The granting of land located in the foothills of the Alps to the south of the River Danube was by no means a unique occurence. Only the previous year the bishopric of Freising has obtained royal demesne near Ulmerfeld. Further transfers of land followed, so that, little by little, Freising came to possess extensive holdings in the valley of the River Ybbs. Incidentally, during the 1990s, other places in this region have celebrated the 1000th anniversary of their first recorded mention (e.g. Krems, 995). More than eighty per cent of the settlements in the region came into being during the Babenberg era, that is to say before the middle of the 13th century.

Such transfers of land were part of a political concept referred to by historians as "the Ottonian-Salian church system of the Reich." This meant that the Ottonian and Salian Emperors accorded the bishoprics preferential treatment in the matter of granting land; in return they expected the bishops to secure settlers for the land and to establish religious missions there, thus helping to safeguard the frontier to the east. The kings and emperors looked on the bishops as loyal supporters; they owed their appointment to the ruling sovereign, apart from this, there was no need to fear that the bishops would present any problems with regard to inheritance or family matters. The colonized and episcopal land was seen as a firm base, the point of departure, from which the sovereign's territory could be expanded. Thus the bishops provided the necessary contingents for the emperor's military campaigns in Italy. It was Otto III who pursued the most ambitious ideals; up to the time of his death he resided in Rome, where he devoted himself to a renovatio imperii Romanorum (renewal of the Roman Empire).

The monks were notorious for selling their wines to the Ottoman Sultan labelled as 'mineral water' so that the emperor could avoid Muslim strictures against alcohol. The wines which pleased the court of Constantinople are just as good today, and very competitively priced.

Ireland thus experienced, within a short space of time, a substantial rise in non-Irish immigration, mostly from other EU countries, and a smaller but significant rise in non-EU immigrants, whether asylum-seekers, illegal immigrants or immigrant workers on short-term work permits. The country has thus been faced with the difficulties of constructing immigration and integration policies against a background of a rapid changing picture, limited experience, a less than positive attitude towards difference and a largely monocultural tradition. Apart from the rather ad-hoc arrangements made until the recent past for asylum-seekers and refugees, and the more formal arrangements now in place for the same community (although these are unsatisfactory in a number of significant respects) it would be fair to say that there was little that could be described as an ‘official planning process' on immigration.

Today, Norooz is celebrated as splendidly as ever. Setting the Haftsin (Norooz table) and sitting around it at the turn of the year, wearing new garments, presenting Eidi (gifts of crisp paper money) to children, sprinkling rose-water, eating sweets and celebrating sizdeh-be-dar (13th Farvardin or 2nd April) are practiced by Iranians, even those living abroad.

Muslim Iranians light candles as a symbol of ancient Persians' respect for fire, and place the Holy Qur'an on the Norooz table to show their esteem for this divine book. In recent years, by honoring the Norooz festival, Iranians have demonstrated their steadfast attachment to their national customs and traditions while firmly believing in the holy religion of Islam.

It is interesting to note that they are taken to be "refuges" and are described as "important" by the 2nd Century BCE tablet (that describes some aspects of the game) from the British Museum.

It is unfortunate that we know so little of the actual way the game was played. The rules presented here are obviously not to be relied upon as they are modern interpretations. However, I believe that the rules layed down are not far away from the truth. For example, the theorized rules state that the pawns must pass through the two rosettes at the end of the board in order to be safe. I believe that this matches a concept found upon a cylinder seal from the Jemdt Nasr period (3100 - 2900 BCE) [see fig 370, Beatrice Laura Goff, Symbols of Prehistoric Mesopotamia, New Haven, Yale 1963 ... sorry no scanner!] in the early Bronze Age. You will have to take my word for it for now, but the seal depicts the doorway to a temple (of Inanna, a fertility goddess), flanked on either side by eight-petalled rosettes.

Anyway, though we can never really be sure about what they may have meant. It is possible to ascribe a fairly simple correlation between the royal game and real life. After all, if it is around 3000 BCE, chances are, that the most important things to you are your family, your flock, and water (and grain). I am therefore attracted to the idea that the movement of the pieces around the board may mirror a shepherd's journey with his flock, from wadi to wadi, till he reaches the safety of home. This simple concept can then be construed as a metaphor of the King's role as shepherd of his people. A role he would have needed to perfect. A game involving both strategy and luck. The Royal Game ...

Although it originated in the late fourth century, Ghana only became a major regional power near the end of the millenium. Although the state was originally formed by Berbers, it was built on the southern edge of Berber populations. Eventually the state became dominated by the Soninke, a Mande speaking people living in the region bordering the Sahara. They built their capital city, Kumbi Saleh, right on the edge of the Sahara and the city quickly became the most dynamic and important southern terminus of the Saharan trade routes.

The state was ruled by a hereditary king called the Ghana (this is why we now call the kingdom, Ghana). The kingship was matrilineal (as was all Sahelian monarchies to follow); the king's sister provided the heir to the throne. In addition to military power, the king appears to have been the supreme judge of the kingdom.

Fueled by its economic vitality, the kingdom of Ghana rapidly expanded into an empire. It conquered local chieftaincies and required tribute from these subordinate states. This tribute, however, paled next to the wealth generated by the commerce of goods that passed from western Africa east to Egypt and the Middle East. This trade primarily involved gold, salt, copper, and even human beings.

