Superman's Past, Future Takes Comic-Con Spotlight - NYTimes.com

Superman's Past, Future Takes Comic-Con Spotlight - NYTimes.com:

 "SAN DIEGO — Superman is among comics' most recognizable characters, and 75 years after Cleveland teenagers Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster's Kryptonian made his debut in the pages of Action Comics No. 1, his popularity remains stratospheric.

At Comic-Con International this week, Superman's presence could be seen everywhere — from attendees wearing incarnations of his many costumes to scenes from the television serials, cartoons and films, and even in comic books.

DC Entertainment co-publishers say that it's hard to find another character that is 75 and still plowing forward with new comics, big summer films and animation on television, too."

'via Blog this'

Demonstrations Across the Country Commemorate Trayvon Martin - NYTimes.com

Demonstrations Across the Country Commemorate Trayvon Martin - NYTimes.com:

"Thousands of demonstrators gathered in dozens of cities on Saturday to commemorate Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black teenager shot to death in a confrontation with a neighborhood watch volunteer early last year, and to add their voices to a debate on race that his death has set off."

'via Blog this'

Pope, in an Angered Brazil, to Focus on Social Justice - NYTimes.com

Pope, in an Angered Brazil, to Focus on Social Justice - NYTimes.com:

"Barely a month after becoming pope, Francis took a symbolically important step that liberation theologians here and elsewhere in Latin America interpreted as a peace offering. The beatification of Bishop Óscar Romero, a Salvadoran who was killed by a right-wing death squad in 1980 and is considered a martyr by many disciples of liberation theology, had been frozen since 2005, the year Benedict assumed the papacy, but Francis almost immediately ordered it reopened."

'via Blog this'

Pope, in an Angered Brazil, to Focus on Social Justice - NYTimes.com

Pope, in an Angered Brazil, to Focus on Social Justice - NYTimes.com:

"RIO DE JANEIRO — A month ago, hundreds of thousands of young people took to the streets of Brazil to protest corruption, wasteful government spending, bad schools and hospitals, police brutality, and other abuses of power. On Monday, Pope Francis, in his first venture abroad, will dive into the middle of that ferment when he begins a weeklong visit to the world’s largest Roman Catholic country."

'via Blog this'

Being Legal Doesn’t End Poverty - NYTimes.com

Being Legal Doesn’t End Poverty - NYTimes.com:

 "LOS ANGELES — THOSE pressing for change in the country’s immigration system like to say that creating a path to citizenship will bring the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants “out of the shadows.” It is taken as a given that legal status will help them climb the economic ladder."

'via Blog this'

50 Years of Tough Questions And ‘Thank You, Mr. President’ - NYTimes.com

50 Years of Tough Questions And ‘Thank You, Mr. President’ - NYTimes.com:

 "WASHINGTON — Helen Thomas, whose keen curiosity, unquenchable drive and celebrated constancy made her a trailblazing White House correspondent in a press corps dominated by men and later the dean of the White House briefing room, died Saturday at home in Washington. She was 92."

'via Blog this'

Ex-Goldman Director Gupta Paying $13.9M Civil Fine - NYTimes.com

Ex-Goldman Director Gupta Paying $13.9M Civil Fine - NYTimes.com:

"WASHINGTON — The former Goldman Sachs board member convicted of insider trading is paying $13.9 million to settle related civil charges of feeding inside information to his friend, a billionaire hedge fund boss."

'via Blog this'

Ex-Goldman Director Rajat Gupta Fined $13.9 Million For Insider Trading - Business Insider

Ex-Goldman Director Rajat Gupta Fined $13.9 Million For Insider Trading - Business Insider:

 "A federal judge Wednesday ordered former Goldman Sachs board member Rajat Gupta to pay a $13.9 million penalty related to insider trading, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced."

