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Investigations underwayAir India said Tuesday an investigation was underway after a passenger found worms in his sandwich mid-flight. The passenger made the discovery during a flight from New York to New Delhi on September 28 on India's struggling flagship carrier. The passenger reported the incident to Air India, but said he did not hear anything back for two weeks, according to the Press Trust of India. "We are investigating the caterer regarding this incident," airline spokesman Prasad Rao told AFP in New Delhi. The spokesman said the airline maintained high standards, including hygiene conditions, adding that this was a "very...

National Park Service (NPS) rangers removed the handles from some 40 public water pumps and closed restrooms in the 184.5 mile- C&O Canal National Historical Park, but they haven’t been able to keep hikers and bikers off the popular trail known as a “cyclist’s dream.” “It’s full every day,” said Gail Hall, who runs Mountain Side Bikes at the trailhead in Cumberland, Md. “They’re bringing in their own water and utilizing the tree-lined areas [of the park] for restrooms. Some towns like Harper’s Ferry even brought in potties to accommodate them. As long as they can pedal, they don’t care.”

A pilot of a Saudi cargo aircraft en route for Hong Kong canceled the flight after he was attacked by a cat hiding under his seat, a Saudi newspaper reported on Monday. The captain of flight 982 from the Saudi capital Riyadh has just turned the plane’s engine on when the scared cat emerged out and jumped on him. “The captain decided to cancel the flight until further notice after suffering from light injuries,” the London-based Arabic language daily Al Hayat said. It said the cat had sneaked into the plane and hit under the pilot’s seat, adding that it...

The last surviving stretch of German autobahn built under Hitler is set to disappear, almost 80 years after it was first constructed. The four-kilometer stretch of road on the A11, northeast of Berlin in the state of Brandenburg, dates from 1936 and was part of Hitler’s massive motorway-building program of the Reichsautobahn.Newspaper Welt am Sonntag reported that the road survived Nazism and Communism and, despite some repair work, is still the original stretch from the 1930s. …

The findings of Graham Robb, a biographer and historian, bring into question two millennia of thinking about Iron Age Britain and Europe and the stereotyped image of Celts as barbarous, superstitious tribes... "They had their own road system on which the Romans later based theirs," Mr Robb said, adding that the roads were built in Britain from around the 1st Century BC. "It has often been wondered how the Romans managed to build the Fosse Way, which goes from Exeter to Lincoln. They must have known what the finishing point would be, but they didn't conquer that part of Britain...

He is a passionate campaigner on green issues, and now Jeremy Irons has backed a campaign to ban lorries from the quaint Oxfordshire town where he lives. The Oscar–winning actor has thrown his weight behind an action group to prevent HGVs using the narrow streets of Watlington as a rat-run between the M40 and M4. The market town—reputedly the smallest in the country—is regularly snarled up with lorries whose drivers, looking for a shortcut between Oxford and Reading, are directed there by their satnavs. …

Monday, October 25, 20105 Best Countries to Escape America's Decline Activist Post Okay, you're upset with the direction America is headed and you've been thinking of moving to another country. Perhaps you feel exhaustively cynical about the political, economic, or social situation in the U.S. and think it is beyond repair. You wouldn't be alone. Many top economists and other trend forecasters are now openly predicting that a total economic, environmental, and social collapse may be imminent in America.

Heather Harley-Davidson swore profusely after her arrest, a St. Johns County Sheriff's Office deputy saidA St. Augustine woman named Heather Harley-Davidson was arrested for driving under the influence – but she wasn’t driving a motorcycle, the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office said. Heather Harley-Davidson, 49, was at the wheel of a 2001 Silver Lincoln Continental that was swerving from side to side on the 5500 block of A1A late last Wednesday night, according to an offense report from the sheriff’s office. A deputy said that he saw the car leave the road three times. The vehicle was still swerving when...

September survey from Thomas Cook and the Association of British Travel Agents exposed 20 of the most ridiculous (and dumb) complaints by recent vacationers. Below are the republished actual complaints received by “Thomas Cook Vacations” from dissatisfied UK customers (as per their webpage, “Thomas Cook is the UK’s biggest and most popular provider of package tours providing “affordable and accessible” holidays”): 1. “I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local convenience store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts 2. “It’s lazy of the local shopkeepers in Puerto Vallarta to close in...

The region around Florence is renowned for its food. Ian Henderson discovers why as he joins the hunt for one of its most famous delicacies.I'm enjoying a breakfast of scrambled eggs with delicate shavings of ridiculously expensive white truffle. According to experts, it’s the perfect way to bring out the unmistakable but indefinable flavour. I’m at a perfectly dressed table on the terrace of the luxuriously relaxed Villa La Massa hotel overlooking the River Arno, a few miles outside Florence. Below a kingfisher has just shot across the water, a brighter blue than the pale Tuscan sky. Ahead are the...

