For major weather emergencies, Cuba's government mercilessly evacuates hundreds of thousands of people out of the way, under threat of guns if required. This summer,all over the island, Cuban citizens were on multiple forced migrations as hurricane after hurricane flooded the Caribbean's largest island beneath 5 story waves obliterating public housing tenements. Weather whammies came during the heaviest tourist season, inflicting greater harm on the Cuban economy. Grievously damaged are 500 year old beautiful period buildings in the Historic Center of Camagüey that make up the old district founded by Spaniards. Inland, the district forms the heart of a Cuban World Heritage Site that just received its place of honor in July of 2008.Old Havana has a wealth of colonial architecture, historic hotels and Baroque construction beckoning beach going tourists. It was only recently that Cuba's second President Castro, Raul, made an overdue edict that Cubans could now stay at all the posh resorts and use cell phones, even though their earnings are paltry.
He said: 'Havana has some of the best-maintained and impressive selections of colonial architecture in the world.Havana or La Habana is 500 kilometers away from Camagüey. Total damages are assessed at 5 billion dollars US. With a population of 11,000,000m nore than 10% are struggling to find the basic necessities in life amidst the rubble. The crumbled like brown sugar pieces of an inland cultural town will plummet down the priority list for now. Cuba's world class beaches and resorts are reopening as quickly as possible to protect tourism as high winds and monster rain took a bigger bite out of agriculture.
'But it also has a magnificent collection of 20th-century architecture. There were two or three architects working from the 1930s to the 1950s who would have been uttered in the same breath as Mies van der Rohe if not for the revolution. These buildings are in serious dangers from the conditions.'
The amount of destruction and misery is prompting calls from the well of Cuban writers and artists to the US to ease sanctions to make a full recovery possible. UNICEF is rushing to the 2.5 million people in dire straits in the latest hurricane's wake.In Camaguey, the roof of the historic Teatro Principal was blown away and several other older structures suffered damage or collapsed altogether. The rivers Hatibonico and Tinima, which cross the city,overflowed and flooded nearby neighborhoods. Trees were uprooted by the strong winds and electrical cables are down everywhere. As of this writing, most of the city is still without electricity.
A hundred years of history alongside the water as Fleetwood Pier turned into a pile of smoldering, sodden ashes. Recently, London is putting out pier fires all too often. The latest wooden pier Fleetwood, was a shuttered landmark last year and a beacon to homeless seeking shelter. What is interesting is though the dilapidated pier is immediately recognizable, the fire burned from front to back leaving homes onshore safe. It was a historic eyesore, yet completely part of the landscape through the twentieth century where the London pier was a crown jewel of the community until Blackpool upstaged it with flashier tourist trappings and bigger name stars with local real estate interests.
ntold liters of water and in full view of all of its residents while wringing their hands ensues a dawning realization that it was something of the resort community's heritage to preserve. Nevermind, local teens trashed it in recent times and less fortunate people used it as a rough hotel to get out of the elements. What was the cost of the all out firefighting effort versus preservation of the pier, who knows, as Lancashire went into a deep decline with the increased scarcity of fish off its shores. Eighteen months ago, the pier had been up for auction for a million pounds with helium hopes of enticing real estate developers to put pricey homes on the docks. Now its all part of a police investigation into the fire's cause.
Built in 1906, Fleetwood Pier was the last such structure to arise out of the 'golden age' of pier building between 1860 - 1910.
With a promenade deck, a jetty stretching 600 foot (182 metres) and an
oriental-style pavilion, the pier was opened to the public in 1911.
A major fire gutted the structure in 1952, which was rebuilt a year later and continued to generate profit throughout the declining years of the seaside resort.
Another pier of historical value had a fiery send up within the last six weeks. Nothing but rubble was left of the prize winning 104 year old Weston-super-Mare's pavilion. It was privately held though a known grade II listed building on the English heritage list,cementing its merit as a national landmark. It is not everywhere in the world one finds donkeys on the beach. That followed the devastating loss of cultural parts of Camden Canal Market on Chalk Farm Road where the pre-hip shop in February 2008. One too many suspicious fires of landmarks...
