Please write for further details of any items of particular interest.

The following items were printed in the September, 2003 issue of The Prophetic Expositor:

Science, Journal of The American Association For The Advancement of Science, Vol. 301, No. 5633, 1 August, 2003, pp. 582-589,
Mayhem in Mesopotamia, A Museum Looted - News focus Special Report forms a well-illustrated examination of what happened in the Iraq area, both in the Baghdad Museum, and in the multitudes of archaeological sites which stand exposed to looting.
The sub-heading sums up the contents of the article in these words: "From catastrophe to exaggeration, and from blunder to bluster, the looting of the Iraq Museum turned a scientific and cultural tragedy into a media event and political free-for-all."
The Museum Scorecard (as at 28 July 2003): Public gallery thefts: 40; Recovered: 10, Conservation room thefts: 190; Recovered 30, Heritage room thefts: 236; Recovered: 164, Ground-floor storage area thefts: 2703; Recovered: 2169, Basement storage thefts: 10,337; Recovered: 671; Returned through local amnesty: 1453; Recovered through raids/seizures: 1591, Safe in off-site locations: 39,453 manuscripts, 8366 public gallery objects, 616 objects from Numrud and Ur. Total thefts: 13,515. Total recovered: 3044, Still missing: 10,471.

Time, August 4, 2003, Vol. 162 No. 5 (Canadian Edn.) pp. 30-32
Where The Good Jobs Are Going - forget sweatshops. U.S. companies are now shifting high-wage work overseas, especially to India by Jyoti Tottam -
[Brief: U.S. financial-services firms expect to move more than 500,000 jobs overseas within five years.]
COMMENT: Can workers who thus lose their jobs eventually continue to buy the produce which will be on offer, no matter how low the wages paid to foreign workers?

Time, August 11, 2003, Vol. 162 No. 6 (Canadian Edn.) Religion - Mary Magdalene; Saint or Sinner? A new wave of literature is cleaning up her reputation. How a woman of substance was "harlotized" by David van Biema.
[Some quotes: "Three decades ago, the Roman Catholic Church quietly admitted what critics had been saying for centuries: Magdalene's standard image as a reformed prostitute is not supported by the text of the Bible...", "Mary Magdalene (her name refers to Magdala, a city in Galilee)...", "Discrepancies notwithstanding, the net impression is of a woman of substance, brave and smart and devoted, who plays a crucial-perhaps irreplaceable-role in Christianity's defining moment." "The mix-up (of several Marys mentioned in the Gospels) was made official by Pope Gregory the Great 591: 'She whom Luke calls the sinful woman, whom John calls Mary (of Bethany), we believe to be the Mary from whom seven devils were ejected according to Mark.' Gregory declared in a sermon. That position became church teaching, although it was not adopted by Orthodoxy or Protestantism when each later split from Catholicism." "The notion that Magdalene was pregnant by Jesus at his Crucifixion became especially entrenched in France, which already had a tradition of her immigration in a rudderless boat, bearing the Holy Grail, his chalice at the Last Supper into which his blood later fell. Several French kings promoted the legend that descendants of Magdalene's child founded the Merovingian line of European royalty, a story revived by Richard Wagner in his opera Parsifal and again in connection with Diana, Princess of Wales, who reportedly had some Merovingian blood..."] [Brief: 4 pages, illustrated.]

From e-mails and as presented in "The Pathfinder", we note the following Obituary: A Tribute to Colonel Jack Mohr.
Colonel Gordon "Jack" Mohr of North Little Rock , Arkansas, passed from this life on Thursday, July 17, 2003 at the age of 87. He will be greatly missed by all who knew, loved and respected him. His writings, wherein he fearlessly upheld the truths concerning the Gospel of the Kingdom and those things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, no matter the cost to himself personally, were read and appreciated by a great many people. He attended Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, and was a Lay evangelist for the last 40 years. He was a retired Lt. Colonel with the U.S. Army and was one of the top 10 most-decorated men in the Korean War, and thus he was buried with full military honors at Concord Cemetery in Furlow, Arkansas. Col. Mohr is survived by his son, Ike, and wife, Sandra Mohr, of North Little Rock; grandchildren Russell and Katie Mohr of St. Louis, Missouri, and Amanda Mohr of North Little Rock. 2 Sam. 3:38 is a fitting tribute to Colonel Mohr. It reads, "And the king said unto his servants, know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel."

