Free Republic

It does not matter if Pompeii is damaged by visiting tourists, Professor Mary Beard has said, as she argues it would be "ghastly" to keep the public away from ancient ruins. Prof Beard, a Cambridge classicist and leading authority on Roman history, said she was "culpably laid back" about the crumbling of houses and walls, insisting they must not be restricted to academics. Arguing it is more important the ancient world engages the imagination of tourists, keeping them interested in history, she said: "The world isn’t going to stop if Pompeii loses a house." "It's had a good innings," she...

Archeologists in Peru have found 20 800-year-old wooden statues in the largest pre-Columbian site in the Americas, Culture Minister, Patricia Balbuena and researchers revealed on Monday. The statues, all but one of which were in a good condition, were found in the Chan Chan archeological site: a city that was once the capital of the Chimu Kingdom and pre-dated the Inca Empire. Located close to the north Peruvian modern city of Trujillo, Can Chan was comprised of 10 citadels, or walled palaces, in its six kilometer squared centre of a wider city that measured 20 square kilometres. Each statue measures...

Chad Haag considered living in a cave to escape his student debt. He had a friend doing it. But after some plotting, he settled on what he considered a less risky plan. This year, he relocated to a jungle in India. "I've put America behind me," Haag, 29, said. He now lives in a concrete house in the village of Uchakkada for $50 a month. His backyard is filled with coconut trees and chickens. "I saw four elephants just yesterday," he said, adding that he hopes to never set foot in a Walmart again. His debt is currently on its...

An archaeological mission from Egypt's Ain Shams University has completed the excavation of a shrine to King Ramses II discovered last year in Cairo's Matariya district. The head of the mission Mamdouh El-Damaty explains that the shrine was once used during festivals. The mission has also unearthed a collection of lintels, scarabs, amulets, clay pots and blocks engraved with hieroglyphic text. El-Damaty says the discovery is important because it is a unique shrine from the New Kingdom that was used for the Heb Sed festival, not only during the reign of King Ramses II but throughout the Ramesside period.

The remains of five people, probably two women and three children, were found in a bedroom in Pompeii on Wednesday. The group probably took refuge in the bedroom in a desperate attempt to escape a shower of volcanic rocks that had filled the house, Pompeii director Massimo Osanna told ANSA. "It's a shocking discovery, but also very important for the history of studies," Osanna said. The skeletons were found in a house where a charcoal inscription was recently found backing the theory that the Mount Vesuvius eruption that destroyed the ancient Roman city took place in October of 79 AD,...

We've had a GOES card for several years. Its a card from the gummit that gets you by TSA security when traveling. I just got an email saying I have to convert my account over to the new TTP system. It gives me a URL "ttp.cbp.dhs.gov" to click on. Pardon my paranoia but not quite yet!!!!!!! Anybody here have a GOES account and get this email?????

A Turkish Airlines flight journeying from Panama City to Istanbul, Turkey, took the brazen step of flying an additional 800 miles outside its usual flightpath, but passengers onboard might have otherwise been oblivious. The re-route was a huge divergence from its usual trajectory across the Atlantic and through the Mediterranean, but thanks to excess windspeed harnessed by the jet stream, Flight 800 touched down on Turkish soil on time and unscathed. Wired first noticed the Airbus A330's arch-shaped journey on the website Flight Radar. On a mock-up rendering of the flight, the plane traverses the U.S. eastern seaboard before skirting...

<p>ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — The former president of Ethiopia's Somali region was arrested Monday, the state broadcaster ETV reported.</p> <p>The dismissal and arrest of Abdi Mohammed Omar, a well-known politician from the country's eastern area, came after unrest in the Somali region's capital, Jigjiga, and other towns in recent weeks in which ethnic Somalis, suspected to be connected to Abdi, attacked people from other ethnic backgrounds.</p>

Test flights of a driverless hover-taxi will take place in Singapore next year, a German aviation firm said, the latest innovation to offer an escape from Asia's monster traffic jams. Millions of commuters in the region's cities have to contend with chronic gridlock every day, sparking a race to develop new ways to avoid the snarl-ups. While the developed city-state of Singapore does not suffer major congestion, it is seen as a perfect test-bed for new technologies due to its compact size and openness to innovation. German firm Volocopter said Tuesday it will conduct the test flights in Singapore in...

A woman flying from Houston to Albuquerque on Sunday had just settled into her seat and fallen asleep when she was awoken by an unwanted touch — a hand from behind her grabbing the right side of her breast. And the man authorities say is responsible allegedly cited President Trump’s past lewd language about women. Federal prosecutors allege that the hand belonged to 49-year-old Bruce Michael Alexander from Tampa, another passenger on the Southwest Airlines flight, who reportedly told authorities after being arrested Sunday that “the President of the United States says it’s ok to grab women by their private...

