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Bitlis Eren University academic Associated Professor Mehmet Demirtaş said the ancient city was registered by the Culture and Tourism Ministry in 1986.

The ancient city, part of which is underground and part of which is submerged beneath the lake, had all the traces of a city and settlement, Demirtaş said, adding it should be protected from illegal excavators and those who want to use it for commercial purposes.

Demirtaş called for the ministry and the Van Cultural and Natural Heritage Preservation Board to take action. “The region has a history of 5,000 years. Lots of findings from the 3rd century B.C. have been unearthed there so far. There are two ancient cities in the district; one is in Şahmiran village and the other is this one on the coast of the lake. It is known as the ancient city of Tatvan. There are rock-carved niches, geometric shapes and paintings. These are the most common features of an ancient city and they were all registered in 1986.”

Demirtaş said many structures which had been unearthed during previous excavations remained underground because they were not taken under protection.

“[Potential excavation] work will completely unearth the ancient city. This place will be a focus of interest in the world. But there are those who want the area to be zoned for housing and build a holiday village or drill for water. Also, treasure hunters cause a large amount of damage to this area. A common project should be made for its  protection,” he said.

Source: Hurriyet Daily News [March 25, 2015]

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So, I wasn't going to say anything about the WSJ article. I said my piece on Twitter, I've read many, many posts about the subject and kind of felt that everyone had said all their was to say about the subject and said it very well.

BUT

Then, I started noticing that there are a lot of people rebutting the rebuttal. There are people defending her article and I listened to her defend herself on a radio show (you can listen here) . She talks about how she comes across as anti-reading. She's sad that people are saying that parents do not have the right to have a say in what their kids read.

I don't think that. I don't think that at all.

I'm very anti-censorship. I'm very, very anti-censorship. BUT a parent has the right, has the complete right to be involved in what their children are reading. A parent has the right to make an informed and educated decision with their child and decide that a child isn't emotionally ready for a particular book. That is your right as a parent. A mother called in on the radio show with Meghan and said that she was horrified to learn that her 10 year old daughter and her friends were reading Breaking Dawn and she told her daughter that she was not allowed to read it. So she completely supports the WSJ article. But here's the thing. That book was not written for a 10 year old audience. Stephenie Meyer herself mentioned that she wouldn't let her youngest son read her book because she thought he was too young for it, even though he had read the other Twilight books. You are the parent. You have that right with your own child.

I read those #YASaves tweets on Twitter. I tweeted my own. I was a part of that Twitter conversation for hours. This debate is not about censorship. Not the way you mean. This debate is about whether these books are being written because they 'sell'. To you, this is a debate about consumerism. That because these books are edgy, daring, and gritty, people are reading them. And even though I know the odds of you reading this are slim, I'm here to tell you that YOU ARE WRONG.

Books like Scars, Thirteen Reasons Why, Shine, But I Love Him, and those other books dealing with 'dark' subject matter are not written OR read because they are 'edgy'. They are written and they are read because they save lives. The Twitter hashtag was NOT about why it's cool to read Young Adult novels, was not simply about why people read those dark and gritty novels. Did you read any of those tweets? Did you pay attention to the hashtag? YASaves. SAVES. Those tweets were heartfelt out pourings of emotions. Those tweets were people coming together and talking about which YA books SAVED THEIR LIVES. I'm not talking about books that kept them from being bored, or got them better grades in school. Some of those 'dark' and 'lurid' books out there that you are so quick to brush off as commercial and unnecessary are saving the lives of teenagers EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

THAT is why people got so upset about your article. To me, it's pretty obvious that you are pro-reading. You are a children's book reviewer and you are actually taking the time to talk about books. You are pro-reading. But you are anti-reality. Your condescending comments about how people 'claim' that these darker toned YA books 'validate' the teenage experience clearly illustrate that you don't get it. As does your radio interview where you talk about how surprised you are to be attacked by so many people about this subject.

You claim that your post was merely a way to point out the 'trend' in YA that wasn't there 30 or 40 years ago, that you were simply making a calm and rational argument, to announce the trend. But that isn't true. Not entirely. If that's all you were doing, you would not have linked vampire themed novels with books dealing with self-harm and suicide. Because they are very, very different kinds of books, very different kinds of dark. So what you have done, is not say that you are anti-book or anti-reading. What you have done is say that you would rather live in a world like the 50s, where bad things happened every single day, but no one talked about it. The main difference between now and then is not that it happens more often now, but that now people TALK about it. People come forward and say I am stronger than the silence.

