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Death Valley, Norfolk

THE county of Norfolk in eastern England is noted, in Noel Coward’s words, for being “very flat”. But could it really be the hottest place in the world too? When James Brown tried out Microsoft’s new search engine, MSN Search, earlier this month, he was intrigued by the claim that by using information in Microsoft’s Encarta encyclopedia it could answer questions as well as search by keywords. So, after confirming that the normal human body temperature is 37 °C and that Ouagadougou is still the capital of Burkina Faso, he asked it to tell him the “hottest place in the world”.…