Hello, welcome to issue number 16 of The Bugle the Unique Audio Newspaper from TimesOnline.co.uk

for the week beginning Monday the 11th of February, with me Andy Zoltzman in London and in New

York City, Mr John Oliver. Hello Bugles, that's New Amsterdam Andy, New Amsterdam. I don't

recognise the new name of this city, if it's good enough for the Dutch, it's good enough

for me. What is true with cheese is true with anything else. Also happy 16th anniversary

to all the Bugles, it's our Switch 16 and in true MTV style we're demanding that you

throw us a disgustingly lavish party, hire Jay Z to perform and buy us a Mercedes, otherwise

you must not love us. As always some sections of the Bugle go straight in the bin this week

on the 200th anniversary of this first experimental burning of anthracite as a residential

heating fuel, here's a commemorative sound effect of a piece of anthracite being thrown

through a window and hitting the Duke of Edinburgh flush on his bones. Also in the bin

the chess section, a special feature on the move Knight to King IV, celebrity singer

Placido Domingo tell us what it means to him and also an interview with the chess obsessed

Bishop of Kloppenburg in Germany who only walks diagonally and moved house so he can

live next door to a horse. Top story this week Afghanistan. NATO defense

ministers moved quickly this week to dismiss talk of a crisis over the operations in Afghanistan.

They were at pain to admit that life in Afghanistan is still vastly better than when on the Taliban

control but let's be fair, it's still partly under Taliban control and anyway it could

scarcely have gotten worse. When you essentially live on a scorched rock under a brutally repressive

regime and you merely remove the brutal part, you still live under a repressive regime and

you still live on a scorched rock whose major export is the opium poppy, whole sweet home.

Well it does turn out according to NATO that Afghanistan is fine, the rumours that it's

...