Austrian ex-officer suspected of spying for Russia for years | Austria News | Al Jazeera
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Category: Europe,
Venice Hit With Worst Flooding In A Decade As Tourists Wade Through Landmarks | HuffPost
The city has been working on an ambitious engineering project ― nicknamed “Project Moses” ― to protect Venice from future floodwaters, but the effort has been plagued by cost overruns and a corruption scandal since it began in 2003. When it’s finished, several massive retractable gates are meant to block the mouths of the city’s lagoons when extremely high tides come in, theoretically protecting Venice until the water retreats.
The project is expected to be completed by 2022 and has already cost some 6.5 billion. Minor flooding would still take place in certain areas when floodwater is below the level needed to activate the system of gates.
Venice Hit With Worst Flooding In A Decade As Tourists Wade Through Landmarks | HuffPost
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London’s earliest settlers to be uncovered in Britain’s biggest archaeological dig ahead of HS2
Hunter gatherers were living along the flood plains in the early Mesolithic, between 9,000 and 7,000BC.
Now they want to learn more about the lives of people who inhabited Britain at the end of the last ice age, thousands of years before the building of Stonehenge.
…Among the projects, the teams will be investigating Romano-British town in Fleet Marston, Aylesbury, a medieval manor in Warwickshire, and a 1,000 year old medieval church and burial ground in Buckinghamshire village.
…“From Prehistoric remnants and Roman settlements to deserted medieval villages, Wars of the Roses battlefields and Victorian innovation, HS2’s archaeology programme has it all.”
London’s earliest settlers to be uncovered in Britain’s biggest archaeological dig ahead of HS2
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Viking ship burial discovered in Norway just 50cm underground
The imposing burial mound that once covered it has long since been ploughed out. Another mound, Jelle mound, still rises high in the field, and the research has also traced the outlines of at least eight other previously unknown burial mounds that once surrounded it, and five nearby longhouses.
…“The ship burial does not exist in isolation, but forms part of a cemetery which is clearly designed to display power and influence.”
Viking ship burial discovered in Norway just 50cm underground | Science | The Guardian
Wild.
EU lawmakers vote to ban single-use plastics across Europe
The ban includes a full prohibition of plastic plates and utensils, cotton swabs, straws and drink stirrers and calls for reduced use of plastic cups and other similar food packaging products.
…The ban targets pollution from cigarette filters, ordering manufacturers to reduce their plastic inclusion by 80 percent by 2030. And EU member states will be required to recycle 90 percent of plastic bottles by 2025.
EU lawmakers vote to ban single-use plastics across Europe | TheHill
Fishing equipment? B.U.L.L.S.H.I.T.
How tiny magnets could save a historic warship that once sailed for King Henry VIII
The Mary Rose sank in 1545 off England’s southern coast during the Battle of the Solent, a skirmish with the French fleet of King Francis I. The ship was raised in 1982, with about 40 percent of the structure surviving.
How tiny magnets could save a historic warship that once sailed for King Henry VIII
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World’s oldest intact shipwreck discovered in Black Sea
Archaeologists have found what they believe to be the world’s oldest intact shipwreck at the bottom of the Black Sea where it appears to have lain undisturbed for more than 2,400 years.
The 23-metre (75ft) vessel, thought to be ancient Greek, was discovered with its mast, rudders and rowing benches all present and correct just over a mile below the surface. A lack of oxygen at that depth preserved it, the researchers said.
…“This will change our understanding of shipbuilding and seafaring in the ancient world.”
…They said the finds varied in age from a “17th-century Cossack raiding fleet, through Roman trading vessels, complete with amphorae, to a complete ship from the classical period”.
World’s oldest intact shipwreck discovered in Black Sea | Science | The Guardian
Wild.
Hungary’s constitution makes street homelessness a crime
The new provision, which went into effect Monday, bans “habitual residence in a public space” and gives police the authority to remove rough sleepers from the streets and confiscate their belongings.
