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Multilingual Books to Give Away $1 Million in Free Language Downloads to Libraries

Multilingual Books announced this week that it will give away 20,000 language courses, valued at $1 million, to libraries throughout the world.

All a library needs to do in order to take advantage of this offer is to contact Multilingual Books by phone (253 353 2761) or email.

Each library can receive up to $1,000 in downloads.

The downloads offered include the comprehensive Foreign Service Institute language courses, the popular Audio Libros Spanish Intermediate Readers, and the renowned Platiquemos Spanish Course.

“We are happy to announce this giveaway. We know how language demand is soaring for libraries, and also how strapped their budgets can be. This is an opportunity for us to help,” Kenneth Tomkins, president of Multilingual Books, said.

A 20-Kilogram Bronze Umbrella Is the Must-Have Fashion Accessory in Zagreb This Season

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

An iconic statue of writer and journalist Marija Juric Zagorka had its very iconic-ness sawed off last week.

Vandals in the Croatian capital managed to detach the umbrella Zagorka is carrying from the statue – for reasons which must only be known to them. Further, the umbrella is closed, so it won’t be of much use during the cold and wet Balkan winter.

According to reports, the statue weighs between 400 and 500 kilograms, so we are guessing (conservatively) the umbrella comes in at about 20 kg.

Zagorka, who penned some 35 books in the first half of the last century, is one of the most widely read writers in Croatia.

Happy New Year Spoken in 50 Languages by Native Speakers

As we are only conversant in a mere 40 languages we cannot vouch that each of the greetings in the accompanying video is pronounced perfectly and/or grammatically correct. And of course we don’t know that there are any native Latin speakers around these days.

Nevertheless, requests by our sister site, Simple English News, to embassies, culture houses, students, teachers, priests and rabbis have enabled this multilingual New Year’s greeting. A special thank you, from Arabic to Yiddish speakers, to all those who contributed.

We would like to wish our loyal reader(s) a happy, successful, productive and peaceful 2012.

A Guy Breaks Into a Bar … And Falls Asleep

The arrest of a 40-year-old man who broke into a public house last month in Ujkigyos, Hungary proved to be bereft of challenges.

According to a report on the BEOL website, the man, upon entering the drinking establishment in the southeast Hungarian town on October 19, poured himself a glass of vodka and a bottle of beer from the bar.

He then proceeded to fill a bag with a bottle of vodka and a beer.

As he was on his way to exit the bar, however, the man succumbed to a powerful attack of fatigue.

When the publican opened his premises the following morning, he found the man on the floor, straddled in the arms of Morpheus.

The local constabulary was promptly alerted, and the man – who had no previous criminal record – was placed on probation for one year.

Odds Favor J.R. Martinez to Win DWTS

Wynn Las Vegas views J.R. Martinez as having the best chances of winning Season 13 of “Dancing with Stars”. The actor and motivational speaker is 3/1 to emerge victorious during this season’s hit ABC reality show.

Ricki Lake is second at 7/2, Chynna Phillips third at 5/1. They are followed by Kristin Cavallari (7/1), Robert Kardashian (10/1), Hope Solo (10/1) and David Arquette (14/1).

Carson Kressley, Nancy Grace and Chaz Bono are the long shots, coming in at 20/1, 50/1 and 85/1, respectively.

The odds were produced on October 4, 2011 by Johnny Avello, the director of race and sports operations at Wynn Las Vegas, and are for entertainment purposes only.

Update: Kristin Cavallari was eliminated from the competition during last night’s show.

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