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Seven years after Chandra Levy's remains were found in a Washington, D.C., park, a year-long investigation by the Washington Post offers evidence the congressional intern was murdered by an illegal alien. As suspicion mounted that Levy's boss, Rep. Gary Condit, D-Calif., might be involved in her disappearance, the case became front-page news in the summer of 2001. But with the Sept. 11 attacks, law enforcement personnel in the capital quickly turned their attention to the the nation's security, and Levy's case became a distant memory for the public. But the Post says that as authorities searched for Levy in Rock...

WASHINGTON — A federal judge has thrown out former California Congressman Gary Condit's defamation lawsuit against author Dominick Dunne, extending the one-time lawmaker's costly courtroom losing streak over rumors of his relationship to murdered intern Chandra Levy. In a 22-page opinion issued Tuesday morning, U.S. District Judge Peter Leisure summarily dismissed Condit's suit and ruled the First Amendment as well as California law protected Dunne's expressions of opinion. The ruling further shrinks Condit's legal maneuvering room. "I'm just delighted," Dunne's attorney Paul LiCalsi said Tuesday. "This was an abusive lawsuit all along." (snip) The new ruling comes one year after...

A group of criminal justice students at a small Atlanta college are preparing to launch their own investigation into the 2001 disappearance and slaying of Modesto resident Chandra Levy in Washington, D.C. Since 2005, students at Bauder College have sifted through old evidence and case files from unsolved crimes as part of the school's Cold Case Investigative Research Institute, according to institute director Sheryl McCollum. This year, Levy's homicide and the disappearance three years ago of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway in Aruba are on their agenda.

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. - The mayor of this gambling resort resigned Wednesday after a two-week absence from office during which he checked himself into a rehabilitation clinic. Robert Levy's disappearance came amid a federal investigation for embellishing his Army service in Vietnam. "Mr. Levy has concluded that public confidence is so eroded by these circumstances that the only responsible action is to step down," his attorney, Edwin Jacobs, said. "He does so with great regret and with apologies to his supporters, to the people of Atlantic City, and to his family and friends." The president of the seaside city's council...

ATLANTIC CITY - The possible whereabouts of Atlantic City Mayor Bob Levy continue to make national news, including top billing Saturday on AOL's list of news stories, fueling additional media focus on his mysterious absence. Major news organizations such as Fox News and NPR also are planning coverage into next week. Levy vanished from public life Sept. 26, the day he signed seven ordinances and city officials said he transferred power to city Business Administrator Domenic Cappella. Officials, his family and his lawyer have refused to say where he is, claiming privacy regulations that experts say do not apply. Levy's...

Leading Democrats in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail are having a difficult time agreeing on what it means to be wealthy. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has said it means earning $500,000 or more annually. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) contends that raising the tax rate on families making more than $400,000 could offset legislation to slash taxes on the middle class.

In most good heist movies there is always a moment when the bad guys fall out. A disagreement over splitting the loot turns to violence. More usually, one of the gang, fearing the Old Bill, sings like a canary. What you do not expect is to see the Lavender Hill Mob played out inside Downing Street. The cash for honours investigation is reaching its climax. Assistant Commissioner John Yates and his Scotland Yard colleagues are said to be confident of bringing charges under both the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act of 1925 and for perverting the course of justice. The...

Famed writer Dominick Dunne can't stop blabbing about Gary Condit, the ex-California congressman who was forced to fend off claims that he withheld information from authorities about the slaying of Washington intern Chandra Levy. , claiming the Vanity Fair correspondent caused him to suffer "public hatred, contempt and ridicule" as a result of comments Dunne made on CNN's "Larry King Live" on Nov. 16, 2005. Eight months after publicly apologizing to Condit, Dunne told the show's fill-in host Bob Costas: "I think [Condit] knows more about what did happen than he has ever said." Condit's asking for more than $75,000...