'via Blog this'

Raj Rajaratnam/Galleon Group, Anil Kumar, and Rajat Gupta insider trading cases - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Raj Rajaratnam/Galleon Group, Anil Kumar, and Rajat Gupta insider trading cases - Wikipedia, the free 
encyclopedia:

The Raj Rajaratnam/Galleon Group, Anil Kumar, and Rajat Gupta insider trading cases are parallel and related civil and criminal actions by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and the United States Department of Justice against three friends and business partners: Galleon hedge fund founder-owner Raj Rajaratnam and former McKinsey & Company senior executives Anil Kumar and Rajat Gupta. In these proceedings, the men were confronted with insider trading charges: Rajaratnam was convicted, Kumar pleaded guilty and testified as key witness in the criminal trials of Rajaratnam and Gupta, and Gupta was convicted in Federal district court in Manhattan in June 2012.

'via Blog this'

Rajat Gupta - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rajat Gupta - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Rajat Kumar Gupta (Bengali: রজত কুমার গুপ্ত [ɾɔdʒot̪ kumaɾ gupt̪o]; born 2 December 1948) is an Indian American businessman and philanthropist who was the Managing Director (chief executive) of management consultancy McKinsey & Company from 1994 to 2003. He was also a board member of corporations including Goldman Sachs, Procter and Gamble and American Airlines, as well as an advisor to non-profits such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Additionally, he is the co-founder of the Indian School of Business, American India Foundation, New Silk Route and Scandent Solutions.

'via Blog this'

Andreessen

Andreessen Horowitz Leads $25.5 Million Series B Investment in Jumio. Read how @TIBCO is involved here: http://t.co/iwtAYKTH

— TIBCO Software (@TIBCO) March 6, 2012

Capture of Mexican Crime Boss Appears to End a Brutal Chapter - NYTimes.com

Capture of Mexican Crime Boss Appears to End a Brutal Chapter - NYTimes.com:

"MEXICO CITY — Body parts strewn on highways, etched with the letter Z. Videotaped torture sessions uploaded onto YouTube. Victims placed in barrels and dissolved into a “stew” of violent death."

'via Blog this'

Universities Face a Rising Barrage of Cyberattacks - NYTimes.com

Universities Face a Rising Barrage of Cyberattacks - NYTimes.com:

"America’s research universities, among the most open and robust centers of information exchange in the world, are increasingly coming under cyberattack, most of it thought to be from China, with millions of hacking attempts weekly. Campuses are being forced to tighten security, constrict their culture of openness and try to determine what has been stolen."

'via Blog this'

Nations Buying as Hackers Sell Flaws in Computer Code - NYTimes.com

Nations Buying as Hackers Sell Flaws in Computer Code - NYTimes.com:

 "On the tiny Mediterranean island of Malta, two Italian hackers have been searching for bugs — not the island’s many beetle varieties, but secret flaws in computer code that governments pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to learn about and exploit."

"Countries in the Asian Pacific, including Malaysia and Singapore, are buying, too, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington."

"Still, said Mr. Soghoian of the A.C.L.U., “The bounties pale in comparison to what the government pays.” The military establishment, he said, “created Frankenstein by feeding the market.”"
'via Blog this'

Echoes From the Roman Ghetto

Kathryn Ream Cook for The New York Times

Restaurants and cafes serving kosher food line the Via del Portico d’Ottavia in the old Jewish ghetto of Rome.

By DAVID LASKIN

Published: July 12, 2013 15 Comments

• FACEBOOK
• TWITTER
• GOOGLE+
• SAVE
• E-MAIL
• SHARE
• PRINT
• REPRINTS
• 

The Portico d’Ottavia is one of those chunks of urban surrealism that you come across only in Rome. From a cavity about 20 feet below street level, the ruin of a massive 2,000-year-old portico thrusts its crumbling marble geometry into the present. The dome of a Baroque church, Santa Maria in Campitelli, peers down from the next piazza like a nosy matron.

Multimedia

Map

Sites in Rome’s Former Jewish Ghetto, and Beyond

Connect With Us on Twitter

Follow@nytimestravelfor tips, features and photography from all over the globe.

Enlarge This Image

Giorgio Cosulich/Getty Images

Rome's former Jewish ghetto is made up of four cramped blocks next to the Tiber River.