Under amended Article 22 of the revised constitution, homeless people who refuse to go to shelters will be forced to participate in public work programs, which they can avoid only by paying a fine. If they are unable to pay those fines, they will face time in prison.
…Farha added that there were insufficient emergency shelter spaces to accommodate Hungary’s homeless population, estimated at more than 10,000 people.
…In 2013, the government first adopted a law that made sleeping in a public place a criminal offense and allowed for police to fine those who do so. That 2013 law passed after a law that criminalized homelessness was reversed by Hungary’s Constitutional Court on the ground that it violated the right to human dignity
Hungary’s constitution makes street homelessness a crime – CNN
Jeezus…
Russian Orthodox Church cuts ties with Constantinople | World news | The Guardian
The Russian Orthodox Church has announced it will break off relations with the Patriarchate of Constantinople in a religious schism driven by political friction between Russia and Ukraine.
The Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church elected on Monday to cut ties with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which is viewed as the leading authority for the world’s 300 million Orthodox worshippers.
The split is a show of force by Russia after a Ukrainian church was granted independence.
Last week Bartholomew I of Constantinople, the “first among equals” of eastern Orthodox clerics, granted autocephaly (independence) to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which previously answered to Moscow.
Russian Orthodox Church cuts ties with Constantinople | World news | The Guardian
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I pulled a 1,500-year-old sword out of a lake
I pulled a 1,500-year-old sword out of a lake | Life and style | The Guardian
Queen Saga, long may she reign.
French Plastic Use: Key facts and figures
The production of plastic packaging has been increasing since the summer of 2013, with growth of 2.4% in 2016, and an acceleration in the first half of 2017: + 3.5%. By comparison, output of manufacturing industries across all sectors stagnated in 2016 (+ 0.3%) and grew by 1.7% year on year in the first half of 2017.
…Packaging is the main plastics user sector with nearly 45.1% consumed in France and 39.9% in Europe (source PlasticsEurope 2017).
Key facts and figures – Elipso
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How Did These Other Individuals End Up Buried With Elite Germanic Warriors?
A 7th century burial site in Niederstotzingen, Germany. It was clear that the individuals were high status, and that at least some of the adults were warriors because their graves were stuffed with weapons, armor, jewelry and equestrian gear.
…The Niederstotzingen bodies belonged to the Alemanni, a confederacy of ancient Germanic tribes that were sprinkled across modern-day Germany, France, Switzerland and Austria. The Alemanni …were ultimately brought down by the Franks, another Germanic group, in 497 A.D. To reflect integration with the Franks, the Alemanni started to inter their dead in elaborate graves known as Adelsgrablege.
…Six of the individuals appeared to be from northern and eastern European populations, and five of these individuals were directly related to one another. Seven bodies, reports Michael Price of Science, were completely unrelated. Two seemed to come from southern Europe, possibly the Mediterranean.
…“Folklore from the time has tales of tribes exchanging hostage children that are raised as their own,” he says.
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New archeological research forces historians to reconsider the story of Iceland’s settlement
Written sources suggest the first settler to arrive in Iceland was Ingólfur Arnarson who settled in Reykjavík in the year 874. New research suggests the first people arrived as much as 100 years earlier.
…Bjarni Einarsson, the archeologist in charge of the dig told the local TV station Stöð 2 that the younger of the two houses was built on the ruins of the older structure, which measures as much as 40 meters (130 ft). Both structures are located beneath the “settlement layer”, a layer of volcanic tephra that fell sometime in the years 869-73, making both older than the “official” time of settlement which began in 874, according to the Icelandic Sagas and the Book of Settlement, medieval sources on the Viking Age and the settlement of Iceland.
…The very name of the farm Stöð and the fjord Stöðvarfjörður seem to support this theory: Stöð translates as camp, station or base.
Such seasonal camps could have been used for decades before permanent settlement began. Bjarni believes they played a key role in the settlement of Iceland:
“People would have come here to work part of the year, producing goods during summer to take home in the fall. They would have taken these goods home, as well as information about this new land. Based on this information people would then have been able to make an informed decision to settle here permanently.”
