In particular, the next shelf to the south, the Larsen C, is very near the stability limit, and may start to recede in the coming decade if the warming trend continues. Melt ponds are occasionally observed in limited regions of the Larsen C shelf. More importantly, the warmest part of the giant Ross Ice Shelf is in fact only a few degrees too cool in summer presently to undergo the same kind of retreat process. The Ross Ice Shelf is the main outlet for several major glaciers draining the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which contains the equivalent of 5 m of sea level rise in its above-sea-level ice.

New York continued to press claims and in March of 1777 a meeting in Windsor produced a Declaration of Independence for a new republic and the name "Vermont" was adopted... In the meantime Ethan Allen had led an ill-fated invasion of Montreal and wound up in an English prison until 1778. In June, 1778, sixteen New Hampshire towns decided to join Vermont. Congress took a dim view of this and in early 1779 the towns were returned to New Hampshire.

In 1790, Vermont had a population of 85,000; Ethan Allen died (President Ezra Stiles of Yale University note in his diary: "Feb. 13, Gen'l Ethan Allen of Vermont died and went to hell this day." and Vermont Governor Moses Robinson met with George Washington in Bennington to discuss the possibility of Vermont joining the United States. Agreeing to pay New York $30,000 reparations for the land that had been 'taken', on March 4, 1791, Vermont became the first state to join the original thirteen.

Gustav Nachtigal, a German Consul in Tunis, arrived on the coast of the Golf of Benin. On July 4, 1884, Gustav Nachtigal stopped his ship, "The Gull", at the level of Baguida. Then, with some of his men, he took a launch and went to the village of Togo. He met Placko, a notable of a local king named Mlapa who died not long before, who signed, by drawing a cross, an English text that Nachtigal presented to him.

The treaty gave to the Bismarck, the German Emperor, powers that he was not really willing to make use of , but which were profitable to some German merchants and businessmen.

The following day, July 5, Nachtigal chose to baptize the whole territory with the name of the village Togo. After doing this, he proceeded to some administrative formalities and appointed a German merchant of Aného temporary Consul, and left, content of accomplishing a mission he has assigned to himself.

Deputy Education Minister Zvi Hendel (National Union) said "the mask has now been removed from Olmert's face. Now that he's no longer Jerusalem's mayor, his true face has been exposed. Olmert was and remains basically anti-religious and, in addition, is betraying his duty to enforce the law regarding opening a place of business on Shabbat."

Halldór Laxness (1902-1998) is the undisputed master of contemporary Icelandic fiction and one of the greatest European novelists of the twentieth century. He was the first Icelander writing in his native language to achieve international renown, culminating with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1955.

His government became a ruthless tyranny. Assisted by spies, propagandists, and the Mazorca (a secret political society that degenerated into a band of assassins), he instituted a regime of terror. Though he was adulated in public, successive and continuous revolutions were organized against his rule.

Ironically, this federalist leader, who was nominally only the governor of Buenos Aires, did more than the unitarians to unify the country. Ironically, too, this enemy of intellectuals stimulated his political opponents to write in exile some of the finest works of the Spanish-American romantic period; among the writers were Domingo F. Sarmiento, Bartolomé Mitre, José Mármol, and Esteban Echeverría.

... the Malé cult, also called "religiao dos alufás" (religion of the alufás), "mussurumim" or "muçulmim" was developed by Islamic Africans that came to Brazil as slaves in the 18th century. The Islam practiced by the Africans was already different from the one practiced by the Arabs; in Brazil it was further transformed by the new influences it encountered here. The Malês remained deeply attached to the Qur'an, never departing from its teachings or its rituals; however, some practices and some names, were influenced by different places and cultures.

Members of the cult observed a number of important rituals. At the age of ten, they practiced male circumcision. Every year they observed the "assumy" (the annual fasting). During the fasting they would only eat at four o'clock in the morning and at eight o'clock at night. Their predominant diet would be sugar, honey, milk, rice, and yam. They were required to pray five times a day. Since they were slaves they often found it impossible to pray five times a day they reduced daily prayer to two main prayers that were attended by men and women. One was in the early morning; the other one at night. During these prayers, they undertook a ritual in which they washed their face, hands and feet, they sat in a basin of water.

... the present Jewish community dates from before World War II and is primarily of Eastern European origin, nearly half from two villages in Poland. They were apparently from within the Hasidic ambit since they use the Hasidic ritual Nusach Sephard in their services. When they came to Costa Rica they became known as "Polacos," (perhaps for the same reason as in Mexico where the Jews chose that term because they feared to be identified as "Judeos" or "Israelitas"), a term which had some derogatory connotations.