SAN DIEGO – An attorney for the city's largest employee union is demanding that the City Council levy a new tax on San Diego property owners to help pay municipal pension obligations. In a letter sent to Mayor Jerry Sanders and the City Council, SDMEA attorney Ann Smith stated that “adding such a 'pension' tax to the city's annual tax levy is not a matter of discretion, but rather a matter of duty, and therefore, enforceable by the courts.” The mayor could not be immediately reached for comment on the letter, which was sent Friday and made public Monday. But...

Tony Blair's chief fundraiser Lord Levy has been arrested. His arrest is in connection with the "cash-for-honours" inquiry by the Metropolitan Police. Lord Levy, 61, made his money in the music industry in the 1960s and 1970s, managing singers including Alvin Stardust and Chris Rea. He has been a high profile fundraiser for Labour since Tony Blair's election. Lord Levy is understood to be being held at a North London police station. Asked if he had any reaction to the news that Lord Levy had been arrested, the prime minister's official spokesman said: "I cannot comment on that, it is...

In April, 1940, Norwegian politician Vidkun J. Quisling became the first politician in history to use the radio airwaves to announce a coup d'etat, declaring the formation of an ad-hoc government during the confusion brought on by the Nazi invasion of Norway. Quisling hoped his action would result in Nazi recognition of Quisling as head of state. Instead, his treasonous action earned him a different kind of recognition. Today, the name "Quisling" stands beside that of Benedict Arnold as a synonym for "traitor." Quisling's treacherous efforts to use his country's peril to advance his own personal political fortunes also earned...

Big Questions About the Big Easy Hughes Joseph Hughes chairs the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech and serves on the EPA's environmental engineering advisory committee. He toured the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast with President Wayne Clough in November, spoke to former Alumni Association trustees in January and recently sat down with the ALUMNI MAGAZINE. Hughes now is helping coordinate a conference that will address the future of New Orleans.What is Georgia Tech's role in the rebuilding of New Orleans? We're at the stage right now in the discussion where there are real questions whether we should rebuild...

Enhanced pension deals are county's albatross... The county has the distinction of carrying more retirees (6,050) than active employees (4,631) on county health insurance. Add in 3,100 spouses and dependents of retirees, and the county is insuring more than 9,000 individuals on the retiree side. The county now pays out more in health care for retirees than for active employees. In addition to her monthly check, she was promised, and cherishes, free health insurance for the rest of her life. It is the sum of such promises to Schumann and 6,000-plus other retirees that is a major stumbling block as...

Translated from the original French by Charlotte Mandell. Nothing made a more lasting impression during my journey through America than the semi-comatose state in which I found the American left. I know, of course, that the term "left" does not have the same meaning and ramifications here that it does in France. And I cannot count how many times I was told there has never been an authentic "left" in the United States, in the European sense. But at the end of the day, my progressive friends, you may coin ideas in whichever way you like. The fact is: You...

"A Marine Came For Me" David J. Danelo Proceedings, October 2005 Discuss this article in the eForum. The odyssey of Marine Corporal Ross Craft (center) began with his hunt to find his aunt and uncle, Diane and Richard Angelico, who were missing in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR On 30 August, the day after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, shattered two levees, and flooded New Orleans, a local television station ran footage of a Marine on a jet ski zipping through the floodwaters guiding rescue boats to safe evacuation routes. Corporal Ross Craft, a...

With all due deference to my colleague, Donnel Jones, it is not “over for the Bush Administration.” Maybe it is natural during a national crisis for emotions to run so high, but this blame-game has gotten out of hand. Granted, Donnel is not blaming Hurricane Katrina on Bush as so many wacky leftists are, but to conclude that this is the conclusion of Bush’s efficacy, or that this spells a certain change in who holds the House and Senate; this is just over the top. Katrina is the “worst natural disaster in modern American history”. Could anyone have been fully...

Let's recap: The Pakistani special forces squad arrested Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Al Qaeda's third in command, on March 1, 2003, a few hours before informing the Americans that Pakistan would not back a resolution in favor of the war in Iraq. They arrested Yasser Jazeeri, another key Al Qaeda operative, in March 2003, a few months before Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf visited Camp David, where he was promised foreign aid to the unprecedented tune of $3 billion. In March 2002, they collared Abu Zubeida, Al Qaeda operations chief, and they did this during a big U.S. congressional debate on the...