The Annals of the Association of American Geographers Vol. 93 No. 2, June 2003, pp. 350-364:
Fished Up or Thrown Down: The Geography of Pacific Island Origin Myths by Patrick D. Nunn, Department of Geography, The University of the South Pacific.
Myths recalling how islands were "fished up" or "thrown down" by (demi)gods are widespread in the Pacific Islands. [Brief: The more widespread "fished-up" myths appear related to tectonic upheavals wherein new island land appeared, whereas the less-common "thrown down" myths appear related to islands in which volcanic eruption occurred within the period of human occupation. Detailed study of the distribution of the myths across the multitudes of tiny islands which dot the Pacific may grant insight into the patterns of the earliest spread of settlements, and their directions of migration. Scriptural description of the Biblical flood will doubtless come to mind for comparison.]

Scientific American, Vol. 289 No. 2, August, 2003, pp. 66-73 Questioning the Delphic Oracle, by John R. Hale, Jelle Zeilinga de Boer, Jeffrey P. Chanton and Henry A. Spiller -
"For the past century, scholars have discounted as myth the traditional explanation that vapors rising out of the earth intoxicated, and inspired, the prophesying priestesses at Delphi. Recent scientific findings show that this description was, in fact, extraordinarily accurate. In particular, the authors have identified two geologic faults that intersect precisely under the site of the oracle. Furthermore, the petrochemical-rich layers in the limestone formations of the region most likely produced ethylene, a gas that induces a trancelike state and that could have risen through fissures created by the faults." [Brief: A beautifully illustrated , well-written account.]

The Globe & Mail, August 1, 2003:
1. Israeli law a hurdle for mixed marriages Jerusalem.
The Israeli parliament passed a law yesterday that bars Palestinians who marry Israeli citizens, including Arabs, from living in Israel. The government justified the measure as necessary to fight terrorism, but critics say it is intended to cut Palestinian immigration and to coerce Israeli Arabs into leaving the country. The practical effect of the law will probably be to force Arabs, who account for one in five of the Israeli population, to move to the West Bank or Gaza, although legally it could force a husband and wife to live apart. Guardian
2. Israel plans new settler homes - Bids for 22 family-size units in Gaza Strip call into question commitment to peace by Timothy Abbleby [Brief 4-columns, illustrated.]
3. Iraq: Time to get out - The perils of a rapid exit are many, says security analyst Edward Luttwak. But the alternative is worse. [ This 4-column illustrated account begins: "By now it's obvious that no significant population group in Iraq wants the democracy that the Bush administration is striving so hard to establish. The best-educated Sunnis and Christians of the Baghdad elite may admire democracy in theory, but fiercely oppose it in practice. They do not want to (be) ruled by the Shia majority, and still less by the emerging Kurdish-Shia alliance... ."]
4. Obituary: Eileen Haddon, 1921-2003 Determined editor fought racism, injustice, by Terrence Ranger -
The life of journalist and campaigner Eileen Haddon, who has died aged 82, spanned the changes of 20th-century southern African history. In her youth she fought against segregation in her native South Africa; in maturity, she opposed repression in Rhodesia; and in old age, she witnessed with indignation the authoritarianism of the current Zimbabwean regime. [Brief: 5-columns, mentioning her origins in the South African mining town of Boksberg, her start at medical school, and the influence of her father's friend , the anti-racist Professor Fouché, her advocacy against Ian Smith's Government in Rhodesia, and her later sadness at the results when the Mugabe Government took its later stringent policy direction.]

