Breaking News

100-Year Mystery: Did 'Lady Bluebeard' Get Away With Murder?

Asle Helgelien didn't believe Belle Gunness' claims that his brother, missing for months after answering the widow's lonely hearts ad, had left her northern Indiana farm for Chicago or maybe their native Norway. Suspicious after a bank said his brother, Andrew, had cashed a $3,000 check — a large sum in 1908 — the South Dakota farmer came to LaPorte and discovered his brother's remains in a pit of household waste. A century later, modern forensic scientists hope to solv

Baghdad museum receives artifacts stolen from Iraq

Iraq's National Museum on Sunday welcomed the return of more than 700 antiquities stolen during the chaos that followed the U.S.-led invasion five years ago. Golden necklaces, daggers, clay statues, pots and other artifacts were displayed briefly during a ceremony attended by Syrian and Iraqi officials. Syrian authorities seized the items from traffickers over the years and handed custody last week to an Iraqi delegation in Damascus. Mohammad Abbas al-Oreibi, Iraq's ac

At Columbia, Remembering a Revolution

Forty years ago, they launched a student protest at Columbia University that involved the occupation of five campus buildings, the hostage-taking of a dean, 712 arrests and injuries to scores of students, faculty members and police officers. Now, they are lawyers, judges, playwrights, poets, professors and ministers. They gathered this weekend back on campus with former classmates to hear memories of those events and occasionally raise a revolutionary fist for old times' sake.

Ukraine's Pursuit of Genocide Designation Upsets Russians Who Say Others Died, Too

Relations between Russia and Ukraine, bedeviled by disputes over natural gas supplies and NATO expansion, have lately been roiled by one of the great tragedies of Soviet history: the famine of 1932-33, which left millions dead from starvation and related diseases. Ukraine is seeking international recognition of the famine, which Ukrainians call Holodomor -- or death by hunger -- as an act of genocide. When Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin forced peasants off their homestea

Scholars run down more clues to a Holocaust mystery: What happened to Wallenberg? (AP Investigation)

Budapest, November 1944: Another German train has loaded its cargo of Jews bound for Auschwitz. A young Swedish diplomat pushes past the SS guard and scrambles onto the roof of a cattle car. Ignoring shots fired over his head, he reaches through the open door to outstretched hands, passing out dozens of bogus "passports" that extended Sweden's protection to the bearers. He orders everyone with a document off the train and into his caravan of vehicles. The guards look on,

How to Show a Dictator the Door

ZIMBABWE’S political crisis lurched on last week as President Robert Mugabe, the strongman who has ruled the California-size country in southern Africa for the past 28 years, refused to release the results of the March 29 elections. In old-fashioned autocratic style, the government’s police began to round up opposition supporters. The world is losing patience, but Mr. Mugabe is only the latest example of dictators in Africa and elsewhere — some more bloodthirsty than others — who ha

Significant or not? McCain would be the first president born in 1930s

MUCH has been made of Senator John McCain’s advancing years. He is, as everyone knows, the oldest candidate in the field, and if things go his way in November he will take office at age 72, which will make him older than any other new president in history. This fact has provoked merriment, most conspicuously on late-night television, where he is often the butt of codger jokes. Actually, he inhabits a more serious historic role, as the latest — and almost certainly the last — hope fo

Soldiers' diaries reveal devilish side of First World War angels

Nurses inflicted pain upon wounded soldiers in the First World War to a scandalous degree, according to new research. Military hospitals have traditionally been portrayed as havens run by caring, if overstretched, staff but fresh evidence suggests that the experience of patients was very different. Diaries written by injured working-class soldiers from the Somme to Gallipoli have revealed how they silently endured brutal treatment by the female military nurses, surgeons

Farrakhan's Pennsylvania Admirer

Among all of the top Democrats intimately involved in the Pennsylvania primary, which would you say has had the coziest relationship with Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam? It's not Barack Obama. The individual who has shared a podium with Farrakhan and has publicly praised the Nation of Islam the loudest is the person most responsible for organizing, mobilizing and delivering the Pennsylvania vote to Hillary Clinton: her close friend and trusted political counsel

