Free Republic

Natascha weighs less than when kidnapped By Kate Connolly in Vienna (Filed: 26/08/2006) The full horror of Natascha Kampusch's eight-year kidnap ordeal became clearer yesterday as her mother said that the 18-year-old girl weighed less now than when she was abducted. Brigitte Sirny said she had been shopping for size 6 clothes for her daughter whose weight had dropped to 6st 6lb despite having grown to 5ft 3in. She said her daughter had "nothing" except for an orange dress she was wearing when she escaped her "master". Natascha has developed a formal, slightly stilted high-German accent similar to that of...

Archaeologists find 2,500-year-old mummy in Mongolia, tattoos and all Thu Aug 24, 2:18 PM ETAFP/DDP/GAI-HO Photo: This undated picture released by the German Archaeological Institute (GAI) shows a mummified body from... BERLIN (AFP) - An international group of archaeologists has unearthed a well-preserved, 2,500-year-old mummy frozen in the snowcapped mountains of Mongolia complete with blond hair, tattoos and a felt hat. The president of the German Archaeological Institute, Hermann Parzinger, hailed the "fabulous find" at a press conference to present the 28-member team's discovery in Berlin. The Scythian warrior was found in June at a height of 2,600 meters (8,500...

8/17/2006 - RANDOLPH AIR FORCE BASE, Texas (AFPN) -- The Air Force is on track to make its recruiting goal this year, marking the seventh consecutive year the service has brought in the right number and mix of new Airmen. To date, 25,645 people have enlisted in the Air Force and entered active duty in fiscal 2006. That puts the Air Force on pace to send 30,750 men and women to basic training and technical schools to fill jobs in more than 150 areas. In response to the Air Force's force shaping, fiscal 2007 recruiting goals have been reduced by...

Cambridge scholar makes rare 30,000-year-old find Archaeologists have unearthed a pair of tiny bone fragments dating back almost 30,000 years and featuring minute designs carved by some of our earliest European ancestors. The thumbnail-sized bone fragments are engraved with parallel lines and match similar artefacts uncovered in the same area during the 19th century. They were carved by hunter-gatherers as they slowly made their way north in pursuit of moving populations of mammoth and reindeer 25-30,000 years ago. The unusual find was made by a Cambridge scholar, Becky Farbstein, who has been working at Predmosti in north Moravia, in the...

A 3,000-year-old voyage of discovery JENNIFER VEITCHMen would have used this type of log boat to fish and hunt, as well as to trade goods with others, as this drawing exhibits. Picture: Courtesy Perth and Kinross Heritage Trust IN ANCIENT times, when Scotland was virtually covered in dense forest, there was only one way to get around. Traveling by boat helped early Scots to find food and trade goods with their neighbours. The work to extract the boat from the river bed is slow and painstaking. Picture: Courtesy Historic Scotland Now, with the excavation of a 3,000-year-old log boat, archaeologists...

Archaeologists seek hints on 4000-year-old civilization in Tekirdað Wednesday, July 19, 2006 ANKARA - Turkish Daily News Archaeologists working on an ancient Thracian site in Tekirdað said on Monday they have unveiled part of an ancient city named Heraion Teichos, which is thought to date back to 2000 B.C. The excavation team of Mimar Sinan University's Archaeology Department has been working to unearth the ancient city, located near Tekirdað's Karaevli village, for the last six years. Head of the excavations, Associate Professor Neþe Atik, told the Doðan News Agency on Monday that they were the first team to conduct the...

AL ASAD, Iraq (July 12, 2006) -- From navigating the jungles of Vietnam to surviving the deserts of Iraq, one warrior has been a part of almost every major campaign that the Marine Corps has had in the past four decades. Marines with Task Force Military Police, 1st Battalion, 14th Marine Regiment, honored Chief Warrant Officer 4 Wayne H. Silva for his 40th anniversary in the Marine Corps while in Al Asad July 8. "June 28, 1966, was the day that I stepped onto the yellow footprints," stated Silva, Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear defense officer, Task Force Military Police....

2,300-year-old artefacts may change Ashoka-Buddhist history (FOC) BHUBANESWAR: Orissa Institute of Maritime and South East Asian Studies (OIMSEAS) has unearthed some 2,300-year-old artefacts at Jajpur district in Orissa, which, it claimed, could change some historical narratives on the Ashokan period. The description of Chinese pilgrim Hieun-Tsang about Ashoka that he had constructed 10 stupas in Odra country where Buddha had preached may come true. Earlier, historians refused to accept the narrative. We have already analysed five stupas and found three more similar structures,” OIMSEAS Director Debaraj Pradhan told mediapersons here. He said a huge inscribed monolithic stupa along with other...