Like Fujimori, Serrano had only a handful of deputies behind him in the Congress, while defeated parties easily formed a majority. Without a solid party, program for government, or team of cadres to support his administration, Serrano governed by improvisation. This suited his authoritarian personality, preference for confrontation over dialogue, and tendency to rely on the armed forces and intelligence service. For two and a half years, he tried to conciliate the groups arrayed against him. He made alliances in Congress and gained support from those who were eager to secure, in return for their cooperation, immunity from investigations into past corruption. Corruption in Congress and the judiciary grew. Finally, facing a major corruption scandal that threatened his presidency, Serrano attempted an autogolpe.

The defendants characterize their travails as "Kafkaesque." Our rehearsal of the facts in some detail below tends to support that view. The United States Customs Service wrongfully seized a large sum of money from Romano, which he alleges made it impossible for him to pay taxes he owed the IRS on those funds. Although the government paid interest on the seized money, it did so at a rate so low in comparison with the penalties and interest the IRS was charging him on the unpaid taxes that, ultimately, the amount Romano owed the government in taxes and interest on the fund far exceeded the amount in the fund. Meanwhile, Romano was hindered in bringing the civil proceedings to a conclusion by related criminal prosecutions which also eventually proved meritless. When Romano finally went to get his money back, it had been eaten up by taxes and penalties on it that, he says, he could not have paid because the government had wrongfully seized his money. We conclude, nonetheless, that Romano has not presented us, as an Article III court, with a legal basis upon which to deliver him from these circumstances. We are no more able to relieve Romano of the absurdity of his situation than we are able to relieve Kafka's Joseph K of the absurdity of his.

In the Czech census of 2001 some forty thousand Czech citizens described their nationality as German, a little under half a percent of the population, but the number of Czechs who have at least partly German roots probably runs into hundreds of thousands.

... the kind of tension that exists between Czechs and Germans is largely absent in Slovakia. The current Slovak President, Rudolf Schuster, is himself of ethnic German origin, he speaks fluent German and his roots have never caused him political problems within the country [...] The gulf between the Slovaks and the Germans had never been as deep as it was here, between the Czechs and the Sudeten Germans who had been forced to stay here or who could stay here. I think one interpretation lies in history, because Slovaks had to fight for their survival against the Hungarians, historically seen.

Perhaps the most famous of these was the Hardwicke Settlement (1848 - 1852) which was created by the South Seas Whaling and Fishing Co. 200 settlers came out from Britain in response to a glowing 'ad campaign' - needless to say the whole project was a total disaster. The director of the settlement was given the title of Lieutenant Governor by the British parliament -- creating, in the Auckland Islands, a colony with the same status (at the time) as Canada, Australia and New Zealand!

... the word 'referendum' is of Latin origin which means 'things to be referred'. It is derived from the French term 'referer' or from the Latin term 'referre' and a compound verb formed from the prefix 're', meaning, 'back' and 'ferre' meaning 'carry' and referendum is an adoption of 'neture gerundive of referre'. The terms 'plebiscite' and 'referendum' are interchangeable. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Volume XI, Second Edition, 1989, the word 'plebiscite', which is also of Latin origin, is made of two words 'plebis' and 'citus', which mean 'referring to the people'. The word 'plebiscite' is said to be derived from 'plebeian' and etymologically is a decree approved by the common people. In modern politics, plebiscite is a direct vote of the whole of the electors of a State to decide a question of public importance. Direct democracy elections or plebiscite are nearly as old as the idea of democracy. The notion of plebiscite goes back at least to the ancient Rome. A plebiscite is a direct vote by which voters are invited to accept or refuse the measure, program or the government of a person or a party, and is a consultation whereby citizens exercise the right of national self-determination. According to the book 'Direct Democracy' by Thomas E. Cronin, Harvard University Press, the Swiss Constitution of 1848 provided for a popular constitutional initiative. The Swiss have held more than 300 referendums and launched 135 initiatives since 1800s. Similarly, Australia, Italy, the Scandinavian nations, Canada, Ghana and the Philippines have also used referendums. Although the United States is one of the few democracies without a nationwide initiative or referendum, the State Department has some times recommended its use to settle political questions in other nations. In 1978, the US mediators urged President Anastasio Somoza to allow Nicaraguans to vote on the question whether he should remain in office or not.