Enlarge This Image

Giorgio Cosulich/Getty Images

The ruins of the Portico d’Ottavia.

Enlarge This Image

Giuseppe Ciccia/Corbis

Visitors at the Jewish Museum of Rome.

Enlarge This Image

Kathryn Ream Cook for The New York Times

The Basilica of San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura was damaged by Allied bombing in 1943.

Enlarge This Image

Stefano Montesi/Corbis

Site of the massacre at Fosse Ardeatine, where 335 Italians were killed by the Nazis.

Readers’ Comments

Share your thoughts.

• Post a Comment »
• Read All Comments (15) »

A few steps from the ruins, multilingual waiters reel in tourists to dine on their terraces amid pyramids of artichokes. A poster on a palace wall hawks kosher sushi — coming soon! Bearded men in skullcaps jostle students in tank tops.

No one seems the least bit thrown by this jarring mosaic of times and cultures. Everybody is too busy talking, sipping, pointing, sauntering, forking up something delicious.

For half a millennium, the Portico d’Ottavia has been the heart of Rome’s Jewish ghetto, four cramped blocks wedged between the Tiber, the Turtle Fountain, the Theater of Marcellus and the Palazzo Cenci. Amid today’s celebration of earthly pleasures, I had trouble finding the small wall plaque that commemorates “la spietata caccia agli ebrei” — the merciless hunting down of the Jews — that took place here on Oct. 16, 1943.

Seventy years ago, the world was at war, Rome was occupied by the Nazis, and the ghetto was a virtual prison for a large part of the city’s Jewish community. On the morning of Oct. 16, 1943, SS Captain Theodor Dannecker ordered that the prison be emptied.

Trucks pulled up on the cobblestoned piazza beside the Portico d’Ottavia, the neighborhood was sealed, and 365 German soldiers fanned out through the narrow streets and courtyards. Families hid at the backs of their shuttered shops. The able-bodied and quick-witted jumped from their windows or fled along the rooftops. The unlucky were hounded from their homes at gunpoint and herded into the idling trucks. Of the more than 1,000 Roman Jews seized that day and later transported to Auschwitz, only 16 survived.

On a balmy night in April, I sat pondering that dark time with my wife and two of our daughters on the terrace of Ba” Ghetto, a lively restaurant near the Portico d’Ottavia. All around us, waiters were bearing platters of grilled meat and assuring tourists that their fried artichokes alla giudia were the best in Rome. Deep into the night, a sparkler ignited atop a slice of cake and everyone sang “tanti auguri a te” (happy birthday to you) to a 20-something beauty.

It was impossible not to be stunned by the contrast between the festive present and the somber past. Even a dozen years ago, when we first visited the ghetto, the neighborhood felt forlorn and insular. Old, suspicious eyes sized us up as we made our way past kosher butchers and shabby tailor shops. Jews had been confined to these flood-prone riverside streets in 1555 by Pope Paul IV, and in 2001, an aura of melancholy still lingered.

But today the place is a party. Well-heeled Romans flock to the ghetto to “eat Jewish” the way New Yorkers pop down to Little Italy or Chinatown. On that soft spring evening, with Israeli cabernet brimming in our wineglasses and plates heaped with hummus and couscous, we had trouble summoning up the shadows of the past.

In this city’s 2,000 years of glorious and inglorious history, the nine-month German occupation (Sept. 11, 1943, to June 4, 1944) is just a nick. But, as I learned in the course of a week spent chatting with bakers and archivists, museum curators and rabbis, cabdrivers and historians, the nick remains raw. “Memories of Hitler and Fascism are still vivid,” Alessandra di Castro, director of the Jewish Museum of Rome, told me. “The wound still has not healed.”

The deepest wound was inflicted on the ghetto (ex-ghetto, as Ms. di Castro corrected me with fierce pride), but there are other sites around the city that bear witness to the struggle and suffering of those months. With a good map, some bus tickets and a bit of imagination, I was able to tease out this painful, fascinating chapter of Roman history.

