Where are these kids?

Disappearances of children in Greece rose 143% in 2005 compared to 2004, according to Chamogelo tou Pediou Association (‘Smile of a Child’), an association against child abuse.

Police in northern Greece yesterday continued their search for an 11-year-old boy who disappeared from his hometown of Veria on Friday, but were hindered by persistent snowfall in the area.

With bad weather grounding a number of flights yesterday, authorities have placed emergency services on standby in anticipation of the heavy snow and rainfall that is expected to hit many parts of Greece. The government will be hoping that this cold snap is less intense than the one in January that brought serious power shortages to the Ionian islands of Kefalonia and Ithaca. The residents of Samothrace were the first to suffer a power blackout yesterday.

In the UK, Abu Hamza was today found guilty of soliciting murder and stirring up racial hatred. Hamza did not aim his vitriolic rhetoric only against Jews, unbelievers and the democratic West, his targets included homosexual vicars, the tourist industry, the royal family and women in bikinis.

A convicted drug dealer who was jailed in 2002 and released on licence last year after serving half his sentence has been recalled to prison after imitating a suicide bomber during a protest over cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammad.

And a "slimmer's potato", with as few as half the calories of the normal variety, has been discovered by scientists.

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