In 1824, the Sultan ceded the 200 square mile area to Great Britain, and in 1830, according to historical records, the Jewish population totaled nine Jewish traders living in Singapore. In 1840, the wealthy Sephardic Sassoon family established business interests in Singapore, and the Jewish population soon increased. The Jewish community managed to build a 40-person synagogue on a street still called "Synagogue Street." By local custom, the Jews were allowed to travel by rickshaw on the Sabbath.

The politics of Thailand took a very significant turn on 24 June 1932 when a group of young intellectuals, educated abroad and imbued with the concept of Western democracy, staged a bloodless coup demanding a change from absolute to constitutional monarchy. Determined to avoid any bloodshed, King Prajadhipok (Rama Vll) agreed to the abolition of absolute monarchy and the transfer of power to the constitution-based system of government as demanded. On 10 December 1932, King Prajadhipok signed Thailand's first constitution and thus ended 800 years of Thailand's absolute monarchy.

He and his wife Elena lashed out at the interior and defense ministers for their forces' inability to quell the protests. "Why didn't they shoot?" Ceausescu demanded to know. Putting all law enforcement agencies under his direct and immediate control, the Romanian leader ordered the army and police to fire on demonstrators with live ammunition.

By the afternoon of December 17, demonstrations had spread to most parts of central Timisoara, and security forces had begun to implement Ceausescu's orders. Thousands of people who had gathered around the city's main Orthodox cathedral suddenly came under fire from platoons of soldiers approaching from the nearby opera house. In the central square between the opera and the cathedral, shops were being looted and set on fire by men wielding truncheons. Witnesses later said the looters appeared to have been government agents, bent on provoking mayhem to provide a pretext for repression.

In the last century, the city [of Angra] became the residence of a number of Jewish families, engaged in traditional trading activities that, ever since the time of the island's discovery, had served to turn Angra into a major port between Europe and America. The Jewish cemetery still remains today as a testimony to their presence

One possibility is that the status quo will continue - a small elite will be comfortable in English while the masses converse in the vernaculars. A second prospect is that almost half the population might speak English to varying degrees of comfort. A third option is that there will be a linguistic renaissance of the vernaculars and we might have a bilingual middle class. A fourth possibility is the Sangh Parivar's dream of a Hindi rashtra.

If I were a gambler I would bet on the second scenario. For every Indian mother knows that English is the passport to her child's future - to a job, to entry into the middle class - and this is why English schools are mushrooming in city slums and villages across India, and English has quietly become an Indian language fifty years after the British left. David Dalby, who measures these things in Linguasphere, predicts that by 2010 India will have the largest number of English speakers in the world.

... we were always relaxed about our languages and the consciousness of a 'mother tongue' did not even appear until the Europeans arrived. Interestingly, in Europe, vernacularisation of Latin happened at the same time, but there it led to the nation-state. Prior to our vernacular millennium, for a thousand years or more our literary world was cosmopolitan as Sanskrit held sway over South Asia, and as Latin did in Europe. Pollock says, "there was nothing unusual about finding a Chinese traveller studying Sanskrit grammar in Sumatra in the 7th century, an intellectual from Sri Lanka writing Sanskrit literary theory in the northern Deccan in the tenth, or Khymer princes composing Sanskrit poetry for the magnificent pillars of Mebon and Pre Rup in Ankor in the twelfth." Again, unlike Europe where Latin was the language of power and the Roman state, the Sanskrit cosmopolis was dharmic and voluntaristic - the Shakas and Kushanas, for example, as they migrated into India adopted Sanskrit and its culture.

Executions are usually carried out on Friday mornings, and convicts are not given advance notification. Surviving any Friday past nine a.m. guarantees another week of life.

... no outside persons, including family members, are to be notified in advance of the date of execution. Reasons for this treatment are as follows: the family might experience unnecessary mental anguish, if they are notified of the date of execution beforehand, and, if the prisoners, whose death penalty have become final, receive their family visit after they have been notified of the date of execution, they may become mentally distressed and be unable to maintain calmness.

Before the sea route around the peninsula was firmly established, trade between India and China was conducted across the peninsular isthmus. One of the primary trading centers for this overland trade was a Hindu-Buddhist kingdom that flourished from the fourth to the seventh century in the Bujang Valley, just south of the peak of Gunung Jerai (and thus easily located by early Indian mariners). Like Malacca a thousand years later, the Bujang Valley civilization attracted a cosmopolitan population of merchants and traders, including Indians, Chinese, Achenese (from Sumatra), Burmese, and Arabs. With the arrival of Arab traders, Islam arrived on the Peninsula for the first time, though the most substantial cultural influence came from Pallava India.