Since the arrival of the French scientific mission at the turn of the 19th century, the City of Light was the destination of most of the educational missions sent to Europe. As a result, not only did the majority of the growing Egyptian professional and intellectual cadres receive their certificates in France but French became the second language in Egyptian schools. In addition, most of the European literary works selected by Refa'a El-Tahtawi and his disciples for translation were French.

Helping to promote the dissemination of French in Egypt was that the transition from a military to a civil hierarchy in government transpired along Latin rather than Anglo-Saxon lines. In the era of the Khedive Ismail (1863-1879) French became the language of the court and soon the acquisition of French became the sine qua non for the class of rural elite that began to emerge at that time. The Mixed Court system, established in 1876, was predominantly French inspired, with the result that not only did French become the language of litigation but also the corpus of law was largely based on French law and the Napoleonic code in particular.

Ablo says for a while it seemed he might escape the fate of other migrant workers. At school he excelled and he also turned out to be a very talented distance runner. In 1998 he won the marathon in a national competition, prompting the Ivorian sports federation to try to obtain for him Ivorian citizenship.

This would have allowed him to study on scholarship at a college and run marathons as a citizen of Ivory Coast. They failed. The trouble was this thing called "Ivoirité," which Ablo says Mr Gbagbo came up with long before he became president. Ivoirité means that you can't be a citizen unless both your parents and all your grandparents are or were Ivorian.

This neatly excludes the millions of immigrants who have lived for generations in this country, also anyone with a parent bearing a foreign name, sometimes a northern name. So Ablo's dreams of an education and athletic glory were dashed and he found himself back in cocoa country, driving a lorry.

Two buses and a truck were burnt and reduced to shells while several other vehicles and shops were stoned by organised gangs which went about intimidating people in high-density suburbs throughout the country on the first day of mass action called by the MDC.

Police fired tear gas to disperse protesters and anti-government activists erected roadblocks Tuesday as opposition calls for nationwide demonstrations against the Zimbabwean government gained momentum, witnesses said.

... the court has ways of imposing initial barriers. Customarily this is a "court emissary," the man who accompanies the prospective convert and provides the court with an assessment of what he or she has undergone. According to Ish-Shalom, the court emissaries, who have a purely technical role, have been transformed into "filters" that sift out those they deem unsuited for the conversion process.

He also says the special courts impose "sociological", non-halakhic criteria on the candidates, such as requiring a convert's spouse (even if he is considered Jewish) to also be religiously observant and that their children be sent to a religious school. "I can understand the logic behind this requirement, but there is cause to adopt a lenient approach," he says.

He cites several particularly absurd cases: "Students who study for four years at the religious youth villages and who were sent there by their families so that they would be observant, are frequently barred from converting because their family is not religious; an observant woman is disqualified from converting because she declared her intention to serve in the army; a woman whose adoptive family was the family of the director-general of our institute, Nehemiah Citroen, was disqualified because she didn't live in the same neighborhood as her adoptive family."

It seems obvious to me that it's hard to know exactly what happened, but that the bulldozer driver should be regarded as innocent until there are strong indications to the contrary (as any driver would after someone jumped in front of his vehicle).

According to a statement issued on Sunday by the region's information minister, Abdullahi Duale, Somaliland was not a party to the Somali conflict.

"There are no Somaliland military forces operating on Somali territory," the statement said, adding that Somaliland had "refrained from interfering in Somalia's internal affairs despite numerous provocations".

In Somaliland and Puntland, where central governmental administrations have been re-established, the human rights situation is markedly better than in other regions of former Somalia. Somaliland went through a period of localised civil war in 1994 to 1996, but has largely avoided the bitter factional fighting to which Mogadishu and parts of the south have been subjected. The Somaliland administration in Hargeisa has made significant progress in rehabilitating political, social and physical infrastructure.

The story goes that a 20-pound carp about to be slaughtered and made into gefilte fish for Sabbath dinner began speaking in Hebrew, shouting apocalyptic warnings and claiming to be the troubled soul of a revered community elder who recently died.

Many people here believe that it was God revealing himself that day to two fish cutters in the fish market, Zalmen Rosen, a 57-year-old Hasid with 11 children, and his co-worker Luis Nivelo, a 30-year-old Ecuadorean immigrant.

Some people say the story is as credible as the Bible's account of the burning bush. Others compare it to a U.F.O. sighting. But the story rapidly spread around the world from this town about 30 miles northwest of Manhattan, first through word of mouth, then through the Jewish press.

[...]

Mr. Rosen said that when he approached the fish he heard it uttering warnings and commands in Hebrew.

"It said `Tzaruch shemirah' and `Hasof bah,' " he said, "which essentially means that everyone needs to account for themselves because the end is near."

The fish commanded Mr. Rosen to pray and to study the Torah and identified itself as the soul of a local Hasidic man who died last year, childless. The man often bought carp at the shop for the Sabbath meals of poorer village residents.

That the souls of the righteous might enter a fish is consistent with the tradition that at the time of the Flood, fish were not punished since they had not sinned; and by their very nature they survive and thrive in the water.

There are numerous hasidic stories about fish, especially about poor families who retrieved a coin or jewels from a fish just as tax-time came due, etc.

My only question is, why did the shop owner and his assistant go ahead and kill the fish?