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2005-01-07 15:52

Sm�rg�spost

�1. It isn't easy being a consumeur!

It is 'Arry Potteur an ze ordre of ze ph�nix! In poche!

Any month now !

Cet article para�tra le 15 avril 2005.

This article will be out sometime after Easter.

Bah!

�2. Make Mine Mitteleuropa!

It is Sir Simon Rattle in Berlin. Which 'bladets does he favour, Charlotte Higgins asks or enquires?

Sir Simon has recently moved wholesale to Berlin with his new partner, the mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozena, having previously made his primary home in Islington in London. He described himself as feeling "Middle-European" and out of touch with British life. "I find it very hard to imagine moving away from here," he said. He has even let slip his reading of the Guardian. "If I had a subscription to the Guardian, the trouble is that it's a very good newspaper, and I would read it, and I wouldn't read enough of the German papers," he said.

We bet he says that to all the Guardian journalistes...

�3. Bah!

It is Budvar v Budweiser!

American brewing giant Anheuser-Busch said Wednesday that a WTO ruling on geographically-linked product names amounted to a victory for it in a trademark row with Czech brewer Budejovicky Budvar.

It's all very complicated, but we'll chop and splatt through it together, let's:

With the Czechs' EU accession in May, Budvar, together with Ceske Budejovice's other brewer Budejovicky Mestansky Pivovar, was awarded the EU-wide geographical protection indicators 'Budejovicky pivo' and 'Ceskobudejovicky pivo', meaning "Ceske Budejovice beer" in Czech.

But they don't get dibs on the German "translation" Budweiser.

(Translation? Well, sort of:

Budvar argues that it has a right to the names as they are derived from Budweis, the former name of Ceske Budejovice, where it is based.)

But the WTO thinks otherwise. It'll be no Bourbon or Nice biscuits for them, for sure!

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2005-01-07 11:53

Sm�rg�spost

�1. The apr�s-hopp

Lib�bladet has a good upwritening:

Lors de la seconde manche, le Finlandais volant l�che tout ce qu'il peut pour renverser la tendance et croit y parvenir avec un fabuleux saut � 140 m. Mais H�llwarth, dernier � sauter, fait � peine moins bien (137,5 m) et tire le b�n�fice de son premier saut, battant le Finlandais de 50 centim�tres. La d�ception d'Ahonen est si vive que les larmes lui montent aux yeux. Ce visage impassible avait enfin une expression : celle de la d�tresse.

In the second round the flying Finn did everything he could to reverse the trend and thought he'd done it with a fabuleux jump of 140m. But H�llwarth, jumping last, did almost as well (137.5m) and benefitting from his first jump, beat the Finn by 50 centimetres. Ahonen's disappointment was so sharp it brought tears to his eyes. His stony face finally showed an emotion: distress.

Later, according to some reports, he almost smiled when congratulating H�llwarth.

�2. Her Majesty's Privateers!

They're not pirates, they're the Customs and Excise, and they have a nice page on the ransoms they can extract on your Interweb shoppnings.

Books and portable radios are duty free, but there is still import Value-Added Tax to fear...

�3. It is an undersea earthquake!

But no penguins were injured:

An earthquake on a remote Antarctic archipelago home to 850,000 King Penguins was the strongest on earth in four years, seismologists say.

[...]

Penguins appear to have escaped a major disaster as the quake occurred deep under the sea, far from inhabited land.

Take-home message? The god of penguins is a mighty god indeed!

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2005-01-07 10:43

How EU am I?

I don't know; Aftonbladet's fun questionnaire comes out as an unreadable bitmap, but the accompanying article - part of a series celebrating ten (10) years of Swedish membership - is worth a read, if you read Swedish:

Budgeten
EU:s totala budget �r knappt 900 miljarder kronor per �r. Den svenska statsbudgeten �r drygt 700 miljoner. St�rsta delen av EU-kakan, n�stan 80 procent, g�r till st�d f�r jordbruk och regional utvekling.

