Berlin has been melded back together so well over the last two decades that there are now very few obvious visual clues to the division that once was: the shiny "golf ball" TV Tower, the East Side Gallery (the longest remaining stretch of the wall), and the odd scattering of blocky GDR buildings, which defined eastern development in the 1960s when the city was in dire need of reconstruction. Although many of these East German government buildings were knocked down after 1989, and many of those that still stand are ugly, cheap monstrosities, the most iconic remaining examples of this era-defining architecture are now winning the interest of a new generation, thanks in part to the current buzz around the 20th anniversary of the wall coming down. Many young Berliners now think of the GDR era with nostalgia; it's no longer something to forget.
At 10.20pm on Saturday 1 August 2009, a man walked along Nachmani Street, a residential road in central Tel Aviv. He went into the apartment block at number 28 and down a flight of steps to the basement flat, where a song by Blur was playing on the stereo amid the sound of laughter and conversation. There, the man shot 13 people, killing 26-year-old Nir Katz and 16-year-old Liz Trobishi, before returning up the steps and disappearing into the promenading crowds. His identity remains unknown. Understanding what happened that night is not easy. It might be tempting to assume that such an attack - unprovoked, apparently indiscriminate - was political, somehow connected to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But it was not, for the basement flat at 28 Nachmani Street is the headquarters of the Aguda (Hebrew for "association"), otherwise known as Israel's National Association of LGBT, representing the country's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender communities.
At 10.20pm on Saturday 1 August 2009, a man walked along Nachmani Street, a residential road in central Tel Aviv. He went into the apartment block at number 28 and down a flight of steps to the basement flat, where a song by Blur was playing on the stereo amid the sound of laughter and conversation. There, the man shot 13 people, killing 26-year-old Nir Katz and 16-year-old Liz Trobishi, before returning up the steps and disappearing into the promenading crowds. His identity remains unknown.
Understanding what happened that night is not easy. It might be tempting to assume that such an attack - unprovoked, apparently indiscriminate - was political, somehow connected to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But it was not, for the basement flat at 28 Nachmani Street is the headquarters of the Aguda (Hebrew for "association"), otherwise known as Israel's National Association of LGBT, representing the country's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender communities.
Italian tax police have seized a secret stash of masterpieces from the disgraced founder of a collapsed dairy company. Police in Parma seized 19 works belonging to Parmalat founder Calisto Tanzi from the basements and attics of three apartments. Among the masterpieces are paintings by Van Gogh, Picasso, Monet, Cezanne, Modigliani, Manet and Degas. Authorities estimated the total value at more than 100 million euros (£90 million.) Police showed some of the paintings to journalists near Parmalat's headquarters today.
Italian tax police have seized a secret stash of masterpieces from the disgraced founder of a collapsed dairy company.
Police in Parma seized 19 works belonging to Parmalat founder Calisto Tanzi from the basements and attics of three apartments.
Among the masterpieces are paintings by Van Gogh, Picasso, Monet, Cezanne, Modigliani, Manet and Degas. Authorities estimated the total value at more than 100 million euros (£90 million.)
Police showed some of the paintings to journalists near Parmalat's headquarters today.
Authorities in Italy say they have seized concealed works of art belonging to the convicted founder of Italian firm Parmalat, Calisto Tanzi.The 19 paintings and drawings, including works by Picasso, Monet and Van Gogh, are worth more than 100m euros (£90m), financial police said. Tanzi denied he was in possession of any secret art collection earlier this week, Italian newspapers reported. The art was found stashed in houses belonging to friends of the family. Tanzi's son-in-law, Stefano Strini, is under investigation for allegedly handling the artwork.
Authorities in Italy say they have seized concealed works of art belonging to the convicted founder of Italian firm Parmalat, Calisto Tanzi.
The 19 paintings and drawings, including works by Picasso, Monet and Van Gogh, are worth more than 100m euros (£90m), financial police said.
Tanzi denied he was in possession of any secret art collection earlier this week, Italian newspapers reported.
The art was found stashed in houses belonging to friends of the family.
Tanzi's son-in-law, Stefano Strini, is under investigation for allegedly handling the artwork.
South Africa is engaged in a race against time to avoid the spectre of empty stadiums next June, as international fans turn their backs on the richest World Cup in history. Moves in the past few days by the local organisers and by football's governing body, FIFA, suggest the third round of ticket sales, launched on 5 December, will not prevent the World Cup from becoming a financial fiasco for South Africa. While FIFA has already made a record 2.1 billion Euros from the sale of sponsorship and television rights, the problem lies in low international take-up of premium tickets and apparent apathy among South Africans.
South Africa is engaged in a race against time to avoid the spectre of empty stadiums next June, as international fans turn their backs on the richest World Cup in history.
Moves in the past few days by the local organisers and by football's governing body, FIFA, suggest the third round of ticket sales, launched on 5 December, will not prevent the World Cup from becoming a financial fiasco for South Africa.
While FIFA has already made a record 2.1 billion Euros from the sale of sponsorship and television rights, the problem lies in low international take-up of premium tickets and apparent apathy among South Africans.
and it's an expensive long way away. And we're in a recession. keep to the Fen Causeway
Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and antisocial, also underlie humankind's phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success. With a bad environment and poor parenting, orchid children can end up depressed, drug-addicted, or in jail--but with the right environment and good parenting, they can grow up to be society's most creative, successful, and happy people. ... Recent analyses, in fact, suggest that many orchid-gene alleles, including those mentioned in this story, have emerged in humans only during the past 50,000 or so years. Each of these alleles, it seems, arose via chance mutation in one person or a few people, and began rapidly proliferating. Rhesus monkeys and human beings split from their common lineage about 25 million to 30 million years ago, so these polymorphisms must have mutated and spread on separate tracks in the two species. Yet in both species, these new alleles proved so valuable that they spread far and wide. As the evolutionary anthropologists Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending have pointed out, in The 10,000 Year Explosion (2009), the past 50,000 years--the period in which orchid genes seem to have emerged and expanded--is also the period during which Homo sapiens started to get seriously human, and during which sparse populations in Africa expanded to cover the globe in great numbers. Though Cochran and Harpending don't explicitly incorporate the orchid-gene hypothesis into their argument, they make the case that human beings have come to dominate the planet because certain key mutations allowed human evolution to accelerate--a process that the orchid-dandelion hypothesis certainly helps explain. ...
Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and antisocial, also underlie humankind's phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success. With a bad environment and poor parenting, orchid children can end up depressed, drug-addicted, or in jail--but with the right environment and good parenting, they can grow up to be society's most creative, successful, and happy people.
... Recent analyses, in fact, suggest that many orchid-gene alleles, including those mentioned in this story, have emerged in humans only during the past 50,000 or so years. Each of these alleles, it seems, arose via chance mutation in one person or a few people, and began rapidly proliferating. Rhesus monkeys and human beings split from their common lineage about 25 million to 30 million years ago, so these polymorphisms must have mutated and spread on separate tracks in the two species. Yet in both species, these new alleles proved so valuable that they spread far and wide.
As the evolutionary anthropologists Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending have pointed out, in The 10,000 Year Explosion (2009), the past 50,000 years--the period in which orchid genes seem to have emerged and expanded--is also the period during which Homo sapiens started to get seriously human, and during which sparse populations in Africa expanded to cover the globe in great numbers. Though Cochran and Harpending don't explicitly incorporate the orchid-gene hypothesis into their argument, they make the case that human beings have come to dominate the planet because certain key mutations allowed human evolution to accelerate--a process that the orchid-dandelion hypothesis certainly helps explain. ...
