It said at least 108 ancient woods would be affected by HS2 as a whole, with 63 suffering “direct loss” and damage due to noise, vibration, changes to lighting and dust.
HS2: Ancient woodland clearance halted while review held – BBC News
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Category: Europe,
Daphne Caruana Galizia: Maltese journalist’s family presses on after prime minister resigns
One of the most important levers they pulled was a visit, by all three brothers, to Strasbourg, the seat of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in northeast France, where they petitioned that international organization — devoted to human rights — to investigate their mother’s death.
The result was the appointment of a special rapporteur, the Netherlands’ Pieter Omtzigt, who told me about his initial meeting with the brothers.
…But when Malta’s prime minister, Joseph Muscat, made the surprise announcement Sunday that he would resign in connection with the government’s mishandling of the case, there was little jubilation in the family.
…But that relief is mixed with dissatisfaction that the prime minister says he’ll stay in office for another month, allowing him to manipulate and cover up — or so the family fears.
…The family, understandably, is not yet satisfied — but for press advocates around the world, the developments are stunningly positive, because they suggest a rare accountability taking shape.
“This is an incredible moment and achievement,” said Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists.
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Maltese Premier Promises Resignation Amid Firestorm Over Journalist’s Killing
The investigative journalist had been known widely in Malta for her dogged pursuit of government corruption — quite a bit of which she unearthed by carefully perusing the massive Panama Papers leak, which has revealed a slew of inappropriate financial moves by politicians around the world.
Maltese Premier Promises Resignation Amid Firestorm Over Journalist’s Killing : NPR
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Ukraine Condemns Apple For Changing Map To Show Crimea As Part Of Russia
Ukraine on Wednesday criticized Apple for changing its location-based apps to show Crimea as part of Russia, implying that the company “doesn’t give a damn” about its pain, as U.S. tech companies face criticism for complying with controversial local laws in order to keep doing business in those countries.
Ukraine Condemns Apple For Changing Map To Show Crimea As Part Of Russia
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Hoard of golden treasure stumbled upon by metal detectorist revealed to be most important Anglo-Saxon find in history
Britain’s most spectacular Anglo-Saxon treasures may well have been captured on a series of Dark Age battlefields – during bitter conflicts between rival English kingdoms.
…The hoard was made up of golden fittings from up to 150 swords, gold and garnet elements of a very high status seax (fighting knife), a spectacular gilded silver helmet, an impressive 30cm-long golden cross, a beautiful gold and garnet pectoral cross, a probable bishop’s headdress – and parts of what is likely to have been a portable battlefield shrine or reliquary.
…The ecclesiastical treasures and secular/military items appear to have been treated in a potentially disrespectful way before they were buried. They had been broken and/or folded and deliberately bent out of shape.
…Given the probable mid-seventh century date of the burial of the treasure, it is therefore possible that it was war booty captured by the pagan Mercian king, Penda, from armies led by Christians, such as the East Anglians.
One possible explanation is that the treasure was ritually buried as a Mercian pagan war trophy – perhaps even as a thanks offering to a pagan deity for delivering victory.
Wild.
A Sorceress’s Kit Was Discovered in the Ashes of Pompeii | Smart News | Smithsonian
A Sorceress’s Kit Was Discovered in the Ashes of Pompeii | Smart News | Smithsonian
Seems like a bit of a leap to Sorceress’s Kit.
Impeachment transcript: White House officials testify quid pro quo effort was coordinated with Mulvaney
[National Security Council Ukraine expert Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and former White House Russia expert Fiona Hill] …told lawmakers the “blatant” push for politically motivated investigations from President Donald Trump left “no ambiguity” what the Ukrainians needed to do to secure a highly sought meeting.
… Gordon Sondland told Ukrainian officials in meetings on July 10 they would have to open an investigation to secure the White House meeting. Sondland told [Vindman and Hill] he was acting at the direction of Mulvaney.
…[Hill] was instructed by Bolton to take her concerns about the role Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani was playing in Ukraine to National Security Council attorneys. Bolton told her to make clear he was “not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up on this.”
…Vindman testified that the Ukrainians asked him in the spring “for advice on how to respond to Mr. Giuliani’s advances, meaning his call to undertake these — what would come across as partisan investigations.” Vindman said he recommended to Zelesnky not to get involved in US domestic politics.
…Vindman said he was first aware of the hold on Ukraine aid by July 3, and later learned that it came from Mulvaney’s office.
……Vindman said that he had raised concerns about the July 25 call to NSC lawyers, and that the process that was used for placing the call transcript on a highly secure server was abnormal.
Impeachment transcript: White House officials testify quid pro quo effort was coordinated with Mulvaney – CNNPolitics
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Holocaust Survivor Is Swept Up in Italy’s Storm of Vitriol
Last month, to counteract what increasingly feels like a political time marked by ethnic scapegoating and nationalist invective, Ms. Segre called for the creation of a parliamentary commission to investigate hate, racism and social media.
But the League Party, led by Mr. Salvini, the post-fascist Brothers of Italy and the center-right Forza Italia led by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi all opposed the commission.
They abstained from the vote, seeing it as a political trap by their enemies to make them look extremist and as a first step toward censorship.
…The motion passed without the conservative votes.
Ms. Segre expressed bewilderment at the abstentions, …“I thought a committee against hatred, as a matter of principle, should be accepted by everyone. I thought it was almost banal.”
Mr. Belli Paci said his mother had been taken back by the “barbarization” of the country. Nevertheless, he said, she planned to continue reaching out to students and telling the story of what happened here not so long ago.