Globe & Mail, August 2, 2003 -
1. America's Cultural Offensive - Washington hopes to ease foreign-policy woes in the Middle East by wooing hearts and minds with a new Arabic-language radio network, satellite TV channel and glossy monthly magazine. It's the funky side of the war on terror, Simon Houpt writes -
[Brief: 12-column illustrated article explains the attempt to appear "open", giving Arab youth an outlet, and in effect to make American culture appear "desirable" with every influence that big dollars can supply. Will it work? That is an open question.]
2. Bending their ways - After centuries of spurning mainstream society and modern technology, Canada's old order Mennonites suddenly are embracing both. Mark Stevenson ventures into Ontario's horse-and-buggy country, where he encounters a secretive community at a turning point in its history.
[Brief: 9-column-spread with illustrations across 3 pages.]
3. Globetrotter - Our guide to what's on worldwide by Laszlo Buhasz and Jennifer Hardenne -
Kew Gardens given World Heritage status. Photo caption sums up: "London's Royal Botanic Gardens, better known as Kew Gardens, have been granted World Heritage status.
4. History 'Til death (or something else) do us part - Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII by David Starkey Harper Collins, 852 pages $44.95 -
reviewed by Mary Ambrose - [Brief: 10-column review with large illustration of the scene in which Anne Boleyn, the grand passion of Henry's life, makes a last appeal to be spared, just before her head was chopped off.]

Globe & Mail, August 7, 2003:
1. Religion today: "There is a joke in the Jewish community about a typical Jewish mother who travels to a remote Buddhist temple in Nepal," writes Mary Wakefield in The Spectator. "Eventually granted an audience with the revered guru there, she says just three words: 'Sheldon, come home.' The first trickle of Jews began to convert to Buddhism about 50 years ago...."
2. Banks said to dodge tax - More than $17-billion shifted into shelters - by Glenn R. Simpson, NEW YORK
Some of the biggest banks in the United States have avoided millions of dollars in state taxes by creating investment funds that didn't sell shares to the public but paid tax-exempt dividends to their corporate parents. A review of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission records shows that at least 10 major banks shifted more than $17-billion (U.S.) into such funds, which appear to have served little purpose for many of the banks beyond sheltering income. Bank of America Corp. transferred at least $8-billion into its fund, sheltering more than $750-million in profit over three years. Most of the 10 known funds were set up in the 1990s, and all have been shut down since the SEC and California revenue officials quietly began looking into the practice. It isn't known if more such funds remain active... .
[Brief: 3-columns, ending with this paragraph: "The investment funds themselves typically aren't subject to state and federal taxes because individual investors are supposed to pay taxes on income generated by such funds. When they set up the funds, some banks told the SEC that they planned to offer shares for sale. But ultimately the 10 known funds had few customers other than the banks themselves.]
3. Obituary - Gerald Hawkins 1928-2003 by Michael Bailey -
Gerald Hawkins, who as a Boston university professor in the 1960s used results from a primitive IBM computer to contend that Stonehenge was not a random-creation of barbarians but a rather sophisticated bronze Age astronomical observatory and calculator, died May 26 at his farm in Rappahannock County, Va. He was 75. ... It was his work on the collection of 30-ton boulders and pillars on Salisbury Plain in southern England that garnered Dr. Hawkins his most fame and controversy. In the early 1960s Dr. Hawkins, a British native, led a group of researchers to Stonehenge. Using calculations fed into a massive International Business Machines 7090 computer, Dr. Hawkins said he found a correlation between the alignment of certain archways and pillars and 12 major lunar and solar events of 1500 BC, when he said the builders of Stonehenge lived. By standing in the centre of the structure and watching where the sun and moon rose and set in relation to the pillars, the residents of Stonehenge could predict summer and winter solstices, Dr. Hawkins's theory stated. In addition, through the use of 56 "Aubrey" holes ringing the site, the resident astronomers could calculate the much more sophisticated schedule of eclipses. The number 56 is key, corresponding to the number of years it takes the moon to complete its three cycles - each representing a different angle between the moon's orbit and the Earth's equator, and therefore, its relationship to the sun. At the beginning and end of these cycles, the moon rises and sets on the horizon at the same position. Dr. Hawkins called the application of these holes a crude computer. [Brief: 5-columns. The article contains references to critics and to his other books, University teaching, directing the radio meteor program at the Harvard observatory, and association with the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories &c.]