From our rented apartment at the foot of the Janiculum Hill, I trekked out to corners of the city that most tourists, unaware of their connection to the war, either avoid or hurry through. A 20-minute stroll along the Tiber brought me to the ex-ghetto, but I had to cross the city on two buses to reach the Via Tasso, site of a notorious SS prison and now a museum. And from there it took another 15 minutes by tram to reach the San Lorenzo neighborhood, which was heavily bombed by the Allies.

It was helpful before setting out to brush up on history. Rome and Berlin, of course, were allies in World War II — but when the Allies took Sicily in July 1943 and began massing for an invasion of the Italian mainland, the Fascist axis collapsed. Mussolini was ousted, and the weak new government that took control began secretly negotiating for an armistice.

The Nazis, however, had no intention of letting Italy go neutral. When an armistice was announced on Sept. 8, the German army sprang to disarm Italian soldiers and shore up positions on the Italian mainland. Rome waited and trembled as the Germans closed in.

On Sept. 10, a troop of disbanded Italian soldiers and civilians made a desperate last stand at Rome’s Porta San Paolo. The battle raged through the day outside the gate’s crenelated twin towers and beneath the Pyramid of Cestius, which looms over the Protestant Cemetery, where Keats and Shelley lie. Some 597 Italian soldiers and civilians, including 27 women, died defending their city, but by day’s end the Germans prevailed.

I asked the attendants in the little gift shop inside the cemetery if they knew where the battle had been fought, and one of them directed me to the nearby Parco della Resistenza dell’8 Settembre. I strolled around the rather unkempt park, past parents airing babies in the shade of palms and sycamores. But aside from a plaque commemorating “the soldiers of every corps and citizens of every class who opposed the German invaders,” I found little trace of the battle.

Shadows were lengthening as I made my way through the Porta San Paolo and waded into the roaring traffic of the Piazza dei Partigiani (Plaza of the Partisans), a major transportation hub just outside the city walls. Here I caught a tram to the San Lorenzo neighborhood, a working-class district about three miles east of the ghetto.

On July 19, 1943, shortly before the fall of Mussolini, Allied aircraft bombed San Lorenzo hoping to take out a crucial railway pivot point. In the course of the bombardment, some 2,000 to 3,000 Roman civilians died, and a stray bomb heavily damaged the gorgeous Basilica of San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura, parts of which date back to the sixth century. I wanted to check out what the church and neighborhood look like today.

The tram skirted the hoary arches of the Porta Maggiore and rumbled through the ugly, gritty but supposedly gentrifying blocks near the vast University of Rome complex. My stop was next to a modern parking lot that might have been in the Bronx. I was about to recheck the map when I spotted San Lorenzo’s mellow 12th-century brick campanile rising against a stand of horse chestnuts. The basilica’s door swung shut behind me, and the modern world blinked out into the Middle Ages.

Photos in the sacristy show the ruin that remained after an American bomb caved in the roof of the nave and shattered parts of the mosaic floor, one of the most beautiful in Rome. Stone by stone, the crimson and white coils and diamonds were lovingly retrieved and set back into place

As my guidebook instructed, I descended a short flight of steps at the end of the nave to find the tomb of St. Lawrence, who was martyred over hot coals in the year 258.

But the moment that will stay with me came in the 12th-century cloister. Amid the dainty paired columns and drifts of myrtle and herbs, I stumbled upon a fragment of a bomb’s casing that was pried out of the rubble in 1943 — a shard of American steel displayed incongruously in a sacred Roman garden.

In the days that followed, I asked a number of Italians whether Romans harbored any bitterness toward the United States over the collateral damage at San Lorenzo: a beloved basilica in ruins, thousands of citizens killed in a bombing raid gone awry. The answer was always the same: We are still grateful to America because you liberated us from the Nazis.

The Via Tasso, about midway between San Lorenzo and the ghetto, is an undistinguished thoroughfare of 19th- and early-20th-century apartment blocks and schools, with a crumbling arch at one end and the sanctuary of the Scala Sancta (the sacred stairs that Jesus trod) at the other. It looks like a comfortable, convenient place where middle-class Romans and striving immigrants live, though not a spot you’d go out of your way to visit.

