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Sept. 5 (UPI) -- Chinese authorities have arrested two construction workers accused of using an excavator to dig a hole through the Great Wall in central Shanxi province, according to local reports. The Shanxi Cultural Relics Bureau said Monday that the two people used the excavator to dig a shortcut through the 32nd Great Wall, which dates back to the Ming Dynasty of 1368-1644, in Youyu county, Shanxi province, state-run China Daily reported. The suspects have been identified by local police as a 38-year-old man and a 55-year-old woman, according to Sina. Local police were notified of the damage at...

Eight lucky travellers will be given a unique chance to spend the night on top of the Great Wall of China next month. Airbnb claims its temporary accommodation, perched atop a watchtower and with 360-degree views of the surrounding landscape, will represent the first time in thousands of years that ordinary visitors have been permitted to sleep on the ancient fortification. The pop-up room, part of a campaign to promote preservation efforts at the Great Wall, features a four-poster double bed, but is open to the elements – perfect for mountain views during the day and stargazing at night. The...

Verified from Twitter: Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump The dishonest media does not report that any money spent on building the Great Wall (for sake of speed), will be paid back by Mexico later! 3:19 AM - 6 Jan 2017 -------------------------------Snip----------------------------------------------- President-elect Donald Trump opened the news agenda this Friday morning with a 3AM tweet about the new border wall referring to it as the "Great Wall" while clarifying what the dishonest media deliberately fails to report. Initially U.S. money will be utilized for the "sake of speed," and later, Mexico will be reimbursing the building cost of the border wall....

Construction first begun in the third century BC, but nearly 6,300 kilometres were built in the Ming Dynasty of 1368-1644, including the much-visited sectors north of the capital Beijing. Of that, 1,962 kilometres has withered away over the centuries, the Beijing Times reported. Some of the construction weathered away, while plants growing in the walls have accelerated the decay, said the report Sunday, citing a survey last year by the Great Wall of China Society. "Even though some of the walls are built of bricks and stones, they cannot withstand the perennial exposure to wind and rain," the paper quoted...

Around 30 percent of China's Ming-era Great Wall has disappeared over time as adverse natural conditions and reckless human activities -- including stealing the bricks to build houses -- erode the UNESCO World Heritage site, state media reported. The Great Wall is not a single unbroken structure but stretches for thousands of kilometres in sections, from Shanhaiguan on the east coast to Jiayuguan in the windswept sands on the edge of the Gobi desert. In places it is so dilapidated that estimates of its total length vary from 9,000 to 21,000 kilometres (5,600 to 13,000 miles), depending on whether missing...

Explanation: Fading now as it returns to the outer solar system Comet Lovejoy (C/2013 R1) still graces planet Earth's sky, a delicate apparition in binoculars or small telescopes. The comet, a relic of the solar system's formative years, is seen here rising in the morning twilight on January 12 among the stars of Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer. Posing near the comet is bright star Alpha Ophiuchi, also known as Rasalhague, from Arabic "the head of the serpent collector". Of course, the serpentine shape below is the ancient Great Wall of China, along the Panlongshan section northeast of Beijing. Panlongshan is...

Vast stretches of Central Asia feel eerily uninhabited. Fly at 30,000 feet over... Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan -- and there are long moments when no town or road or field is visible from your window. Wandering bands and tribes roamed this immense area for 5,000 years, herding goat, sheep, cattle, and horses across immense steppes, through narrow valleys, and over high snowy passes. They left occasional tombs that survived the ages, and on rare occasions settled down and built towns or even cities. But for the most part, these peoples left behind few physical traces of their origins, beliefs, or ways...

My husband and I visited the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, this week. I couldn't help but relate the events of December, 7, 1941 to those of September 11, 2001. Listening to the stories of the people who were suddenly under fire from an enemy from the sky, who saw friends and family shot and bombed, was almost too much to bear. The sight of the Arizona underwater, where all those men died without warning when bombed and their ammunition supplies blew up, reminds us that there are men who will kill, without warning, for power. The museum at...

Stunning Color Pic Image of Great Wall of China in URL http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/7313/greatwall13.jpg

Choose a legend: The Great Wall of China is the one of the few man-made structures visible from orbit. Or, more remarkably, it's the only human artifice on Earth visible from the moon. Both are false, say astronauts and remote-sensing specialists. Although the Great Wall spans some 4,500 miles (7,200 kilometers), it's constructed from materials that make it difficult to discern from space. The unglamorous truth is that the wall is only visible from low orbit under a specific set of weather and lighting conditions. And many other structures that are less spectacular from an earthly vantage point—desert roads, for...