Globe & Mail, August 9, 2003: Two book reviews:
1. History: What hath King James wrought? - God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible by Adam Nicolson - Harper Collins, 281 pages, $38.95 -
Reviewed by Jim Reid - [Brief: 5-coloumns, illustrated. The story of the organisation of the men who were called to translate the Scriptures and produce the KJV.]
2. Biography: 'Let there be Newton' - Isaac Newton by James Gleick, Pantheon, 272 pages, $34.95 -
Reviewed by Chet Raymo -
[Brief: 7-columns, illustrated - Together forming The Royal Society, Isaac Newton, a man of prodigious intellect and inscrutable personality stood head and shoulders above other famous scientists of his acquaintance. One quote: Today's scientists tend to be embarrassed by Newton's religious and alchemical studies, but Newton was looking for deeper, unifying truths than the superficial speculations of the secular empiricists of London... .] The book is also reviewed in a full page of Science, Vol. 301, No. 5635, 15 August, 2003, p. 920.
Globe & Mail, August 12, 2003: Model plane flown across the Atlantic, by Allison Lawlor:
The history of transatlantic aviation reached a new milestone yesterday when a 4.9-kilogram model airplane completed a 3,040-kilometre flight from Cape Spear, Nfld., to Ireland. [Brief: (At 300 metres altitude, on auto-pilot, and tracked by satellite for most of the flight, following the route of Alcock and Brown's first transatlantic flight in June 1919)... The craft - 1.8 metres long with an almost matching wingspan - landed 38 1/2 hours later at Mannin Beach in western Ireland just 10 metres from target. Just under 5 kilograms at take-off, it held only 51.1 millilitres of fuel (40-minutes worth) when it landed, weighing 2.6 kilograms. Its designer, who launched the craft, is legally blind. It is a remarkable achievement.]
Also Weekly Telegraph No. 630, August 20-26, 2003.
The Weekly Telegraph, No. 628, August 6-12, 2003 carried a somewhat related item: Birdman's express flight across the Channel by Nicole Martin in Cap Blanc-Nez -
TO THE crowd of onlookers gathered at sunrise on a cliff near Calais, Felix Baumgartner was nothing more than a speck in the sky. Hurtling to the ground at speeds reaching 220 mph, the skydiver gradually became recognisable as he opened his parachute and guided himself through the clouds. Twelve minutes and three seconds after leaping from a plane 30,000 ft above Dover and gliding across the 21 miles of water, he made his hard but controlled landing in Cap Blanc-Nez, securing his place in history as the first person to fly across the Channel without power... . [Brief: The Austrian wore a 6ft carbon fibre 'wing' to glide across, and safely parachuted down near Calais to land.

The Weekly Telegraph, No. 628, August 6-12, 2003 held 2 other items of interest:
1. MPs reject sovereignty deal for Gibraltar By George Jones -
A JOINT sovereignty deal for Gibraltar is fundamentally wrong, unenforceable and should be shelved as soon as possible, the Government has been told. Instead ministers should work on promoting cordial relations between the British overseas territory and Spain, said a report by the Commons foreign affairs committee. Gibraltarians overwhelmingly rejected joint sovereignty of the territory with Spain in an unofficial referendum last November... . The Gibraltar government welcomed the report.
2. US in cash threat to halt Israeli fence By Inigo Gilmore in Jerusalem -
THE US State Department has drawn up a proposal to cut loan guarantees to Israel in an attempt to halt ever-expanding construction work on a controversial security fence, according to Israeli media reports. [Brief: 3-column, illustrated details the issues.]

