Ruins

Discover Mayaland Hotel, only 100 yards from the spectacular reconstructed temple city of Chichen Itza in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. In Travel.

For their own safety and to prevent further vandalism, a group of neighborhood "town watchers" has started night and early-morning patrols around the burned ruins of the Palumbo Cafe-Restaurant in South Philadelphia. The Bella Vista Community Association took the action following last Thursday's three-alarm fire at the CR Club. The club was the only portion of the restaurant complex that remained standing after a four-alarm fire destroyed the 100-year-old landmark at 824 Catharine St. on June 20. The fire marshal's office has ruled both fires arsons.

As an anxious mother and her teenage son prepare to move from the country to Rome, the boy complains and asks what he will do in the big city. "You'll keep an eye on the ruins," she responds in a tone that suggests they will encounter more ruins among the people than the ancient monuments. Pier Paolo Pasolini's Mamma Roma unfolds as one woman's tragedy in a world of moral dilapidation, and the mother's worst fears are soon realized in ways she could never have imagined. Mamma Roma, filmed by the late and still controversial Pasolini in 1962, is a movie that was released amid tumult and never received the distribution it merited.

The shapes and colors of this rock-carved city in the Jordanian desert wash gradually through a visitor's consciousness until, after a day of strolling in the ruins, the clamor of the ancient metropolis, echoing across more than a thousand years, is virtually audible. Today, when a donkey lets out its hee-haw bray, the noise goes on and on, bouncing off the sandstone cliffs and ricocheting through the canyons and man- made caves, as though electronically amplified. Petra is one of the world's better-kept tourist secrets.

Fire marshals are investigating a fire that ripped through a house in Gloucester County early today, leaving it a smoking, charred ruin. Two children reportedly were treated for smoke inhalation at the scene while firefighters battled the blaze in the 2-story house at 22 Stanger Court in Clayton. The fast spreading fire apparently started before 5 a.m. in the attached garage of the house bordering Scotland Run Park and it took firefighters about a half-hour to bring it under control.' Contact the Online Breaking News Desk at online@phillynews.com or 215-854-2443.   

The Incan ruins at Machu Picchu, Peru's most popular tourist destination, could find themselves in the spotlight - literally. The National Culture Institute said this month that it was considering a plan by a French company to illuminate the ruins using solar-powered lights mounted outside the mysterious city, according to news reports in Lima. Traditionally, the entrance to Machu Picchu closes before darkness falls, and a culture official said that tourists would not be allowed into the ruins after dark even if they are lighted.

In the heart of the Italian Market, half a block from DiBruno's, photographer Vincent D. Feldman has come across something strikingly evocative of Rome, but this is not a story about cheese or prosciutto. This is a story about ruins, and a not-so-ancient city that is startlingly full of them. And what has brought Feldman to Montrose Street between Eighth and Ninth is an abandoned municipal pool, the Fante Leon pool, whose sculpted granite facade, intricate statuary, and carved moldings speak of a hard-to-fathom grandeur, despite the fact that a tree is now growing out of the pool basin.

With the heat bearing down, the humidity wearing down, and the air conditioning breaking down, High Season affords a fast, cheap escape from this ozone-swathed Summer of Hell. An amiable lark of a movie starring that amiable lark of an actress, Jacqueline Bisset, Clare Peploe's High Season is a diverting romantic romp shot in the most diverting of locales - the Greek isle of Rhodes, where whitewashed villages cradled in rocky green hillocks tumble down into cobalt blue seas. It's an idyllic retreat - the idyllic-ness of it all being summarily overrun by camera-snapping hordes of vacationing Brits, who line the beaches like endives lining a produce shelf: thin, white and packed closely together.

MEXICO CITY - When neighbors in the hills east of Mexico City saw backhoes ripping up pre-Hispanic relics for a highway, they did something unexpected in a country where building projects often bulldoze through ruins: They launched protests to stop the digging and demanded an accounting of what is there. Dozens of residents set up a protest camp and filed complaints with state and federal officials, demanding the highway be rerouted, hoping that studies of the site could help solve an age-old riddle.

Investigators were continuing their probe after drugs and weapons were found in the ruins of a fire Friday that damaged a condominium complex in Morrell Park. The fire marshal's office has ruled that arson caused the two-alarm blaze, which forced the evacuation of three dozen residents from the three-story Clarendon Court Condominiums, 3751 Morrell Ave. The ruling was disclosed yesterday. Investigators sifting through the rubbish after the 2:01 a.m. fire pulled out 5 pounds of methamphetamine and a cache of weapons in the unit where the fire started.

