The Nation’s Largest Landfill Beckons Tourists

story by MATTHEW BRUNWASSER
photo by D’ARCY NORMAN
Broadcast on NPR / Day to Day
Click here to listen

Los Angeles County is home to the country’s largest active landfill. Recently the high-tech Puente Hills Landfill also began offering tours. What is so attention-worthy about a massive pile of trash?

Garbage is the affluence of our consumption. That’s one of the messages of the exhibit, Post Consumed: A Landscape of Waste in Los Angeles at CLUI’s Culver City gallery. It’s 8:30 in the morning, and Heidi De Vries (ph) is waiting for the bus tour, which is part of this exhibition. She’s looking at photos of different stages of the waste stream.

Singing-Shepherd: Hans Breuer

Hans Breuer is one of a kind. He was born in Vienna, Austria…to a Jewish father and a Christian mother. He became a shepherd — a singing shepherd. In fact, he became a Yiddish-singing shepherd. Breuer sings to his sheep…and to his fellow Austrians. He says his songs make the sheep happy. But they make some Austrians uncomfortable. Breuer was featured in the book “Shlepping through the Alps,” by American Sam Apple. Matthew Brunwasser schlepped along with Breuer and his 900 sheep in the Austrian Alps. Continue reading “Singing-Shepherd: Hans Breuer” →

Nuclear ambitions fan controversy in Bulgaria

SOFIA — As governments around the world struggle to secure energy supplies, cut carbon emissions and adapt to rising oil prices, Bulgaria has adopted an ambitious solution: Construct a new nuclear power plant, the country’s second, near the northern town of Belene, across the Danube from Romania. Continue reading “Nuclear ambitions fan controversy in Bulgaria” →

A Ride to the Afterlife

story by MATTHEW BRUNWASSER
published in Archaeology Magazine Vol 60 Issue 5

STANDING OVER AN EXCAVATED PIT in a lush field between rusting grain silos and an aging dairy, archaeologist Veselin Ignatov explains, in helpfully unscientific language, the difference between two Thracian chariots he has just uncovered. “This one is a Mercedes,” he says, as we look over the remains of a chariot and horses buried in Bulgaria sometime between the first and third centuries A.D. “The other one,” he says, indicating a pit 10 yards away, “is more economy class.” Continue reading “A Ride to the Afterlife” →

International Accordion Festival

Quick — name a famous American accordionist. You might have a little trouble. The accordion has a bit of an image problem here in the U.S. But next month, it gets star billing at an International Accordion Festival in San Antonio, Texas. The festival is promoting a broad array of international performers. Recently, the festival director took a trip through the Balkans to scout for talent. Reporter Matthew Brunwasser caught up with her in Sofia, Bulgaria.

http://media.theworld.org/pod/glohit/09262007.mp3

Doctor Recounts Imprisonment in Libya

By MATTHEW BRUNWASSER

SOFIA, Bulgaria, Aug. 1 — In the yard of the Bulgarian presidential residence, on the foothills of Vitosha Mountain, Ashraf al-Hazouz on Tuesday recounted his years of imprisonment and torture in Libya and aired his grievances: the beatings, the electrical charges all over his body, the injection that he was told carried the virus that causes AIDS. Continue reading →

Libya’s Release of 6 Prisoners Raises Criticism

July 25, 2007

Libya’s Release of 6 Prisoners Raises Criticism

By MATTHEW BRUNWASSER and ELAINE SCIOLINO

SOFIA, Bulgaria, July 24 — After more than eight years in a Libyan prison, convicted of deliberately infecting children with the virus that causes AIDS, five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor stepped off a French presidential plane to freedom here on Tuesday.

The charge had been widely dismissed abroad as absurd. The Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, had accused the six medical workers, who were said to have been tortured, of acting on the orders of American and Israeli intelligence agencies to destabilize the Libyan state. Continue reading “Libya’s Release of 6 Prisoners Raises Criticism” →

Poland’s conservative family values

Matthew Brunwasser reports on Poland’s “League of Polish Families.” The group is moving the Catholic country further to the right. That’s making many Europeans uncomfortable. But it’s also winning friends in the United States.

http://www.pri.org/theworld/?q=node/11322

Looter describes ‘beginner’s luck’

SOFIA — A self-described Bulgarian looter has ignited an international controversy by admitting that he dug up an ancient treasure – a set of rare 12th-century silver dishes – and accusing Christie’s of trying to resell one of the dishes in London for far more than he ever got for it.

Continue reading “Looter describes ‘beginner’s luck’” →

Bulgarian relics spark an international scuffle

SOFIA — A self-described Bulgarian looter has ignited an international controversy by admitting that he dug up an ancient treasure – a set of rare 12th-century silver dishes – and accusing Christie’s of trying to resell one of the dishes in London for far more than he ever got for it.

The case has developed into Bulgaria’s first high-profile effort to recover allegedly plundered antiquities, with prosecutors seeking the return of not just the dish that Christie’s was trying to sell, but also nine dishes that Sofia maintains are from the same set and now in the possession of three Greek museums. Continue reading “Bulgarian relics spark an international scuffle” →