Tomb of Antony and Cleopatra to be opened

Archaeologists have revealed plans to uncover the 2000 year-old tomb of ancient Egypt's most famous lovers, Cleopatra and the Roman general Mark Antony later this year. Zahi Hawass, prominent archaeologist and director of Egypt's superior council for antiquities announced a proposal to test the theory that the couple were buried together. He discussed the project in Cairo at a media conference about the ancient pharaohs. Hawass said that the remains of the

Scanning World's Every Book, Including Oldest Bible

In a dimly lit back room on the second level of the University of Michigan library's book-shelving department, Courtney Mitchel helped a giant desktop machine digest a rare, centuries-old Bible. Mitchel is among hundreds of librarians from Minnesota to England making digital versions of the most fragile of the books to be included in Google Inc.'s Book Search, a portal that will eventually lead users to all the estimated 50 million to 100 million books in the world. Th

Egypt's Pyramids Packed With Seashells

Many of Egypt's most famous monuments, such as the Sphinx and Cheops, contain hundreds of thousands of marine fossils, most of which are fully intact and preserved in the walls of the structures, according to a new study. The study's authors suggest that the stones that make up the examined monuments at Giza plateau, Fayum and Abydos must have been carved out of natural stone since they reveal what chunks of the sea floor must have looked like over 4,000 years ago, when the building

NARA Clarifies Decision Not to "Harvest" Federal Agency Websites

On March 27, 2008, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) issued a memorandum, stating that it would not conduct a “harvest” of federal agency websites as they exist at the end of President Bush’s term as they did in 2001 and 2005. In response to concerns expressed by stakeholders, last week the National Archives issued further clarification stating “each agency is now responsible, in coordination with NARA, for determining how to manage its web records, including whether to pre

Emperor Nero's gate discovered in Cologne

The gate, found complete with 11 meters of wall, was a goods-delivery entrance to the Roman town from its river port outside on the Rhine.

Giant puzzle exposes Germany's communist secrets

It is painstaking work, almost a labour of love, but help is close for the nine people who have spent years sticking together millions of pieces of paper to decipher the workings of East Germany's once-feared Stasi secret police. Almost two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the actions of the communist government still fascinates and scares Germans. Who worked with them? And why? Stasi employees started to destroy their secret files as the Berl

Activist: Gettysburg Battlefield visitor center lacks disabled access

Disabilities-rights activist Marilynn Phillips is prepared to file a complaint with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission regarding the newly opened Gettysburg National Military Park Museum and Visitor Center - which she alleges does not "reasonably" accommodate disabled patrons. Phillips' main gripes are with the center's 500-foot sloped sidewalk from the parking lot to the entrance, the low number of handicap parking spaces, a lack of automatic and power-assist doo

Guide helps tourists track down remains of Berlin Wall

It can be hard to find what remains of the Berlin Wall, a divisive landmark that for 28 years split the German capital and an entire generation. But history buffs wanting to see the last vestiges of the iconic symbol of east versus west no longer have to consult old maps or seek out guidebooks. A new multimedia guide offers individualized walking tours connecting the key points where the 103-mile-long wall once stood. The hand-sized minicomputer, commissioned by the cit

Remains of WWII airmen identified

The Pentagon says the remains of 11 U.S. servicemen missing in action from World War II have been identified and will be returned to their families for burial. The airmen's remains were recovered on the Pacific island of New Guinea.

Vikings acquitted in 100-year-old murder mystery

Tests of the bones of two Viking women found in a buried longboat have dispelled 100-year-old suspicions that one was a maid sacrificed to accompany her queen into the afterlife, experts said on Friday. The bones indicated that a broken collarbone on the younger woman had been healing for several weeks -- meaning the break was not part of a ritual execution as suspected since the 22-metre (72 ft) long Oseberg ship was found in

Helping WW II vets get a chance to see the WW II memorial in DC