An Iraq tour package may not have many takers right now for the Fertile Crescent. But Iraqis and other partners are repairing the ancient marshlands devastated by a destructive Saddam and a never ending US military occupation. Many Marsh Arabs believe Iraq's marshes and wetlands were the designer set for the original Garden of Eden. The United Nations has been on site for four years restoring the militarized damage from a lackluster reconstruction, trying to regain their ecosystem and the culture of the indigenous Iraqis and encouragement for creating the biodiversity of the past. It has gone so swimmingly with a 58% restoration that a petition is being drafted by United Nations Environment Program to seek World Heritage Site status over the next two years. 
The Arabs of the Marshland, receive the run off and waters of the Tigris & Euphrates along the once volatile border near Iran. That can be iffy as the The rivers are filthy from lack of sanitation, filled with bodies of the missing and a long occupancy by the US military upriver. Their Islamic faith practices mirrored Saddam's enemies he was fighting the long war with causing his maniacal order to drain the area and damn the consequences both great and small. Slaves and servants had long run away t this area to hide from despotic rules and occupiers. Farming & agriculture suffered, especially rice as a drought doubled the misery. Crops, cattle and herds of buffalo live amongst the wetlands. Marshlands of Mesopotamia are rich with history in the houses made of reeds, blood feuds and Ezra's Tomb which sometimes takes the place of a house of worship.The Iraqi Environment Minister Narmin Othman welcomed the plans.
She said the marshlands and centuries-old culture of the Marsh Arabs had been in danger of disappearing in an ecological and human tragedy.
2003 Marsh view Army Corps of Engineers
A large ancient copper pot filled with dirty water and human bones contained a wreath of gold made in the time of Alexander the Great. The spectacular was found on a dig by a freshman worker. Greece, with its blindingly white buildings, rocky cliffs, sparkly Aegean seas is without peer the cultural birthplace of western civilization. Now, it has added another fantastic find to its immense collection of archaeological and anthropological puzzle pieces detailing life from more than two thousand years ago. Somebody robbed a fresh grave of one of noble or royal lineage after the burial, hiding the wreath in the middle of the bustling Aigai market with human bones in the pot with all the pieces dating back to the audacious empire building period of Macedonian King Phillip II, Alexander the Great's father's murder by stabbing from his aggrieved bodyguard at the age of 46. The Age of Aristotle. (AP Photo/Aristotle University)"This happened quite soon after the original burial; it's not that a grave robber took it centuries later and hid it with the intention of coming back," excavatorChryssoula Saatsoglou-Paliadeli told TheAssociated Press. "It probably belonged to a high-ranking person."
The "impressively large" copper vessel contained a cylindrical golden jar with a lid, with the gold wreath of oak leaves and the bones inside.
"The young workman who saw it was astounded and shouted 'land mine!'" the university statement said.
Saatsoglou-Paliadeli, a professor of archaeology at the university, said the find probably dates to the 4th century B.C., during which Philip and Alexander reigned.The Archaeological Site of Aigai (or Verdina) continues to cement why it was named a UNESCO World Heritage site in the 20th session of the committee in 1996. The northern city of Verdina came into existence in 1922 with a mix of cultural heritages from Greek serf descendants, Bulgaria and Asia Minor. More than fifty years before the hills excited a cadre of archaeologists that royal tombs and burial mounds of the nobility were there. So many munificent artifacts including the tumulus, were found, they built a museum as part of a showcase and conservation effort in 1993. Alexander the Great's son's tomb was found untouched just like his grandfathers. All the found royal or minor nobility's treasures are part of the museum's exhibits.