The Weekly Telegraph, No. 629, August 13-19, 2003 -
1. Frozen pensions fight goes on -and the search for funding - As the Carson case goes to the House of Lords, the expat campaigning intensifies -
THE fight for parity in expatriates' pensions goes on, thanks to the petition lodged this month with the House of Lords by Annette Carson. [Brief: 6-columns, illustrated.] COMMENT: We will continue to keep our eye on this one.
2. "Anti-euro feelings rise as Sweden heads for vote." heads a 3-column item.
3. [Weekly Telegraph Editorial:] Mugabe's madness -
Nothing better illustrates the madness that pervades President Mugabe's Zimbabwe than the forlorn gathering of what remains of the country's white farmers for their 60th annual conference, which we report this week. Their meeting coincided with news that yet another 150 farms are to be taken over and transferred to members of the ruling party and their cronies. That spells more uncultivated fields, yet higher food prices and many more unemployed black farm workers... .
[COMMENT: This tragedy might have been entirely avoided if good common sense had pervaded the minds of the internationalists back in the 70s!]
Related articles in the same issue: No relief for white farmers (2-columns, illustrated) and Zimbabwe cannot afford ink needed to print its banknotes (2 columns).
4. Cromwell's lion banned by US town by Marcus Warren in Los Angeles -
A TOWN in the United States named after Oliver Cromwell's birthplace has banished his family lion from its coat of arms in belated indignation of his treatment of the Irish... . [Brief: 2-columns, illustrated with a representation of the heraldry concerned.]
5. Druids cut road death toll with divine intervention by Michael Leidig in Vienna -
DRUIDS have been brought in to reduce the number of accidents on Austria's worst stretches of autobahn. They have put up huge roadside monoliths to restore the natural flow of "earth energy". After the massive pillars of white quartz were put up beside a notorious stretch of road during a secret two-year trial the number of fatal accidents fell from an average of six a year to zero... . [Brief: 3-columns, illustrated.]
6. Iraqis flock to sign up for Mahdi's Shia army -
[Brief: This is composed of a growing militia of mostly Shia men who have responded to the fiery call to arms made by a maverick young cleric, Muqtader al Saef to resist the US "invaders" and Iraq's "Zionist" governing council, appointed by the coalition. Now the ranks of this religious army, named after an ancient imam who Shias believe will return to save the world, have swollen into tens of thousands, perhaps more... .]
7. Churches in dispute over keys to Christ's birthplace by Inigo Gilmore in Jerusalem -
AN UNHOLY row has erupted at the church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, which is believed to stand on the site of Jesus' birth, after Greek Orthodox monks changed the locks and refused to share the keys. [Brief: The rivals are the Catholic and Armenian churches.]
8. Move over, Winston: the world is picking Newton as top Briton by Elizabeth day -
SIR ISAAC NEWTON is poised to beat Sir Winston Churchill in a worldwide contest being run by the BBC to find the "Greatest Briton". ...
9. Glimpse into the Queen Mother's life by Caroline Davies -
A NEW standard may have been raised on the flagstaff but the essence of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother lingers at Clarence House as it opens to the public for the first time... . [Brief: Colour-ilustrated 1/2-page article.]
10. "Quiet burial amid political storm" and "Labour is in a sorry state over Kelly" are two headings in a full page treating of the ongoing intense interest into the death of that highly-regarded scientific investigator. Another 5-column heading reads: Blair is suffering a Major loss of respect.
11. Obituary: Sir Charles Kerruish, Aged 86.
Former President of Tynwald, the ancient Isle of Man parliament, and the leading personality in Manx politics in the second half of last century. He had been the youngest member of the House of Keys, the Lower House of Tynwald, in Manx history and was elected as the youngest Speaker there in 1962. Also in The Weekly Telegraph No. 630, August 20-26, 2003.
12. De Beers fears lab diamonds - by Simon English -
DE BEERS, the diamond giant, is under threat from two US companies which are poised to begin mass producing synthetic versions of the precious stones said to be virtually identical to the real thing. A scientific breakthrough means that the high-pressure and high-temperature conditions under which diamonds were formed billions of years ago can now be recreated in a laboratory. Gemesis is a Florida-based business headed by retired army officer Gen. Carter Clarke, who first heard of the techniques in Moscow. He has been perfecting the process for the past eight years and now has 27 diamond-making machines in operation. Apollo Diamond, a Boston company, believes that by subjecting carbon to heat and pressure it can create diamond semiconductors that will revolutionise the computer world. DeBeers is taking the threat seriously. It set up the Gem Defensive Programme to protect its near monopoly.

