this is very weird.
I open google earth and search for "athens, greece" for example, and even though it will through a pin on top of the correct location, the google earth globe will turn and zoom in towards a location in the sahara desert!

Could this be related to the regional settings on the computer?

nass@stardust:~$ locale

LANG=en_US.UTF-8

LANGUAGE=

LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"

LC_NUMERIC=el_GR.UTF-8

LC_TIME=el_GR.UTF-8

LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"

LC_MONETARY=el_GR.UTF-8

LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"

LC_PAPER=el_GR.UTF-8

LC_NAME=el_GR.UTF-8

LC_ADDRESS=el_GR.UTF-8

LC_TELEPHONE=el_GR.UTF-8

LC_MEASUREMENT=el_GR.UTF-8

LC_IDENTIFICATION=el_GR.UTF-8

LC_ALL=

What else could it be?