Greece continues to unearth pieces of the past as the very ground changed from fires, seismic activity and the amount of people gives up its buried treasures. One of the big archaeological quests is discovering the final resting place of Alexander the Great. In Vergina in 1977, a royal
cemetery had gold and silver trinkets, elaborate wreaths and other precious tokens such as The Golden Larnax, found alongside the remains of Phillip II. Those finds now reside in the Museum of Vergina augmented by the chronicler and critic of Philip's life, the orator Demosthenes.A trip to Greece is filled with mind-bending ways to spend the time either in the ancient past or the modern wonders. For certain hotels one had to take a donkey up to enter as the narrow streets were made thousands of years ago. Yet, the marketplaces of Greece thrive into today. the people are clothed a bit differently but the activities remain the same, fresh food and fruits for travelers, a bit of gossip and a sense of community. Beneath all of that thousands of years in the past, somebody moved a body and wreath and buried it in the vessels of the day to be found in today's world.
market in Crete
La Dame Blanche belts out a siren song, luring top skiers and avid hikers in all seasons. Near Chamonix, France, ten were crushed to their deaths today buried beneath snow and boulders of ice in another massive summer avalanche ,while 8 others survived with two still missing and buried. Since 1 July, a climbing toll of twenty died in a summer season rife with peril on Mont Blanc. The Alps are suffering from declining snowfalls and mushier snowpacks setting up perfect conditions for a raging wind to push massive amounts of snow and glacial ice off the mountaintops. Ravages of global warming and climate change enhance the risks of tangling with Mont Blanc. Ski tourists follow the best powder. Mont Blanc with the highest elevation in western Europe, almost 16,000 feet or 4,811 meters, remains an irresistible challenge whether its summer or winter.
They were among a party of climbers who were hit by a wall of snow 200mAvalanches are majestic to watch. In the Alps, summer is a season for deadly avalanches. Seasoned people arm themselves with all types of devices like EPIRB or Personal Locating Beacons with GPS to get located quickly by dogs or authorities. But so many times they are merely there to locate the remains when avalanches make areas impassable or threaten further slides, endangering rescuers. On the European table 2 or small avalanches lists death as one of the range of outcomes in an unstable area.
(600ft) long and about 45m wide while roped together on Mont-Blanc du
Tacul.
The avalanche is believed to have happened at about 0300 (0100 GMT)
after a large block of glacier ice broke off higher up the mountain.
The group of climbers had been bivouaced on the slope below.
A climb to Mont Blanc du Tacul, part of the Mont Blanc massif, is done in well
equipped stages. Both the Italians and the French have well traveled, for a glacier mountain, historic routes to follow across the mountain range. Passes are described as snow in the upper elevations or bridle path and road at the more modest or lower stages. There is always a veritable danger of avalanches as wind conditions shift and temperatures change. Reaching the summit where the Janssen Observatory once stood, is considered a pinnacle of the trip. Proposed as a World Heritage Site because its deemed where mountaineering originated with the official ascent of Jacques Balmat and Dr. Michel Paccard in 1786 would require Italy, France and Switzerland to make a joint application for the protection the listing would offer. Conserving the mountain range has more of a sense of urgency as glacier melts and increased tourist visits to the area are altering its ecosystem and the mountains features.
For the past decade, Italy waged a cultural war with specially trained carabinieri to retrieve their looted art pieces and statuary back from the iron clutches of some of the world's most prestigious art museums and gallery collections. The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia had to use UNESCO's diplomatic and enforcement resources to pry their rightful treasure from the almost 2500 year old Kingdom of Axum back from an outdoor tourist plaza in Rome, Italy. After 70 years of forced exile in Italy, and the hectoring of a vigilant professor, the Italian nation coughed up over $4 million USD for the return of the stolen 1700 year old, Obelisk of Axum after it sat in storage at Rome's Leonardo Da Vinci airport for three years waiting to return to the Horn of Africa. In 1980, UNESCO designated Aksum a World Heritage Site and still the Italian government could not be moved. 
