Weekend Edition: The week's best reads
- 24 July 2015
A collection of some of the best features from the BBC News website this week, with an injection of your comments.
"Fascinating!" posted Mariam Di S. This unusually shaped clam is a delicacy in China. "Part of it is the phallic appearance - it's a sexual-looking beast and there's a draw to that," says Bill Dewey, whose firm Taylor Shellfish has been farming oysters since 1890 on the tidelands of Puget Sound in Washington State. The geoduck's name even sounds peculiar when pronounced correctly: "gooey-duck".
Time please
"Interesting article," commented Jay Gee. Some pubs are being knocked down without planning permission. Certain councils are ordering them to be reconstructed "brick by brick". In London and south-east England, a net total of 266 pubs and bars were lost between December 2014 and June this year, according to the Campaign for Real Ale. "A reconstructed building will not have the same character and patina as the original building," argues Christopher Costelloe from the Victorian Society.
Hated for being gay
"Heartbreaking interview," tweeted Alex Coady. Taim, which is not his real name, is gay. He tells how he was stigmatised and threatened with death by the Islamic State group (IS or Isis) in Iraq. "If I'd stayed, Isis would have come for me and killed me the way they've killed others," he says - one of his friends was thrown off a high building. "If Isis didn't get me, members of my family would have done it." Even many of those who oppose IS support the way the group treats gay people.
Out of synch
"A brilliant, heart-warming, fascinating story," tweeted Tim Sowula. Synchronised swimming has been around for many years but men have always been barred from competing at the top level. That is starting to change, though, and this week men will take part in the synchronised swimming at the World Aquatics Championships for the first time.
Footage row
Grainy black and white pictures of the Queen Mother, the future Edward VIII and the future Queen Elizabeth apparently performing a Nazi salute as a child might seem astonishing. But what was the historical context? "My instinct is it's ill-judged silliness," says one historian.
Enjoyable reads from elsewhere
The Mystery of ISIS - New York Review of Books
The art of sound in movies - The Guardian
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