United Kingdom: Llanelli sailor’s WW1 letter home takes 98 years
A World War One letter by a sailor stationed in Orkney is to be picked up by his family - 98 years after it should have been posted home to Wales.
Signed “Your Blue Jacket Boy” and dated December 1916, it was found behind a fireplace in the island’s capital of Kirkwall more than 60 years later.
The letter was handed into a local archive, where it emerged the author was Llanelli sailor Dai Phillips. ... (Read more)
BBC
New Zeland: Auckland woman lands 411kg tuna
An Auckland woman landed a potentially world-record size Pacific bluefin tuna this morning.
Donna Pascoe reeled in the 411.6kg tuna off the coast of the Far North following a four-hour battle with the monster fish. ...
Ms Pascoe - who has a history of catching big fish, after landing a 243.5kg blue marlin last year - used a 60kg line to reel in her catch today. ... (Read more)
The New Zeland Herald
Sweden: Swedes need to ditch their Abba obsession
It’s time to move on from Abba and to embrace other stars from the past forty years of Swedish music, argues The Local’s music contributor Paul Connolly.
It really is time that Sweden ditched its Abba obsession. 40 years on from their victory in the Eurovision Song Contest with Waterloo and 33 years since the release of their last album, Abba were recently the most high profile inductees into the new Swedish Music Hall of Fame, an honour which was thoroughly merited - they really did change pop music. ... (Read more)
The Local
Australia: Rediscovering Lost Melbourne
Jason Henderson, a BMW spare parts executive, has turned his passion for local history into the non-profit cult Facebook page Lost Melbourne, on which people post and share photos and stories from buildings, streets, parks, objects, and events from the city’s past. ... (Read more)
The Sydney Morning Herald
Switzerland: Iconic Swiss train station clocks lose second hand
The sweeping second hand on Swiss railway clocks with its distinctive red disc will disappear from some stations because the part is too costly to repair when it breaks down, according to a report.
The motor driving the second hand wears out quickly and Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) is balking at the replacement charges, of around 3,250 francs for each motor, the Zurich-based newspaper Tages Anzeiger reported on Wednesday. ... (Read more)
The Local
France: How France Still Pays For Bad City Planning In The Middle Ages
The English chose to build their towns next to rivers. The French instead built on the ruins of Roman cities. A look at how these centuries-old decisions have impacted today’s economy.
What if all of France’s current economic and social problems were the fault of Julius Caesar? Could the nation be suffering from weaknesses that have been concealed for two millenniums? ... (Read more)
Les Echos via WorldCrunch
India: With no laws to protect them, India’s maids are ‘invisible’...
New Delhi: Millions of maids working in middle class Indian homes are part of up an informal and “invisible” workforce where they are abused and exploited due to a lack of legislation to protect them, the International Labour Organization (ILO) said on Wednesday.
Economic reforms that began in the early 1990s have transformed the lifestyles of many Indian families, and as people get wealthier and more women go to work, there has been a voracious demand for domestic workers in urban households. ... (Read more)
The Times of India