Globe & Mail, August 14, 2003: Obituary - Diana Mosley 1910-2003 - Hitler's angel dies unrepentant - One of a brood of notoriously eccentric, upper-class sisters, she married the leader of Britain's fascist party and never apologized for her fascination with Adolf Hitler - by Amelia Gentleman, Paris -
Diana Mosley, widow of Britain's pre-war fascist party leader Sir Oswald Mosley and one of the notoriously eccentric , upper-class Mitford sisters, has died in her Paris apartment at the age of 93. Lady Mosley, who spent much of the Second World War in prison in Britain, died peacefully on Monday in the city where she had lived for over half a century. Despite unabating criticism of her fascist sympathies, she never apologized for her fascination with Adolf Hitler, who attended her secret wedding to Sir Oswald, held at Joseph Goebbels' Berlin home in 1936. "They'll go on persecuting me until I say Hitler was ghastly," she said in a recent interview. "Well what's the point in saying that? We all know that he was a monster, that he was very cruel and did terrible things. But that doesn't alter the fact that he was obviously an interesting figure... .
[Brief: 5-columns, illustrated. Excerpts: "She claimed, however, that Hitler never mentioned his anti-Semitism during many hours of conversation." MI5 (1940) regarded Diana as the greater threat (than Sir Oswald). "Her upbringing among a brilliant, eccentric, funny and supremely self-confident clan of English aristocrats marked her for life and shone through in everything she did. When she died she was still, unquestionably, a Mitford girl."]
Also a full-page obituary and an article in The Weekly Telegraph, no. 630, August 20-26, 2003.

The Globe & Mail, August 16, 2003 - Shining a light on medieval treasure -
Thanks to advanced technology, the Lindisfarne Gospels, the 1,300-year-old masterpiece of an artist-monk, are finally getting the attention they deserve - by Robert Mason Lee, LONDON
For the past 150 years, the most priceless book in the world and one of Britain's greatest art treasures has rested - if not entirely forgotten, then not exactly celebrated either - in a glass case in the British Library. While tourists in Dublin have long crowded by the thousands to glimpse the permanent exhibit for a later masterpiece of Celtic art, The Book of Kells, the British Library had no special exhibit for its predecessor, the stunning Lindisfarne Gospels. That has now been corrected with a tour de force exhibition that illuminates the gospels using the most advanced technology available and the surprising results of recent scholarship. [Brief: 6-columns, illustrated.]

Globe & Mail August 18, 2003:
1. Obituary- Idi Amin - Death of a sadistic despot - One of modern history's bloodiest tyrants imposed an eight-year reign of terror on Uganda - by Stephanie Nolen -
[Brief: 5-columns, illustrated.] Also full page in The Weekly Telegraph No.631, August 27-September 2, 2003.
2. Between the crosses, row on row - Mike DeJong [Brief: A visit to Dieppe - Then and Now. One long column well worth reading.]

