In northern Jordan, a Roman-era painted tomb has been unearthed by the Department of Antiquities. An extraordinary document of religious, political, and social history that three historians and epigraphists have had an opportunity to examine, and are striving to interpret.

The archaeologists cannot bless roadwork enough. Especially in Jordan. It's just that certain thrusts of the mechanical shovel, such as the one in late 2016 at the school entrance in the village of Bayt Ras, in the north of the country, have a knack for unearthing secrets from the depths of the past. In the present case, it is a Roman tomb that was dug into the side of a hill, and whose existence was just revealed by the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, after securing access to the site.

"This tomb, which consists of two funerary chambers and contains a very large basalt sarcophagus, is in an excellent state of conservation, even though it appears to have already been 'visited.' It is part of a necropolis located to the east of an imposing theater that was recently unearthed," says with enthusiasm Julien Aliquot, one of the three researchers from the research unit Histoire et sources des mondes antiques (HiSoMA),1 which had investigated this hypogeum in the spring of 2017 and 2018, as part of two on-site surveys. "The tomb is located on the site of the ancient city of Capitolias, which was founded in the late first century CE, and was part of the Decapolis, a region that brought together Hellenized cities (provided with Greek-style institutions but belonging to the Roman Empire) in the southeastern area of the Near East, between Damascus and Amman."

The book The Watchdogs Didn't Bark by John Duffy and Ray Nowosielski, with new insider interviews and documentary evidence, convincingly establishes that named people at the CIA and NSA actively prevented the FBI from learning information that could have disrupted the 9/11 plot. Principals at these agencies manipulated government investigations to cover up responsibility, and to exploit the public's fear after 9/11 in order to justify the so-called 'war on terror', the Iraq invasion, torture, the NSA's massive warrantless domestic spying programs, indefinite detention and extrajudicial killing even of Americans. The authors don't claim to have proved that US government officials deliberately allowed or facilitated the 9/11 plot, but that's what the actions and inactions of key people accomplished, and the Establishment has rewarded their incompetence or criminality. The authors quote Stafford Beer: "The purpose of a system is what it does." While 'serendipity' for the Military-Industrial Complex may be in the range of theoretical possibility, official responsibility for 9/11 and its evil consequences remains an urgent issue for the People of the US and the world, along with establishing effective public oversight of government and elite power.

This case has been made effectively by others*, but the Duffy-Nowosielski Watchdogs book is significant, as it's the kind of book that 'serious people' take seriously. So seriously, that when the authors posted their Richard Clarke video "Interview #7" in 2011, DCI George Tenet, CTC Director Cofer Black and CIA Alec Station (Bin Laden Unit) Chief Rich Blee released a joint public statement denying Clarke's shocking allegations - that they had been running an illegal domestic CIA spy operation with Saudi help. So seriously, in fact, that the CIA threatened the authors with criminal prosecution if they revealed some of the names in this book (7-9, 239-245). Other journalists have declined to name these public officials, while reporting on their criminal involvement.

• Duffy and Nowosielski credit Disconnecting the Dots by Kevin Fenton, my HistoryCommons.org colleague, for doing a lot of the foundational work that this book builds on. Kevin identified CIA Bin Laden Unit Chief Rich Blee from the name 'Blee' left unredacted in a 9/11 Commission documentI scanned at the National Archives , as well as a great deal of other significant 9/11 information.

This past week the 14th Dalai Lama, Tibet's 83-year old self-declared spiritual leader in exile, made controversial remarks at a press conference in Malmö recognizing the 80th anniversary of the founding of Individual Humanitarian Aid, a Swedish development and philanthropic assistance program that took in Buddhist refugees after the Chinese annexed Tibet in 1959. His comments came as he addressed the European migrant crisis and his choice of words immediately sparked criticism because they seemed to express an attitude typically shared by the European Union's far right. With the exception of his detractors, the views he expressed to most were unexpected coming from a monk known for preaching enlightenment and inner peace around the globe. "His Holiness", AKA Tenzin Gyatso, stated:

"Recently large numbers of refugees, many from the Middle East, have fled to Europe in fear for their lives. They have been given shelter and support, but the long-term solution should include providing training and education, particularly for their children, so they can return to rebuild their own countries when peace has been restored.I think Europe belongs to the Europeans. ... Receive them, help them, educate them ... but ultimately they should develop their own country."