Despite signing various agreements that promised to return the monument, the Italian government showed no signs of doing so until the obelisk was badly damaged by lightning in a thunderstorm in 2003. (Photo of Obelisk in Rome 2002)In 1937, under the orders of fascist Benito Mussolini, Italian soldiers hacked the more than a millennium old obelisk into three pieces for shipping back to Rome as part of augmenting his imperial claims that the Roman Empire was once again ascending. In 1947, the United Nations demanded that it be returned as Italy dug in its heels and made Ethiopia wage one after another diplomatic initiative to get their rightful cultural symbol returned. Fifty years later, Italy grants permission for the Obelisk's return to Ethiopia. Ethiopia had to upgrade its own runway for the plane carrying the returning pieces weighing over 160 tons and standing 24 meters or or 78 feet when fully installed.
The holy city of Axum or Askum and its royal rulers have a long heritage of Christian
lineage with strong Muslim ties going back to the protection of the family of the Prophet. Ethiopia's collection of obelisks contains some which date back almost 5,000 years before the birth of Christ. The area is said to be the cradle of civilization with archaeological evidence dating back 5.9 million years. The kingdom of Axum is where this architectural stone specimen was carved and stood until its removal. The modern day return of the obelisk is said to herald the return of peace and prosperity to Ethiopia.The obelisk pieces are so massive, it took six weeks for artisans, historians and construction contractors to erect the returned artifact monument in its place of origin in Northern Ethiopia, near the border of Eritrea. An Ethiopian national celebration is planned for 4 September, 2008 to commemorate its joyful return. The Italian government had museum curators put on an elaborate how upon receiving over 70 notable pieces back into their possession. The Northern Stelae Park, home of ancient obelisks, showcases the fallen Great Steale in all its broken glory.
slabs of ice before they reach the famed Shiretoko Peninsula. Hokkaidō, scene of this year's July G8 summit, is Japan's second largest island where tourists enjoy photographing and sometimes catching a quick ride on drifting blocks of ice. Within the past five years, drift ice is melting as it arrives in the Sea of Okhotsk. The sea between Russia and Japan freezes each winter into ice lily pads that ride the current to an isle, the World Heritage Site of Shiretoko. The lack of staying power for this ice deprives the area's ecosystem of necessary nutrients, temporary homes or safe havens for flocks of rare birds and imperils a vibrant tourism industry economic base for the area. In prior seasons, the frozen ice masses could last up to four months.(photo Tony McNicol)The pursuit of those resources will be underscored this week as the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Healy sails north from Barrow, Alaska, on Thursday to map the sea floor of the Chukchi Cap, an area at the northern edge of the Beaufort Sea. The maps could bolster U.S. claims to the area as part of its extended outer continental shelf.
The U.S. Geological Survey confirmed last month what the oil industry had long suspected when the agency released an estimate that the area north of the Arctic Circle may hold as much as 90 billion barrels of
oil and 1,669 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, or roughly 13 percent of the world's total undiscovered oil and 30 percent of the undiscovered natural gas.
The dash to stake out territory across the Arctic has accelerated since Russia sent one of its submarines last August to plant the country's flag on the sea floor beneath the North Pole, provoking an outcry by other nations that viewed it as an unauthorized land grab.
Earlier this month, Canadian officials at a geology conference in Norway detailed their territorial claims to the Lomonosov Ridge, an underseas mountain range that runs beneath the North Pole. Canada argues that the ridge is part of the North American continent, not part of Siberia, as Russia has asserted.
The Northwest Passage is on its way to becoming open for shipping, more marine life, and international strife as the phony debate over drilling accelerates the years old diplomatic debate over the "true" Arctic owners (Russia, Canada, USA) of the natural resources presumably beneath the Arctic Ocean's floor. The USGS confirms collaboration between Canada and the USA on making a shared map while Russia disputes Canada's calim because their coastline borders more of the ocean.Melting ice is causing trauma to the polar bear community as fishing becomes precarious, with sharks and killer whales following their prime blubber meal tickets, seals. One endangered polar bear suffered the indignity of being eaten by a Greenland shark off of Svalbard, home of the Noah's Ark of Seeds. Scientific arguments range from no way from the shark experts (except, the bone found in the shark's gullet proved it) to the Norwegian Polar Institute owning up to shock and theorizing that, maybe, the bear was already dead. The same slower shark species have also shown a taste for caribou in the past. Killer whales are expanding their northern Arctic territory in the colder waters while more sharks prefer warmer waters.
