Guardian (UK)

In search of Shakespeare's dark lady

On 20 May 1609, the publisher Thomas Thorpe stepped off Ludgate Hill into Stationers' Hall, and registered what was to become perhaps the most famous poetic works of all time: Shakespeare's Sonnets. It was a slim volume on publication, containing 154 poems over 67 pages, and the edition is now extremely rare: only 13 copies survive. But its influence has been all-encompassing, providing a template for language, for literature, for love, ever since. Recent years have seen the sonnets disseminated in ways that Shakespeare could never have imagined. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" is quoted 5m times on the internet. Apps have been created in which famous voices recite the poems, sonnets are tweeted, T-shirts are printed, and poetry that was once said to circulate only among Shakespeare's "private friends" is now stored for ever in the cloud.

Jon Kiriakou: Obama's Abuse of the Espionage Act is Modern-Day McCarthyism

John Kiriakou is a former CIA analyst and whistleblower. He worked for the agency from 1990 to 2004, including as chief of counterterrorist operations in Pakistan. In an interview in 2009, he became the first former government official to confirm the use of waterboarding against al-Qaida suspects. From 2009 to 2011, John was a senior investigator for the US Senate foreign relations committee. In 2012, he was charged with leaking classified information to journalists; he is currently serving a 30-month prison sentence in Loretto, Pennsylvania

Gibraltar frontier conflict causing frustration for locals

Bobbing on the port captain's launch off the coast of Gibraltar on Tuesday there was no evidence of how this calm stretch of sea could have caused such an international storm. A handful of craft fishermen cast their nets, seemingly oblivious to the fact that 10 metres below their dinghies lay the unlikely catalyst for a political row that has embroiled David Cameron in the UK's bitterest battle with Spain over "the Rock" since Franco.Here, late last month, Gibraltar dumped an artificial reef on a fishing ground favoured by Spanish scallop dredgers. Now the ripples from those dozens of concrete blocks are rocking a 300 year old British enclave that for some is an emblematic imperial redoubt and for others an awkward colonial hangover.On Tuesday Gibraltar said it was preparing for legal action against Madrid over its retaliation for the reef, which has taken the form of a frontier control go-slow that has caused residents to queue for up to six hours in scorching summer temperatures. Gibraltar has accused Spain of inhumane behaviour and is gathering evidence that could be used at the European Court of Human Rights....

Ofcom urged to stop Bauer's radio takeover due to 'Nazi magazine'

Ofcom has been drawn into the controversy over Bauer Media's publication of the German magazine Der Landser, which has been accused of whitewashing the history of the Waffen-SS, the Nazi party's armed wing.A letter has been sent to the broadcasting regulator by the media banker and analyst Bruce Fireman contesting Bauer's acquisition of Absolute Radio (formerly Virgin Radio) from the group that owns the Times Of India.Fireman contends that Ofcom should refuse permission for Bauer's takeover on the grounds that the company is not a fit and proper person, under terms of the broadcasting acts, to hold a broadcasting licence.He has set out his reasons in an online article headlined Nazi sympathisers allowed to run UK radio stations? It includes his full letter to Ofcom....

Woolly mammoth DNA may lead to a resurrection of the ancient beast

The pioneering scientist who created Dolly the sheep has outlined how cells plucked from frozen woolly mammoth carcasses might one day help resurrect the ancient beasts.The notional procedure – bringing with it echoes of the Jurassic Park films – was spelled out by Sir Ian Wilmut, the Edinburgh-based stem-cell scientist, whose team unveiled Dolly as the world's first cloned mammal in 1996.Though it is unlikely that a mammoth could be cloned in the same way as Dolly, more modern techniques that convert tissue cells into stem cells could potentially achieve the feat, Wilmut says in an article today for the academic journalism website, The Conversation."I've always been very sceptical about the whole idea, but it dawned on me that if you could clear the first hurdle of getting viable cells from mammoths, you might be able to do something useful and interesting," Wilmut told the Guardian....

Stolen £1.2m Stradivarius found by police

A riddle worthy of a detective novel – involving an internationally acclaimed violinist, her prized instrument stolen at a busy London station, and a false trail leading to Bulgaria – may be nearing its conclusion.The discovery by police of a 1696 Stradivarius worth £1.2m and two bows with a combined value of £67,000 taken by opportunist thieves in 2010 while Korean-born violinist Min-Jin Kym was eating at a Pret a Manger cafe at Euston station has, she said, left her "on cloud nine" with an "incredible feeling of elation".Kim, 35, said in a British Transport police video: "This had been the instrument I had been playing on since I was a teenager, so it was a huge part of my identity for very many years."...

