Posted on 04/16/2010 9:14:25 AM PDT by jalisco555
All he needs is an iPad and an electrical outlet to run the country.
Norway's prime minister, Jens Stotlenberg is again grounded in New York as volcanic ash from Iceland's tempermental volcano continues to close European airspace, but that didn't stop him from doing the daily business of Norwegian govemernment from his iPad in an airport lounge.
Stoltenberg, who traveled from Oslo to participate in President Obama's nuclear summit, was stranded along with many thousands of others and will probably be waiting for at least another day before flights can resume, authorities said Friday.
The FAA is working to move some of the many affected flights from the US to international destinations by rerouting them around the huge cloud of ash.
Stoltenberg's press secretary told CNN that the prime minister has been running his government from Apple's tablet.
The arc of grounded aircraft widened across Europe Friday, as thousands of planes stayed on the tarmac to avoid the hazardous cloud.
Eurocontrol, the air traffic agency, said a half dozen European countries closed their airspace, with about 60% of European flights cancelled.
Delays will continue into Saturday, it said. "We expect around 11,000 flights to take place today in European airspace.
On a normal day, we would expect 28,000," said Eurocontrol spokeswoman Kyla Evans. "The cloud of volcanic ash is continuing to move east and southeast."
Authorities shut down air space over Britain, Ireland, France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Belgium.
That halted flights at Europe's two busiest airports - Heathrow in London and Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris - as well as dozens of other airports, 25 in France alone.
Polish officials worried that the ash cloud could threaten the arrival of many world leaders for Sunday's state funeral of President Lech Kaczynski and his wife, Maria, in the southern city of Krakow.
Among those coming are President Barack Obama, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Officials have said a postponement of the funeral would be an absolute last resort.
The White House says Obama still planned to fly to Poland on Saturday for the funeral.
No more than 120 trans-Atlantic flights reached European airports Friday morning, compared to 300 on a normal day, according to Eurocontrol.
Ping.
Well whaddya know...the cotton-pickin’ thing is good for something!
“Governing a country? There’s an app for that.”
It's good to be KING!
He is not “running the country” any more than the President does here.
Talk about stupid reporters
You owe me a keyboard.
Well...if HE can do that why can’t our CONGRESS CRITTERS “govern” from their DISTRICTS instead of DC? HHHMMMMmmmmm????
Interesting to watch fuel prices, refineries calculate demand and volume load on jets flying 24/7.
During the last big grounding (9/11) oceans of jet fuel went up the flares as pipelines and tanks filled.
Yup. And he could do the same thing with nearly any other Internet-connected computer.
The iPad continues to underwhelm.
^__^ lawl
Ha, that was the excuse. The real reason was to buy an IPad. They won't be available in Norway for a while. I wonder how many other heads of state came for that reason, LOL.
Uh huh...
LOL, you nailed it.
Maybe he should be governiing from a real computer and not a toy.
Is it really an iPad? Or a laptop? Most of the geeks I read on-line say that the iPad is pretty useless.
Norway? He could probably run it from an Etch-A-Sketch.
Etch-A-Sketch = my 1st laptop.
At least they have a short re-boot time.
Those "geeks" think a device is "useless" based on a spec sheet; they reach that conclusion without trying to use it or considering how people in the real world use computers.
If you can do it from a (Flash-free) Web browser or e-mail client, you can do it from an iPad. For that matter, there are remote access clients that let you remotely control a Mac or Windows PC from the iPad. I doubt the president is doing a lot of photoshop or video editing.
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