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Discovery of Galileo’s long-lost letter shows he edited his heretical ideas to manipulate the Inquisition
Galileo wrote the 1613 letter to Benedetto Castelli, a mathematician at the University of Pisa in Italy. In it, Galileo set out for the first time his arguments that scientific research should be free from theological doctrine (see ‘The Galileo affair’).
He argued that the scant references in the Bible to astronomical events should not be taken literally, because scribes had simplified these descriptions so that they could be understood by common people. Religious authorities who argued otherwise, he wrote, didn’t have the competence to judge. Most crucially, he reasoned that the heliocentric model of Earth orbiting the Sun, proposed by Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus 70 years earlier, is not actually incompatible with the Bible.
…The changes are telling. In one case, Galileo referred to certain propositions in the Bible as “false if one goes by the literal meaning of the words”. He crossed through the word “false”, and replaced it with “look different from the truth”. In another section, he changed his reference to the Scriptures “concealing” its most basic dogmas, to the weaker “veiling”.
This suggests that Galileo moderated his own text, says Giudice.
…For now, the researchers are stunned by their find. “Galileo’s letter to Castelli is one of the first secular manifestos about the freedom of science — it’s the first time in my life I have been involved in such a thrilling discovery,” says Giudice.
Discovery of Galileo’s long-lost letter shows he edited his heretical ideas to fool the Inquisition
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A forgotten soldier on a forgotten front
“I could see nothing,” the trooper wrote. “It was exactly as though I had gone suddenly blind; but I felt the tail of an overcoat sweep across my face. Instinctively I clutched it with my left hand, and must have held on for two or three yards before I fainted.
“The Serbs have a theory that you must not give water to a wounded man because they say it chills him, so they poured fully half a bottle of brandy down my throat and put a cigarette in my mouth.
“I caught the little sergeant who had helped carry me watching me with his eyes full of tears. I assured him that it took a lot to kill me, and that I should be back again in about ten days”.
…It took Sandes not ten days but six months to recover sufficiently to rejoin the ranks and to return to the front line. By the end of the war, Sandes would be awarded Serbia’s highest military honour, the Order of the Karadjordje Star.
Sandes is a celebrated national hero in Serbia to this day. That’s all the more remarkable for two reasons. First, Sandes was not Serbian but British – born and raised in Yorkshire.
And second, Private Sandes’s first name was Flora. She was the only British woman to serve in uniform, in combat, as an enlisted soldier in World War One.
A forgotten soldier on a forgotten front – BBC News
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Watch Russia’s bizarre RT interview to deflect blame for UK spy poisoning
The British government has identified two men — Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov — as Russian intelligence agents sent by the Kremlin to assassinate Skripal using Novichok, a Russian-made nerve agent.
The RT interview features two men claiming to be Petrov and Boshirov. And their story is, uh, let’s go with “interesting.”
They claim they’re not intelligence officers at all, but rather tourists who were visiting the town of Salisbury, where the attack occurred, on vacation.
Their main reason for going to this completely random British town where a former Russian spy just happened to be living? They really, really wanted to see Salisbury Cathedral, which boasts the tallest spire in Britain.
…The UK called the two men’s comments “lies” after the interview came out. But that, in a way, is the point: Russia created the narrative that the two suspects were just innocent tourists, forcing the British government to respond to the claims.
Russia’s manipulation of the media doesn’t just muddy up the facts; it also turns the truth into a joke.
It’s the perfect encapsulation of Russia’s entire fake news propaganda strategy, which they’ve also used in Syria to deny chemical attacks by Bashar al-Assad’s regime, the Russian troop presence in Ukraine, and interference in the 2016 US presidential elections.
It’s just ridiculous enough to work. And it does.
Watch Russia’s bizarre RT interview to deflect blame for UK spy poisoning – Vox
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