But during the nine months of the Nazi occupation, Via Tasso 145 was the most feared address in Rome. It was here in a charmless, smudged yellow apartment house that the SS and the Gestapo had their headquarters, their prison and their torture chambers. During the occupation, the place was so dreaded that Romans never called it the Via Tasso. Instead they would say laggiù (down there), as in, “He was hauled off laggiù.”

If you’ve seen the classic Roberto Rossellini film “Rome, Open City,” you’ll have some idea of the sinister atmosphere of sadism and despair that infected the Via Tasso. Former apartments were walled off into tiny cells where political prisoners and captured partisans lived in the dark with no bed or toilet. The Italian writer Corrado Augias was an 8-year-old student at a boarding school that backed up on the Via Tasso. “Even after so many years,” he writes, “I can still clearly remember the screams that sometimes broke the stillness of the night and penetrated all the way inside our dormitory.”

The former Gestapo headquarters is now the site of the Historical Museum of the Liberation of Rome, with displays devoted to the brutality of the Nazi occupation and the response of the Roman people. Artifacts are sparse but heartbreaking: a sock embroidered with the words “courage my love” that a wife or mother smuggled in, a tortured prisoner’s bloody shirt, a mournful portrait of Colonel Giuseppe Cordero di Montezemolo, an officer in the Italian Army who organized the Roman resistance. The SS interrogated and tortured Montezemolo at Via Tasso for 58 days, but he uttered not a word.

On the museum’s second floor, five prison cells preserve the incredibly moving messages that prisoners scratched on the walls. “Addio piccola mia — non serbarmi rancore un bacio,” one prisoner wrote (“Farewell, my little one, don’t harbor any bitterness on my account, a kiss.”)

The next day, a balmy Sunday, my wife and I decided to get out of town and join sweater-clad Romans and ski-pole-toting German trekkers for a leisurely saunter on the Appian Way. Though just a few minutes by bus from central Rome, the road seems to slumber 2,000 years in the past. The original colossal cobblestones, heaved and rutted by time, still pave the way. Along the margins, villas peep from behind hedgerows and grain fields lie open to the sky. Aside from the occasional jet overhead and the whine of a Vespa, the illusion of classical antiquity was nearly complete.

But the shadow of the war fell here as well. At a crossroads just past the Catacombs of San Callisto, a sign points the way to the Fosse Ardeatine. We followed a country lane sunk deep in birdsong and drew up at a gate that resembles a tangled wrought-iron thorn bush. Beyond a lawn hemmed with flower beds rises a high stone wall with a black rectangular cavity incised in the bottom. Inside, in the perpetual twilight of caves and tunnels, is the site of a notorious Nazi massacre. Just as the Via Tasso meant torture during the German occupation of Rome, so the Fosse Ardeatine meant slaughter.

In retaliation for a partisan bombing on the Via Rasella (near the Barberini Palace) that killed 33 German soldiers on March 23, 1944, the SS ordered that 330 Romans — 10 for every German — be put to death. The city quaked as the Nazis did their culling. Partisans imprisoned at the Via Tasso, political prisoners from the Regina Coeli prison in Trastevere, former soldiers, Jews, farmers, students, even a priest ended up in the ranks of the condemned.

For some reason 335 men — five more than the required number — were transported on March 24 from Rome to the Fosse Ardeatine, a quarry for pozzuolana (a volcanic ash used to make cement) near the Appian Way. The victims were shot point blank inside one of the caves. When the last man was dead, the executioners exploded dynamite to collapse the cave and seal off the bodies.

The memorial at the Fosse Ardeatine is all the more powerful for being perfectly simple. An opening in the cliff’s side ushers you from daylight to the darkness of the tunnels. A single light flickers in a chapel. Bronze gates guard the spot where the corpses, stacked five deep, were discovered after the city was liberated. Inside the mausoleum 335 identical slabs of granite cover the tombs of the slain.

