http://s10.invisionfree.com/ELSOKAI/index.php?showtopic=926

Cell phones, the next big threat

Millions of cell phones are thrown away every year, culminating in a problem scientists say could be the next big threat to the global environment. Discarded mobile phones release toxic chemicals which can pollute soil and trees, yet the country’s mobile phone service providers appear to be turning their backs on a state-run telephone recycling program.

A Lesvos court found an Orthodox priest guilty of prostituting women.

Greek scientists have begun working on technology designed to introduce artificial intelligence into homes and offices within a decade (let’s hope it doesn’t rely on broadband!)

And more earthquakes have rocked parts of Greece.

More in the ELSOKAI Forums >

Bird flu will hit the UK

A bird flu pandemic will hit Britain - but not necessarily this winter, the UK’s chief medical officer has said.

Racists are targeting Brits in France: When Deborah Beattie and her eight-year-old daughter arrived home at their rustic stone farmhouse in northern France, the pair did what they always do and whistled for their pet horses to trot over from the paddock to be fed. But something was wrong. In a far corner, Lutin, the family's favourite miniature stallion, lay motionless on the ground. A deep cut ran from the horse's throat, along his stomach, and down to his groin. Lutin had been disembowelled.

Thousands of British football fans are watching Premiership football for nothing and that the number is rising each week. Find out how in the pc section.

More on these stories in the ELSOKAI Forums >

Bird flu - don't panic, don't ignore

With the news that several poultry workers in Turkey may have contracted bird flu, the EU may soon be faced with having to take more drastic measures - such as restricting the movement of people.

Experts say that it’s unlikely that the killer flu will cross from birds to humans but that hasn’t stopped thousands of Greeks from buying anti-viral shots. Nor is it stopping the government planning for 700,000 deaths in the UK in the first few months, should a pandemic break out.

Police tracking the most wanted Nazi known to be alive think he is now living on the Spanish Costas.

And police on Lesvos have arrested a local priest suspected of running a prostitution ring.

More news in the ELSOKAI Forums >

PC madness

A quiet day for news, which was handy for me as a friend bought her laptop down. She’d been having problems with it and she’d taken it in to have it fixed at a well-known pc shop (the name of which I won’t mention ‘cos it makes me want to spit). They told her she had spyware on her pc and they installed Ad-Aware and Spybot, and then quarantined 512 mru’s. When she queried this, the assistant told her they were Trojans! Unfortunately, the pc still didn’t work as it should. Turns out there was a .dll file gone awol so I pointed her to dll-files.com and she d/l-ed it from there, f.o.c. Seems OK now.

A few snippets from the news:

Coast-guards have rescued a leisure boat adrift off Corfu and a hotel on Kefalonia has won a Gold Medal award, for the second year running.

In the UK, an injured pedestrian has complained that she was ticked off by a police officer for using the word “fat” to describe a hit-and-run motorist.

Nigeria is considering making spamming a criminal offence for which senders of unsolicited emails could be imprisoned for at least three years. Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, is known for its "advance fee" spammers - conmen who send millions of unsolicited emails around the world.

And a new security device is being tested by customers of a leading UK bank in a bid to combat the growing problem of internet fraud.

More in the ELSOKAI Forums >

Ruddy ducks

The UK government wants to do its bit to save the globally threatened white-headed duck from extinction. Very noble. The problem is that the white-headed duck flies off to Spain and has sex with foreigners (nothing new there, then). Mainly its ruddy cousin, an aggressive immigrant from North America (yeah, over sexed and over here). From memory, I’m not tooooo sure if this is consensual sex, or if the ruddy duck doesn’t, basically, f… er, rape anything it fancies. But anyway…

In 1998 the Government set up a task force to decide what action it should take. The task force took four years to issue a report, during which time it spent almost €2,000,000 on various trials, including contraception (the mind boggles here – how do you get a duck to practice safe sex?)

In the end, it came to exactly the same conclusion as a report by the Department of the Environment – issued eight years earlier.

The Government has now announced a five-year programme, jointly funded with the European Union, as part of an international conservation effort.

