Rome cracks down on marauding centurions

The city has given a deadline of April 6 for the tourist terrors to clear away from the Colosseum area.

By Adam L. Freeman,?Contributor / April 2, 2012

Rome has given the centurions a deadline to clear out. The solders in question aren't from the ranks of an ancient legion, but are modern-day performers who pose for tourist?photos at the Colosseum.

Skip to next paragraph

Men and women decked out in chest plates and helmets eke out a?tax-free living at Rome?s most popular attraction, posing for photos with foreign?visitors for 5 or 10 euros. Disoriented, jet lagged, or simply scared,?tourists have been known to pay up to 50 euros ($67). Some have been roughed?up when they refuse.

Arrests were made last summer in an undercover operation with police?in tunics and sandals handcuffing centurions and gladiators for?ripping off tourists. A recent Italian media report cited a policeman?as saying the centurions are all ex-convicts, ?every last one of?them.?

Now the city government says ?basta!? and wants them to pack up their?swords, shields, and ensigns and clear out by April 6.

?This will end badly. We?ll wage a revolution. We?ll burn down the?Coliseum rather than move from here,? a 21st-century centurion?recently told the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

Along with the fake ancient Roman soldiers, the city aims to rid?itself of the vast illegal industry of food and souvenir vendors that?feeds off the 6 million people who every year visit the site where?Russell Crowe avenged his family?s murder in the 2000 sword-and-sandal blockbuster "Gladiator."

City and national officials say they are defending?Rome-the-living-museum from an image akin to theme parks where?visitors feast on fast food and ham it up for the camera with?fairytale characters.

But the Italian economy is in recession and its prisons overcrowded so government bureaucrats should be vigilant for unrest?in the legionary ranks. They might want to reconsider a plan that puts?ex-cons out of work.

m.i.a super bowl coin toss madonna super bowl halftime kelly clarkson super bowl giants super bowl 2012 half time show halftime show 2012

Why Does Google Think Pinterest Is an "Extraordinary" Problem Solver? [Pinterest]

After watching Facebook spend $1 billion on Instagram, here's a lot of curiosity as to whether Google will buy Pinterest, one of the hottest startups in the world right now. More »

college football bowl schedule double mastectomy 2011 bowl schedule bcs games heath bell ncaa bowl schedule ncaa bowl schedule

Verizon selling 700MHz spectrum, but only if government approves its AWS purchase

Seems odd that Verizon would decide to sell off some of it's wireless spectrum considering it told the FCC that it doesn't have enough space for its future LTE needs. Yet Big Red's doing just that, pledging to pawn off its 700MHz A and B licenses should its purchase of AWS spectrum from a contingent of cable companies be approved by the FCC and DOJ. Why would Verizon do such a thing? It appears that the 700MHz upper C band (where VZW's LTE service currently resides) combined with the new AWS licenses will provide Big Red the bandwidth it needs. Plus, selling off some of its other spectrum will surely grease the wheels with the governmental powers that be, and perhaps even assuage Verizon's competition arrayed against its AWS acquisition. Of course, the A and B licenses being offered for sale don't blanket the nation, but they do cover quite a few large metropolitan markets. Check out the full list after the break.

[Tower photo via Shutterstock]

Continue reading Verizon selling 700MHz spectrum, but only if government approves its AWS purchase

Verizon selling 700MHz spectrum, but only if government approves its AWS purchase originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

amy chua iowa gop meteor shower tonight annie oakley edc paranormal activity 4 love and hip hop

Jackson's coalition challenging Okla. gun laws (Providence Journal)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories News, RSS and RSS Feed via Feedzilla.

heejun han bohemian rhapsody bohemian rhapsody donovan mcnabb donovan mcnabb lottery ticket megga millions

James Van Der Beek Joins Kate Winslet For Jason Reitman's Next Flick

Dawson Leery is back, y?all! Word on the street is James Van Der Beek is in talks to join Jason Reitman?s next picture, ?Labor Day,? along with Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Beek would play a police officer in the film which revolves around a depressed divorcee (Winslet) and [...]

tournament brackets 2012 ncaa basketball tournament walt what time is it current time a thousand words my sisters keeper

Texas small businesses are big on the economy | Clocking In | a ...

According to the Spring 2012 American Express OPEN Small Business Monitor survey, 81 percent of Texas small business owners plan on growing their businesses during the next six months.

Compared to Texas, about 56 percent of U.S. small businesses are also hoping to expand.

While 56 percent of the Texas owners have a positive view of the economy and its prospects for the year, about 35 percent believe the U.S. economy is still in recession.

-Chris Quinn

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

According to the Spring 2012 American Express OPEN Small Business Monitor survey, 81 percent of Texas small business owners plan on growing their businesses during the next six months. Compared to Texas, about 56 percent of U.S. small businesses are also hoping to expand. While 56 percent of the Texas owners have a positive view [...]

Read More

wake forest old dominion insync the duchess the duchess spice katy perry

Some stars capture rogue planets

ScienceDaily (Apr. 17, 2012) ? New research suggests that billions of stars in our galaxy have captured rogue planets that once roamed interstellar space. The nomad worlds, which were kicked out of the star systems in which they formed, occasionally find a new home with a different sun. This finding could explain the existence of some planets that orbit surprisingly far from their stars, and even the existence of a double-planet system.

"Stars trade planets just like baseball teams trade players," said Hagai Perets of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

The study, co-authored by Perets and Thijs Kouwenhoven of Peking University, China, will appear in the April 20th issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

To reach their conclusion, Perets and Kouwenhoven simulated young star clusters containing free-floating planets. They found that if the number of rogue planets equaled the number of stars, then 3 to 6 percent of the stars would grab a planet over time. The more massive a star, the more likely it is to snag a planet drifting by.

They studied young star clusters because capture is more likely when stars and free-floating planets are crowded together in a small space. Over time, the clusters disperse due to close interactions between their stars, so any planet-star encounters have to happen early in the cluster's history.

Rogue planets are a natural consequence of star formation. Newborn star systems often contain multiple planets. If two planets interact, one can be ejected and become an interstellar traveler. If it later encounters a different star moving in the same direction at the same speed, it can hitch a ride.

A captured planet tends to end up hundreds or thousands of times farther from its star than Earth is from the Sun. It's also likely to have a orbit that's tilted relative to any native planets, and may even revolve around its star backward.

Astronomers haven't detected any clear-cut cases of captured planets yet. Imposters can be difficult to rule out. Gravitational interactions within a planetary system can throw a planet into a wide, tilted orbit that mimics the signature of a captured world.

Finding a planet in a distant orbit around a low-mass star would be a good sign of capture, because the star's disk wouldn't have had enough material to form the planet so far out.

The best evidence to date in support of planetary capture comes from the European Southern Observatory, which announced in 2006 the discovery of two planets (weighing 14 and 7 times Jupiter) orbiting each other without a star.

"The rogue double-planet system is the closest thing we have to a 'smoking gun' right now," said Perets. "To get more proof, we'll have to build up statistics by studying a lot of planetary systems."

Could our solar system harbor an alien world far beyond Pluto? Astronomers have looked, and haven't found anything yet.

"There's no evidence that the Sun captured a planet," said Perets. "We can rule out large planets. But there's a non-zero chance that a small world might lurk on the fringes of our solar system."

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:

---

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

---

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

tim thomas oral roberts les paul fred thompson fred thompson red hook romney tax return