Globe & Mail August 21, 2003: One Nation party founder guilty of fraud - Brisbane, Australia.
The controversial founder of Australia's anti-immigrant One Nation party, Pauline Hanson, was sentenced yesterday to three years in jail after being found guilty of electoral fraud, a court official said. The fiery redhead, known as much for her garish wardrobe as her strident politics, had pleaded not guilty to fraudulently registering One Nation in the state of Queensland. Reuters. Also 2 articles in The Weekly Telegraph No. 631, August 27-September 2, 2003.

The Weekly Telegraph, no. 630, August 20-26, 2003: -
1. Catalan dies out - AFTER millions of pounds of investment, efforts to revive Catalan, one of Europe's great languages, are failing, statistics show. Jordi Pujol, the ageing Catalan nationalist regional premier, has caused controversy by blaming its demise on immigrants.
2. 5,300-year-old Alps man 'died in battle' by Bruce Johnston in Rome - [Brief: The mummified man, found in 1991, died after wounding or killing up to four people in combat.]
3. 'More than 1,000 died' trying to flee E Germany by Kate Connolly in Berlin.
4. Obituary - Norman Hancock -
NORMAN HANCOCK who has died, aged 87, was an unsung hero of the Cold war whose design of the nuclear-powered hunter-killer submarine Swiftsure was a generation ahead of American and Soviet models; his drawings of the through-deck cruiser Invincible and the anti-submarine frigate Broadsword still form the backbone of the modern surface Navy. On becoming Assistant Director of Warship Design at Bath in 1969, Hancock was so determined to produce a boat which would be faster, stealthier and deeper diving than any contemporary boat that naval staff had to revise their expectations. He rejected the American teardrop hull and used one of equal diameter throughout which combined a longer pressure hull within a shorter over-all length. This was so successful that Swiftsure survived when, by accident, it plunged 50 per cent deeper than had been planned. He controlled every aspect of the design, placing the machinery on sophisticated mountings, scrutinising every shipboard system and making Swiftsure quieter than any previous submarine. [Brief: Condensed, adaptable, Much is still secret.]

Weekly Telegraph No. 631, August 27-September 2, 2003
1. Obituary: Valerie Lady Goulding aged 84.
[Brief: Royal courier between King Edward VIII and the Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin during the Abdication Crisis; later she founded and managed the largest charity hospital in Ireland. Her father, Sir Walter Monckton, the future 1st Viscount Monckton of Brenchley who became Attorney-General in the Duchy of Cornwall and a confidant of King Edward VIII made her his secretary during the crisis.]
2. Is this the oldest house in Britain? The Old Parsonage in Sussex is a landmark for South Downs ramblers; Now for sale, it may have another claim to fame, says Neil Mackwood. [Brief: 6-columns, colour-illustrated.]

Science, Vol. 301, No. 5635, 15 August, 2003, p. 915: Vesuvius' One-Two Punch -
When Mount Vesuvius began to erupt in A.D. 79, most inhabitants of Pompei fled the city. But some hid at home, and new geological evidence shows that many survived the first harrowing pumice storms only to perish in a second onslaught hours later. The research, by volcanologists and archaeologists at the Universitá Federico II in Napoli and Pompei's archaeological authority, provides "a painfully detailed reconstruction of the various causes of death," says Cynthia Damon, a classicist at Amherst College in Massachusetts. Evidence from new and old excavations shows that about 60% of the people who stayed in Pompei survived the first pumice flows. About half then hid in their homes while the rest fled. In a second wave of eruptions, torrents of ash and pumice poured down streets and piled up on walls, engulfing people on the roads. Those hiding inside stayed alive-only to suffocate when their roofs collapsed, the team reports in the 20 August Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research. The team asserts that intact skeletons and unmelted glass containers indicate the later deposits were not hot enough to burn the victims. But Peter Baxter of the Institute of Public Health at the University of Cambridge, U.K., says they could have died from inhaling hot particles.