Imagine a small country, the size of Massachusetts, with no arable land, irrigation, or permanent crops, nor any forests. The rocky desert is everywhere, falling all the way to the sea. To ‘cheer one up’, there is the lowest point on land, in Africa (and the third lowest on earth); an eerie crater lake called ‘Lac Assal’ (−155 m). And there are countless rock formations, bare, hostile, and frightening. This tiny country has one of the most strategic locations on earth, at least from the West’s geopolitical interest’s point of view. It lies between Somalia, Ethiopia and what is often...

Academics at Coventry University have uncovered complex social networks within age-old Icelandic sagas, which challenge the stereotypical image of Vikings as unworldly, violent savages. Pádraig Mac Carron and Ralph Kenna from the University's Applied Mathematics Research Centre have carried out a detailed analysis of the relationships described in ancient Icelandic manuscripts to shed new light on Viking society. In a study published in the European Physical Journal, Mac Carron and Kenna have asked whether remnants of reality could lurk within the pages of the documents in which Viking sagas were preserved. They applied methods from statistical physics to social networks...

Reports of missing objects from Cairo's Museum of Islamic Art A German-Egyptian excavation mission in the Nile Delta town of Tel-Basta unearthed today a life-size statue of the nineteenth dynasty king Ramses II carved in red granite. The statue, at 195cm high and 160cm wide, was found accidently during a routine excavation carried out by the joint mission. It was discovered in the so-called Great Temple area's eastern side, inside the temple of cat goddess Bastet in Sharkiya's Tel-Basta. Antiquities minister Mohamed Ibrahim explained that the newly-discovered statue depicts king Ramses II standing between the goddess Hathor and the god...

Police say man had torch which attracted the fishA Saudi man died after ‘colliding’ with a pointed a fish resembling a swordfish while he was swimming in the Gulf sea, a newspaper reported on Saturday. Police said the fish had apparently been attracted by a searchlight carried by the victim while he was swimming in a banned area on the eastern coastline of the Gulf Kingdom. The incident took place on Thursday night and is reminiscent of the death of famous Australian wildlife expert Steve Irwin, who was killed six years ago by a stingray. Irwin, who died at the...

Call it Space Survivor. Thirteen years after that now-classic desert island nightmare premiered on NBC, the executive producer behind Survivor is planning to host another reality competition that will land the winner a rocket trip to space. We don’t know yet what feats of strength, endurance, intelligence or teamwork (or is that backstabbing?) will be needed to score a trip with Virgin Galactic. A press release simply promises a “groundbreaking, elimination competition series where everyday people compete for the ultimate prize”, but we sure hope a lot of the individual contests are space-related.

Just before the weekend, the National Park Service informed charter boat captains in Florida that the Florida Bay was "closed" due to the shutdown. Until government funding is restored, the fishing boats are prohibited from taking anglers into 1,100 square-miles of open ocean. Fishing is also prohibited at Biscayne National Park during the shutdown.

The World's 12 Most Dangerous Roads Adventure is around literally every corner when you take these wild rides... In some cases, though, it's more that just topography that makes a road dangerous. Some pass through war-torn countries, others are plagued by bandits and still more of our favorite adventure destinations are just too far North, where the roads are a frozen mess three-quarters of the year and a muddy quagmire the for the rest. The controlled environments of our vehicles—especially when contrasted against the unforgiving environments of the great outdoors—all too often give us a false sense of security....

Diesel pollution makes it harder for honeybees to find flowers by changing the chemical make-up of their scent, scientists have found. Honeybees use floral odors to find flowers that will give the best yields of pollen and nectar, but diesel fumes can affect their ability to locate and recognize the plants, potentially affecting pollination and ultimately global food security. British researchers took eight chemicals found in the odor of oilseed rape flowers and mixed them both with clean air, which had no impact on the scent, and air containing diesel fumes. When mixed with diesel fumes, six of the eight...

I admit it, I drove in the car pool lane as a single driver. I got in a hurry and started playing that game of seeing what I could get away with. I drove from the Veteran's Hospital in Santa Rosa, toward San Rafael, past acres of vineyards, past sleep cows, past car lots full of vehicles and tried to save some time. All was well until some other driver peered out of her SUV to see me whizzing past, then and decided to join me in the express lane. That single driver was soon followed by another in one...

