Iceland

DON'T underestimate the power of chess in Iceland. Witness the plight of poor Bobby Fischer, the legendary chess champion and malcontent who has been on the run from American authorities since 1992 for violating U.S. sanctions by playing a chess match in Yugoslavia. The jailed 62-year-old chess master has been fighting deportation to the United States since his arrest in Japan last July for traveling on an expired passport. Enter Iceland, and its offer of citizenship to Mr. Fischer. The scene of Mr. Fischer's triumph over Russian Boris Spassky in 1972, Iceland may be the least-inhabited European country (three people per square mile)

Pe'Shon Howard isn't the only Maryland men's basketball player who has been turning heads this summer. Howard became an Internet sensation this past week and even earned some airtime on ESPN's "SportsNation" Tuesday thanks to a highlight reel of his play in Washington's famed Goodman League . But another Terp -- forward Haukur Palsson -- has been quietly putting up some big numbers this summer, albeit not in the U.S. Palsson is currently...

Haukur Palsson , a 6-foot-6, 215-pound forward from Iceland, has made an oral commitment to the Maryland men's basketball team. Palsson, who selected the Terps over South Florida, is spending his senior year of high school at Montverde (Fla.) Academy. He visited College Park for No. 22 Maryland's 79-72 win over No. 4 Duke on Wednesday. "He's very talented, and he's multidimensional," Montverde coach Kevin Sutton said. "He can play outside - he's shooting 52 percent on 2s and right around 41 percent on 3s. He's a very good free-throw shooter.

Almost nobody pronounces his first name correctly. "No, definitely not," Haukur Palsson says good-naturedly. The freshman forward draws it out -- "hey-ya-kuss" -- as if it had an extra syllable and ended in "s. " But what Americans do get right about blond Icelandic native "Hawk" Palsson -- the thing that translates in any language -- is what Maryland coach Gary Williams sensed about the player on a Florida recruiting trip. It's what coaches like to call a "motor. " "I saw Hawk play, and I liked what he brought to that [high school]

If there's one place the global financial crisis has hit harder than the United States, it's Iceland. But one industry that's thriving in Iceland is tourism, as visitors rush to scoop up bargains in what was once one of the most expensive countries in the world. Lonely Planet and other travel publications have listed Iceland as one of the top destinations this year. Icelandair used to fly direct from BWI Marshall Airport to Reykjavik. That service has been discontinued, but you can hop a flight out of New York or Boston and be in the world's northernmost capital in less than six hours.

I was searching for the perfect winter vacation -- one that would offer natural beauty as well as a bustling city center. And I found it, surprisingly, in Iceland.Certainly, planning a winter trip to Iceland was a concern. But it's a popular myth that Iceland, the second largest island in Europe, is a frozen country. Despite its northerly location, the Gulf Stream actually keeps temperatures quite moderate.Iceland, which lies close to the Arctic Circle, is situated approximately halfway between Moscow and New York in the Atlantic Ocean and is only a two-hour flight from the United Kingdom.

New York-based conceptual artist Roni Horn, best known for her installations, in recent years has also published books based on the trips she's made to Iceland since 1975. These books, together with a set of drawings she made in Iceland a dozen years ago, form a small but effective exhibit called "Roni Horn: Inner Geography" at the Baltimore Museum of Art.Horn obviously has a deep and abiding sense of identity with Iceland, an island country whose treeless, icy landscape is covered with lava from still-active volcanoes.

Pale gray clouds swallowed the broad shock of flat, verdant moss that caressed the treeless terrain. Light rain misted a shaggy sheep perched on black rock. The occasional car passed by, dwarfed into a toy of the elements on its path along the Reykjanes Peninsula, while a farmhouse stood alone in the starkness like a small white miracle. -- From "Letting the Body Lead" by Jenn Crowell Jenn Crowell fell in love with Iceland long before she ever went there. Scott Stevens was drawn to the land of glaciers and volcanos after about "25 Baltimore summers too many," the Parkville native says with a laugh.

I HAND THE agent my brottfarerspjald, step on board Icelandair Flight 642. Just before takeoff, the flight attendant stands before us clasping a seat-belt buckle and droning through the oryggisbunadur um bord. Some five hours later, we begin our descent into Reykjavik. At the airport, I get my passport stamped at vagabraeftirlit, make a quick refresher stop in the snyrtingar, exchange dollars for kronurs at the gjaldeyrir and pick up tourist information at the upplysingapjonustu fyrir feroafolk.