Budget
The EU's total budget is barely [70 billion GBP] a year. The Swedish state's budget is a good [50 billion]. The largest part of the EU cake, almost 80 percent, goes on subsidies for farming and regional development.

We could certainly stand to reform the Common Agricultural Policy, which is largely a means of giving money to France and hated by everyone else, but the take-home message is that the EU is actually pretty cheap.

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2005-01-06 16:27

At the halfway stage

Could it all be going the shape of the pear?

17:13
Ahonen landet bei 132 Metern, minimal schw�cher als Janda. Damit ist der Super-Finne auf Platz zwei.

Down to fourth by the end of the first half! C'mon, Janne!

NB: It isn't easy being a Foreigner:

De fem beste taperne i duellene kommer videre som s�kalte lukcy loosers

UPDATE: Ahonen only second for the round, boo hoo, but winner by miles for the tournament.

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2005-01-06 13:21

A short course in semiotics with the �berflieger

It is, of course, Janne "The Manne" Ahonen:

Vad har d� ringen som �kta mannen Ahonen har runt ringfingret p� h�gra handen f�r betydelse?
- Vad har den vita tr�jan som du har p� dig f�r betydelse? svarar Ahonen.
Ingen alls, s�ger journalisten.
- D�r har du ditt svar.

What does the ring that the married man Ahonen has round the ring finger on his right hand mean?
"What does the white jumper you're wearing mean?" answers Ahonen.
Nothing at all, says the journaliste.
"There you are, then."

And as a bonus, there's allegedly to be live coverage of the climax of the jumpning via a popup on this Tyskbladet. Our money would be on Ahonen, for sure, but the bookies stopped taking bets on him days ago.

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2005-01-06 09:44

For shame, Danmark!

This fine overview of international radio broadcastnings has two (2) entries for the Danish tongue ("the tongue of the Danes"): Radio Danmark and Rai International.

Rai International, you ask or enquire? It is an Italian station.

In Danish, you press or pursue? In, indeed, Danish:

Rai International's radioprogram sender for tiden informations programmer p� 26 sprog udover italiensk. De danske programmer til Europa sendes tre gange om ugen kl. 20.00 UTC/GMT (21.00 lokal tid) p� kortb�lge frekvens 6040 og 9710 Khz.

Rai International's radio-programme broadcasts up to date information programmes in 26 languages besides Italian. The Danish programmes for Europe are broadcast three times a week at 20.00 UTC on shortwave frequencies 6040 and 9170 KHz.

It is less boggleworthy that Radio Danmark should be doing this too, except it isn't because they don't:

TV-avisen kunne torsdag aften oplyse, at DR pr. 1. januar lukker og slukker for Radio Danmark, "da computere og satelitter har gjort kortb�lge overfl�dig", og da der kun "er ganske f� radiobrugere tilbage".

TV-News could reveal on Thorsday evening that DR as of the 1st of January os shutting Radio Danmark "because computers and satellites have made shortwave superfluous" and because there are only "a few radio users left."

What sort of behaviour is that, you might be forgiven for wondering or musing? This sort:

Med kultuministerens beslutning om at acceptere DRs lukning af Radio Danmark, kommer Danmark p� niveau med Estland og Letland samt miniputlande som Liechtenstein, Andorra og San Marino, der heller ikke betjener deres udenlandske medborgere gennem kortb�lgeudsendelser. Alle andre udviklede lande sender p� kortb�lge til udlandet - fra Finland, Sverige og Island i Nordeuropa til Nederlandene, Belgien, Tyskland, Polen, Tjekkiet og �strig i Centraleuropa og til Portugal, Spanien, Italien, Malta og Gr�kenland i Sydeuropa.

With the kultureminister's decision to accept DRs closure of Radio Danmark, Danmark attains the level of Estonia and Latvia along with microstates such as Liechtenstein, Andorra and San Marino, which also don't serve their foreign citizens by means of shortwave broadcasts. All other developed countries broadcast overseas on shortwave - from Finland, Sweden and Iceland in northern Europe to the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Polandland, Czechia and Austria in central Europe and Portugal, Spain, Italy, Malta and Greekland in southern Europe.