Meghan, I want you to send an email to these authors you are brushing off as unimportant and commercially sensational. These authors you have condescendingly claimed try to validate the teenage experience. Ask them. Ask them to share with you their reader response. Ask THEM what teens are telling them about the impact of their book. You are going to hear something from them. Something that should soften your heart and open your mind. Each of these authors who write these books you call dark and lurid are going to tell you that they have received letter upon letter, year after year, day after day thanking them because their book saved their life.

These books are SAVING LIVES. So, send a letter or email to Cherly Rainfield (that's her own arm on the cover of Scars you know. That book is written through her experiences and her own pains.) Talk to Laurie Halse Anderson, Ellen Hopkins, Sherman Alexie, Chris Crutcher, Stephanie Kuuehnert and Jay Asher. Do you know what the common theme you are going to find? Redemption. Hope. LIFE. These books save lives. Not in the arbitrary or abstract. In REALITY. People pick up these books, realize they are not alone and they seek help. They stop their destructive behaviors. They tell the truth. They LIVE.

THAT is why the YA Universe is so upset about your article. NOT because we think parents don't have the right to have a say in what their kids read. NOT because we think that every single book is a perfect fit for every single kid. NOT because we think you think that no one should be allowed to read anything other than rainbows and lollipops. NOT because we enjoy depravity and get thrills from reading books about disparity. People are upset because you don't GET it. You are missing the point. The justification isn't that these books 'validate' the teen experience. These books ARE the teen experience.

These books teach teens that they are not alone, that their experiences are valid, that the bad things that have happened to them are NOT THEIR FAULT, that there is still hope, that things get better. These books help these kids hold on, seek help, and they teach compassion. I have never been bullied. But, because of books like Thirteen Reasons Why I am able to understand what bullying does to a kid and you had better believe that I'm going to pass that lesson along to my own

Meghan, before you condemn an entire body of writing, you should talk to the people who write it and the people they are trying to reach. Maybe, instead of simply defending your stance and trying to prove that you really are in the 'right' here, you should try listening to what the people are saying. These books save lives. Real lives of real kids. If this is really your opinion, and you are going to stand by it this strongly, maybe you should be the one to talk, individually, to these writers, like Cheryl, who write from personal experience, and go to these teenagers, individually whose lives have been saved by the powerful messages they've read and tell them that it's too dark. Tell them that their experiences don't really belong in books. And then you can come back and tell us that you still believe you are in the right. Listen to teenagers, the very people you feel you are trying to protect tell you why this book is necessary and then come back and tell me that this book that is saving lives isn't really good enough. Try it. I dare you.

Conservationists have reintroduced the gibbons as part of an ambitious project for the "re-wilding" of Angkor Wat, a vast "temple city" that was once surrounded by forests teeming with deer, monkeys, birds and big cats before the arrival of commercial hunters with guns, traps and an appetite for money.

The re-wilding is being led by Nick Marx, a conservationist who believes the project could become a model for other parts of Southeast Asia hit by the trade in endangered wildlife.

Angkor Wat, the largest religious monument on earth, was made a World Heritage Site to protect its sprawling network of temples. Now conservationists want to restore the surrounding forests of Angkor Archaeological Park to their former glory, Marx said.

"The area of forest is beautiful and mature. It's a unique site but it's devoid of wildlife now," he said. "We want to introduce different species that would be appropriate, such as a cross-selection of small carnivores, herbivores, primates and deer, to try to get a build-up of wildlife populations with sufficient genetic diversity."

Cambodia, like many countries in southeast Asia, has suffered from the illegal trade in wildlife. Large numbers of animals have been shot, trapped, butchered and skinned, or sold alive in one of the many Cambodian food markets.

Spiralling demand for traditional Chinese "medicine" has driven the trade to new heights.

"China has done a pretty good job of decimating its own wildlife and now it is moving into other countries," he said. "There is a certain amount of consumption within Cambodia, but most of the valuable items that can bring a high price such as pangolins and cat skins would be going out either to Vietnam or to China," he said. "With the opening of borders and trade, things are getting worse globally. That means we have to work harder to stop it."

Marx is director of a wildlife rescue service funded by Wildlife Alliance, a New York-based non-governmental organisation that specialises in protecting forests and wildlife. He runs Cambodia's Wildlife Rapid Rescue Team which tackles animal trafficking with undercover operations, armed raids on restaurants and markets, and a network of paid informants willing to provide tip-offs on illegal shipments of live animals and body parts.