The total cost will be over €4,500,000 (including the €2 million already spent on trials to assess how to deal with the problem (e.g., contraceptives)).

The answer, it seems, is to shoot ‘em.

The ruddy duck population of the UK is around 6,000.

Arithmetic isn’t my strong point but I reckon the cost works out at over €1,000 to shoot each duck!

Global pandemic feared

The bird flu virus discovered in Turkish poultry is the highly-pathogenic H5N1 strain that scientists worry could mutate into a human virus and spark a global flu pandemic likely to kill millions, EU authorities confirmed today.

A southern Russian university town which is popular with British students has been described as a "crucible of race hatred" following what looks like yet another student's murder at the hands of foreigner-hating skinheads.

New screens, which are literally paper thin, and can do everything a regular TV screen or computer monitor can do - but cost a fraction of the price - have been unveiled by German electronics giant Siemens at the Plastics Electronics trade fair in Frankfurt.

More news in the ELSOKAI Forums >

Deadly bird flu found in Turkey

Bird flu has been found in Romania and it’s just been confirmed that the deadly version has been found in Turkey.

Authorities from the island of Lesvos expressed their concern yesterday about rabbits eating away the crops.

Police in Patras said yesterday they had been given the government’s blessing to distribute the proceeds of their raids on illegal traders among the city’s poor families.

Chinese Authorities are deeply concerned by assaults of unknown men against school students, even infants.

Heating oil goes on ale tomorrow, but it’s more expensive and you’ll need a tax number.

MICROSOFT and Yahoo! yesterday unveiled plans to link up their instant messaging services. The tie-up, which will create a combined community of 275 million users, will also enable people using the services to make telephone calls to each other over their PCs.

More in the ELSOKAI Forums >

Gruesome find 2

The body of another young boy in advanced decomposition has been washed ashore. The most horrifying thing is that in both cases the bodies were recovered from the waist down.

Health Minister Nikitas Kakalamanis urged the public not to panic over the possibility of Asian bird flu spreading to Greece after thirty dead chickens were found floating in a lake in the southern Peloponnese.

Eight suspected leaders of a people-trafficking gang thought to have smuggled up to 100,000 Turks into Britain were arrested by police yesterday. It is estimated that the gang could have made up to £100,000 from a lorry load of 20 migrants.

More at the ELSOKAI Forums >

Just have a nice cuppa!

The US has got an image problem when it comes to the internet. It is seen as arrogant and determined to remain the sheriff of the world wide web, regardless of whatever the rest of the world may think. No!

Earthquake experts said yesterday that they are closely monitoring heightened seismic activity in northern Greece after a quake and three aftershocks rocked Thessaloniki over the weekend.

The Mediterranean's largest nesting population of loggerhead turtles is facing extinction due to tourism, environmentalists said this week.

The Cypriot government said yesterday that it is examining the possibility of grounding all Helios Airways planes after one of its aircraft turned back to Larnaca airport twice in three days due to technical problems.

OK, so the world and its weather are going crazy (so, what’s new?), just have a nice cuppa and everything will be OK… Wacky story of the week: PG Tips have invented the SMS kettle. You can now put the water on to boil just by texting "switch on" to your kettle's phone number. WTF!?!

All this, and more, at the ELSOKAI Forums >

Feel free to tell us just how long you’ve been dreaming of owning an SMS kettle!

Missing kids

If your kid went missing, you’d report it to the police pretty damn quick. Wouldn’t you? I know I did when my daughter went ‘missing’. Today I came across two stories which, frankly, shocked me.

Part of the body, from the waist down, of a young boy aged between 5 and 6, was recovered yesterday from the sea near Olympiada. However, it yet remains unknown if the death was due to drowning or murder.

No-one has reported their child missing?

OK, read on – and this is in the UK: Two-thirds of children who run away from home are not reported missing to police by their parents or carers. An estimated 100,000 children aged under 16 run away each year.

That’s around 66,000 unreported missing kids in the UK, per year.


Greece's treatment of minorities and foreigners trying to enter the country has been lambasted by human rights watchdog Amnesty International.

