From The Weekly Telegraph No. 458 of May 3 - 9, 2000:
Be Jews if not Christians, says Bishop: AN ANGLICAN bishop has invited people to turn to Judaism if they cannot accept the Chrtistian faith. writes P J Bonthrone.
The Bishop of Oxford, the Rt Rev Richard Harries, said he would rather people had faith in God even if they could not believe in Christ as His son. Bishop Harries, chairman of the Council of Christians and Jews, was writing in Manna, journal of the Sternberg Centre for Judaism in north London, the British centre for Reform Judaism.
He said: "I see a category of people who are natural monotheists and who simply cannot believe Christian claims about Jesus but who would love to have a spiritual home."

More people are turning to the Roman Catholic Church for exorcisms because of the "rise of the demonic" and the confusion caused by "New Age" religions, according to exorcist Fr. Jeremy Davies. But the Church said it was not aware of any exorcisms having been performed in the past 25 years.

From The Weekly Telegraph No. 459 of May 10 - 16, 2000:
Police act as Allenby burns: EGYPTIAN police arrested about 100 revellers in the Egyptian town of Port Said last week for burning effigies of Field Marshal Viscount Allenby. The annual tradition has gone on for 80 years, since he was British High Commissioner there. This year it was banned for breaching environmental regulations. "It leaves the streets smouldering for days," said Shim Sham, the public hygiene director.

From The Weekly Telegraph No. 460 of May 17 - 23, 2000:
Anglo-Saxon no longer compulsory at Oxford: Oxford University has reversed a centuries-old tradition by deciding that Anglo-Saxon should no longer be a compulsory part of the English degree course, writes John Clare, Education Editor.
Dr. Kate Flint, head of the 100-strong English faculty, which took the decisive vote after nearly 30 years of scholarly argument, said the aim was to make English more attractive and accessible to contemporary undergraduates.
"Some students find Anglo-Saxon very hard and off-putting," she said. "Some good students don't come here because of it."
The decision was welcomed by Prof Valentine Cunningham, the university's professor of English literature, who specialises in Victorian poetry.
"Anglo-Saxon was the cornerstone of quite the stodgiest and freakiest undergraduate English course in the country," he said.
However, Dr Mark Griffith, who has taught Anglo-Saxon at Oxford for 20 years, described the decision as a disaster.
"It is yet another example of dumbing down", he said. "Anglo-Saxon is the most technical and demanding part of the whole degree."

From The Weekly Telegraph No. 460 of May 17 - 23, 2000:
Dam drowns 'Turkish Pompeii': ARCHAEOLOGISTS are racing to save what they can of one of the richest collections of Roman mosaics ever found before they disappear beneath the waters of an artificial lake, writes Amberin Zaman. Despite repeated appeals for the government to reverse its policy, the waters that have been building behind the new Birecik dam since the end of last month will, within the next three weeks, inundate Zeugma, the site of an ancient city in the southern province of Gaziantep.
Fabulous mosaics and other treasures have been uncovered over the past few weeks in a frantic dig. Archaeologists, led by Mehmet Onal from the Gaziantep Museum, have until the first week of June to remove what they can before the waters arrive. But they fear that much will be lost at a site described as a "second Pompeii".
Two exquisite mosaic floors have been found in the past month. One depicts Poseidon, the god of the seas, on his chariot with the water deities Thetis and Oceanus. The other shows Perseus saving Andromeda from a sea monster.
The mosaics were part of a sumptuous Roman villa that once stood on the banks of the Euphrates. These and other extraordinary artefacts, including a life-size bronze statue of Mars found a few days ago, are being hauled to the Gaziantep Museum. "There must be tens, perhaps hudreds, more villas out there with just as beautiful floors and objects," said Mr Onal. "But we will never know."

From the Toronto Globe and Mail of May 20, 2000:
Roman Catholic and Anglican bishops from around the world ended five days of church unity talks in Toronto yesterday... . They agreed on creating a joint unity commission, on issuing more declarations about what the two churches already agree upon, on telling their episcopal colleagues who weren't at the Toronto meeting how well things went, on setting up national Anglican-Catholic dialogue groups and on producing videos and CD-ROMs to illustrate church progress. There are still areas of difference. They could not share the eucharist at their retreat in Mississauga. The Catholic church won't give communion to non-Catholics. Questions of Papal jurisdiction and authority remain. Ordination of women is another problem issue. The five days of highly controversial meetings were denounced and condemned by more vigilant and zealous Protestant denominations.

From The Toronto Globe and Mail of May 19, 2000:
Obituary: Donald Coggan, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1974 to 1980 has died age 90. The obituary mentions, among other facts, that he supported the ordination of women, and "He will be remembered particularly for his remarkable contribution to the New English Bible and Revised English Bible, and for his unfailing support for the Council for Christian and Jews," said Archbishop Carey... ." A lecturer in Semitic languages at Manchester University from 1931 to 1934, he was professor of New Testament at Wycliffe College in Toronto, from 1937 to 1944, and principal of the London College of Divinity, 1944 to 1956, Bishop of Bradford (1956), Archbishop of York (1961) and Archbishop of Canterbury in 1974. On retirement, he was elevated to the House of Lords.

THE VIKINGS - This topical subject has recently been featured in newspaper articles, and in cover pictures and full colur illustrated feature articles in the pages of a number of literary sources.
Aramco World of November/December, 1999 contained "Among the Norse Tribes: The Remarkable Account of Ibn Fadlan" by Judith Gabriel, which gave an Arab view of the Vikings.
A two-page spread in The Toronto Globe and Mail of May 20, 2000 was headed "Vikings, Barbarians or bad rap?". The Canadian Edition of Time Magazine for May 8, 2000, ["The Untold Saga of The Vikings"] and The National Geographic Magazine Vol. 197 No. 5, for May, 2000 ["In Search of Vikings"] printed their tributes. We thus find The Vikings are back in the news a millennium after discovering the New World.
About time!