Fabrizio Genuini, the affable guard at the memorial’s entry, told me as I left: “Many come to Rome to see the Colosseum and the catacombs at San Callisto, but relatively few people aside from school groups come here anymore. Memory is short.”

On June 4, 1944, two and a half months after the massacre, the American Fifth Army entered Rome from the south and east with little enemy resistance. “My God, they bombed that, too!” one G.I. marveled when he saw the ruins of the Colosseum.

In fact, the Germans had retreated, “wild-eyed, unshaven, unkempt, on foot, in stolen cars,” in the words of one witness, without destroying a single building or bridge. In the end, Rome had little strategic value, and the Nazis were aware that it would have been a public relations disaster to wreck the Eternal City.

Toward the end of our Roman holiday, I returned to the ex-ghetto to chat, to eavesdrop and to eat. But my real motive was to check the pulse of the place 70 years after incomprehensible suffering.

On a bright afternoon, the cafes were crowded; waves of tourists were sampling kosher fast food and artisanal cheese and biscuits; visitors from the United States, Israel and Germany were queuing up at the security checkpoint of the Jewish Museum of Rome beneath the imposing fin de siècle Tempio Maggiore.

In a few hours, the restaurants lining the Via Portico d’Ottavia would fill, and the sound of unconstrained voices would echo off the walls, cobblestones and columns.

Yet I couldn’t help hearing an undercurrent of sadness and anxiety. At the unmarked corner shopfront of the Boccione Jewish bakery, a local landmark for two centuries, the proprietor, Bianca Sonnino, cut me an extra-large slice of pizza ebraica (Jewish pizza) — not pizza at all but a dense nutty-fruity coffeecake. Signora Sonnino told me proudly that Boccione has been her family’s business for generations and that her mother devised the recipe for torta della ricotta.

But when I asked about the war, she teared up. A gentile woman hid her family, she told me, but close relatives were among those who were deported to Auschwitz and never returned. “After the war, the ghetto was nothing,” she said. “It was a dead zone.”

Now some Roman Jews worry that the area is becoming too lively. Gentrification has jacked up apartment prices beyond the reach of most of the families who lived here for centuries, indeed millenniums. The narrow lanes around the Portico d’Ottavia are usually filled with a cosmopolitan collection of well-heeled bohemians and tourists. A Jewish school recently opened a block from the synagogue, though most of the children commute from other neighborhoods. The ex-ghetto is still the beating heart of Jewish Rome, but increasingly Jewish Romans come here only to pray, to eat, to celebrate and matriculate.

In a few years, the last survivors of the Nazi occupation will be gone and the events of those terrible nine months will take their place in the flusso di Roma, the ebb and flow of Rome’s vast tidal history. But for now, amid the joyous clamor of the ghetto, the voices of those who endured that time can still be heard.

IF YOU GO

On the evening of Oct. 16, to commemorate the anniversary of the roundup of 1943, a torchlight procession will gather in Trastevere and march across the Tiber to Largo 16 Ottobre in the ex-ghetto.

Where to Eat

Ba” Ghetto, Via del Portico d’Ottavia, 57; (39-06) 6889-2868; kosherinrome.com. Classic (kosher) Roman Jewish cooking with a zesty Mediterranean twist, including couscous, hummus and falafel. A kosher dairy branch is up the street at Via Portico d’Ottavia, 2/A.

La Taverna del Ghetto, Via Del Portico d’Ottavia, 8; (39-06) 6880-9771;latavernadelghetto.com. Baccalà, fried zucchini flowers, pasta with broccoli and sausage, meatballs, goulash, grilled tuna. The food here is kosher, hearty and traditional.

Giardino Romano, Via Portico d’Ottavia, 18; (39-06) 6880-9661; ilgiardinoromano.it. Roman-Jewish specialties — planked and fried artichokes, tripe, oxtail, abbacchio (lamb) — served indoors in an attractively restored 16th-century palace, or outdoors in a quiet back garden or on the festive terrace near the Portico d’Ottavia. Not kosher, but open on Friday night and Saturday.