Why am I not surprised? While Washington is roiled in the divisiveness of the immigration/amnesty bill, the pencil pushers are working on the building of "THE FENCE"! I'm talking about the fence that's supposed to be built along the Mexican border to cut down the number of illegal aliens sneaking into this country every day. Well, it's not really a fence, as any normal person would imagine. This is a new-fangled one. It's a high-tech "fence" that depends on towers, radar, cameras, video terminals, detectors and all kinds of technology – so much in fact, that Border Patrol agents will...

China to measure the Great Wall The structure is a series of walls first linked up over 2,000 years ago Researchers are to carry out the first detailed survey of the Great Wall of China to establish just how long the ancient barricade is, Xinhua reports. Along with checking its dimensions the four-year study, which starts in May, will map the wall's exact route. And it will check the condition of the fortification, built to protect the northern border of the Chinese Empire. The wall, the world's largest man-made structure, is estimated at over 5,000 kilometres (3,100 miles) in length....

BEIJING, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- There will be no more partying at the Great Wall of China, officials decided after a rave party this summer drew criticism for tarnishing a national symbol. Cheng Dalin, deputy director of the China Great Wall Society, said that the local government had taken back management of the Jinling section of the Great Wall, Beijing Today reported Monday. The government leased management rights to a company called Guangda in 1997 for a 50-year period, for the sum of $740,000, China Daily said. The company had organized outdoor barbecues, dances and parties that attracted ever larger...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Republican lawmakers have introduced a bill to build a 3,200 kilometer (2,000 mile) wall along the US border with Mexico to keep illegal immigrants out. ADVERTISEMENT The legislation aims to "create a border security fence from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico," said House of Representatives members Duncan Hunter of California and Virgil Goode of Virginia in a statement. "Prior to September 11, 2001, illegal immigration was considered a regional issue without national implications. We quickly learned on that day, however, that this is a national issue, affecting each and every American, not just those...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Daredevil skateboarder Danny Way rolled down a massive ramp at nearly 50 mph and jumped across the Great Wall of China on Saturday, becoming the first person to clear the wall without motorized aid, an event sponsor said. Way botched the landing on his first attempt but then successfully completed the jump across the 61-foot gap four times, adding 360 degree spins on his last three tries, sponsor Quiksilver, Inc. said. "I was aware of the dangers and my heart was pumping in my chest the whole time, but I managed to pull it off with...

BEIJING (AFP) - Chinese soldiers sent to the Great Wall centuries ago did not just spend their time keeping alien invaders out -- they also decorated their watch towers with ancient graffiti, state media said. Archeologists studying a section of the wall in northeastern Liaoning province were surprised to find carvings of symbols representing love and peace, the Xinhua news agency reported. The historical record may offer an explanation, as it shows the general in charge of this part of the wall in the late 16th century allowed soldiers to bring their families along in order to boost morale. Each...

PARIS -- An embarrassed European Space Agency (ESA) on May 19 retracted an earlier assertion that its small Proba Earth observation satellite took a remarkably clear image of China’s Great Wall as it orbited 600 kilometers overhead. "The Great Wall’s relative visibility or otherwise from orbit has inspired much recent debate," the agency said in a May 11 press release accompanying a satellite image purporting to show "a winding segment of the 7,240-kilometer-long Great Wall of China situated just northeast of Beijing." The image turns out to have been of a river feeding into the Miyun Reservoir. "Further acquisitions of...

You CAN see the Great Wall from space, says Gene Cernan - By Felix Soh HOLD the presses! Don't change the Chinese elementary school textbooks which say that the Great Wall of China can be seen by the naked eye from outer space. Moves to amend these textbooks are afoot after the first Chinese in space, Colonel Yang Liwei, commented that he could not see the Great Wall during his historic 14 orbits around the Earth in October last year. But Col Yang, a veritable space newbie with a mere 21 hours in orbit, is mistaken - you can see...

China's first man in space, Yang Liwei, could not see the wall China is changing official thinking about a common misconception relating to its best-known ancient site. For decades, elementary schoolbooks have maintained that the Great Wall of China could be seen from space - but now the books are being rewritten. The Wall, China now admits, cannot in fact be seen from the heavens - a fact proved by China's own astronaut Yang Liwei, who became the country's first person in space last year. He said he was unable to see the ancient structure when he orbited the...

Last Updated: Wednesday, 30 July, 2003, 08:08 GMT 09:08 UK China imposes Great Wall ban By Rupert Wingfield-Hayes BBC Beijing correspondent China says it is closing off vast sections of the Great Wall to tourists and ramblers alike in an effort to protect the ancient monument from the ravages of time and trampling. From 1 August, tourists will be restricted to areas of the wall that are restored and officially designated as tourist sites. Those who stray off the beaten track could face fines. Most of the Great Wall of China is not as it appears on the television adverts...