The confusion is rooted in the various names the city assumed under the Ottomans in the centuries after their conquest of the city in 1453. Although the Ottomans did not purposely change the city's name, they opted to make "Constantinople" into a more Turkish style name "Konstantiniye" (which loosely translates as "of Constantine"), however variations on Konstantiniye soon cropped up.

"Stanbulin," (Greek for "to the city") once commonly found on road signs directing travelers to the capital, was punned by devout Turks into Islambol, where "Islam abounds." The names Islambol and Konstantiniye were used interchangeably in Ottoman documents up until the empire's demise in 1923. Westerners continued to refer to the city as Constantinople well into the 20th century. In the 19th century, however, the city's large foreign expatriate community took to calling the old city Stamboul.

Hejaz, together with the other provinces of Arabia which orf the overthrow of the Bagdad Caliphate in 1258 had fallen under Egyptian domination, became by the conquest of Egypt in 1517 a dependency of the Ottoman empire. Beyond assuming the title of Caliph, neither Salim I. nor his successors interfered much in the government, which remained in the hands of the sharifs of Mecca until the religious upheaval which culminated at the beginning of the 18th century in the pillage of the holy cities by the Wahhabi fanatics. Mehemet Ali, viceroy of Egypt, was entrusted by the sultan with the task of establishing order. and after several arduous campaigns the Wahhabis were routed and their capital Deraiya in Nejd taken by Ibrahim Pasha in 1817. Hejaz remained in Egyptian occupation until 1845, when its administration was taken over directly by Constantinople, and it was constituted a vilayet under a vali or governor general. The population is estimated at 300,000, about half of which are inhabitants of the towns and the remainder Bedouin, leading a nomad or pastoral life.

Its well ordered and thriving appearance is commented on by all these travellers. The town is surrounded by a wall and dominated by the emir’s palace, a stately, if somewhat gloomy building, the walls of which are quite 75 ft. high, with six towers, the whole giving the idea of an old French or Spanish donjon.

Mirko Norac is going to enter history books as the first general to be sentenced for war crimes by his own country's courts. Young general, who had earned his rank and fame by organising successful defence of Gospiæ (Gospic) in Autumn 1991, during Croatian war against Federal-backed Serb rebels, has just been sentenced to 12 years. He was sentenced for the role in massacre and disappearance of few dozens of local Serbs. Two of his associates – Tihomir Oreškoviæ (Tihomir Oreskovic) and Stjepan Grandiæ (Stjepan Grandic) – were sentenced to 15 and 10 years, respectively.

His sentence could have serious political implications. For Croatian right wing, Norac became a martyr figure – symbol of everything that is wrong with post-Tudjman Croatia. Streets of Rijeka, where the trial took place, were filled by few thousands of General Norac's supporters – mostly war veterans and people from his home town of Sinj. Many of them have expected acquittal and this decision, although not particularly surprising (even Tudjman's government has considered the Gospiæ troublemakers expendable) and although not the worst case scenario for Norac (if he was tried in Hague, he could have gotten a life sentence), is not going to sit well in many areas of Croatia.

My father likes to joke that, in terms of popular culture, everything in Greece is ten years behind the U.S. and Britain. Thus, in the interim period between the fall of the colonels' regime and his immigration to the U.S.--we're talking mid-seventies here--every friend of his with an instrument and a smidge of talent was forming a rock band, and traversing the path from blues-rock to psychedelia traced out a decade previous by the Beatles and Pink Floyd.

By that reckoning, the present moment should be an excellent time for Greek music: grunge rock, gangsta rap, and whatever you want to call the genre that Radiohead re-invented should be hitting their strides right about now. Who's the Greek Kurt Cobain? That's what I want to know.

It definitely isn't Lavrentis Mahairitsas. But his 1998 album, Pafsilipon, would tend to confirm my father's thesis. He looks like an indie-rocker, but the music takes you straight back to 1988: power chords, anguished balladeering, rockin' guitars, all the melodic trappings of a hair band. The arrangements are harmonically interesting, and the lyrics are smart, though, so it can only be one hair band of the many: Queensryche. Mahairitsas is the Geoff Tate of Greece.

The world is replete with musical genres and movements that would have been impossible without the Euro-American culture industry, but sound nothing like its products: South Asian bhangra, Algerian rai, Brazilian tropicalismo, and every genre of African popular music, to name a few. None has come from the Balkans or Eastern Europe. Why?