A senior European Union official has underlined concern for Turkey's human rights record. An Istanbul court provoked outrage last month when it charged Orhan Pamuk with violating laws that forbid description of the mass killings of Armenians during the last days of the Ottoman Empire as genocide.

The European Commission is banning all live bird imports from Turkey, since cases of avian flu have been confirmed in Turkey and Romania over the last few days.

Greece is rejecting a $200m (£113m or 164m euros) annual contract to refuel the United States Mediterranean fleet.

More details on these stories at the ELSOKAI Forums. Feel free to comment. See link on right >

Grounded

Greece are out of the World Cup after losing 1-0 to Denmark last night.

Another Greek ferry has run aground.

And an 18-year-old pupil at a girls' boarding school in the UK was found with £300,000 in her bank account - money suspected of being at the centre of a Russian mafia laundering operation. Police are planning to confiscate the money.

More news at the ELSOKAI Forums >

The big match

The Greek national soccer team faces Denmark in Copenhagen tonight (9 p.m. Greek time) knowing that anything less than a win will leave it with only an outside chance of qualifying for next year’s World Cup in Germany.

Greece and Cyprus have set up special panels to monitor Turkey’s compliance with the EU accession criteria it was set this week when it formally began membership talks with the 25-nation bloc.

A Helios Airways plane bound for London’s Heathrow Airport returned to Cyprus and landed safely yesterday after the pilot suspected a technical problem.

And any conspiracy theorists among you might be interested in this blog (copy and paste if it doesn’t link) http://schweitn.blogspot.com/2005/10/conspiracy-theory-for-day.html

Catch ya later, if I come across any interesting news even vaguely relating to Greece (or just plain interesting) AND… if I can tear myself away from the football! Oh dear, I do hope Greece win (not soooo sure they will, tho)

George W Bush, son of God?

President George W. Bush has claimed he was told by God to invade Iraq.

Illegally produced cigarettes contain up to 50 times more chemicals than the genuine item, authorities warned yesterday as they uncovered a shipment of smuggled tobacco that had been made in China.

The world's first autonomously-controlled robotic fish were unveiled yesterday at the London Aquarium.

A great white shark called Nicole - after the shark-loving Australian actress Nicole Kidman - crossed the Indian Ocean from South Africa to Australia and back again within just nine months.

And an internet-cafe owner on Kos has been robbing bank-accounts via email using a Trojan horse program.

All in the ELSOKAI Forums >

Who's that in your pants?

Large-scale snooping is about to get up close and really personal, with radio tags in everything from bus tickets to new knickers.

For anyone on Kef, there's free Greek language classes on offer in Argostoli and, if we can get 15 or so folks, they'll come down to Skala/Poros and run classes there.

A parish priest who became a best-selling children's author was asked to leave a secondary school because he used "inappropriate language" during a talk to 11- and 12-year-old pupils. Find out what he said at ELSOKAI!

And a few more wacky items from the news (see 'Orgasm Army'!) in the ELSOKAI Forums >

Bomb blast rocks Constantinople

A fairly quiet day in the news, quite a bit about Turkey joining the EU but nothing really new. A lot of the main news sites aren't carrying this story yet, and it's a bit early to say if it's related to Turkey joining the EU:

A bomb blast in Constantinople has killed one person and wounded seven more.

And the RSPCA last night urged residents of a Cornish village to be vigilant after an alligator was seen in their duck pond.

More at the ELSOKAI Forums >

Awesome!

A Japanese company claims to have created a workable technology that will replace a bulky newspaper with a wafer-thin liquid crystal film of plastic.

More details in the pc section at the ELSOKAI Forums >

Came across an interesting term just now, and an interesting blog:

Elginism - An act of cultural vandalism. The act of elginism has been going on for thousands of years, however the Elgin Marbles are now considered to be the classic case of elginism. (Uh, the film ‘Red Mercury’ sounds horribly prophetic). See new link on right >

Open all hours

Turkey edged closer to being let into the European Union yesterday after more than 40 years of knocking on the door (hm, isn’t that enough time for them to clean up their act??)

The loggerhead turtle is being pushed to extinction due to the overdevelopment of a protected national marine park used by its nesting population on the Ionian island of Zakynthos, the WWF conservationists said yesterday.