Redistribution of the drift ice and the loss of long standing hunting grounds portend more unsettling surprises as humankind and marine life adapt to climate changing events pushing economies and behaviors of all involved into the unknown.Jeffrey Gallant, the co-director of a Canadian-based shark research group, said: "There's no possibility a Greenland shark could predate a live adult white bear, unless it was injured or seriously ill."
He said the Greenland shark would not be able to afford the risk of injury, or the expenditure of energy needed to kill such a large and dangerous animal.
"There is far easier prey to be found," said Mr Gallant.
Wall Arch Before & Wall Arch After
Gravity seems to be the final culprit that pulled the sandstone Wall Arch, into the 43rd pile of decorative desert rubble last week in a park in southern Utah. Arches National Park has a variety of unique and world famous arches, including the iconic oft photographed Delicate Arch, that are susceptible to erosion from wind as rainfall rarely tops 250 mm (10 inches) per year. Moab, Utah welcomes a wealth of BASE jumpers, four wheelers, mountain bikers, hikers, canyon explorers and many budding and professional photographers among almost a million tourists gravitating to the park to capture their magical photograph.
maintenance inside Arches National Park. These rock formations reside atop a 300 million year old sea of salt that gives the Entrada sandstone such beautiful contrasting rust and salmon hues compacted alongside the layers of creamier Navajo Sandstone against backdrops of cerulean skies. It also foretells the eventual crumbling of the formations of such notables as the Double O Arch and the rock ruins from the over 300 foot long Landscape Arch that tumbled to its doom in 1991.The arch (sic Wall Arch) is along Devils Garden Trail, one of the most popular in the park. For years, the arch has been a favorite stopping point for photographers.
The arch, first reported and named in 1948, was more than 33 feet tall and 71 feet across. It ranked 12th in size among the park's estimated 2,000 arches.
Closure of the trail by the Park Service is temporary until the area poses no danger to hikers. It makes the beauty of the photographs taken of the arches more important as their are no guarantees as to how much longer they will last with the geological conditions that are gifts from the Jurassic era. The area is also an important ecosystem with incredible biodiversity of flora plus midget faded and Western rattlesnakes, Western collared lizards and mountain lions. Geologists expressed concern that this particular rock formation is not yet stable with a possibility of further slides. (Double O Arch)Whatever is left in southeastern Utah in the park will take on a different form and shape from the natural forces and be photographic magnets in a new way. (North Window and South Window Arches)
China invented gunpowder around 200 B.C. and organizers aim for a show-stopping fireworks display. The effort will include rockets launched from 1,800 sites around the city.
At the National Stadium, fireworks "will explode into dragon-shaped fountains of red peonies and yellow dragons," the Beijing Today newspaper reported last month. The display will climax with 2,008 "smiley face" fireworks, accompanied by photographs of people smiling around the world, the paper said.
Zhang, who directed films including "Raise the Red Lantern" and "House of Flying Daggers," spent three years working on the project but has appeared frustrated by the task. Among other things, fitting millennia of culture into 50 minutes is tough, particularly when the expectations of 1.3 billion Chinese are riding on the decisions, he told Shanghai's Oriental Sports Daily.
"Seeing how China's 5,000-year history is so brilliant, we can't just give an overview or make it like a history class," he said.
China went to extraordinary lengths to build architectural showcase venues called Water Cube (Beijing National Aquatic Center) and spectacular The Birds Nest (Beijing National Stadium) whose formal names do an injustice to their majesty and innovation. China, open before us for only the next two Olympic weeks will be treat and travesty as the world learns a few of their secrets as cultural treasures go on display with extremely tight security and their ambitions stay hidden close to the Forbidden City's only off limits place even to cars, Zhongnanhai, China's version of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
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