We don't know exactly where the 10,000 person caravan from Guatemala is targeted for crossing the border, but we know they are headed North. The Caravan is getting a lot of publicity., Maybe we should do the same? We could create a counter caravan (of pickup trucks?) to head for the presumed border crossing point, to protest the failure of the government to protect us from invasion seems like a good idea.

Zero has become the biggest name among the ascendant electric motorcycle companies, making bikes for dirt riders, commuters, and even police. I’ve ridden a few, and they’re a blast. The brand's electric bikes have all the benefits of electricity—minimal maintenance, energy efficiency, instant torque—alongside the main benefits of a motorcycle, such as easy parking, paying less than you would for a new car, and feeling cooler than you are. Today, Zero announced its new lineup of electric motorcycles. The most obvious improvement is range. Zero says the S and SR models with the $3,000 Power Tank option will do 223...

...Mnangagwa struck a conciliatory tone in the months leading up to the election. Declaring that Zimbabwe was “open for business,” he amended a law requiring local ownership of diamond and platinum mines. He signaled his intent to end farm seizures and vowed to sell off failing state enterprises. He even wrote a New York Times op-ed calling for democracy and equal rights for all citizens. But Mnangagwa is tied to numerous human rights abuses, including overseeing a series of government-ordered massacres between 1982 and 1986 known as the “Gukurahundi.” An estimated 20,000 civilians from Zimbabwe’s Ndebele ethnic group were killed....

THE Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade is planning to meet members of the United States Congress and the European Union to discuss the removal of sanctions as part of its re-engagement drive. In an interview yesterday, committee chairperson, Kindness Paradza said the committee's major thrust is re-engagement and international trade. "Foreign Affairs is the face of Zimbabwe and we have been given an additional mandate which is international trade. So, what we are going to do this session is to assist the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in re-engagement programmes, as well as bringing in foreign direct investment...

HARARE, Zimbabwe — A new documentary on massacres by Zimbabwe's military … The screening in the capital, Harare, would have been almost impossible under former leader Robert Mugabe, who led the country for 37 years and resigned following military intervention in November. President Emmerson Mnangagwa, a longtime Mugabe loyalist and enforcer who succeeded him, has tolerated documentaries and plays critical of the government amid promises of a "flowering of democracy." But none has taken such direct aim at Mnangagwa as the new documentary on the army operation he supported as state security minister between 1983 and 1987. "Gukurahundi genocide: 36...

China offers development assistance but not everyone is happy about it. The people of Zimbabwe head to the polls today on July 30, 2018, to cast their votes in the first election after the abrupt end to the almost forty-year rule of Robert Mugabe, the country's only ruler since independence in 1980. The two major candidates to watch are Mugabe's former vice president and now leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) Emerson Mnangagwa, the replacement for the late opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and the candidate for the Movement for Democratic Change—Tsvangirai (MDC-T), Nelson Chamisa. The drama that...

The dating of a piece of olive tree found on Thirasia will move the dating of the eruption of Santorini's volcano a few decades later than current estimates, the Ministry of Culture and Sports said on Friday. The wood was found in the area "Kimissi Thirassias", the prehistoric settlement which lies on a hillside of the island once connected to Thira, or Santorini, at least up to the Middle Bronze Age, before the volcano exploded. The settlement is on top of a hill on the southern side of Thirasia, and on the edge of the caldera that existed before the...

Some 3,500 years ago, there was already a brisk trade in fish on the shores of the southeastern Mediterranean Sea. This conclusion follows from the analysis of 100 fish teeth that were found at various archeological sites in what is now Israel. The saltwater fish from which these teeth originated is the gilthead sea bream, which is also known as the dorade. It was caught in the Bardawil lagoon on the northern Sinai coast and then transported from Egypt to sites in the southern Levant. This fish transport persisted for about 2,000 years, beginning in the Late Bronze Age and...

Greek and Roman writers record the use of a substance called miltos as a decoration, a medicine - and a handy way to repair a boat. Now scientists have worked out why. Andrew Masterson reports. From ancient Greek and Roman source texts it is possible to conclude that in the classical world a mineral, a powder known as miltos, was something of a wonder substance. Miltos - referred to in the works of writers such as Theophrastus, Dioscorides and Pliny - was red, fine-grained, and made up mostly of iron-oxide. By the time Theophrastus, a Greek philosopher and proto-botanist, wrote...

The Greek Culture Ministry announced that five additional vessels have been discovered in the ship graveyard off the coast of the Fourni Islands, bringing the total number of ships found there to 58, according to an Associated Press report. The area in the Aegean Sea, at the junction of two main shipping routes, is known for its treacherous waters, and contains wrecks dating from the fourth century B.C. through the nineteenth century A.D. The newly discovered ships rest in shallow waters and show signs of damage from fishing nets and plunderers, but the archaeological team, assisted by local fishermen, found...