BBC: Mussolini message to future revealed under Rome obelisk

Bettina Reitz-Joosse and Han Lamers are the first to translate and study in detail the Codex Fori Mussolini, which, despite being buried at the base of the 300-tonne monument to the power of fascism when it was erected in 1932, has largely been forgotten in the intervening decades. [...]

"The text wasn't meant for contemporaries at the time," Dr Reitz-Joosse, who works at the University of Groningen, told the BBC. "The obelisk was a major spectacle but the existence of the text wasn't reported at all. It was meant for an audience in the remote future. [...]

Dr Reitz-Joosse suggests the author chose to use a language of the past to draw a link between the Roman empire and the rise of fascism.

In addition, she says the fascists were also trying to re-establish Latin as the international language of fascism: "part of an attempt to establish a Fascist International akin to the Communist International" organisation, which advocated world communism. [...]

The irony of this text is that its discovery is predicated on the fall of the obelisk, and therefore the fall of fascism. The fascists were imagining their own decline and fall, says Dr Reitz-Joosse.

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Independent: Emma Morano: Oldest person in the world credits long life to being single and eating raw eggs

The oldest living person in the world has attributed her longevity to her decision to remain single after the end of an unhappy marriage.

Emma Morano of Verbania, Italy, was recently announced as the oldest person in the world at 116 years and 169-days-old. [...]

Upon being told that she held the title of oldest person alive, Ms Morano told The Telegraph via her caretaker Rosi Santoni: "My word, I’m as old as the hills."

Ms Morano became the oldest living person after Susannah Mushatt Jones, a New York woman, had died on Thursday 12 May. Ms Jones said in 2015 that she ate bacon every day, but never drank alcohol or smoked, and that the key to long life and happiness was to "surround herself with love and positive energy".

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Independent: 390-year-old bonsai tree survived the Hiroshima nuclear bomb - and nobody knew until 2001

Moses Weisberg was walking his bicycle through the National Arboretum in Northeast Washington when he stopped at a mushroom-shaped tree. The first thing he noticed was the thickness of the trunk, estimated at almost a foot and a half in diameter. And then there was the abundance of spindly leaves, a healthy head of hair for a botanical relic 390 years old.

But it was only when he learned the full history of the tree, a Japanese white pine donated in 1976, that he was truly stunned. The tree, a part of the Arboretum’s National Bonsai and Penjing Museum, has not only navigated the perils of age to become the collection’s oldest, but it also survived the blast of an atomic bomb, Little Boy, dropped over Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II.

“For one, it’s amazing to think that something could have survived an atomic blast,” said Weisberg, a 26-year-old student at the Georgetown University Law Center. “And then that by some happenstance a Japanese tree from the 1600s ended up here.” [...]

“Location, location, location,” Sustic said. “It was up against a wall. It must have been the wall that shielded it from the blast.”

All the family members inside the home survived the blast as well. It blew out all the windows, leaving everyone inside cut from flying glass, but no one suffered permanent injury, according to the museum.

The white pine has long outlived its life expectancy and has spent about a tenth of its life in Washington.

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Vox: Scientists now think we could find alien life in our lifetimes. Here's how.

That's partly due to new astronomical discoveries. A generation ago, we didn't even have evidence that there were any planets orbiting other stars. But in the past few decades, scientists have found thousands of distant "exoplanets," including several that seem like they might have the right conditions for life. At the same time, scientists have discovered several moons right in our own solar system that appear to have liquid oceans underneath their icy surfaces and perhaps other ingredients necessary for life.

It's all extremely promising. So astronomers have decided to double down on the search for extraterrestrials. They've moved beyond the traditional methods, which involved simply hoping that intelligent aliens might contact us via radio signals, à la the SETI Institute. Instead, they're now planning missions to nearby ocean worlds and finding new ways to peer at distant planets.

Some astronomers— including NASA's chief scientist — even believe we could find alien life within our lifetimes. "With new telescopes coming online within the next five or 10 years, we'll really have a chance to figure out whether we're alone in the universe," Lisa Kaltenegger, the director of Cornell's new Carl Sagan Institute, told me last year. "For the first time in human history, we might have the capability to do this." [...]

Here's a step-by-step guide to how we'll actually go looking for alien life.

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Business Insider: George Washington University hired a reformed Islamic extremist who recruited for Al Qaeda

"Mr. Morton’s affiliation is groundbreaking, as this is the first time the perspective of a U.S.-born former Islamist extremist will be inserted into the American arena," program director Lorenzo Vidino said.

