Poland

When Google began hiring in Zurich for its new engineering center in 2004, local officials welcomed the U.S. company with open arms. Google's arrival is still bearing fruit for Zurich: 450 employees, about 300 of them engineers, work in Google's seven-story complex in a converted brewery on the outskirts of the placid mountain metropolis.

Apple's iPhone partners may be working overtime to enhance the phone maker's image.

Poland Orange, Poland's largest mobile operator, has launched a pre-iPhone 3G marketing campaign that is paying dozens of actors to stand in line to buy one of the new devices, according to a Reuters report. And Orange isn't trying to hide it, either.

"We have these fake queues in front of 20 stores around the country to drum up interest in the iPhone," a spokesman told Reuters. The wire service reported no queues at T-Mobile's Era stores, which will also began selling iPhone 3Gs on Friday.

Apple continued its worldwide drive to dominate the 3G cell-phone market with iPhone 3G rollouts this week in parts of Europe, South America, the Far East, and India. Demand in all locales, however, wasn't nearly as high as in the U.S.

Analysts chalked up the less-than-manic reception to the high price of the iPhone 3G as well as the cost for 3G data service in many countries.

'Acting' Like It's a Must-Have

The car developed by Cree called SAM, a Swiss three-wheeled concept zero emissions electric car, didn’t seem to be making any progress, considering the designing company shut down in 2003. But Polish company Impact Automotive Technologies have scooped it up from the ashes, re-engineered it, and the Cree could be coming out of the factory soon.

///In 2003 was the 50th anniversary of the Watson and Crick paper. Nature magazine commissioned some articles on the occasion, and asked me to write a poem. I had trouble, wrote 3 poems which seemed to head nowhere. Until I went with a friend on a brief trip to Ticino, wandered on an alp, and saw some wonderful blue butterflies. I immediately thought of Nabokov, and the poem took shape.

///In 2003 was the 50th anniversary of the Watson and Crick paper. Nature magazine commissioned some articles on the occasion, and asked me to write a poem. I had trouble, wrote 3 poems which seemed to head nowhere. Until I went with a friend on a brief trip to Ticino, wandered on an alp, and saw some wonderful blue butterflies. I immediately thought of Nabokov, and the poem took shape.

The U.S. government, in collaboration with the governments of Poland and the Czech Republic, is very close to sealing a deal for a “defensive missile shield.” According to the plan initiated by the U.S., ten GMD-variant interceptor missiles will be located in Poland, and an X-band radar will be located in the Czech Republic, 55 miles southwest of the capital of Prague. But there is a catch.

Donna Rifkind reviews The German Bride by Joanna Hershon, in the Washington Post: