Gagrule.net

Gagrule.net News, Views, Interviews worldwide

FBI cracks its oldest case of mysterious Egyptian mummy’s head

By

Mystery of the Mummy’s Head

Mystery of the Mummy’s Head

A museum wasn’t sure whose head they had put on display. That’s when the F.B.I.’s forensic scientists were called in to crack the agency’s oldest case.

In 1915, a team of American archaeologists excavating the ancient Egyptian necropolis of Deir el-Bersha blasted into a hidden tomb. Inside the cramped limestone chamber, they were greeted by a gruesome sight: a mummy’s severed head perched on a cedar coffin.

The room, which the researchers labeled Tomb 10A, was the final resting place for a governor named Djehutynakht (pronounced “juh-HOO-tuh-knocked”) and his wife. At some point during the couple’s 4,000-year-long slumber, grave robbers ransacked their burial chamber and plundered its gold and jewels. The looters tossed a headless, limbless mummified torso into a corner before attempting to set the room on fire to cover their tracks.

The archaeologists went on to recover painted coffins and wooden figurines that survived the raid and sent them to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1921. Most of the collection stayed in storage until 2009 when the museum exhibited them. Though the torso remained in Egypt, the decapitated head became the star of the showcase. With its painted-on eyebrows, somber expression and wavy brown hair peeking through its tattered bandages, the mummy’s noggin brought viewers face-to-face with a mystery.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/science/mummy-head-fbi-dna.html

Mystery over who bombed Turkish convoy allegedly carrying weapons to militants in Syria

By

© IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation / Facebook

© IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation / Facebook

A Turkish convoy, which according to some reports was transporting weapons to terrorist organizations, has been hit by apparent airstrikes in northwestern Syria.

Footage released online by the Istanbul-based Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) shows plumes of smoke from the burning trucks and people running about in panic. At least 20 trucks were engulfed in flames.

The mission, however, wasn’t sponsored or organized by the IHH, the group said. No organization has as yet confirmed that the convoy belonged to them.

“Our teams helped to extinguish the fire… The trucks do not belong to us and there is no information on who bombed them,” Mustafa Özbek, an official from İHH, told Reuters.

At least seven people were killed and 10 injured in the incident, according to the Turkish Anadolu agency. The trucks were reportedly heading to the town of Azaz in northwestern Syria.

Since the news emerged, media has been furiously speculating about who was behind the attack, what the trucks were transporting, what the convoy’s humanitarian mission was, or maybe it was carrying a more sinister load.

One of the aid workers who survived the incident said the trucks had been deliberately targeted, Reuters reported.

The nature of the ‘humanitarian aid’ is also in question. Turkish media and the IHH say the trucks were transporting humanitarian aid to refugees in Azaz.
However, the Turkish Cumhuriyet newspaper cited sources close to the Syrian government saying the convoy was delivering weapons to terrorist organizations

The Hawar news agency reported that Turkey repeatedly sent convoys with arms to the Al-Nusra Front and other terrorist organizations under the guise of humanitarian aid.

Reports on Twitter went further – they identified the arms as allegedly “Docka machine guns” and “small arms with ammunitions.”

In the wake of the recent downing of a Russian Air Force bomber over Syria by Turkish fighter jets, some reports suggested the Russians were “avenging” the pilot’s death. Many media outlets thought it was the work of Vladimir Putin.

Anadolu cited ‘Syrian opposition sources,’ who claimed that Russian jets attacked the convoy.

Other sources suggested the airstrikes were carried out by Syrians, without specifying whether it was members of the Syrian Army loyal to President Bashar Assad, or one of the various Syrian rebel groups.

Neither Turkish, nor Russian authorities have yet commented on the incident. However, before the Azaz incident Tayyip Erdogan commented on an event that took place in 2013, when a Turkish security service convoy was stopped on the way to the Bayırbucak region in northwestern Syria. The Turkish president said: “If there were any weapons, then what? And if there weren’t, what would change?”

Western Armenia: Ararat, the mountain of mystery – Paolo Cossi

By

Ararat, the mountain

Ararat, the mountain

According to the Bible, after the flood of Noah’s Ark to have landed on Mount Ararat, one of the highest peaks of modern Turkey, with more than 5000 meters. What reality corresponds to this story? This is what Azad Vartanian, the main character of Ararat, undertook to discover. Because it is convinced that by comparing testimonies and historical reports we can get to precisely determine the location of the site has yet to keep track of the Ark. Arrived on Ararat, he understands that, beyond the sacred aura that surrounds it, this site is mostly a place eternally disputed, marked by a long history of conflicts that have left incurable wounds in the memory of all populations of Anatolia, and is still tightly controlled by the army of the Turkish state. These wounds resurface over the words, gestures and silences old Kurdish shepherds who receive Azad with friendship, inform him, guide him through the deserts and dark places where took place in 1915, the massacre of Armenians who lived Mountain. With modesty, they make him discover what remains of their villages and their inhabitants. Reached the end of his research on the ancient mystery of the Ararat mountain, Azad scientific discoveries Vartanian will import him less than, painfully, he will have learned from it, the world in which he lives and men who inhabit …

Once BD speaking on condition of the Armenian genocide, the main character what this album Azad Vartanian, Armenian Italian adventurer, aims to reach Mount Ararat where, according to some legends, stories and especially after Aerial reconnaissance of the US Air Force, would have failed the Ark of Noah. But before we get there he will have to avoid military that prevent access to the mountainous area to tourists especially because of the hunt against members of PPK. Greeted by a man of the mountains Azad will be confronted with an event of the past which he was unaware of the existence and extent, to know whether certain customs and special way to bake bread.

This comic speaks of the oppression of the Kurds, Armenians, a genocide and hidden secrets that must be preserved, the scenario is supported by black and white drawings as to alleviate suffering. The negative fact remains that these drawings are more air sketches, probably with more details the story would have taken more depth, but this detail does not spoil anything in the history of this adventurer.

http://stemilou.over-blog.com/2015/08/ararat-la-montagne-du-mystere-paolo-cossi.html? utm_source = _ob_share & utm_medium = & utm_campaign = _ob_share_auto _ob_twitter

Sunday, September 13, 2015,
Stéphane © armenews.com

Bloomberg-Business: Turkey’s $7.9 Billion Mystery Money That’s Simply Vanished

By

No one knows where this money is coming from?

by

-1x-1Something bizarre is happening on Turkey’s accounting books, and nobody’s quite sure why.

Turkey attracted $7.9 billion of income from unexplained sources during the first eight months of 2014, compared to an outflow of $90 million during the same period a year ago, according to the central bank data. In the three months that followed, $5.6 billion of that left the country.

Unexplained flows of foreign funds into and out of the economy — marked as “net errors and omissions” in Turkey’s Balance of Payments report — showed violent swings during the first 11 months of 2014. Outflows in November were estimated to be $3.46 billion, the biggest monthly exodus in more than 16 years, according to central bank data.

Massive amounts of mysterious inflows or outflows raises doubts about Turkey’s ability to finance its current-account deficit, which the government has called the economy’s “Achilles Heel.”

Note that it’s not uncommon for countries to have “net errors and omissions” in their balance of payments sheets. What makes Turkey’s “puzzling” is how big these flows are as a ratio to the country’s current account deficit, according to Ipek Ozkardeskaya, an emerging markets strategist at Swissquote Bank SA in Geneva.

This shortfall in what comes into the country versus what leaves the country, which is the broadest measure of trade in goods and services, has been a huge headache for Turkey. It approached 10 percent of Turkey’s gross domestic product in 2011, prompting policy makers to take action to get Turkey’s consumers to buy fewer imported goods.

The gap matters because economists use that to gauge how vulnerable Turkey’s economy is to sudden changes in global financial markets. And while fresh capital — any capital — helps in a country that desperately needs it, the fact that no one knows where some of that is coming from makes it especially difficult to predict when it will disappear. That’s exactly what happened in the latter months of 2014.

“There is no way to predict what is going to happen to these flows in 2015,” Mehmet Besimoglu, chief economist at Oyak Menkul Degerler, said by phone from Istanbul.

Besimoglu has his theories about the source of money and why it leaves. Inflows might be linked to capital flight from Iraq and Syria, where the advance of the Islamic State has pushed more than around 1.5 million people across the border to Turkey. Outflows tend to take place during periods of lira appreciation, he said.

One sea change on the horizon is an eventual normalization of monetary policy, aka interest-rate increases, in the U.S. Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan has repeatedly said U.S. rate increases is the single most important threat to Turkish economy this year. Higher rates in the world’s largest economy could lead to a shift in investors’ appetite for assets in emerging markets including Turkey, which rely on foreign capital to finance their current-account deficits.

Morgan Stanley last year listed Turkey in what it calls the “Fragile Five” economies. These countries are most vulnerable to a withdrawal of the foreign investment needed to finance their shortfall in capital coming in versus capital going out. South Africa, Indonesia, India and Brazil are the other four.

Mysterious inflows were higher than outflows in 22 out of the last 29 years that the central bank has keep records of, reducing the need for financing through official sources.