British TV comedy actor Ronnie Barker, who starred in Porridge and The Two Ronnies, has died aged 76.

And thieves in Crete made off with an unusual loot yesterday when they stole three coffins from the storage of a funeral parlour near Iraklion,

A Chinese-made glue advertised for use by children has been withdrawn from sale because it contains toxic materials.

Malicious hackers and hi-tech criminals are changing tactics in a bid to outwit security firms. Once unwittingly installed, the Trojans give the attacker full access to the victim's computer by logging keystrokes, capturing e-mail, capturing websites visited, and even allowing remote access to things like webcams and microphones.

More in the ELSOKAI Forums >

Simply the Best

Football legend George Best is in a "serious but improving" condition after being admitted to hospital suffering from a kidney infection.

The Turkish government has accepted the terms set by the European Union for membership negotiations to begin. Members agreed on the terms of entry talks after Austria withdrew a demand that Turkey should be offered an option short of full membership.

More at ELSOKAI >

Tourist trap

300 tourists were trapped in the Samaria Gorge, Crete, after weather conditions worsened over the weekend.

The Bakers Association has accused the country’s food chains of selling poor quality “fresh bread” made from imported frozen dough.

A school in Arizona, US, has thrown out its paper-based text books and is relying solely on laptops and digital material to teach its pupils.

And why does Turkey need the EU?

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Talking Turkey

EU Foreign Ministers failed to reach a compromising agreement on Turkey’s accession talks.

Austria insisted that an alternative be offered in case Turkey fails to join the EU.

Greek FM Petros Molyviatis pointed out, "This is an extremely significant meeting, and therefore everyone should be careful regarding the decisions to be made."

Politicians, not people, want Turkey to join EU

According to opinion polls, not one EU country has a majority of people in favour of Turkey's attempts to enter the bloc. And a poll yesterday showed that 57% of Turks wanted to join the EU — down from 68% a year ago.

Islamic suicide bombers have carried out coordinated attacks in Bali.

A psychiatric patient has pushed his mother out of an upper-floor window where he is hospitalised.

Ultra-Orthodox clerics, Old Calendrists and other religious zealots are to stage a rally in the northern town of Ouranoupolis today to protest a decision by the Mount Athos monastic community to evict some 100 zealot monks from the Esphigmenou Monastery.

And a volcano has erupted in El Salvador after laying dormant for a century.

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Volcano

El Salvador's highest volcano, Ilamatepec, has erupted, killing two people and forcing thousands to evacuate the area. The eruption released giant plumes of smoke and hurled ash and burning rock into the air, witnesses said.

Scientists said the volcano had spat rocks as far as 1.5km (0.93 miles) from its crater.
There have also been reports of lava rocks the size of cars, and villagers fleeing from a flood of boiling water.

Ilamatepec, also known as the Santa Ana volcano, had lain dormant since 1904. It lies about 60km west of the capital, San Salvador.

So, what have the Turks ever done for us?

Well, you can find out at ELSOKAI. And, while most EU countries officially welcome the prospect of Turkish membership, public opinion in most EU countries appears, with varying degrees of intensity, to oppose Turkish membership.

One of America's conservative moral crusaders was at the centre of a racism storm last night after suggesting that aborting black children would lower the crime rate.

Russia's military has resorted to ruses such as fake job offers and dates with supposed childhood sweethearts to catch the growing number of draft dodgers.

And the Danish Air Force got into some serious trouble with Santa Claus recently. Sleigh ho!

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From one empire to another

FOR almost 3,000 years, its location has been a mystery, but classical scholars around the world are now convinced that a British businessman and amateur archaeologist with a passion for Homer has found the island of Ithaca, home of the Greek hero Odysseus and the site of his palace.

Europe's foreign ministers are to hold an emergency meeting on Sunday to try to salvage plans to start EU membership talks with Turkey, which are teetering on the brink of collapse.

The Hellenic Meteorological Service today issued a bulletin on dangerous weather conditions.

And my daughter emailed me a naughty joke about the Pope. So I’ve posted it in the Mad House at the ELSOKAI Forums >