Mexican TV Actress Dies After Seeing Gun MEXICO CITY - A Mexican television actress died on Friday of a heart attack after a man armed with a pistol approached her vehicle on a Mexico City street, officials said. Mariana Levy, 39, featured on the "Nuestra Casa" show on the Televisa network, developed labored breathing after seeing the weapon, said prosecutor Carlos Gurrea. Her husband, Jose Maria Fernandez Jr., drove her to a nearby clinic where she died, Gurrea said, quoting Fernandez. A man was arrested and later identified by Levy's husband as the man who approached the vehicle, in which...

The "supermajority" issue is hardly the no-brainer some people make it out to be. So be wary of cheering along the current effort in Olympia to do away with the decades-old, constitutional voting provision for school levies. The no-brainer crowd crows that it is undemocratic to require a 60-percent passage rate for school money measures when politicians typically are elected to office with just more than 50 percent of the vote. And while it sounds well and good to say that the majority should always rule in any given election, the reality is, the majority rarely rules, given low voter...

House votes to end need for 60% on school levies By Andrew Garber Seattle Times Olympia bureau OLYMPIA — The state House of Representatives yesterday passed legislation, for the third year in a row, that could make it easier for school districts to get property-tax levies approved by voters. The constitutional amendment now goes to the state Senate, where it has died in past years. It would allow school levies to be approved by a simple majority of voters instead of a 60 percent supermajority. The amendment would go before voters in November if approved by a two-thirds majority in...

Did you miss that headline in the news last week? Well, that's because no one ran it. Ingmar Guandique, a violent Salvadoran national who is serving a 10-year sentence for assaulting two female joggers in Washington's Rock Creek Park last year, was interrogated recently as part of the investigation into the intern murder mystery. But in my review of all 115 news items archived in the Lexis-Nexis database that mention Guandique in connection with the Levy case, not a single story referred to his status as a criminal illegal alien.

Former U.S. Representative Gary Condit: I swear to tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth….

Scientist: Asteroid May Hit Earth in 2029 Thu Dec 23, 5:40 PM ET By JOHN ANTCZAK, Associated Press Writer LOS ANGELES - There's a 1-in-300 chance that a recently discovered asteroid, believed to be about 1,300 feet long, could hit Earth in 2029, a NASA (news - web sites) scientist said Thursday, but he added that the perceived risk probably will be eliminated once astronomers get more detail about its orbit.   There have been only a limited number of sightings of Asteroid 2004 MN4, which has been given an initial rating of 2 on the 10-point Torino Impact Hazard...

The object, named 2004 YD5, was about 16 feet (5 meters) wide, though that's a rough estimate based on its distance and assumed reflectivity. Had it entered the atmosphere, it would have exploded high up, experts figure. The asteroid passed just under the orbits of geostationary satellites, which at 22,300 miles (36,000 kilometers) altitude are the highest manmade objects circling Earth. Most other satellites, along with the International Space Station, circle the planet at just a few hundred miles up... the second closest pass of an asteroid ever observed by telescope, according to the Asteroid/Comet Connection, a web site that...

Wednesday, 24 July, 2002, 02:29 GMT 03:29 UK Space rock 'on collision course'   An asteroid could devastate Earth       By Dr David Whitehouse BBC News Online science editor An asteroid discovered just weeks ago has become the most threatening object yet detected in space. A preliminary orbit suggests that 2002 NT7 is on an impact course with Earth and could strike the planet on 1 February, 2019 - although the uncertainties are large. Astronomers have given the object a rating on the so-called Palermo technical scale of threat of 0.06, making NT7 the first object to...