Pasticceria “Boccione” Limentani, Via Portico d’Ottavia, 1; (39-06) 687-8637. You’ll probably have to wait in line and the service may be gruff, but it’s worth it for the pizza ebraica, the ricotta e visciole (wild cherry) tart and the slice of history.

Museums and Memorials

Explorations of the ghetto should begin at the Jewish Museum of Rome, Via Catalana; (39-06)-6840-0661; museoebraico.roma.it. A museum visit includes a tour of the Tempio Maggiore upstairs. Closed Saturday. Admission 10 euros.

Basilica di San Lorenzo fuori le Mura, Piazzale Del Verano, 3; (39-06) 446-6184;basilicasanlorenzo.it.

The Historical Museum of the Liberation of Rome (Museo storico della Liberazione), Via Tasso, 145; (39-06) 700-3866; museoliberazione.it. Closed Monday. Free admission.

Fosse Ardeatine Memorial, Via Ardeatine, 174; (39-06) 513-6742. Free admission.

David Laskin, a frequent contributor to Travel, is the author of “The Family: Three Journeys Into the Heart of the 20th Century,” due from Viking in October.

A version of this article appeared in print on July 14, 2013, on page TR1 of the New York edition with the headline: Echoes From the Roman Ghetto.

Survey shows Apple and Google are no longer America’s tech sweethearts – Quartz

Survey shows Apple and Google are no longer America’s tech sweethearts – Quartz:

Market research from YouGov BrandIndex shows that Apple and Google have both fallen off the list of the 1o best-perceived brands in the US. Apple actually failed to make the cut for the second half of 2012, while Google came in last place. But this time, Google’s been knocked off the list by Amazon’s double placement: The rival now ranks both as a web retailer (second only to Ford) under its own name and is listed again under its branded e-reader, the Kindle (which, at number 9, beats Cheerios).

'via Blog this'

Modest Debut of Atlas May Foreshadow Age of ‘Robo Sapiens’ - NYTimes.com

Modest Debut of Atlas May Foreshadow Age of ‘Robo Sapiens’ - NYTimes.com:

"WALTHAM, Mass. — Moving its hands as if it were dealing cards and walking with a bit of a swagger, a Pentagon-financed humanoid robot named Atlas made its first public appearance on Thursday."

'via Blog this'

Snowden Is Said to Renew Plea for Asylum in Russia - NYTimes.com

Snowden Is Said to Renew Plea for Asylum in Russia - NYTimes.com:

 "MOSCOW — Edward J. Snowden, the fugitive American intelligence contractor, broke his silence after three weeks of seclusion on Friday, inviting a handpicked group of Russian human rights figures to visit him in a small conference room at Sheremetyevo Airport, where he told them he hopes to receive political asylum in Russia."

'via Blog this'

Bernanke’s Reassurance Propels Shares to Record Highs - NYTimes.com

Bernanke’s Reassurance Propels Shares to Record Highs - NYTimes.com:

"NEW YORK — The S&P 500 index and the Dow industrials closed on Thursday at record highs, a day after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said the U.S. central bank will keep a loose monetary policy for some time to lower the unemployment rate."

'via Blog this'

Study Finds Benefits in Delaying Severing of Umbilical Cord - NYTimes.com

Study Finds Benefits in Delaying Severing of Umbilical Cord - NYTimes.com:

"In most hospital delivery rooms, doctors routinely clamp and sever the umbilical cord less than a minute after an infant’s birth, a practice thought to reduce the risk of maternal hemorrhaging."

'via Blog this'

American Tastes Branch Out, and Food Makers Follow - NYTimes.com

American Tastes Branch Out, and Food Makers Follow - NYTimes.com:

 "NEW BERN, N.C. — If chicken producers could breed a bird with three legs, they would."

'via Blog this'

A Violent Weekend in Chicago Despite a Recent Trend of Decreasing Homicides - NYTimes.com

A Violent Weekend in Chicago Despite a Recent Trend of Decreasing Homicides - NYTimes.com:

CHICAGO — Amid the flash and bang of fireworks, gunshots from 47 separate shootings echoed through this city over the extended Fourth of July weekend, killing 11 and wounding dozens more, including a 5-year-old boy. The events were a sober reminder to residents that despite a drop in homicides this year, gaining control over gun violence in Chicago will be a long road, and the political pressure it has put on Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s first term is far from over.