"America's Got Talent" is off to a slow start this summer and reasons why abound.   Is it because Howard Stern's presence has turned off a portion of the show's fan base wary of the shock jock's radio persona? Because the first-run competition is much tougher so far than last year's rerun competition, and the show's ratings will rise as it gets deeper into summer? Or have people realized that the show is, to put it simply ... worse? While Tattle has long been a fan of the cheerful, low-key, "Britain's Got Talent," this year's "AGT" has given short shrift to variety-show charm (and quality acts)

Q: My husband's ex-wife always guilt-trips her daughter into going all out for her on her birthday and on Mother's Day. My stepdaughter gets a very small allowance, so her dad is the one who has to pay. I think this is his ex-wife's way of sticking it to my husband, above and beyond the hefty child support and alimony she already gets. I want to put a stop to this, but I don't want to be a wicked stepmother. Please respond quickly. I overhead my stepdaughter tell my husband that her mother wants a certain Michael Kors watch, and the thought of that going on the credit card we both pay for makes me want to scream.

The ballpark was funereal Monday, and Ryan Howard leaned against the railing, seven feet from the Phillies on-deck circle. It was the sixth inning, and a 6-2 Marlins victory in the 2012 opening of Citizens Bank Park was long decided. Charlie Manuel saw his sidelined slugger standing alone, arms crossed and his head resting on them. So the manager joined him. An inning later, with the crack of a bat, both looked up. Now Manuel was closer to Howard, with his left foot on the warning-track dirt.

HENRYVILLE, Ind. - St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church has always been a gathering point for Henryville, never more so than now. Under a roof with a patched-up six-foot hole, dozens gathered Sunday not just to worship but to check on neighbors and get updates on the devastation from last week's tornadoes. Along the Ohio River between Indiana and Kentucky, where small towns were nearly wiped from the map, the damage is clear from a trail of smashed homes, downed trees, and lost lives.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - As families of the 185 people killed in the Christchurch earthquake marked Wednesday's one-year anniversary of the disaster, signs of a city still broken were all around them. Hundreds of wrecked buildings downtown are waiting to be torn down so reconstruction can begin in earnest - many of them within sight of the morning ceremony at Latimer Square. The slow pace of recovery is drawing criticism from residents and developers as it wears at the reputation of Mayor Bob Parker, who was praised in the days after the quake for his leadership and for calmly articulating the pain and frustration many were feeling.

MEXICO CITY - When neighbors in the hills east of Mexico City saw backhoes ripping up pre-Hispanic relics for a highway, they did something unexpected in a country where building projects often bulldoze through ruins: They launched protests to stop the digging and demanded an accounting of what is there. Dozens of residents set up a protest camp and filed complaints with state and federal officials, demanding the highway be rerouted, hoping that studies of the site could help solve an age-old riddle.

DEAR ABBY: My wife, "Kate," and her sister, "Judy," do not get along, to the point that my wife refuses to be in the same room with her. I have a class reunion coming up, and Judy is in my class. Because we're not sure Judy will show up, Kate has said she will attend - but she'll leave if Judy arrives. We had planned on going in separate cars so Kate could escape if necessary. But now she says if Judy puts in an appearance, she'll be upset with me if I don't leave with her. I don't get along with Judy either, but I'd like the chance to catch up with other classmates.

OVERWHELMED, depressed, frustrated - no one ever said that being a Catholic schoolteacher, parent or student these days would be a cakewalk. Looming over the Catholic-school hallways, faculty lounges, households and blogs is talk of school closings by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and endless "what if" scenarios. Archbishop Charles Chaput met Tuesday with an advisory panel assigned to develop a plan for Catholic education, which has been plagued by dropping enrollment and rising tuition.

AN 84-YEAR-OLD ex-university official savagely attacked by four young punks during a walk in Wissahickon Valley Park earlier this week theorizes that the beating he endured was a cruel game of "get the old geezer. " Jim Shea, a former vice president of university relations for Temple, from 1968 to 1983, walks up to five miles on Forbidden Drive, in Fairmount Park, three times a week, but that type of stamina wasn't enough to stave off the lowlifes who not only beat him bloody, but dealt a blow to one of the things he holds most dear - his pride.