Halldór Ásgrímsson (8.ix.1947 - 18.v.2015)

We have seen news that Halldór Ásgrímsson has died. He was prime minister of Iceland when it granted refuge to my childhood hero Bobby Fischer in March 2005 from the United States. No three years later, on January 17, 2008, Bobby Fischer died at the symbolic age of 64.

There is an interesting historic article on the Icelandic politics of that time on grapevine.is, an online magazine from Iceland's capital Reykjavik.

(We believe that as of writing this blog post en-Wikipedia's date of 19.v.2015 is incorrect, de-Wikipedia gives 18.v.2015 with the source Iceland Review Online.)

Congratulations to the Klarsfeld couple!

We would like to congratulate our almost president Beate Klarsfeld and her husband Serge Klarsfeld for receiving the Bundesverdienstkreuz, the highest civil honor of Germany. (The both links are to de-Wikipedia, en-wikipedia has an article on them as a couple.)

Beate Klarsfeld is a famous nazi hunter, most well known are her contributions to the capture of war criminal Klaus Barbie as well as her controversial bitchslap against alleged nazi criminal Kurt Georg Kiesinger while he was chancellor of Germany in 1968.

Europa Rochade commendation. ŠAH-MAT still infringing

While we do not want in any way to endorse the magazine, our journalistic principles necessitate, after we had warned earlier, now to commend the Europa Rochade for acknowledging the composers of chess problems and studies now, thereby being mostly in accordance with the Codex for Chess Composition. This can be seen for fellow composers as an example that they should complain at such magazines.

Indeed, we would like to see the same kind of e-mail sent against the magazine ŠAH-MAT as we sent against the Europa Rochade. Unfortunately we have a language barrier there.