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AMEInfo:

The International Hockey Federation plans to set up a hockey academy at Dubai Sports City, according to Gulf News. DSC will have a dedicated hockey stadium with a capacity of between 7,500 to 10,000 spectators, which will accommodate international hockey matches.

It may be that there was some kind of thing involving some type of drawings made by someone in Denmark recently but that has apparently not stopped Danes from being happy. So happy, in fact, that they are happiest in the world. A University of Liecester study, as reported by Swedish TV, has ranked the world’s countries by happiness as follows:
1. Denmark
2. Switzerland
3. Austria
4. Iceland
5. Bahamas
6. Finland
7. Sweden
8. Bhutan
9. Brunei
10. Canada

You can also find the story at the BBC.

Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet has a story about a refuge for kids in Lebanon run by the Swedish arm of the SOS Children’s Villages charity organization. The children’s village in Lebanon has nine buildings, hosting some 80 children. The article says that while bombs are falling all around, they are trying to take care of the children who are understandably very scared.

If the war continues they will have to build more houses to be able to take care of all the orphaned children, says Joseph Soueidy, manager of the SOS Children’s Village in Sferai. The village has been the children’s refuge and safe haven away from the war but the war is getting closer fast. A few times they’ve been caught in crossfire but so far no one has been hurt. Five year old Dina Jeradi has a sunny smile on her face but she has a hard time saying anything and she needs special help, according to Soueidy. Dina’s mother cannot take care of her and she was abused before coming to the village. She used to receive special treatments by a psychologist twice a week but the psychologist lives in Tyre and since the war started she cannot travel to see Dina, it’s just too dangerous.

According to Swedish TV-news, the Swedish government has agreed to be a part of a multi-national UN peace-keeping force in Lebanon. Nothing is final it seems, but UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is asking governments around the world if they’re willing to take part and so far in addition to Sweden, Germany, Greece, Italy and Turkey has responded favourably to Annan’s request. Sweden has a rapid-response force that can be deployed within 30 days.

From Gulf News:

The Local:

By Thursday morning, almost all Swedish citizens had been evacuated from Lebanon after a gruelling four-day, round-the-clock operation coordinated by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Stockholm. Thoroughout the process there have been reports of chaos, disorganisation and a lack of information, blamed partly on the fact that Sweden only has a consulate, rather than an embassy, in Beirut. But the Swedish evacuation effort, supported by mobile phone technology, has been held up as a “model of order” by commentators in other countries such as Canada, Australia and the US which, on Thursday, were only beginning their own evacuations. The Toronto Star described how many Canadian families gathering in the sweltering heat were subjected to “the stress of seeing children or spouses left off the list” followed by hours of arguing. “At about the same time, Swedish citizens had gathered in an air-conditioned hotel,” wrote the paper. “Their names were placed on a list only after they boarded buses that shuttled them to a first boat, which carried 1,600 Swedes to safety, and a second one that ferried away 300.” The Canberra Times reported that the Australian effort was being unfavourably compared with that of a number of countries including Sweden, while USA Today slammed America’s apparent inaction, pointing out that three ships had been chartered by Sweden to carry citizens to Cyprus. According to foreign ministry spokeswoman Nina Ersman, text messaging has been a major tool in the Swedish evacuation operation. “In the last week we have sent out five text messages to everyone in Lebanon who is registered with a Swedish mobile network,” she told The Local. Telia’s Jan Sjöberg explained that its mobile subscribers who were in Lebanon were sent an SMS as early as last Friday, which told them that an evacuation would be taking place. Since then, further messages have told people to get to a certain hotel at a certain time, depending upon their priority status. “The GSM technology allows us to do this,” said Sjöberg. “We have roaming agreements with two operators in Lebanon. Around 300 of our customers who were in Lebanon would have got the message as soon as they turned on their phones. We also told them that all calls and text messages to Sweden would be free.” The latest SMS was sent on Wednesday night to the last people still in Beirut. Nevertheless, with over a hundred Swedish citizens still in the most dangerous southern region of Lebanon, Sweden’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs is not yet speaking of a successful operation. “We have now evacuated everyone who was in Beirut,” said Nina Ersman. She told The Local that the operation had been “enormously hard work” for the Swedish officials sent to the region, but that everyone involved understood that criticism was part of the job. “Almost 5,000 people, who are all in a state of anguish, have been evacuated from a war zone. Of course there is a lot of misunderstanding and confusion,” she said.

Today I was reading my local news, when I read that Robert Brooks died, the owner of Hooters Restaurant. This has surprised everyone, and they are not sure how he died. Reading this in the local paper, I knew that it would be a big deal in Horry County, but then I read it on CNN. Okay there are over 400 Hooters Restaurants in the US and some in other countries. But when I read it on BBC News, I realized just how big Hooters really is. So little old South Carolina, little Horry County, and little Coastal Carolina University have made world news. Oh by the way Mr. Brooks comes from the same area as my Mother did, and he gave Coastal Carolina 2 million dollars to build their new football (American Football) stadium. Mr. Brooks has done many things but he will be remembered the most for Hooters.

Just about every day I read the news from where I come from (South Carolina), just as, Magnus reads news from Sweden. Well this morning when I went to check www.wpde.com, I found that they have not renewed their domain. It seems that their domain name expired July 7th, 2006. WPDE is our local TV News station. I am not sure what they are thinking, but either someone dropped the ball, or they have decided to not have a website any more. What do you think???

Update: It looks like they have fixed the problem, and I can now read my news.

Check out IKEA Hacker. In the spirit of all the technology “hack” books, the author of this blog shares “hacks” of IKEA products. I know many of us who have tried to put together IKEA furniture ourselves feel like “hackers”