The publication of the book of the famous British archivist and historian Gill Bennett The Zinoviev Letter: The Conspiracy That Never Dies became a noticeable event in the West. Practically all major newspapers responded with reviews. And this is understandable: firstly, Bennett is a world-wide recognised specialist on the investigation into one of the most loud scandals in the history of Britain; secondly, in the current conditions of anti-Russian sanctions and noise apropos "fake news", a reminder about a similar plot from the 1920's is more than actual.

In October, 1924 the so-called Zinoviev Letter (or "red letter", as it was christened back then in the English press) indeed shook the foundations of British society and directly affected the results of parliamentary elections, as a result of which the first government of Labourists was disbanded.

The letter represented an instruction to British communists from the head of Comintern Grigory Zinoviev, the Scottish communist Arthur McManus, and the leader of the Finnish labor movement Otto Kuusinen. The letter speaks about the need to "hype up the inert mass of the British proletariat", organise sabotage in England, and start preparation for the creation of the "red army" for the purpose of beginning a "class war" both in Britain and in its colonies. And all of this for the sake of "exposing the foreign policy" of the Labour government of Ramsey McDonald and forcing him to ratify the trade agreements that were already signed by Moscow and London.

Archaeologists in Sweden have discovered a gold ducat from early medieval Venice in Elleholm, a once thriving port that has now entirely disappeared.

The ducat was minted during the reign of Doge Andrea Dandalos, who ruled the powerful Italian city state from 1343 to 1354.

"To find the first coin ever found in Sweden from the medieval Venice here, suggests it was an international trading port," Marcus Sandekjer, head of Blekinge Museum, told The Local.

The Archbishop of Lund controlled the city from 1450 right up until the reformation in 1536, when it was passed to the Swedish crown.

"Of course when you find coins from Italy in the Archbishop's city, it's tempting to think that it has something to do with ties to Italy and to the Pope," Sandekjer said. "But that is just a hypothesis."

The decades-long mystery surrounding a creature that lived on Earth over half a billion years ago has finally been settled, thanks to fossils found in Russia which are so well preserved they still contain fat molecules.

The true identity of the Dickinsonia fossils has been the center of a heated debate since it was first described in 1947. The 558 million-year-old animal is unlike any we have on Earth today - it's up to 1.4 meters (4.6ft) in length, is flat, oval in shape, and ribbed.

Over the years, scientists have put forward arguments that the creature is a form of jellyfish, bacteria, worm, mushroom, coral, algae - and the list goes on. But the recent discovery of cholesterol in a Dickinsonia fossil determined that the creature is most definitely an animal.

Americans have forgotten that their long history of intervention in the Middle East started in Damascus. Now it might end there.

Just as the Central Intelligence Agency came into being in September 1947, two of its officers drove east out of Beirut over the mountains to meet a colleague who had just arrived in Damascus. Archie and Kim Roosevelt were cousins - grandsons of the buccaneering 26th U.S. president no less - and, though only 29 and 31 years old respectively, were already veterans of the world of intelligence. Archie, who had recently completed a posting as the military attaché in Iran, was the new head of the CIA station in Beirut; Kim, who had served in the Office of Strategic Services during the war, was posing as a journalist on a commission for Harper's magazine. The man they were going to meet would eventually become equally well known. His name was Miles Copeland.

Once the two Roosevelts had met up with Copeland, the three men embarked on a tour of Syria. Ostensibly, they wished to see the country's numerous Crusader castles; in reality, they were talent-scouting. In particular, they wanted to identify Syrians in positions of influence who had benefited from an American education and might be willing to help them in a matter that had assumed the greatest strategic significance. The cover and the real purpose of the mission dovetailed rather well: By the fall of 1947, Syria had become as important to the United States as it had been to the Crusaders eight centuries earlier.