Holocaust Survivor Is Swept Up in Italy’s Storm of Vitriol – The New York Times
Trump apparently wanted Ukraine to investigate Hillary Clinton in addition to the Bidens: State Department official
He just can’t get over Hillary Clinton.
Before giving U.S. military aid to Ukraine, …Trump wanted “nothing less” than for the European country to announce an investigation targeting Clinton in addition to one targeting Joe Biden and his son, according to a senior State Department official.
…Trump used Clinton’s name as “shorthand” for the investigation he wanted President Volodymyr Zelensky to launch into a debunked right-wing conspiracy theory claiming anti-Trump Ukrainians interfered in the 2016 election.
…Trump’s requested Biden investigation centered on unsubstantiated claims that the former vice president’s son, Hunter, evaded prosecution on corruption charges in the country with the help of his powerful father. There’s no evidence to back up the allegation.
…Sondland, a Trump campaign mega-donor, submitted revised testimony to impeachment investigators earlier this week confirming there was quid pro quo involved in the U.S. aid freeze, saying Zelensky had [to] agreed to make the CNN announcement in exchange for the sorely-needed defense cash.
…Kent said he and other career officials were instructed to “keep” their heads “down,” as Giuliani and Trump-appointed administration officials engaged in the dubious back-channel efforts.
Part of that shadow policy included aggressive attempts by Giuliani to slander former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and push for her ouster, according to Kent.
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DNA Support the Idea That Viking Women Were Sometimes Powerful Warriors
Legends of ferocious female warriors appear in Scandinavian lore and poetry from the Middle Ages. Stories of similar warriors have been told in the modern era too, for example Lagertha on the HISTORY series Vikings, but the existence of warrior women in Viking culture has consistently been challenged in official histories, with women often relegated to non-combatant roles.
…This isn’t the first Viking grave to contain both weapons and female remains, the study explains. It is, however, the first to present overwhelming evidence that the weapons and paraphernalia found beside a skeleton belonged to the woman who occupied the grave.
DNA Proves Viking Women Were Powerful Warriors – HISTORY
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How the female Viking warrior was written out of history
Hedenstierna-Jonson et al. do not equivocate in their statements that, for over a century, this individual was mis-identified as male because archaeologists, acculturated in a western society with strictly defined gender roles, view men alone as warriors, or soldiers, or wielders of violence. A warrior, like warfare itself, is a cultural construct, practices and professions created by human societies to fulfill specific desires. To assume uncritically that men alone are warriors leads to a cascade of other assumptions about human behaviors that renders our attempt to understand those behaviors somewhat moot.
…Assumptions regarding gender roles dilute our understanding of past societies and the enormous complexity of human achievements and activities.
…The genomics is fairly certain- these are the remains of a woman who genetically was part of the Viking world, and who was interred in a Viking tomb with Viking material culture, specifically material culture associated with combat and warfare. It continues to be a challenge for some people to reconcile those variables. But those same people are missing the larger implications of the genomics study. The real questions, the interesting questions: what does it mean that Bj 581 was a female? What does this tell us about how Viking society was structured? Was Bj 581 unique, or did she represent a category of women that has been largely relegated to mythology? And what can this tell us about how violent conflict was viewed and experienced?
How the female Viking warrior was written out of history | Science | The Guardian
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Boris Johnson’s Conservatives receive surge in cash from Russians – Business Insider
A new investigation reveals that UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party has received a surge in cash from Russian donors over the past year, news that comes as his government continues to block publication of a report into Russian influence over recent elections.
Boris Johnson’s Conservatives receive surge in cash from Russians – Business Insider
Medieval Scottish Man Who Died 600 Years Ago Was Short and Balding, with Bad Teeth and Back Problems
…Found during excavation work to expand the Aberdeen Art Gallery in 2015. The building was constructed in 1885 on the site of a friary and a church, both built in the 13th century and destroyed in 1560, council representatives said.
…Workers digging outside the art gallery uncovered a charnel house made of red brick containing three Victorian coffins that held hundreds of human bones. Further excavation inside the gallery uncovered 60 skeletons in individual graves, the oldest of which — including SK125 — dated to between 1050 and 1410, according to the statement.
“The disarticulated remains found in the red brick charnel house were redeposited during the late 19th century,”
Trump’s ‘zero tolerance’: Families used to be split up in East Germany, too. It caused lifelong trauma.
In a now-unified Germany, forced adoptions have become synonymous with the state terrorism and injustice that was rampant in the formerly socialist East, known as the GDR. Reached by phone Wednesday and told about the U.S. controversy, Behr, 50, drew a direct comparison between her experience and the fate of children now being separated from their parents in the United States.
“Of course when I hear of this, I immediately think of my own upbringing. Witnessing the arrest of my mom and being separated from her at that age caused a lifelong trauma for me,” said Behr, who lives in Berlin and is involved in research projects about childhood trauma caused by family separation during the GDR.
Sigh….
Catalan protests: Region’s president urges immediate halt to violence
The protests began after nine Catalan independence leaders were handed jail sentences of between nine and 13 years by Spain’s Supreme Court on Monday.
The separatists were convicted of sedition over their role in an independence referendum in 2017, which Spain said was illegal.
Another three were found guilty of disobedience and fined, but not jailed. All 12 defendants denied the charges.
…Catalan nationalists have long complained that their region, which has a distinct history dating back almost 1,000 years, sends too much money to poorer parts of Spain, through taxes which are controlled by Madrid.
The wealthy region is home to about 7.5 million people, with their own language, parliament, flag and anthem.
Catalan protests: Region’s president urges immediate halt to violence – BBC News
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