Former California Congressman Gary Condit is coming to New York — to try to clear his name over the mysterious death of intern Chandra Levy by pursuing his defamation suit against crime author Dominick Dunne. But lawyers for Dunne plan to grill Condit over his relationship with Levy, whose remains were found in Washington, D.C. in May 2002 after she had been missing for over a year. Condit charges that Dunne falsely linked him to Levy's disappearance. He's seeking $11 million in damages. Investigators concluded Condit was not a suspect, although he admitted to having an affair with Levy. No...

Microscopic analysis, reported in the current issue of the journal Geology, revealed a 3-inch-thick layer of "shocked quartz" — a form of the mineral produced only under intense pressure like that of an impact — that dated to 35.5 million years ago, when a space rock slammed into the Earth about 120 miles southeast of present-day Washington.

IF IT had hit Central London, Britain would no longer have a capital city. The force of the meteorite that hit eastern Siberia last September destroyed 40 square miles of forest and caused earth tremors felt 60 miles away. An expedition from Russia's Kosmopoisk institute has only recently reached the site in a remote area north of Lake Baikal because of bad weather and difficult terrain, the Interfax news agency said yesterday. Fragments of the meteorite had apparently exploded into shrapnel 18 miles above the Earth with the force of at least 200 tonnes of TNT. At the time, Russian...

Antarctic craters reveal strike The asteroid may have raised sea levels by up to 60cm Scientists have mapped enormous impact craters hidden under the Antarctic ice sheet using satellite technology. The craters may have either come from an asteroid between 5 and 11km across that broke up in the atmosphere, a swarm of comets or comet fragments. The space impacts created multiple craters over an area of 2,092km (1,300 miles) by 3,862km (2,400 miles). The scientists told a conference this week that the impacts occurred roughly 780,000 years ago during an ice age. When the impacts hit, they would have...

Dino impact gave Earth the chill A cloud of sulphate particles may have blocked out the sun's warmth Evidence has been found for a global winter following the asteroid impact that is thought to have killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Rocks in Tunisia reveal microscopic cold-water creatures invaded a warm sea just after the space rock struck Earth. The global winter was probably caused by a pollutant cloud of sulphate particles released when the asteroid vapourised rocks at Chicxulub, Mexico. The results are reported in the latest issue of the journal Geology. Italian, US and Dutch...

Dark Days Doomed Dinosaurs, Say Purdue Scientists WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. ? Though the catastrophe that destroyed the dinosaurs' world may have begun with blazing fire, it probably ended with icy darkness, according to a Purdue University research group. By analyzing fossil records, a team of scientists including Purdue's Matthew Huber has found evidence that the Earth underwent a sudden cooling 65 million years ago that may have taken millennia to abate completely. The fossil rock samples, taken from a well-known archaeological site in Tunisia, show that tiny, cold-loving ocean organisms called dinoflagellates and benthic formanifera appeared suddenly in an ancient...

Comets, Meteors & Myth: New Evidence for Toppled Civilizations and Biblical Tales By Robert Roy Britt Senior Science Writer posted: 07:00 am ET 13 November 2001 "...and the seven judges of hell ... raised their torches, lighting the land with their livid flame. A stupor of despair went up to heaven when the god of the storm turned daylight into darkness, when he smashed the land like a cup." -- An account of the Deluge from the Epic of Gilgamesh, circa 2200 B.C. If you are fortunate enough to see the storm of shooting stars predicted for the Nov. 18...

An Impact Event in 3114BC? The Beginning of a Turbulent Millennium. Recurring Phenomenon: The Cosmic DisasterThe Mayan CalendarStonehengeA Possible Source for the 3100 BC Event Collected and commented by Timo Niroma, Helsinki, Finland Go to the Evidence of Astronomical Aspects of Mankind's Past and Recent Climate Homepage Recurring Phenomenon: The Cosmic Disaster Besides the most evident cosmic catastrophes ca. 2200 BC and 2345 BC there are other events during the Holocene that are so widely global and difficult to explain by only the Earth's own mechanisms that a cosmic explanation must evidently be taken into account. The first so-called...