"We are known throughout Cambodia. We are feared by wildlife traders. It would be foolish to say there is no risk. We're pissing people off and we are rescuing things like cobras, which often have their mouths stitched up and we have to unstitch them," he said.

Why cobras? "They cut their throats to drink their blood with wine and then eat the flesh. People eat everything, from spiders and grasshoppers up."

Many recovered animals are alive and the aim is to return them to the wild if possible.

"Almost everything we confiscate, about 90 per cent of it - provided it is in recent captivity and is fit and healthy, and of an age it can look after itself - is released back into a safe habitat," Marx said. "If they cannot take care of themselves, we look after them at a rescue centre."

Having established Cambodia's official task force to tackle wildlife crime, Marx said it was time to think about reintroducing species to areas where they once thrived such as Angkor Wat. "We were given permission to release animals back into Angkor last year and we released the first pair of pileated gibbons into this forest last December. This has gone really well. The pair had a baby in September. We've taken up another pair of gibbons and a trio of silver langurs, which are a kind of leaf-eating monkey, which we hope to release later."

Author: Steve Connor | Source: Independent via The New Zealand Herald [December 29, 2014]

In the tiny village of Dmanisi, a 1.8 million year-old human skull was recently discovered to the amazement of scientists. Nearby, a team of archaeologists from the National Museum of Georgia and the German Mining Museum (DBM) unearthed Bronze Era caves.

But the area is also rich in minerals. One site, known as Sakdrisi, is even believed to be home to a 5,000-year-old gold mine. The area was part of a concession of land the Georgian government allotted for the exploration of minerals in 1994.

In 2006, Georgia's Ministry of Culture and Monument Protection added the ancient gold mine site to its list of protected cultural monuments. The archaeological significance of the region had been a source of pride to the company that had the initial rights to mine the area. But that's now due to change. The Russian-owned company RMG bought the lease in 2012, and now plans to mine for gold.

The power of gold

RMG believes that rich gold deposits are directly under the ancient gold mine site and petitioned strongly for the government to lift Sakdrisi's protected status.

The Georgian Ministry of Culture formed a commission to study the site's status in May 2013. After one month of investigations, the commission ruled that no grounds exist to justify the protected status. In July 2013, the Ministry of Culture revoked its protected cultural heritage status.

The commission also held that the previous Georgian government had granted the protected status illegally, although they say they cannot find the 2006 documents that granted Sakdrisi permanent protection.

Thomas Stöllner, from DBM, challenged the commission's scientific qualifications though, requesting in an open letter that a new international committee be set up to test the site's archaeological signficance. So far the request has fallen on deaf ears.

Conflicts of interest

Gold exports are big business in Georgia. Sales of the precious metal overseas totalled 25.7 million euros ($35.5 million) in 2013, nearly 3 percent of the country's total export earnings.

RMG Commercial Director Solomon Tsabadze, a former Georgian Environment Ministry official, says the mining company provides 85 percent of the local budget through licensing fees and is the largest single employer in the region.

But civil society groups suspect collusion between the mining company and the government. Back in 1994 a Ministry of Environment official, Zurab Kutelia, issued the original mining permit for Sakdrisi. Today, he is the chairperson RMG's supervisory board and a company shareholder. On the other hand, other former mining company directors have become government officials too.

For Marine Mizandari, Georgia's former Deputy Minister of Culture, the ministry's decision to remove Sakdrisi from its list of protected sites is a serious setback.

"Why are we called the Ministry of Culture and Monument Protection of Georgia, if we don't protect our monuments of culture?" she said to DW, adding that she believes she was dismissed from her post in the culture ministry for reasons related to Sakdrisi.

Citizens stand up

Mizandari is now at the forefront of the Public Committee to Save Sakdrisi, a coalition of civil society groups and students demanding that the Culture Ministry appoint a non-partisan group of international experts to re-evaluate Sakdrisi.

But her protest work is not yet getting results. At a recent meeting with university students on the issue, Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili reiterated the commission's controversial findings, saying there was no proof gold had ever been mined in Sakdrisi. He stressed that RMG has already invested heavily in the Georgian economy and that protecting Sakdrisi would jeopardize the jobs of 3,000 people.

RMG has now been given the green light to begin excavating, and activists and students have organized protests against the Culture Ministry's decision in Tbilisi and near the mine site. One of their chief complaints is their exclusion from the decision-making process.

"You can stop anybody on the street and every Georgian will tell you they are proud of their history and culture," said Avtandil Ioseliani, representing Unanimity, a local NGO coalition. "I don't know what the Culture Ministry is doing, but they are not answering the questions society has."