The self-conception of cultures in those regions is, as far as I can tell, "(Western) European, but with a difference." When it comes to making popular music, this is reinforced by market considerations. The difference gets expressed in the slight folkloric ornamentations, but the basic song structure remains untouched, so as to avoid challenging the larger European market with anything too markedly foreign. (The North American market is treated as unbreachable, except by occasional novelty acts like those pseudo-lesbian Russian teenagers.) Russian ballads sound like Romanian ballads sound like Greek ballads sound like Israeli ballads sound like Spanish ballads.

The Court monitors arbitration proceedings in every case to which arbitrators are appointed in line with the ICC rules. The arbitrators are subject to a certain degree of discreet supervision by members of the Court. Plenary court sessions held once a month focus on such matters as reviews of pending cases and progress made by arbitrators toward resolution. The arbitrators can rely on the great support of the Court Secretariat, which employs 50 people of 20 nationalities, and over half of these are multilingual lawyers from international legal offices. Each one has experience in arbitration or in international commercial transactions. They can prepare a case, make written reports and review some of the legal issues even before the arbitrator receives the case files. The Secretariat firmly but discreetly reminds arbitrators of deadlines and makes sure that they are observed.

Jovica Stanisic was born in 1950 in Backa Palanka, as was Milosevic-era Customs Director Mihalj Kertes, with whom he later worked closely.

He graduated from the Faculty of Political Science in Belgrade University in 1974 and immediately began working for the secret police. As a young intelligence officer he took part in the arrest of terrorist Sanchez “Carlos” Ramirez in Belgrade’s Hotel Metropol.

He was involved in the 1987 visit of Slobodan Milosevic to Gazimestan in Kosovo, where the nationalist leader sealed his grip on power. Stanisic was subsequently appointed deputy head and finally director of the State Security Service.

His activities over the past decade are unclear, but his name has often been mentioned in connection with key events in Serbia and the former Yugoslav republics. He has been given credit for arming Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia, the release of Zeljko “Arkan” Raznatovic from a Croatian prison in 1991, the establishment of dummy opposition parties and the recruiting of criminals for special units active in battlefields throughout the former Yugoslavia.

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is establishing a special department that will be responsible for implementing the road map for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

According to reports reaching Jerusalem, the CIA officers will coordinate supervision and monitoring of the implementation of the road map, and track both sides' implementation of their responsibilities.

One team within the CIA department will focus on the reorganization of the Palestinian security services.

The CIA move is seen as an indication of the seriousness with which the Americans intend to see the road map implemented. A government source said last night that the U.S. administration is getting ready to implement the plan, with an emphasis on the security aspects as the key to any progress.

That's why the CIA got the job, said the source, noting that in the past the CIA was involved in helping to form and structure the Palestinian security services, and it sat in on the security coordination efforts between Israel and the PA.

The comradeship-in-arms with Germany during the Continuation War did not alter the status of Jews in Finland or in its army. Jewish citizens served in the Finnish army, in women's voluntary defence services and in other duties alongside other Finns. The same was true with regard to all the ethnic minorities, Tatars, Russians, Gipsies, Lapps, without differentiation.

In a quite unique photo, in a snowy forest there is a millboard tent with an iron heating stove, the chimney on the left-hand side - and a number of soldiers are posing outside the tent. The tent is a field synagogue, "Scholka's shul", set up for the Jewish soldiers at the front beside the River Svir in Eastern Karelia. A field synagogue with a Torah Scroll was, no doubt, a very exceptional event in an Army fighting on the German side during the War.

Several Jewish soldiers were cited for bravery in action; a number of them served as company commanders and one as a captain and battalion commander; Jewish army doctors were promoted to the same officer ranks as their colleagues, inclusive of ranks of major.

During the two wars, 23 Finnish Jews were killed in action. As a tribute to their memory, their names are published annually in the Jewish Calendar of the Bicur Cholim Society in Helsinki.

...the land and the sea return to labour unique produce: mushrooms, wild boars and game, wheat, sheep's milk, lobsters and fish, grapes and wines of superb quality.

Under Norman custom a person can obtain immediate cessation of any action he considers to be an infringement of his rights. At the scene he must, in front of witnesses, recite the Lord's prayer in French and cry out "Haro, Haro, Haro! A mon aide mon Prince, on me fait tort!" The Clameur must be registered at the Greffe Office, and a deposit (£7.50) made. All actions must cease until the matter is heard by the Court and if, after investigation, the complaint is disallowed, the deposit is forfeited, and the complainant can be liable to a claim for damages.