Probe to 'look inside' asteroids By Paul Rincon BBC News Online science staff in Paris, France Studies of asteroids would aid Earth-protection strategies A new space mission concept unveiled at a Paris conference aims to look inside asteroids to reveal how they are made. Deep Interior would use radar to probe the origin and evolution of two near-Earth objects less than 1km across. The mission, which could launch some time later this decade, would also give clues to how the planets evolved. The perceived threat of asteroids colliding with our planet has renewed interest in space missions to understand these...

CAPE CHARLES, Va. - Geologists drilling half a mile below Virginia's Eastern Shore say they have uncovered more signs of a space rock's impact 35 million years ago. For more than two weeks, scientists drilled around the clock alongside a parking lot across the harbor from Cape Charles. They stopped at 2,700 feet. From the depths came jumbled, mixed bits of crystalline and melted rock that can be dated, as well as marine deposits, brine and other evidence of an ancient comet or asteroid that slammed into once-shallow waters near the Delmarva Peninsula. Cape Charles is considered Ground Zero for...

Mesopotamian climate change Geoscientists are increasingly exploring an interesting trend: Climate change has been affecting human society for thousands of years. At the American Geophysical Union annual meeting in December, one archaeologist presented research that suggests that climate change affected the way cultures developed and collapsed in the cradle of civilization — ancient Mesopotamia — more than 8,000 years ago. Archaeologists have found evidence for a mass migration from the more temperate northern Mesopotamia to the arid southern region around 6400 B.C. For the previous 1,000 years, people had been cultivating the arable land in northern Mesopotamia, using natural rainwater...

Did Asteroids and Comets Turn the Tides of Civilization? By Mike Baillie The heart of humanity seems at times to have lost its cadence, the rhythmic beat of history collapsing into impotent chaos. Wars raged. Pestilence spread. Famine reigned. Death came early and hard. Dynasties died, and civilization flickered. Such a time came in the sixth century A.D. The Dark Ages settled heavily over Europe. Rome had been beaten back from its empire. Art and science stagnated. Even the sun turned its back. "We marvel to see no shadows of our bodies at noon, to feel the mighty vigor of...

The Dark Ages : Were They Darker Than We Imagined? By Greg Bryant Published in the September 1999 issue of Universe As we approach the end of the Second Millennium, a review of ancient history is not what you would normally expect to read in the pages of Universe. Indeed, except for reflecting on the AD 837 apparition of Halley's Comet (when it should have been as bright as Venus and would have moved through 60 degrees of sky in one day as it passed just 0.03 AU from Earth - three times closer than Hyakutake in 1996), you may...

Public release date: 3-Feb-2004 Contact: Dr Derek Ward-Thompson derek.ward-thompson@astro.cf.ac.uk 029-2087-5314 Cardiff University Astronomers unravel a mystery of the Dark Ages Undergraduates' work blames comet for 6th-century "nuclear winter" Scientists at Cardiff University, UK, believe they have discovered the cause of crop failures and summer frosts some 1,500 years ago – a comet colliding with Earth. The team has been studying evidence from tree rings, which suggests that the Earth underwent a series of very cold summers around 536-540 AD, indicating an effect rather like a nuclear winter. The scientists in the School of Physics and Astronomy believe this was caused...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2004 July 24 A String Of Pearls Credit H. Weaver (JHU), T. Smith (STScI), NASA Explanation: Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, named after its co-discoverers, was often referred to as the "string of pearls" comet. It is famous for its suggestive appearance as well as its collision with the planet Jupiter! The comet's original single nucleus was torn to pieces by Jupiter's strong gravity during a close encounter with the...

Very long but good anthropology/archaeology article Click Here

Meteor clue to end of Middle East civilisations By Robert Matthews, Science Correspondent (Filed: 04/11/2001) SCIENTISTS have found the first evidence that a devastating meteor impact in the Middle East might have triggered the mysterious collapse of civilisations more than 4,000 years ago. satellite images of southern Iraq have revealed a two-mile-wide impact crater caused by a meteor Studies of satellite images of southern Iraq have revealed a two-mile-wide circular depression which scientists say bears all the hallmarks of an impact crater. If confirmed, it would point to the Middle East being struck by a meteor with the violence equivalent ...