A committee administering Egypt's antiquities decided Tuesday to re-erect a dismantled replica tomb of King Tutankhamun, placing it beside the former residence of discoverer Howard Carter on Luxor's west bank. Secretary-general of the Ministry of the State of Antiquities (MSA), Mostafa Amin, told Ahram Online that the replica tomb will provide tourists with a better picture of how Carter lived during his excavation work at the Valley of the Kings in the early 1920s. Tourists can already visit the Carter Rest-House in Luxor, which has been restored and developed into a museum displaying the tools and instruments he used during...

Flames that engulfed the front end of a Tesla electric car near Seattle also burned in the vehicle's battery pack, making it difficult for firefighters to extinguish the blaze, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. In an incident report released under Washington state's public records law, firefighters wrote that they appeared to have Tuesday's fire under control, but the flames reignited. Crews found that water seemed to intensify the fire, so they began using a dry chemical extinguisher. After dismantling the front end of the vehicle and puncturing holes in the battery pack, crews used a circular saw...

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An Arab sheikh who parked his massive car in a public square in front of the town hall of the Spanish city of Valencia has escaped punishment because the vehicle was too large to be towed away. Sheikh Hamad bin Hamdan Al Nahya of Abu Dhabi parked his custom “Black Spider” in the square during a recent visit to the city. … But Sheikh Hamad escaped a parking fine because he didn’t have European Union number plates. …

A Spanish judge has got himself into hot water after he said a driving school was within its rights to charge female learners more than their male counterparts. … Back in 2011, Autoescuela Zaragoza advertised a deal where, for €665 ($900), prospective male drivers aged 18 to 22 could get as many classes as they needed to obtain their driving license. The price for female learners was €850 ($1,155). …

I don't travel much, but right now I'm in the A Concourse at Atlanta and I fu**ing cannot get away from CNN. It's everywhere, spewing propaganda about children suffering from Head Start being shut down. Haven't they heard that Head Start is a fraud and a colossal waste? Seriously, this experience is like the telescreen in 1984. Only members of the Inner Party can shut it off, and there's no members around right now. I think I'll go to the chapel and say a few prayers for JimRob.

Chrysler is recalling more than 142,000 pickup trucks and SUVs worldwide because of software glitches that could affect instrument cluster lighting and braking systems. Around 132,000 Jeep Grand Cherokee SUVs and 10,800 Ram pickup trucks from the 2014 model year are affected. …

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Ancient DNA methodology was applied to analyse sequences extracted from freshly unearthed remains (teeth) of 4 individuals deeply deposited in the slightly alkaline soil of Tell Ashara (ancient Terqa) and Tell Masaikh (ancient Kar-Assurnasirpal) – Syrian archaeological sites, both in the middle Euphrates valley... [also] fifty-nine dental non-metric traits on a sample of teeth from 350 human skeletons excavated at three sites in the lower middle Euphrates valley. This showed a stable population until after the Mongolian invasion which resulted in a large depopulation of northern Mesopotamia in the 13th century CE. The final major change occurred during the 17th...

Archaeologists working on Iasos on Turkey’s Aegean coast have recently discovered that the ancient city was buried under a mountain of ash caused by the explosion of Mt. Thera on Santorini 3,600 years ago. Excavation works have also revealed a sewage system that was in place in the 4,000-year-old city and tunnels to the city’s theater... Spanu said columns that were found one meter underground provided vital information about the history of the city. “Following the explosion of the volcano Thera, which also caused the destruction of the Minoan civilization on the islands of Crete and Santorini, the ancient city...

A circular has been issued by the Indian Consulate warning pilgrims not to accept food and drink from strangers. The circular was disseminated on Facebook and other social media sites following an incident in Makkah, where several Indian pilgrims fainted after drinking a cup of tea offered by a stranger, who then stole their belongings. The circular was issued by the Indian Haj Pilgrims Affairs Office in Makkah. Speaking to Arab News, Mohammed Noor Rahman Sheikh, deputy consul general and Haj consul, said: “We have already brought this incident to the attention of Saudi authorities and they have launched an...

A stowaway raccoon is thought to have survived a month at sea by eating cardboard. Curious Meeko got in a container in Davenport, Iowa, US, that was sent by rail to Halifax in Canada and shipped to Liverpool. The cargo was driven to Ebbw Vale in South Wales, where workers found a furry extra in their machine parts order. ‘She was really thin when she arrived but is starting to put some weight on,’ said Jan Garen, who has given Meeko a home at Wales Ape and Monkey sanctuary, in Abercrave. ‘She is getting used to us but she has...