The Weekly Telegraph No. 461 of May 24-30, 2000 - Obituary:
Dame Barbara Cartland. "THE QUEEN of the breathless romantic novel, Dame Barbara Cartland, who was born in the age of innocence and remained forever outspoken about how the manners of the world were no longer the way they once were, has died aged 98 at her home in Hertfordshire, writes Hugh Davies.
Step-grandmother of Diana, Princess of Wales, and writer of 723 books, her theme never wavered from a gallant man's unconsummated love for a virginal woman. And there was always a happy ending.
As she explained her appeal, she gave women glamour and "the marvellous, attentive men they were starved of".
She wished to be remembered for her novels, through which she said that she hoped to give "beauty and love to the world."

Her Obituary in The Toronto Globe and Mail of 22 May, 2000 adds:
"Sales of her 723 books exceeded one billion worldwide, in 36 languages. The Guinness Book of Records lists her as the world's top-selling author."

From The Toronto Globe and Mail of 22 May, 2000: "Victoria Speaks" (Quotations from the good Monarch):
"The important thing is not what they think of me, it is what I think of them."
(Circa 1838, upon first meeting her future husband) "It was with some emotion ... that I beheld Albert - who is beautiful."
"As a rule, children are a bitter disappointment - their greatest object being to do precisely what their parents do not wish."
"Nothing brutalizes people more than cruelty to animals."
(In 1898, after a meeting with Prime Minister Gladstone) "He addresses me as if I was a public meeting."
(On newspapers) "None of the worst French novels from which careful parents try to protect their children can be as bad as what is daily brought and laid upon the breakfast-table of every educated family in England."
"I sincerely hope that increased taxation, necessary to meet the expenses of the war, will not fall upon the working classes; but I fear they will be most affected by the extra sixpence on beer."
"The Queen is most anxious to enlist every one who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of 'Women's Rights,' with all its attendant horrors."
"Lord Hartington's letter [is] very officious and impertinent in tone. The Queen has a right to telegraph congratulations and enquiries to any one, and won't stand dictation. She won't be a machine."
"To try and find out the reason for everything is very dangerous and leads to nothing but disappointment and dissatisfaction, unsettling your mind and in the end making you miserable."

The Weekly Telegraph No. 461 of May 24-30, 2000: Navy's gunnery training goes with a 'bang' - by Michael Fleet: Naval recruits at a gunnery school are shouting "bang" rather than firing real shells as part of the Ministry of Defence's drive to save money. The sailors at HMS Cambridge, near Plymouth, check the co-ordinates, line up a target and prepare to fire. Then they shout "bang" rather than fire their shore-to-ship guns, saving a £642 shell each time. The move is saving the Navy more than £1 million a year, but has been criticised by some ratings who complain that it is making a laughing stock of the service.
COMMENT: They might try the sound of Drake's Drum. [Drake's Drum by Sir Henry Newbolt (1862-1938) first appeared in print in 1896 and was an immediate success. Later correspondence between Admiral John Luce, Lady Glenconner and the poet, written in 1919, recalls the traditional power of Drake's drum mentioned in Newbolt's poem, and relates stories of Drake's Drum being heard in the first World War when the German fleet surrendered.

Take my drum to England, hang et
by the shore,
Strike et when your powder's runnin' low;
If the Dons sight Devon, I'll
quit the port o'Heaven,
An' drum them up the Channel as we
drummed them long ago.]

From The Toronto Globe and Mail of 23 May, 2000: Israeli women win prayer fight: Right to worship aloud at Western Wall upsets ultra-Orthodox Jews - by Matthew Kalman, Special to The Globe and Mail, Jerusalem:
"Jewish women scored a resounding victory over Israel's religious establishment yesterday with a Supreme Court ruling that they be allowed to pray aloud from the Torah at the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site in the Old City of Jerusalem.
Until now it has been an offence punishable by up to six months in jail for female Reform Jews to pray using religious items, such as a Torah scroll and prayer shawl, which are traditionally reserved for men. Ultra-Orthodox Jews say that women praying from the Torah violates Jewish law and the division of male and female roles.
The Israeli government had argued that allowing reform women to hold services at the wall would have endangered public security, offended other Jews and broken a law prohibiting ceremonies contrary to customs practised at the holy site.
But the country's Supreme Court discounted the arguments and ordered the government to make proper arrangements within six months to allow women to exercise their rights."
The article contains further details and probes possible ramifications and prospects in light of the contentious ruling.

The same issue of The Globe and Mail printed a letter to the Editor under the heading "What is a Jew?":
Andrew Cohen, in his column (choosing One Of The Chosen People - May 22), states that Madeleine Albright did not know she was a Jew when she was appointed U.S. Secretary of State and that Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut is an observant Orthodox Jew. Also identified as Jews, possibly unobservant, are Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, Monica Lewinsky, Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan and Henry Kissinger.
What then is a Jew? Is, say, a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant who has converted to Judaism one? A black Ethiopian who claims decent (sic) from one of the lost tribes of Israel? Was Sammy Davis Jr. a Jew, as he claimed? Can there be such a thing as an atheistic Jew? Or a Jew who accepts Jesus as divine? Is a Jew who becomes a Baptist still a Jew?
I have struggled with this question for years, and can now provide the answer: A Jew is anyone who struggles with the definition of the word Jew.
Philip M. Alderman, West Vancouver, B.C.