The band comes from Iceland, but the members of Singapore Sling neither invented their own language, as their countrymen in Sigur Ros did, nor wear clothing that resembles dead waterfowl, as countrywoman Bjork did with her swan dress at the 2001 Academy Awards ceremony. Singapore Sling is enigmatic in its own right, though. The group displays a jumble of musical influences on The Curse of Singapore Sling, the band's debut. Hints of the Jesus and Mary Chain and old-school Lou Reed blend into something that sounds a bit like Black Rebel Motorcycle Club at times, and like trippy surf music for hip vampires at others.

Visions of the Iceland volcano spewing ash into the air and weary, grounded travelers waiting it out at airports are causing more people to consider travel insurance. Insurers and agents say queries about policies to protect against flight cancellations and delays are sky- high. InsureMyTrip.com, which compares and sells policies, received its second-highest number of calls during the week of April 19th, days after Eyjafjallajokull erupted. (The busiest week for the 10-year-old site was after the swine flu outbreak in August.

Haukur Palsson , a 6-foot-6, 215-pound forward from Iceland, has made an oral commitment to the Maryland men's basketball team. Palsson, who selected the Terps over South Florida, is spending his senior year of high school at Montverde (Fla.) Academy. He visited College Park for No. 22 Maryland's 79-72 win over No. 4 Duke on Wednesday. "He's very talented, and he's multidimensional," Montverde coach Kevin Sutton said. "He can play outside - he's shooting 52 percent on 2s and right around 41 percent on 3s. He's a very good free-throw shooter.

BILL HOLM, 65 Noted writer Bill Holm, a poet and essayist who wrote about a dozen books and traveled the world, died Wednesday at Avera Heart Hospital in Sioux Falls, S.D. A cause of death was not given. Mr. Holm's books included The Windows of Brimnes, published in 2007 and named for his cottage near the small fishing village of Hofsos in Iceland, where he spent his summers in the land of his ancestors.

If there's one place the global financial crisis has hit harder than the United States, it's Iceland. But one industry that's thriving in Iceland is tourism, as visitors rush to scoop up bargains in what was once one of the most expensive countries in the world. Lonely Planet and other travel publications have listed Iceland as one of the top destinations this year. Icelandair used to fly direct from BWI Marshall Airport to Reykjavik. That service has been discontinued, but you can hop a flight out of New York or Boston and be in the world's northernmost capital in less than six hours.

10 p.m. [MLB Network] The hourlong show announces the rosters for teams in the World Baseball Classic and then analyzes them. The club from Iceland never seems to get any love.

Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon recently said the city is entering into a period "worse than the Depression." This week, Jim Press, vice chairman of Chrysler, told the Associated Press, "If we have a catastrophic failure of one of these car companies, in this tender environment for the economy, it's a huge blow. It could trigger a depression." These leaders are far from alone in their apocalyptic thinking. In an unscientific, online survey in The Baltimore Sun, 46 percent of respondents agreed that "the U.S. is heading for an economic downturn on a par with the Great Depression."

My first brush with these two islands hugging the Arctic Circle in the far North Atlantic was in elementary school. A geography teacher, pointing to an ancient map on the wall, tried to explain why an island covered almost entirely by a vast, continental icecap was called Greenland while another, teeming with volcanic activity, wildlife and spectacular waterfalls, was called Iceland.Was this the world's first real estate scam? It would take three decades before I'd get the chance to check it out myself.

The Horn of Africa, comprising Ethiopia and its surrounding countries, is cut off from the rest of the continent by mountain ranges and coastline, forming an "ark" that, in the words of author Graham Hancock, "shelters an astonishing variety of human societies: from the ancient and highly sophisticated to the remote, simple and untouched. . . ." (The region has other ark connections as well; this is the traditional homeland of Noah, and the ancient Ethiopian city of Axum is, "Raiders" notwithstanding, the legendary resting place of the Ark of the Covenant.

Alta Haywood of Perry Hall recalls watching the northern lights years ago in Gettysburg, Pa. She asks where to go "to have a good chance of seeing this incredibly beautiful sight again." Marylanders' last view of the aurora borealis was Nov. 7, 2004. Go north, closer to the geomagnetic pole, September to March. Alaska, Canada, Iceland and Finland offer aurora packages. Google "aurora borealis tourism."

Johns Hopkins researchers who studied the genomes of people in Iceland and Utah say they may have found a clue to why people are increasingly prone to disease as they age. The answer may not lie specifically in the person's genes, but in chemical changes occurring around the genes that help determine which are active and which are silent. As a result, a person could become more prone to heart disease, cancer and other diseases of aging because certain genes that used to function no longer do so - or vice versa.