Then as now, it was the country's location, rather than its resources, that made it so crucial. Syria had mattered to the Crusaders in the 12th and 13th centuries because it lay on the route between Europe and Jerusalem. And it mattered to these three Americans in September 1947 because it lay on the likely route of a pipeline that would pump vast quantities of oil from Saudi Arabia to Europe via a terminal on the Mediterranean coast. Such was the importance of this project that the CIA men made two extraordinary moves to secure it. Not only did they sabotage a British plan that seemed to threaten it, but they also interfered, to a degree that was unprecedented, in local politics in the region.

In a report released late Friday, conveniently timed to fall into the news cycle hole, the American Psychological Association was officially implicated as an accessory to Pentagon and CIA torture.

As the New York Times explained:

The 542-page report, which examines the involvement of the nation's psychologists and their largest professional organization, the American Psychological Association, with the harsh interrogation programs of the Bush era, raises repeated questions about the collaboration between psychologists and officials at both the C.I.A. and the Pentagon.

The report implicates several top officials in the APA guild, including two presidents who served on a CIA advisory panel, and the guild's "ethics director."

In response to the findings, former APA president, Nadine Kaslow, issued a statement full of the most profound hand-wringing that a psychology professional could muster:

The actions, policies and lack of independence from government influence described in the Hoffman report represented a failure to live up to our core values. We profoundly regret and apologize for the behavior and the consequences that ensued.

Yesterday, three top APA officials - its CEO, deputy CEO and communications director - announced they were stepping down and taking an early "retirement."

The whole episode seems shocking, and it is. But if you know your history, it'd actually be more of a shock if the APA was not involved in a project that combined their three favorites: government grants, military-intelligence collaboration, and sadism.

The discovery was made by a group of scientists from a Marseille university, who were studying human remains that matched Caravaggio's description.

Italian Baroque painter Caravaggio, who died in 1610 at the age of 38, succumbed to sepsis caused by the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus, researchers from the Marseille-based University Hospital Institute (IHU) revealed this week.

"Thanks to cooperation with Italian anthropologists and microbiologist Giuseppe Cornaglia, the IHU team has retrieved several teeth from Caravaggio's skeleton," the university said in a statement, as cited by AFP.

The researchers examined remains in a cemetery where the mercurial painter had been buried. One of the skeletons matched all the criteria: height, age and time, and also demonstrated high levels of lead, which proved it was Caravaggio who was known to have used lead-based paints.

On the morning of Nov. 19, 1985, a wild-eyed and disheveled homeless woman entered the reception room at the legendary Wall Street firm of Deak-Perera. Carrying a backpack with an aluminum baseball bat sticking out of the top, her face partially hidden by shocks of greasy, gray-streaked hair falling out from under a wool cap, she demanded to speak with the firm's 80-year-old founder and president, Nicholas Deak.

The 44-year-old drifter's name was Lois Lang. She had arrived at Port Authority that morning, the final stop on a month-long cross-country Greyhound journey that began in Seattle. Deak-Perera's receptionist, Frances Lauder, told the woman that Deak was out. Lang became agitated and accused Lauder of lying. Trying to defuse the situation, the receptionist led the unkempt woman down the hallway and showed her Deak's empty office. "I'll be in touch," Lang said, and left for a coffee shop around the corner. From her seat by a window, she kept close watch on 29 Broadway, an art deco skyscraper diagonal from the Bowling Green Bull.

Deak-Perera had been headquartered on the building's 20th and 21st floors since the late 1960s. Nick Deak, known as "the James Bond of money," founded the company in 1947 with the financial backing of the CIA. For more than three decades the company had functioned as an unofficial arm of the intelligence agency and was a key asset in the execution of U.S. Cold War foreign policy. From humble beginnings as a spook front and flower import business, the firm grew to become the largest currency and precious metals firm in the Western Hemisphere, if not the world. But on this day in November, the offices were half-empty and employees few. Deak-Perera had been decimated the year before by a federal investigation into its ties to organized crime syndicates from Buenos Aires to Manila. Deak's former CIA associates did nothing to interfere with the public takedown. Deak-Perera declared bankruptcy in December 1984, setting off panicked and sometimes violent runs on its offices in Latin America and Asia.