Stolen Picasso 'burned in stove' in Romania

A Romanian museum is analysing ashes found in a stove to see if they are the remains of seven paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Monet and others that were stolen last year from the Netherlands, an official has said.The prosecutor's spokeswoman, Gabriela Chiru, told Associated Press that Romania's National History Museum was examining the ashes found in the stove of Olga Dogaru. She is the mother of Radu Dogaru, one of three Romanian suspects charged with stealing the paintings from Rotterdam's Kunsthal gallery in a daytime heist.It was the biggest art theft in more than a decade in the Netherlands. The stolen works have an estimated value of tens of millions of dollars if they were sold at auction....

T. rex tooth found embedded in prey

Threats to the fearsome reputation of Tyrannosaurs rex appeared to have been seen off on Monday by fresh evidence unearthed in the US.The dinosaur's feeding habits have long been debated by academics, with some claiming that T rex was less a ferocious hunter and more a lumbering slowcoach that scavenged the carcasses of beasts that had died at the claws of others.The latest evidence comes from palaeontologists who found remnants of a prehistoric skirmish in a slab of rock at the Hell Creek Formation in South Dakota. The clash, which occurred around 66m years ago, involved a T rex and a large, plant-eating hadrosaur, and ended with the tooth of the former lodged firmly in the spine of the latter.Scans of the tooth and two surrounding tail vertebrae showed clear signs of bone healing around the wound, taken as proof that the hadrosaur was alive at the time of the attack and survived for several months or even years afterwards....

Debt-ridden Harrisburg to auction Wild West memorabilia

One of the world's largest collections of Wild West memorabilia, including a poker table that belonged to Wyatt Earp and weapons from Custer's Last Stand at the Battle of Little Bighorn, is to be auctioned off next week, to help pay down a Pennsylvania city's burgeoning debts.A former mayor of Harrisburg, Stephen Reed, amassed the artefacts with a view to displaying them in a museum he wanted to build, in order to draw in history-seeking visitors and help revitalise the fortunes of the economically depressed city. But with Harrisburg's debts passing $370m, city leaders voted to put the collection under the hammer. The auction represents an attempt to recover $8m in redevelopment funds that Reed spent on about 10,000 items, during a buying spree in western states."Every item you're able to purchase is an investment in our future," said Linda Thompson, the city's new mayor, who is a vocal opponent of Reed's museum project. "These artefacts had been in the city's archives for a very long time. Here we are at that important moment to see what Harrisburg's history looks like and the opportunities ahead."...

Who edited Shakespeare?

Sometime in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare's death, the actors John Heminges and Henry Condell published Mr William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies – what we now know as the First Folio. It was the literary event of the century, recording for all time the sound of Shakespeare's English and the sweep of his imagination: Elsinore, Egypt and the Forest of Arden; a balcony, a spotted handkerchief and a skull.

Richard D. Wolff: How Capitalism's Great Relocation Pauperised America's "Middle Class"

Richard D Wolff is professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a visiting professor in the graduate programme in international affairs of the New School University, New York City. Richard also teaches classes regularly at the Brecht Forum in Manhattan. His most recent book is Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It (2009). A full archive of Richard's work, including videos and podcasts, can be found on his site.Detroit's struggle with bankruptcy might find some relief, or at least distraction, by presenting its desperate economic and social conditions as a tourist attraction. "Visit Detroit," today's advertisement might begin, "see your region's future here and now: the streets, neighborhoods, abandoned buildings, and the desolation. Scary, yes, but more gripping than any imaginary ghost story."

Rare Buddhist manuscript Lotus Sutra released

A rare Buddhist manuscript, discovered by cattle grazers in 1931, has been released in book form in India.The Lotus Sutra was found in Gilgit region, now in Pakistan.The document, which dates back to 5th century, is perhaps the only Buddhist manuscript discovered in India.Believed to be one of the most revered Buddhist scriptures, it represents the discourse delivered by Buddha towards the end of his life.The Gilgit Lotus Sutra is kept at the National Archives of India in the capital, Delhi....

Tower of London's Line of Kings continues 400-year-old narrative

William the Conqueror has been deposed, along with Edward III and Henry V, and Elizabeth I has kept her head but lost her horse, but the survivors of one of the oldest tourist attractions in the world, suited and booted in shining armour, their horses pawing the ground and tossing their wooden manes, are almost ready to ride out again.On Wednesday visitors to the White Tower, the oldest part of the Tower of London, will see the latest version of a display almost 400 years old, extolled in countless guide books, maps, journals and letters. In 1652 a Dutch diplomat, Lodewijck Huygens, wrote that he had been to see "wooden horses with armed men on them" – and the tall tales were also already in place, since he was shown not only the genuine armour of Henry VIII, but that of John of Gaunt, "a renowned warrior of a few hundred years ago"."It was the one sight any visitor to London worth his salt had to see," said Thom Richardson, curator of armour at the Royal Armouries, which runs the White Tower within the Historic Royal Palaces Tower of London site....