Although Sakdrisi has lost its cultural heritage protected status, it is still an archaeological site, which prevents RMG from destroying it completely. The Culture Ministry has announced that it will appoint an independent group of archaeological experts to monitor the mining work done.

But mining opponents fail to see the logic in the policy, since the mining process requires blasting and the destruction of the ancient tunnels, they say.

Nikoloz Antidze, from the National Agency for Cultural Heritage and Preservation of Georgia, recalls how archaeological sites were ruined when BP laid an oil pipeline across the country in last 10 years.

"State interests often override archaeological interests all over the world, not just in Georgia," he told DW.

Source: Deutsche Welle [December 17, 2014]

At a writers conference ten years ago, four aspiring writers met and became close friends. A decade later they are still friends, and very much a part of one another's lives.

Kendell Aim's writing career is in danger. Her editor goes on maternity leave, and her new editor shows no interest in her work.

Mallory St. James is an obsessed workaholic. She's constantly working on yet another best seller.

Tanya Mason is a single mom who supports her two kids and difficult mother by working two jobs.

Faye Truett is married to a televangelist and writes inspirational romances. She has a secret that no one would dare to believe.

Kendell has a quickly approaching book deadline that she needs to meet, but when she learns her husband has been cheating, she flees to her vacation home. Rather than focus on her writing, she works at fixing up her mountain hideaway. Her friends won't allow her to bear this burden alone and come together in a sort of intervention. They collaborate on a novel based on their own lives. Each of them writes a segment of the book, all under Kendell's name.

But they would have never guessed that the book would reach the NY Times Bestseller's list. When the truth is revealed on a day time talk show, they are each forced to reveal a secret they'd kept from one another. Their friendship has survived the years, but will it survive this?

THE ACCIDENTAL BESTSELLER is an intriguing glimpse into the world of publishing and the difficulties that authors must face. It was interesting to learn about how many hands manuscripts pass through on the way to publication. Each of the characters suffer realistic insecurites about their writing and personal lives. I learned a great deal about the publishing process in my reading of THE ACCIDENTAL BESTSELLER. It makes me appreciate and value writers even more!

About the Author:

A native of St. Petersburg, Florida, Wendy has come a long way since her days at Sunshine Elementary School. As a child she read voraciously, was a regular at her local library, and became fast friends with Nancy Drew and Anne of Green Gables. Her love affairs with language and storytelling paid off beginning with her first shift at the campus radio station while studying journalism at the University of Georgia.

After returning to her home state and graduating from the University of South Florida she worked for the Tampa PBS affiliate, WEDU-TV, behind and in front of the camera. Her resume includes on air work, voiceovers and production of a variety of commercial projects and several feature films. She may be best known in the Tampa Bay area as the host of Desperate & Dateless, a radio matchmaking program that aired on WDAE radio, and nationally as host of The Home Front, a magazine format show that aired on PBS affiliates across the country.

The mother of a toddler and an infant when she decided to change careers, she admits it was not the best timing in terms of productivity. “I’m still not certain why I felt so compelled to write my first novel at that particular time,” she says, “but that first book took forever.” Since then she’s written six more books, including Single in Suburbia and THE ACCIDENTAL BESTSELLER. Her work has been sold to publishers in ten countries and to the Rhapsody Book Club. Her novel, Hostile Makeover, was excerpted in Cosmopolitan magazine.

Wendy lives with her husband John and her baseball-crazy teenage sons in the Atlanta suburbs where she spends most of her non-writing time on baseball fields or driving to them. She continues to devour books and is busy producing Accidental Radio, a new feature on her web site.
You can visit her website at www.authorwendywax.com.

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Eight towers are connected among themselves by a series of high-rise bridges which, by analogy to skyscrapers, have been named “skybridges”.

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“This is a salvage operation to get as much as we can,” said archaeologist Jera Davis, who is part of the team excavating the site.

The sites along the bank overlooking the river have been endangered by rapid erosion caused by a shift in the river channel. The salvage effort is a stopgap measure until UA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers can agree on a plan to stabilize the stretch of riverbank along the wooded northern border of the park, according to Matt Gage, director of the UA Office of Archaeological Research.

“Since 2010, we have really seen a major change in what is happening with the erosion in this area,” Gage said.

The university and the Corps are trying to work on a feasibility study, he said.

The stabilization work would likely be funded by local and federal matching funds, with the Corps responsible for the stabilization and the university assisting with the archaeological work at the site.

At a site below the raised walkway that runs along the edge of the bank, the team has been excavating a midden heap — or trash pit — for about a week.