If it comes to that, I can add Ukrainia, Bulgaria, Romania and even Al-bloody-bania to the list from eastern and Balkan Europe.

Sort it out, Danmark! You're currently second in a field of one (1) for international broadcasts in your own langwidge!

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2005-01-05 15:42

For shame, Danmark!

An exciting new series! First up, VG indulges in a rare bout of moral-highground-seizing re. today's EU wide post-tsunamic silence keepnings:

Danmarks var det eneste EU-landet som ikke deltok i markeringen onsdag, fordi landet holdt to minutters stilhet sist s�ndag.

Danmark was the only EU country which didn't take part in the observance on Wednesday, because the country had already held a two minutes silence last S�nday.

The mystery deepens, however:

Klokka 12 i dag stoppet Norge og 23 andre europeiske land opp i stille markering over tre minutter.

At noon today, Norway and 23 other European countries stopped in silence for three minutes.

But there are 25 EU-lands and Norway is not one of them, so who else opted out? (Or did VG just miscount?)

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2005-01-05 13:13

Black, no bonnet

It is the Swedish prinsesses! And there were many sobbnings!

Strax f�re halv fyra i morse inleddes ceremonin f�r de sex d�da p� Arlanda. Helt privat, utan mikrofoner, enligt de anh�rigas �nskan.

Just before half-past three this morning the ceremony took place for the six dead at Arlanda. Completely private, without microphones, as the relatives wished.

Did they put in a special request for the papparazzi, too?

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2005-01-05 11:00

Is that a booby in your trap or are you just displeased to see me?

The same fuse tripped six (6) times last night while I was attempting to microwave some pasta sauce for forty (40)-odd seconds. Lacking convenient access to the chair that is the only sensible way to reach it, I used my rusty climbing skills, a doorknob (ball of left foot), the door frame (left hand) and a nice stretch (right hand) to reset it.

By the sixth (6th) time I was feeling the effects, and my langwidge was far from dainty.

Then, having been eluded by sleep, I got up to get a glass of water and when I turned the light on, a fuse went. Attempting the same procedure in pitch blackness turned out to be even stupider, and in any case I couldn't find the fuse that had gone.

A chair-fetchning and door-proppning and some even less dainty remarks later all was better except my temper. And then the only thing on shortwave was a Radio Bulgaria news bulletin I'd already heard, only this time in Frenchy-French.

Gah!

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2005-01-04 17:45

Bleurgh

It it the coffee, or simply all the �l I didn't have last night?

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2005-01-04 15:19

Hardy Perennials!

In these difficult times of change and difficulties, including the difficulties of change and the difficulties associated with it, it's sometimes good to pause and think of all the things which are reassuringly the same as ever.

For example, a BBC News story headlined "EU grapples with translation boom", just like all the others they've published before and after the newbies joined, with the added bonus that it's actually about interpretation. Translators and interpreters are of course the only persons who don't think their trades are interchangeable, but when you're writing on the subject it is unlikely they won't notice and take offence.

The cost of all translation and interpretation in EU institutions amounted to just over US$2.50 per citizen last year. That is about as much as a cup of coffee, the Commission likes to point out. The cost is expected to rise by a further US$0.75 per citizen as more people are recruited.

The dollar was actually still money when they started saying that, of course, and I bet you can get a cup of coffee for somewhat less in, say, Slovakia. Which is not to say it's not money well spent, because it is.

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2005-01-04 12:54

Not waving but mourning

It isn't easy being a prinsess:

Kronprinsessan Victoria kommer hem f�r att delta i mottagandet av stoftet efter de f�rsta omkomna svenskarna.

Kronprinsess Victoria is coming home to take part in the reception of the remains of the first Swedish victims.

The black bonnet, Kronprinsess?

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