Australian bushman claims to have footage of legendary night parrot

An Australian bushman and naturalist claims to have captured video footage of the night parrot, a bird not seen alive for more than a century.John Young, who describes himself as a wildlife detective, showed the footage and a number of still photos of the bird to a packed room of enthusiasts and media at the Queensland Museum on Wednesday. The desert-dwelling night parrot, Pezoporus occidentalis, has never been photographed and the only evidence of its continued existence has been two dead birds found in 1990 and 2006.Wildlife authorities and birders responded to the sighting with excitement, saying the evidence supporting Young's claim was overwhelming....

Martha Bergmark: Remembering Medgar Evers

Martha Bergmark is founding president and CEO of the Mississippi Center for Justice, a nonprofit public interest law firm committed to advancing racial and economic justice.On this day, 50 years ago, I was a white teenager in Jackson, Mississippi, absorbed most of the time with the typical concerns of childhood. But I vividly remember 12 June 1963, because that night my family and I heard the news that Medgar Evers, a well-known civil rights leader in our state, had been shot and killed in the driveway of his home, just a few miles from where we lived.

Jacques Barzun's grandson nominated ambassador to the Court of St. James

Washington is due to nominate the head of finance of Barack Obama's re-election campaign, Matthew Barzun, as the new US ambassador to London, according to diplomatic sources.Barzun's nomination has been delayed by the general backlog of personnel appointments at the state department as it looks around for new faces to fill critical roles in Obama's second administration, but it is said now to be imminent.Barzun, 42, is a Kentucky-based businessman who was made ambassador to Sweden in 2009 in recognition of his work on the 2008 Obama campaign, where he won praise for amassing large numbers of small scale contributors. But he was called back to the US two years later to lead the fundraising drive for the 2012 campaign, the most expensive in US history. The campaign Barzun ran raised $730m (£470m)....

Caroline Elkins: Britain Has Said Sorry to the Mau Mau. The Rest of the Empire is Still Waiting.

Caroline Elkins is professor of history and African and African American studies at Harvard University and author of Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag, for which she was awarded a Pulitzer prize in 2006On Thursday nearly 200 elderly Kikuyu people travelled from their rural homesteads and sat before the British high commissioner in Nairobi. Over half a century had passed since many were last in front of a British official. It was a different era then in Kenya. The Mau Mau war was raging, and Britain was implementing coercive policies that left indelible scars on the bodies and minds of countless men and women suspected of subversive activities.

A salute to the 'British Schindler' as he turns 104

Nicholas Winton is famous because he did not turn over the page. While many British people tut-tutted when they read about the plight of Jews in central Europe under the Nazis in late 1938 and then turned to the next item of news, he took action. At the time, he was working as a broker at the London Stock Exchange and was about to go on a skiing trip as a Christmas break. Instead, he received an urgent call from a friend to come to Prague, where the latter was visiting a refugee camp. Winton cancelled his holiday, went over and saw the situation facing the Jews in the Nazi-occupied part of Czechoslovakia.

Tristram Hunt: History is Where the Great Battles of Public Life are Now Being Fought

by Tristram Hunt

Tristram Hunt is Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central. He is the author of The English Civil War: At First Hand and the critically acclaimed Building Jerusalem: The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City. A regular history broadcaster, he has authored numerous radio and television series for the BBC and Channel 4. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a trustee of the Heritage Lottery Fund. The bullish Harvard historian Niall Ferguson cut an unfamiliar, almost meek figure last week. As reports of his ugly suggestion that John Maynard Keynes's homosexuality had made the great economist indifferent to the prospects of future generations surged across the blogosphere, Ferguson wisely went for a mea culpa. So, in a cringeing piece for Harvard University's student magazine, the professor, who usually so enjoys confronting political correctness, denied he was homophobic or, indeed, racist and antisemitic for good measure.

Pankaj Mishra: Sun At Last Setting on Britain's Imperial Myth

Pankaj Mishra is an Indian author and writer of literary and political essays. His books include Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan and Beyond. His new work, From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia, is published in 2012.Scuttling away from India in 1947, after plunging the jewel in the crown into a catastrophic partition, "the British", the novelist Paul Scott famously wrote, "came to the end of themselves as they were". The legacy of British rule, and the manner of their departures – civil wars and impoverished nation states locked expensively into antagonism, whether in the Middle East, Africa or the Malay Peninsula – was clearer by the time Scott completed his Raj Quartet in the early 1970s. No more, he believed, could the British allow themselves any soothing illusions about the basis and consequences of their power.