Athens. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras announced a new bailout plan, trademarking Greek prefixes and suffixes.
"The Greek alpha™bet™ is fair use," he explained, "but there will be a nom™inal fee for each prefix or suffix."
The Central Bank estimated that "pro™" and "con™" alone could be worth up to 20 billion Eu™ros a year, and Google searches of "hyper™" turned up 345 million uses this week. An Apple spokesman said it would be technic™ally difficult to avoid using Greek terms, and disclosed plans to auto™mate IPhon™e charges for them. Micro™soft had no comment, but the Penta™gon™ announced an encryp™tion pro™gram™s to convert its phonet™ic alpha™bet™ just in case.
The American Medical Association has already secured a group rate for "otomy™," "ectomy™, and "ostemy™" so that emergency pro™cedures can be performed throughout the financial crisis™. In the US, Chief Justice John Roberts posted on his Facebook page that the new Greek law was probably, "Unenforceable," which the Greek Prime Minister pointed out was unlicensed use of "en™". Europ™ean opposition has been led by and Angel™a Merkel and Pope™ Francis. The Patri™arch of the Cath™olic™ church™ (who just completed his Auto™bio™graphy™) declared from his balcony that Greek authors could no longer use Latin terms free of charge. In retaliation, Greece recalled the prefix "Bibl™".
The eco™nom™ic toll has already been felt throughout the world, with many universities laying off staff and closing whole departments. "Sure it's fine for accounting and engineering, but try to teach philo™sophy,™ Geo™logy™ or Bio™logy™ without using Greek," said Yale University President Pet™er Salovey. "It would not be hyper™bole™ to call this cata™stroph™ic." However, nowhere was the crisis felt more deeply than on the Internet, where traffic came to a standstill due to a restraining order on use of the prefix Porn™.