Morton, whom The New York Times described as one of the "most prolific recruiters for Al Qaeda," was previously known as Younus Abdullah Muhammad and helped form an extremist group called Revolution Muslim. Several of his recruits are now fighting for ISIS.

Morton will have a role at George Washington's Center for Cyber & Homeland Security, a nonpartisan think tank, completing writing and research. Before hiring Morton, the university worked with FBI officials and the lawyers who prosecuted him during a yearlong vetting process, according to the Times. [...]

But prison, especially the library, caused him to find value in tolerance and democracy through thinkers like John Locke and Jean-Jacque Rousseau, according to CNN. He deradicalized and became an informant for the FBI, which helped reduce his time in prison. Morton was released in 2015 after serving less than three years in prison.

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Business Insider: Former Israeli intelligence chief: Israel 'at risk of civil war'

Israeli society is heading for civil war and the country must take steps to counter it, former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo signaled Tuesday in his first public remarks since stepping down as the spy agency director in January. [...]

There was more to unite than divide, Pardo told reporters, as he promoted an event next month to commemorate fallen soldiers from the Druze community. But, he added, some people in Israel sought the intensity that came with division, and “there are some for whom it’s comfortable to emphasize that which divides and not that which unites. I can’t put my finger on a group or a leader. It exists within all the country’s groups.” [...]

Pardo also criticized the Avigdor Liberman-led Defense Ministry for comparing last year’s nuclear deal with Iran with the Munich Agreement signed by the European powers with Nazi Germany in 1938. History did not repeat itself he said, adding that it was wrong to compare events that had taken place at such different times.

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Seeker Stories: Why India’s Youth Are Dating In Secret

In western culture, the idea of forbidden intimacy before marriage seems pretty antiquated, but for young adults in India it's the reality they face everyday. While not technically illegal, being physically intimate before marriage is considered immoral by many Indians, and public displays of affection often result in verbal and sometimes physical attacks. Young couples are forced to jump through hoops just to get a few hours of privacy.

That’s why a new start up is trying make the process easier. StayUncle helps young couples find rooms at participating hotels that guarantee their anonymity and safety. They hope that they can contribute towards changing cultural values in India and make it easier for couples to express their affection to one another.

Vox: A new poll shows most Republicans appear to regret nominating Donald Trump

A new poll by the Huffington Post and YouGov shows that 54 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters now say that Donald Trump was not the best choice for the GOP nomination, up from 44 percent in June. Meanwhile, the number of Republican voters who say Trump was the best option fell from 44 to 35 percent.

In comparison, 53 percent of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters say Hillary Clinton was the Democrats' best option, compared to 56 percent in June. And 37 percent say she was not the best option, up from the previous 32 percent. [...]

The findings likely reflect Trump’s abysmal performance in the polls. According to RealClearPolitics’ poll average, Clinton currently holds a 5-point lead over Trump — a very big margin in presidential polling. It wasn’t supposed to be this way: Vox’s political science model found that the election favored Republicans after eight years of a Democrat in the White House, yet Trump is polling about 4.9 points behind where he should be as of Tuesday.

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Böll-Stiftung: Nord Stream II: Shaking Hands with the Devil

Doubled to 110 bcm, Nord Stream would be able to handle all of Russia’s gas exports to Western Europe. But what would the consequences of such a development be? Within a very short time, both the Brotherhood and Yamal pipelines would go out of business, and without continual maintenance and investment they would soon fall into disrepair. Stripped of important revenue sources, Poland, Slovakia, Belarus, Ukraine and their 100 million people would become economically weaker and more vulnerable to separate “deals” with Moscow.

The big winner would indeed be the Kremlin, securing more European money flowing to Moscow for a longer period of time. Western investment into Nord Stream II would commit Europe to Russian natural gas for longer, while intensified lobbying by the Western gas companies involved in the deal could discourage more aggressive energy conservation, encourage waste, and delay the transition to renewables.

The aim of corporate and Russian propaganda is for the German public to believe that the “only” losers in a Nord Stream II deal would be Germany’s eastern neighbours. They would certainly be losers: an important Kremlin objective is, without a doubt, to increase pressure the EU’s eastern flank and on Ukraine in particular. An economically weaker eastern EU periphery and an economically and socially more polarised EU are exactly what the Kremlin is hoping for in its quest to destroy the European Union and re-establish the good old world order of the first half of the 20th century. Nord Stream II would make anti-EU propaganda and subversion much easier in an economically, socially and politically more polarised continent. A poorer Ukraine would be even more vulnerable to Russian occupation and military aggression, and Putin’s hold on Belarus would become even firmer.

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