One immediate result of Arab revolutions in North Africa throws a monkey wrench into the “death of multiculturalism” rhetoric that has thrummed from European leaders almost like a heartbeat since last fall. Tunisians, still unemployed even with their dictator gone, have boarded boats for Italy. Since the revolution, some 5,000 illegal immigrants from Tunisia have arrived on the small Italian island of Lampedusa. They’re fleeing the same conditions that masses of people protested before the resignation of Tunisia’s president and dictator, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali — poverty, ... Read More
CSI: Pompeii
September 30, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Ever since 19th-century archaeologists started making plaster casts of the fallen inhabitants of Pompeii, it has been assumed they died from suffocation as a thick layer of ash fell on the town following a massive eruption of nearby Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D. But a new report from a team of Italian scientists tells a very different tale about what happened to the residents of the Roman town, and it has important implications for the 3 million people who today live around the world's most dangerous volcano. A meticulous study of bones, household objects and other evidence — a little like a ... Read More
