This isn’t the best time to be a traveler. Europe is still fighting plumes of volcanic ash—FC Barcelona had to take a bus from Barcelona to Milan for tomorrow’s game against Inter!—and now there’s word that a computer virus has wrecked a Russia-China border crossing. Some 2,000 Russians visiting the Chinese city of Heihe found themselves stranded when the computer virus totally wrecked everything.

But don’t worry! The virus was deleted from the computer system lickety split, and all is now back to normal.

No, the virus was never identified. Presumably it’s not the same one that caught porn fans in the act last week. (That’s one of my favorite tech stories in a long, long time. Hilarious.)

In other Russian news, Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich launched his gigantic yacht, the Eclipse, the other day. It’s safe to say the vessel is fairly fancy.

I sat here for a good 10 minutes trying to make this story interesting, but clearly I’ve failed.

I’ve been lax in my coverage of Russian watches lately. Most Russians do not have, how you say, very high quality but they have lots of features and plenty of style.

This dude at Russia2All covers the Buran Stingray, a diver that looks like someone stole the depth gauge off of a Victorian-era submersible.

This “style,” if you want to call it that, came about in WWII and is very similar to the old-timey Cartier Pasha. Those bars are to keep the crystal from blowing up under water. This watch has an ETA 7750 movement modified to remove the chrono parts.

Apparently this watch was made in Switzerland, a move by Buran to lend a little credibility to their brand. If you’re in the market for a watch, take a look at the Russians.

People are freaking out all over Norway because of what you are seeing here. According to Norwegian news outlets, the spooky giant spiral was seen, photographed, and recorded on video from all over the country. Updated.

Confirmed: It was a failed Russian missile launch. Click here for the full explanation.

Could it all be a hoax? Maybe it’s a massive joke, but all kinds of Norwegian news sites are reporting on it. According to NKR—Norway’s national TV channel—it could be related to a rocket fired from a Russian submarine in the White Sea. The Russians are denying any part on it at this at the moment. Nick Banbury, a witness located at Harstad, described how it all happened:

We are used to seeing lots of auroras here in Arctic Norway, but on my way to work this morning I saw something completely unexpected. Between 7:50 and 8:00 a.m. local time, there was a strange light in the sky. It consisted initially of a green beam of light similar in colour to the aurora with a mysterious rotating spiral at one end. This spiral then got bigger and bigger until it turned into a huge halo in the sky with the green beam extending down to the earth.

As hard as it is to believe, you can’t dispute the fact that the strange spiral was witnessed and recorded by thousands of people from hundreds of miles away, which means that the phenomenon occurred at a very high altitude. Even Phil Plait from Bad Astronomy agrees that this is real, and says that it was probably a rocket out of control. Norwegian astronomers and news outlets have actually confirmed that this was a failed Russian missile launch.

So barring any epic group joke, expect your new alien overlords to arrive at any time now. We can only hope they are all peace-loving voluptuous blondes with blue eyes. [Altaposten, VG, NRK via SpaceWeather via Universe Today—thanks Gonzalo Oxenford]

If you know Norwegian and have any information, contact me on AIM or by mail.