'via Blog this'

Defining Prosperity Down - NYTimes.com

Defining Prosperity Down - NYTimes.com:

Friday’s employment report wasn’t bad. But given how depressed our economy remains, we really should be adding more than 300,000 jobs a month, not fewer than 200,000. As the Economic Policy Institute points out, we would need more than five years of job growth at this rate to get back to the level of unemployment that prevailed before the Great Recession. Full recovery still looks a very long way off. And I’m beginning to worry that it may never happen.

'via Blog this'

Brazil was target of U.S. signals spying: Globo newspaper | Reuters

Brazil was target of U.S. signals spying: Globo newspaper | Reuters:

 "(Reuters) - The U.S. National Security Agency monitored the telephone and email activity of Brazilian companies and individuals in the past decade as part "

'via Blog this'

Regions of Derpistan - NYTimes.com

Regions of Derpistan - NYTimes.com:

Josh Barro has made a very useful contribution to policy discussion by adapting the term “derp” for a certain kind of all-too-prevalent stance in economic debate, which Noah Smith somewhat euphemistically describes as “the constant, repetitive reiteration of strong priors”. In other words, people who take a position and refuse to alter that position no matter how strongly the evidence refutes it, who continue to insist that they have The Truth despite being wrong again and again.

'via Blog this'

Mayhem in Cairo as Morsi Backers Fight for Return - NYTimes.com

Mayhem in Cairo as Morsi Backers Fight for Return - NYTimes.com:

"CAIRO — Egypt’s bitter split over who should be ruling the country exploded into violent clashes in the streets of Cairo and elsewhere on Friday as masses of demonstrators celebrating the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi battled crowds of Islamists who wanted him reinstated."

'via Blog this'

President of Venezuela Offers Asylum to Snowden - NYTimes.com

President of Venezuela Offers Asylum to Snowden - NYTimes.com:

"CARACAS — Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro offered asylum to former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden on Friday in defiance of Washington, which is demanding his arrest for divulging details of a secret spy program."

'via Blog this'

Political Islam Fails Egypt’s Test - NYTimes.com

Political Islam Fails Egypt’s Test - NYTimes.com:

 "LONDON — Heba Morayef voted for Mohamed Morsi last year. The Muslim Brotherhood candidate was an unlikely choice for a liberal Egyptian woman, the director of the Human Rights Watch office in Cairo, but she loathed Hosni Mubarak’s old guard, wanted change and believed Morsi could be inclusive."

'via Blog this'

Unprecedented Globalization - NYTimes.com

Unprecedented Globalization - NYTimes.com:

"No special moral here — and no, it doesn’t actually make the world flat, because services account for most value added and are still mainly not tradable. But it’s quite a picture."

'via Blog this'

Can Barometric Pressure Cause Headaches and Other Discomforts? - NYTimes.com

Can Barometric Pressure Cause Headaches and Other Discomforts? - NYTimes.com:

 "Can Barometric Pressure Cause Headaches and Other Discomforts?"

'via Blog this'

Snowden Revelations Will Continue, Assange Says - NYTimes.com

Snowden Revelations Will Continue, Assange Says - NYTimes.com:

 "WASHINGTON — Julian Assange, the founder of the antisecrecy organization WikiLeaks, said on Sunday that even as Edward J. Snowden remained in diplomatic limbo at a Moscow airport, the disclosures from the classified documents he took as a National Security Agency contractor would continue."

'via Blog this'

Egypt’s Army Issues Ultimatum to Morsi - NYTimes.com

Egypt’s Army Issues Ultimatum to Morsi - NYTimes.com:

 "CAIRO — Egypt’s armed forces threatened on Monday to intervene in the country’s political crisis, warning President Mohamed Morsi and other politicians that they had 48 hours to respond to an outpouring of popular protests that have included demands for his resignation."

'via Blog this'