Top 10 dream cars High-end luxury and sports cars stir the imagination, yet few will ever be able to buy them. This crowd-sourced list of dream cars consists of models frequently viewed at Cars.com but rarely drawing buyer inquiries. Cars.com editors name their dream cars here. What car do you dream of owning? The Lamborghini $354,000-$450,000 Murcielago & slightly cheaper cousin Gallardo? The Maybach Type 62? The Rolls-Royce Ghost, Phantom & Phantom Drophead Coupe? The Aston Martin V8 Vantage & DBS, Bentley Continental GTC and the oh so cheap Bentley Continental GT at $185K?

'Eyes gouged out, bodies hanging from hooks, and fingers removed with pliers': Horrific claims of torture emerge as soldiers reveal gory Kenyan mall massacre details Kenyan soldiers claim to find scenes of torture by mall terrorists They say children found dead in food fridges with knives still in bodies Men were said to have been castrated and had fingers removed By Paul Bentley Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2434278/Kenya-mall-attack-torture-claims-emerge-soldiers-Eyes-gouged-bodies-hooks-fingers-removed.html#ixzz2g8kwK3gd Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Myanmar is the world’s primary source of top-grade jade, but the jade mining industry in the Southeast Asian nation remains mired in a humanitarian catastrophe two years after the reform government took over control -- tens of thousands of workers are exploited and heroin is abused on an unprecedented scale, creating the world’s largest HIV-infected community. ... For less than the price of a beer, an injectionist administers the drug directly into the vein of a miner, delivering as many as 800 separate injections from the same dirty needle. Large quantities of the drug are provided by the mine owners,...

While the nature and timing of the very beginning of the Neolithic in Ireland is still debated, our results -- based on new Bayesian chronologies of plant macro-remains -- are consistent with a rapid and abrupt transition to agriculture from c. 3750 cal BC, though there are hints of earlier Neolithic presence at a number of sites... Cereals were being consumed at many sites during this period, with emmer wheat dominant, but also barley (naked and hulled), as well as occasional evidence for einkorn wheat, naked wheat and flax. The earliest farmers in Ireland, like farmers elsewhere across NW Europe......

Abstract -- We present dendrochronological evidence of long-distance oak timber supply for the harbour of the Roman town Forum Hadriani, an important market place and point for military supplies located at the watershed of the Rhine and Meuse rivers, near the North Sea in the west of the current Netherlands. During excavations at Voorburg-Arentsburg (site Forum Hadriani) in 2007-2008, the wooden quay from the Roman harbour was revealed and 60 oak (Quercus sp.) piles were sampled and analysed by dendrochronology. Hierarchical cluster analysis was employed to group the tree-ring series from the piles according to their affinity, and three object...

Found in Tarquinia, a hill town about 50 miles northwest of Rome, famous for its Etruscan art treasures, the 2,600 year old intact burial site came complete with a full array of precious grave goods. "It's a unique discovery, as it is extremely rare to find an inviolate Etruscan tomb of an upper-class individual. It opens up huge study opportunities on the Etruscans," Alessandro Mandolesi, of the University of Turin, told Discovery News. Mandolesi is leading the excavation in collaboration with the Archaeological Superintendency of Southern Etruria. A fun loving and eclectic people who among other things taught the French...

It’s the most significant archaeological discovery in the Portsmouth area for many years. Buried a few feet under a garden in the centre of Havant, archaeologists stumbled upon a Roman well filled with coins and a bronze ring with a carving of Neptune, the Roman god of the sea. Perhaps most intriguing was the discovery of eight dog skeletons at the bottom of the well. Experts believe the dogs, which were worshipped in some ancient religions, may have been dropped down the ‘sacred well’ as a sacrifice to the gods. The excavation was done at Homewell House, a Georgian property...

Archaelogists excavating a medieval church in a dales village have found further evidence that the site was an Anglo Saxon settlement. A carved section from an eighth century stone cross was unearthed during a dig at St Botolph"s field in Frosterley in Weardale this week. The discovery was met with great excitement from the archaeologists and volunteers who were digging on the site as part of the Altogether Archaeology project... Mr Frodsham said Frosterley was largely a post-medieval village but recent finds have suggested people lived in the area much earlier... It has already attracted more than 500 volunteers who...

Many researchers had assumed the traps were fairly modern, but Porat's colleagues were curious about their provenance and asked her to analyze the traps. Porat used a technique called optical dating to measure the amount of radiation that had been absorbed from the environment in two of the leopard traps. By comparing that with background levels of radiation in the area, which have changed very little over the millennia, the team could determine when the traps were created. One of the traps was about 5,000 years old, while the other was 1,600 years old. That suggests this same technology was...

