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Researchers from the University of Cincinnati have found evidence of a cosmic cataclysm 1,500 years that may be responsible for the downfall of the Hopewell Culture. The Hopewell Culture was a widely dispersed set of pre-Columbian Native American populations connected by a common network of trade routes from 100 BC to AD 500 in the Middle Woodland period. The researchers found evidence of a cosmic airburst at 11 Hopewell archaeological sites in three states stretching across the Ohio River Valley in the United States, which rained debris down into the Earth’s atmosphere creating a fiery explosion around 1,500 years ago...

Defense attorneys expressed outrage Tuesday when federal prosecutors compared 10 Earth Liberation Front arsonists who are awaiting sentencing to Ku Klux Klan arsonists. The six men and four women, branded eco-terrorists, have pleaded guilty to charges related to 20 fires set in five Western states from 1996 to 2001 that caused $40 million of damage. Targets included the Vail ski resort, wild horse corrals, National Forest ranger stations, meat packing plants, research laboratories, lumber company offices and a tree farm. The 10 are to be sentenced starting next week. Federal prosecutors asked Judge Ann Aiken that a so-called terrorism enhancement...

1998 Fires At Vail Ski Resort Cost $12 Million In Damage. Two people accused of setting the 1998 fire at the Vail ski resort will be sentenced in December on eight counts of arson stemming from the blaze that caused some $12 million in damage. Chelsea Gerlach and Stanislas Meyerhoff, both 29, were arraigned Wednesday in federal court in Eugene. They are to enter pleas and be sentenced on Dec. 14, when they are also to be sentenced for other arson-related crimes to which they pleaded guilty in July. Under plea deals, both agreed to have the Colorado charges transferred...

A federal grand jury in Denver has indicted four people on eight counts of arson for a series of eco-terrorism fires set at the Vail ski area in 1998. Those indicted are: Chelsea Dawn Gerlach, 29, Stanislas Gregory Meyerhoff, 28, Josephine Sunshine Overaker, 31, and Rebecca Jeanette Rubin, 33. Gerlach and Meyerhoff are presently in federal custody in Oregon, facing separate arson charges. The whereabouts of Overaker and Rubin are unknown. The Two Elks Lodge and other structures on Vail Mountain were burned to the ground on Oct. 19, 1998. Damage was estimated at $12 million. A group called the...

Ancient American Skeleton Has European DNA Link[Original headline: Sinkhole Skeleton Skeleton’s DNA Could Shed Light on American Migrations] Vanlue, Ohio [AP] — The discovery of prehistoric tools from an Ohio cave is one of several finds that has scientists questioning the identity of settlers thought to have moved in 11,000 years ago. A just completed excavation of Sheriden Cave in Wyandot County, 100 miles southwest of Cleveland, revealed tools made from flaked stone and bone. The items are scheduled to go on display next year at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Kent State University archaeologist Kenneth Tankersley, who led...

Three environmental activists were cooking up plastic explosives and had planned to test a device the day they were arrested, federal prosecutors alleged Wednesday as they indicted them. The three face five to 20 years in federal prison if they are convicted of conspiring to use fire or explosives to damage property. The suspects planned assaults this spring in the name of the Earth Liberation Front, a 'loosey-goosey, sort of mist-of-the-fog kind of an organization' of environmental activists, U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott said. Eric McDavid, 28, Zachary Jensen, 20, and Lauren Weiner, 20, remain in jail. They could enter a...

After a delay of nearly a month, a Flagstaff woman accused of being connected with the 1998 firebombing of a logging company in Oregon has been released from jail. Kendall Tankersley, 28, also known as Sarah Harvey, was released from an Oregon jail Jan. 10 on $150,000 bond. She is back in Flagstaff, ready to begin taking two classes at Northern Arizona University. Tankersley, a former employee at the university, was indicted in November by a federal grand jury in Oregon. She is accused of attempted arson and arson, acting as a lookout, in connection with a fire at U.S....

PHOENIX (AP) -- An Arizona bookstore owner charged in the firebombing of a government wildlife lab in Washington committed suicide in his jail cell Thursday, officials said. William C. Rodgers, 40, of Prescott, Ariz., suffocated after placing a plastic bag over his head while in a one-person cell in Flagstaff, the Coconino County medical examiner said. Rodgers was one of six people arrested earlier this month in connection with ecoterror attacks in Oregon and Washington in recent years. He was accused of setting fire to the Agriculture Department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services facility in Olympia, Wash., in 1998....

An employee of Northern Arizona University was arrested and charged Thursday with being a member of an ecoterrorism group and setting fires... Her arrest, one of six across the country and two in Arizona, marks the culmination of a nine-year investigation by the FBI and dozens of other agencies into several arsons in the Pacific Northwest, many of which were claimed to be the work of the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front. Kendall Tankersley, 28, also known as Sarah Kendall Harvey, stood shackled and bound in front of U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Aspey in Flagstaff as a...