The bank below the excavation is a steep slope of exposed sandy soil where the trunks of toppled cypress and gum trees protrude from the silt at the water’s edge.

Gage estimated the staff has about six to eight months of salvage work along the riverbank on the edge of the park. The salvage by the archaeologists needs to be done before the stabilization work begins and before the valuable archaeological deposits slide down the slope into the river.

Only about 15 percent of the massive Moundville complex has been excavated. The section threatened by the river is among the least explored, according to Davis.

The site overlooking the river was likely one of the first and last places to be occupied at the complex, which was inhabited from roughly the 11th to 16th centuries by Native Americans of the Mississippian culture. The site was a religious and commercial center, home to both elite and commoners of the culture.

Based on materials found in the trash pit, experts say the sites near the river were likely the residential areas for the elite members of the society. The items include such things as shards of elaborate ceramics and mineral pigments from the Midwest, Davis said.

The trash pits offer glimpses of daily life at the sprawling complex, once the second largest of its kind in what is now the United States.

Moundville is eligible as a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization World Heritage site, Gage said.

Erosion along the bank is speeding up, he warned.

“Every day, we are losing a little bit of Moundville,” he said.

In the past, a natural jetty formed by silt deposits at the mouth of Carthage Branch to the east of the park helped protect the stretch of riverbank by redirecting the current. The recent changes to the river channel eroded the natural barrier and began to cut away at the bank along the Moundville site, Gage said. He estimated that approximately 30 meters of riverbank has been lost since 1969. The Corps of Engineers stabilized a stretch of riverbank northwest of the park roughly 25 years ago with riprap and other stone to prevent erosion.

While the Corps was previously able to stabilize the riverbank on the northwest corner of the park with aggregate, the erosion occurring now is a more challenging engineering problem because of the steep slope of the bank, which drops almost immediately into the river channel, Gage said.

Gage anticipates the project could cost anywhere from $7 million to $11 million.

“It all depends on what the Army Corps of Engineers decides is a possibility,” he said.

Author: Ed Enoch | Source: The Tuscaloosa News [January 26, 2015]

So much so that battle plans would be drawn up to specifically give the castle at Zhangjiakou, in China's northern Hebei province, a wide berth.

Now archaeologists have begun a daunting project to restore the once-mighty site to something approaching it previous glory, in particular the dilapidated outer wall that repelled every attack which invading Mongolian armies could throw at it.

The restoration of the fortress - which was given the coveted title of 'Wucheng' or 'Martial City' after its construction in 1393 - will see building work completed in the original Ming Dynasty style of architecture, Cinese sources report.

The project will see the restoration of the Ming and Qing era commercial districts, the Great Wall Martial Museum, the Golden Harvest Academy and performance theatres as well as the opening of the Red Tourist Route, with all work planned to be complete in 2016. The restoration work will also include the ongoing protection of surviving structures.

The castle in Wanquan county - known in China as a 'living fossil of the Ming military system' - was built in 1393 but is relatively well-preserved, especially the interior city area which includes the residences of generals and wealthy merchants.

The fortress has huge historical, cultural and military significance and has key cultural relic status in China.

Author: Edward Chow | Source: Daily Mail Online [April 07, 2015]

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The Innovative Park in Australia

The new project of mixed use located in the north of Sydney, with the budget in 400 million dollars, urged to "plant trees and shrubs" in business. Developed by architects GHD, Innovative park Gore Hill is the newest building object Lindsay Bennelong Developments before which it's necessary to connect a problem ecological stability to business innovations.
Project Gore Hill will be the first technological business park received five stars AGBA and rating Green Star in Australia. In located on the former areas of studios ABC in Gore Hill, on the bottom part of northern coast of Sydney, business park, the area in 4.6 hectares, provides convenient places for offices, and as spaces under retail shops and the entertaining centers — including a separate site for retail trade in plaza-style, a zone of municipal departments, motor shows, the aqua-center, and also foot and bicycle paths.

The Australian Innovative Project

“Project of a glass cube so typical for given area is not pleasant to us”, main architect GHD Nando Nicotra speaks. “From the very beginning of the project we wished to create the unique building corresponding to aesthetic ideals, and have decided, that it's necessary to concentrate attention to appearance of a building”.
The given project, example of modern innovative architecture, also is realization of various innovations on ecological stability — including repeated capture of superseded heat, effective system of lifts and a central air “chilled beam”. It guarantees that the project will receive a five-stars rating and will set the tendency of new level of requirements to the future industrial and commercial projects. At present works on district to start building in January, 2009 are conducted.

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