An ancient relic that shines a light on Neolithic life has been discovered on a picturesque reserve in Highland Perthshire. The Scottish Wildlife Trust made the exciting archaeological discovery while repairing a wall in Balnaguard Glen. Volunteers were working on field walls on the hillside when they noticed one of the wall stones was shaped like a shallow basin. It has since been identified as a possible Neolithic quern stone -- potentially more than 6,000 years old -- with its shape created by years of rubbing grain with a heavy stone to make flour. The conservation charity believes the find...

An international team of archaeologists led by experts from the University of York has uncovered evidence of human activity in the high slopes of the French Alps dating back over 8000 years... one of the most detailed archaeological investigations carried out at high altitudes. It reveals a story of human occupation and activity in one of the world's most challenging environments from the Mesolithic to the Post-Medieval period. The work included the excavation of a series of stone animal enclosures and human dwellings considered some of most complex high altitude Bronze Age structures found anywhere in the Alps... Excavations carried...

The heart of Eleutherna beat for a very long time, from the Neolithic era to the Byzantine period, when it vanished from the map... a palimpsest showing a constant human presence that dates back to 3000 BC, architecture from the late Minoan period, prosperity in Homeric times and a great burst of growth in the Roman era. The decline of Eleutherna was gradual, starting in the 8th century AD and culminating in the 13th century. In the 14th century, the Venetians prohibited the unruly Cretans from living in the fortified city due to fears they would create a rebel stronghold....

The question of how human societies evolve from small groups to the huge, anonymous and complex societies of today has been answered mathematically, accurately matching the historical record on the emergence of complex states in the ancient world. Intense warfare is the evolutionary driver of large complex societies, according to new research from a trans-disciplinary team at the University of Connecticut, the University of Exeter in England, and the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS)... The study's cultural evolutionary model predicts where and when the largest-scale complex societies arose in human history. Simulated within a realistic landscape of...

An unexpected discovery awaited a team of Israeli archaeologists in a drainage canal dating from roughly 2,000 years ago: an aluminum bottlecap. From a beer bottle. No, the good people of ancient Sussita weren't producing aluminum metal. The meaning of the startling discovery is that millennia after its construction, the drainage canal was still working, centuries after the city's final destruction by earthquake. Made of aluminum and feather-light, the bottle-cap floated on rainwater that washed into the canal, says Dr. Michael Eisenberg, head of an Israeli archaeological team digging the site. This canal, or less romantically -- a sewer, passed...

...the complete 50-page parchment manuscript is in its original binding and contains Hebrew script that incorporates Babylonian vowel pointing. Steve Green, president of the Hobby Lobby craft store chain who oversees support for the Green Collection, announced the find at the annual meeting of the Religion Newswriters Association's annual conference in Austin, Texas, along with plans for a new museum that will house the book and more than 40,000 ancient religious texts and artifacts... "We are not collectors," said Green, an evangelical Christian. "We buy (ancient biblical texts and artifacts) because of the story that they tell. We believe in...

Abstract: Ten Viking Age individuals from the northern Norwegian site at Flakstad were analysed for δ13C, δ15N and ancient mitochondrial DNA fragments. The material derives from both single and multiple burials with individuals treated in different ways. The genetic analyses show that the individuals buried together were unlikely to be maternally related, and stable isotope analyses suggest different strata of society. It is, therefore, suggested that slaves may have been offered as grave gifts at Flakstad. A comparison with the remaining population from single graves shows that the presumed slaves had a diet similar to that of the common population,...

If you’re looking to take a different route home after a night out we don’t recommended you drive through an underground train tunnel like one man did in Germany. Martin Huber was arrested on tracks in Bochum after trespassing on to them in his black Citroen. He had initially been following a tram line but did not stop when he hit the tube station. Unsurprisingly, the 27-year-old was found to be more than three times over the legal limit for alcohol allowed when driving. He reportedly had not intended to take the underground route and immediately stopped after he realised...

When I appeared at the airport today, Avis refused the rental says I had bad credit. What I don't understand is that since I paid most of the rental in advance, they could have checked that based on the information I provided. They charged me a $100 no show fee since they refused to rent me the car. I have never heard of such nonsense.

Dr Francis Wenban-Smith discovered a site containing remains of an extinct straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) in 2003, in an area of land at Ebbsfleet in Kent, during the construction of the High Speed 1 rail link from the Channel Tunnel to London... Excavation revealed a deep sequence of deposits containing the elephant remains, along with numerous flint tools and a range of other species such as; wild aurochs, extinct forms of rhinoceros and lion, Barbary macaque, beaver, rabbit, various forms of vole and shrew, and a diverse assemblage of snails. These remains confirm that the deposits date to a warm...