Wanted: Adriana Rivas

Adriana Rivas with Manuel Contreras

From the Australian:

AUSTRALIA is being asked by Chile's Supreme Court to extradite a woman accused of involvement in torture and murder during Chile's 1973-1990 military dictatorship.

The court requested the extradition of Adriana Rivas overnight.

She is wanted for her role in the 1976 murder of a Communist Party leader who was held in a secret prison before he was suffocated and thrown into the ocean.

Ms Rivas was assistant to Manuel Contreras, the head of the DINA secret police during General Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship.

She moved to Australia in 1978 but was detained during a visit to Chile in 2006.

Ms Rivas was released after some months on probation and escaped to Australia.

In an interview last year with SBS, she insisted she was innocent of the charges.

From SBS: The Other 9/11

Obit: Professor Halet Çambel

From Hurryet Daily News:

One of the most important figures in the archaeology world, Istanbul University’s retired academic Professor Halet Çambel, has died aged 98. Turkish archaeologist and writer Çambel was found dead in her house on Jan. 12. 

After a ceremony to be held tomorrow at 10 a.m. at the Bosphorus University, Çambel will be buried next to the grave of her husband in the western province of Muğla. 

She played a key role in the understanding of Hittite hieroglyphics by discovering a tablet with the Phoenician alphabet, which allowed philologists to decipher the inscription. 

Medieval Women & Armour

Rather interesting article from  - What Kind of Armour Did Medieval Women Really Wear:

We know that skimpy armor that shows off a woman's cleavage is rather impractical for combat and that sculpted "boob plate" armor can be a hazard to your health, but on occasions that women did don armor in medieval Europe, what kind of armor did they actually wear? And is shapely, feminine armor a modern convention, or does it have some roots in the Middle Ages?

Even if they aren't necessarily historically accurate, depictions of armor worn by men in European historical fictions or European-inspired fantasies tend to have at least some basis in fact, whereas women's armor is often depicted in a more fantastical manner. There are, of course, the infamous body-bearing suits of armor with scale mail bras and chain mail loin clothes that seem to scream, "Please, stab me in my fleshy stomach!" And then there is the overly sculpted boob-plate breastplate for suits of plate mail, which gives fictional woman warriors the appearance of femininity, but places a rather dangerous metal protrusion right at the wearer's sternum.

History of the Hennin

From Smithsonian dot com:

Nothing says “princess” like a pointy, cone-shaped hat. From kids’ costumes to medieval paintings, the cone hat—more formally known as a hennin (or henin)—is a sure sign of royalty. But here’s something you might not know about the hat that adorn the heads of pale-skinned ladies: they were actually modeled after the hats of Mongol warrior queens.

Medieval PoC points to the book Secret History of the Mongol Queens, where author Jack Weatherford writes:

The contraption struck many foreign visitors as odd, but the Mongol Empire had enjoyed such prestige that medieval women of Europe imitated it with the hennin, a large cone-shaped headdress that sat towards the back of the head rather than rising straight up from it as among the Mongols. With no good source of peacock feathers, European noblewomen generally substituted gauzy streamers flowing in the wind at the top.