Del Potro Boosts London Hopes With Title In Japan

It will help us to understand when and how what we characterize as a medieval community changed following the dissolution, during a period of expansion and great change in London. What has it been like as an archaeologist to get a peek beneath the streets of one of the world’s great old cities? It has been a great privilege being part of the Crossrail project, as it has given us unprecedented access to the capital’s past. We are unlikely to have ever got access to excavate sites like the busy roadway at Liverpool Street, outside one of London’s mainline railway terminuses. In London, history is everywhere you look, and Liverpool Street has certainly not disappointed. How has it changed your perception of London? It makes you realize the great impact that people in the past had on their environment, and that we are just one small part of a very long story. As well as contributing to these big questions, these excavations give us a series of snapshots of the life of Londoners over 2,000 years: a carter in Roman Britain, struggling to get his horse up the road to a bridge over the Walbrook, and losing his horse’s shoes in the deep, muddy wheel-ruts; medieval ice-skaters shooting across the frozen Moorfields Marsh; someone in the 16th century with a small gold Venetian coin used as a pendant, aping the much more expensive jewelry of their betters; a family burying their young girl in the Bedlam burial ground, wearing her beaded necklace despite Christian customs; or the local craftsmen, sneaking into the same graveyard to dump the waste pieces and failed items of bone, shell, and even elephant tooth from their nearby workshops. Subway tunnelers have uncovered archaeological artifacts everywhere from Athens to Istanbul to Mexico City. We also asked Jay Carver, lead archaeologist for the Crossrail project, to discuss such finds in London. What other significant Roman-era finds have been unearthed by the Crossrails project? One of the things we are always testing is assumptions about the activities in the Roman period in areas outside the core area of the Roman city. Liverpool Street is the focal point for that research into the road network, extramural burials, local industry, and management of natural resources, and we are finding a wealth of finds there to elaborate on these topics. At places like Whitechapel out along the London Colchester Road, and at Tottenham Court Road and Bond Street which are alongside the Silchester Road (now Oxford Street), evidence for burial, suburban, and roadside settlement has been absent. Finds have been limited to numerous Roman pottery shards mixed with the backfills of quarry pits mined for the valuable brick earth that was used for ceramic building materials and no doubt contributed directly to some of Londinium’s buildings.

Jude Law joins Greenpeace protest in London

Milos Raonic of Canada returns a shot to Juan Martin Del Potro of Argentina during their men’s singles final match at the Japan Open tennis championships in Tokyo October 6, 2013. Credit: Reuters/Toru Hanai Sun Oct 6, 2013 5:28am EDT (Reuters) – Top seed Juan Martin del Potro beat Canada’s Milos Raonic in the battle of big-servers on Sunday to bag the Japan Open title and boost his chances of qualifying for the end-of-season ATP World Tour finals in London. The 25-year-old Argentine, a last-minute wild-card entry for injured Andy Murray, won 7-6(5) 7-5 with the lone break of serve of the match coming at the fag end of the second set as Raonic lost the final in Tokyo for the second year running. The win gave del Potro his third title of the year and moved him up to fifth spot in the race to London while Raonic is 10th in the qualification race for next month’s tournament involving the top eight players of the world. Raonic, 22, who finished runner-up to Kei Nishikori last year, fired 17 aces and was untroubled in his service games before a crucial double fault in the first-set tie-breaker put del Potro ahead. The Argentine got his first break point opportunity in the 11th game in the second set and managed to convert the third to go 6-5 up before holding on in the next game to win in an hour and 43 minutes. “I played really well in the last two games of the match, returning all of his first serves,” del Potro told reporters. “It was a fantastic week for me as I played better and better with each match. “In the tie-break, he hit a double fault in the most important part of the match and then my chance came, which I knew I had to take. “I did what I could to win. When he serves well and hits aces, it means I have to be aggressive on serve. I threw in drop shots and came to the net to mix up my game.” Del Potro hit seven aces and had to save three break points in the first set against the Canadian, who had won their only meeting in Montreal in August.

View gallery British musicians Damon Albarn (L) and Paul Simonon (R) along with British actor Jude Law (2-R) take part in a protest against the detainment of Greenpeace activists by Russia outside the Russian embassy in central London on October 5, 2013. (AFP Photo/Carl Court) 19 hours ago London (AFP) – British actor Jude Law joined hundreds of people gathered in London Saturday as part of worldwide Greenpeace protests over Russia’s jailing of activists opposed to Arctic oil drilling. “Sherlock Holmes” star Law, joined by Damon Albarn, the frontman of British band Blur, and guitarist Paul Simonon of The Clash, voiced support for his friend Frank Hewetson, one of 30 Greenpeace activists threatened with up to 15 years in prison. British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood also turned out to join demonstrators who held up placards showing the faces and names of those detained. Police said about 800 people had gathered for the protest that lasted about two hours. Organisers put the number at 1,000. “Of course I am worried about Frank because I care about his family and I care about him but I know that he is incredibly durable,” Law told reporters as he took part in the demonstration held outside the Russian embassy. “I think that it is very interesting that the people over there (Greenpeace activists) probably knew there would be an arrest involved and the threat of a conviction is probably part and parcel of the act of drawing attention to the drilling in the Arctic which we all know is an international problem which needs confronting.” Law added: “What is ludicrous is that they have been charged with piracy which has a threat of 15 years in prison.” Greenpeace supporters held vigils across the world Saturday in support of the activists, whose imprisonment has sparked a new row between Moscow and the West. A 950-tonne icebreaker sailed by Greenpeace was impounded by Russian authorities last month after it approached the world’s first oil rig in the pristine Barents Sea — the focus of energy companies from around the world. A court in Russia’s northwestern region of Murmansk has since charged all crew members — who come from 18 different countries — with charges that carry jail terms of up to 15 years. Society & Culture