The Climax of a Turbulent Millennium: Evidence for Major Impact Events in the late Third Millennium BC Timo Niroma, Helsinki, Finland The First Intermediate PeriodThe Curse of AkkadTroy IIgThird Millennium BC Climate Change and Old World CollapseNatural Catastrophes during Bronze Age Civilisations Two separate cataclysmsSodom and GomorrahWhere did the impacts occur? The First Intermediate Period Selections from "The Egyptians" by C. Aldred (London 1987). "At this distance of time, the overthrow of the Old Kingdom at the end of the Sixth Dynasty has all the appearance of being sudden and complete. "Recent research has attributed the abrupt nature of...

Obituaries in the News Apr 3, 2004 The Associated Press Aaron Bank LOS ANGELES (AP) - Retired Army Col. Aaron Bank, a military icon called "the father of the Green Berets" for his role as the first commander of the Army's elite Special Forces, has died. He was 101. Bank died Thursday of natural causes in an assisted-living facility in Dana Point, said his son-in-law, Bruce Ballantine. In 1952, the Army approved 2,300 spaces for men in a Special Forces unit, the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne), at Ft. Bragg, N.C. Bank was a key figure in pushing for its...

Condit Sues Over Chandra Levy Articles Saturday December 20, 2003 2:46 AM By JILL BARTON Associated Press Writer WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) - Former Rep. Gary Condit sued The National Enquirer and other tabloids for $209 million on Friday, alleging they falsely connected him with the 2001 murder of federal intern Chandra Levy. The California Democrat alleges that the Enquirer, Globe and Star Magazine tabloids, along with parent company American Media Inc., maliciously published defamatory statements that Condit ``was involved in deviant and perverted sexual conduct, which directly or indirectly led to the kidnapping and/or murder of Ms. Levy,''...

What if this levy fails?If this operating levy is not approved by the voters on November 4th, the district will make reductions each year until a levy is passed.The reductions for the 2004-2005 school year are as follows: Cut one full-time High School English teacher. Cut one full-time High School Social Studies teacher.Cut one full-time teacher at West Elementary.Cut full-time Middle School Spanish teacher.Cut one full-time classroom teacher at Park Elementary.Cut half-time Tiger Pause teacher at Park Elementary.Cut two half-time reading teachers.Cut one administrator.Cut one custodian.Cut special education instructional supplies, field trips, summer curriculum writing, and professional development.Cut media generalist...

Voting for higher property taxes actually means lower property taxes, says Bemidji schools superintendent Rollie Morud. Actually, because of the state kicking in dollars, Bemidji School District voters who OK an operating referendum Nov. 4 of at least $301 per student will see local property taxes not rise as high. “You will have to explain that well to the public about lower taxes, or else they’ll claim fuzzy economics,” Wes Gjovik, state Transportation Department district engineer in Bemidji, said Thursday. “All these numbers come straight off the printouts,” Morud said. “We will need to find credible sources to explain how...

<p>Read the death notice posted by Chandra's family or post in the guest book.</p> <p>Chandra Levy's remains were laid to rest at Lakewood Memorial Park on Tuesday, in a private ceremony attended by family and investigators who still hope to solve her murder.</p>

<p>MODESTO, California (CNN) -- Relatives and close friends of Chandra Levy held a private burial Tuesday, just days after Washington police turned her remains over to her family, said George Arata, an attorney for the Levys.</p> <p>Between 75 and 100 people attended the traditional Jewish service, Arata said. The Levys also were having a service at their home Tuesday night, which Arata said was part of the family's tradition.</p>

Police are looking at a man who attacked two joggers in Washington, D.C. in the same area where Chandra was found. The man initially passed a polygraph which police now believe was flawed due to language problems. The suspect is currently in jail for attacking two women.