The descendants of Japanese pearl divers in the Torres Strait are coming together for Obon, Japan's day of the dead, to remember the contribution of their forebears to an industry that claimed hundreds of lives.
David Fricker urges public servants not to fear FOI
By
Shannon Jenkins
Wednesday August 4, 2021
The National Archives of Australia boss acknowledges that a fear of government documents being made public could be leading to complacency. (AAP Image/Lukas Coch)
National Archives of Australia boss David Fricker has reminded public servants of their record-keeping obligations, and has acknowledged that a fear of government documents being made public could be leading to complacency.
Speaking to the National Press Club on Wednesday, the director general said the possibility of documents being publicly accessed under Australia’s freedom of information (FOI) laws may dissuade some public servants from keeping proper records of government business, or from conducting business in a format that can be recorded.
Attempts to access the Mountbattens’ diaries that cover India’s Partition are being stonewalled
An immense trove of important historical material has been quietly made public in the UK. But some of it is still out of reach. 12 hours ago Lord Mountbatten was the last viceroy of India, presiding over the transition from the British Raj and Partition. | Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)
An immense trove of the most important royal historical material for decades has quietly been released in the United Kingdom. These are the diaries of Lord Louis Mountbatten and his wife Lady Edwina, from the 1920s until 1968.
As the last great-grandchild and godchild of Queen Victoria, uncle of Prince Philip and adored great-uncle of Prince Charles, Mountbatten exercised a “Rasputin-like influence” in the court of Queen Elizabeth.
On June 25 2021 the Office of the Director of National Intelligence published its
Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. UFOs are now to be called UAPs . Republican Senator Marco Rubio (Florida) added a request for such a report in the 2020 financial authorization legislation. At a time when Republicans and Democrats are feuding in Congress, his request received bipartisan support.
The report says little but symbolizes a lot. The document (freely available on the Internet) is only nine pages long. It acknowledges the limited amount of high-quality reporting on UAPs. But it does admit that some UAPs cannot be currently explained.
Advertisement
The significance of the report is that the taboo on even mentioning them has now been lifted. After all, even the US military have problems explaining some of the occurrences.
Secret history: release of Mountbatten archives and fight to access royal diaries dailyexcelsior.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from dailyexcelsior.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.