30,000-year-old Relics Reveal Pre-historic Civilization along Qinghai-Tibet Railway 2006-06-24 13:59:42 Xinhua Chinese archaeologists claim that relics unearthed in the areas along the Qinghai-Tibet Railway proved that human beings lived there at least 30,000 years ago. Archaeologists with the Qinghai Provincial Archaeological Institute said they collected large number of chipped stone tools including knives and pointed implements dating back 30,000 years in the Tuotuo River valley, Hoh Xil, a habitat for Tibetan antelopes, and Qaidam Basin, where the railway runs through, during recent excavations. More than 30 stone implements were also discovered at the site of Sancha River bridge on the...

Japanese researchers discover remains of what appears to be 4,800-year-old temple in Peru 06/20/2006 The Asahi Shimbun CHANCAY, Peru--Japanese researchers said they have discovered--with the unintended help of looters--what appears to be a temple ruins at least 4,800 years old that could be one of the oldest in the Americas. The temple is believed to have been built before or around 2600 BC when Peru's oldest known city, Caral, was created, the researchers said. The ruins were found in the ruins of Shicras located in the Chancay Valley about 100 kilometers north of Lima. The team started full-scale excavation work...

Jun. 18, 2006 0:24 | Updated Jun. 18, 2006 10:4511,000-year-old grain shakes up beliefs on beginnings of agriculture By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH Bar-Ilan University researchers have found a cache of 120,000 wild oat and 260,000 wild barley grains at the Gilgal archaeological site near Jericho that date back 11,000 years - providing evidence of cultivation during the Neolithic Period. The research, performed by Drs. Ehud Weiss and Anat Hartmann of BIU's department of Land of Israel studies and Prof. Mordechai Kislev of the faculty of life sciences, appears in the June 16 edition of the prestigious journal Science. It is the...

BAGHDAD, May 29, 2006 — The ratification of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s cabinet ministers is another sign of progress toward unity, security and prosperity in Iraq. This past week, I met with delegations from two of the 29 nations that comprise Multinational Force-Iraq to discuss future support to Iraq’s democratic government. The El Salvadoran Minister of Defense Gen. Otto Alejandro Romero, accompanied by several Salvadoran Congressmen, reviewed the contributions of their battalion and discussed progress with Iraqi and coalition leaders. In the same week Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen inspected the Danish contingent and met al-Maliki and senior officials...

Climate change may be key to 10,000-year-old mystery - University of Alberta leads investigation into disappearance of ancient people OTTAWA, May 16 /CNW Telbec/ - Today, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) announced an investment of $2.5 million in a research project that will investigate the link between climate change, human genetics and the disappearance of an entire culture from the Boreal forest region of Siberia between 7,000 and 6,000 BC. With the help of DNA analysis, radiocarbon dating and climate modeling, University of Alberta professor Andrzej Weber will lead an international team of scholars in...

FORT HUACHUCA — Soldiers of the 69th Signal Company returned home after nearly a year in Iraq where they put in a number of communication infrastructures. The 142 men and women of the unit — most of whom are cable dogs, individuals who install communication lines — stepped off the charter aircraft at 8 p.m. Thursday, concluding a trip from Kuwait to Arizona. Waiting for the ramp to be put up to the plane, soldiers of the 11th Signal Brigade, to which the 69th belongs, were as anxious to see their fellow soldiers get off the commercial airliner as probably...

Blair: I'll quit next year - trust me By George Jones, Political Editor and Brendan Carlin (Filed: 09/05/2006) Tony Blair abandoned his election promise to serve a full third term last night, indicating that he could stand down next summer. Although he refused to set a timetable for his departure, saying that it would paralyse government, he anointed Gordon Brown as his successor and promised to give him sufficient time to establish himself before the next election. Tony Blair was in no mood for compromise yesterday As the Labour Party stood on the brink of civil war over the timing...

TRENTON, N.J. - New Jersey: We're Not So Good With Slogans. The state has jettisoned "Come See For Yourself," its second attempt at a tagline in less than a year. It was the product of a statewide contest set up by then-acting Gov. Richard J. Codey last fall, after he rejected a consultant's offering: "We'll Win You Over." State tourism officials said legal issues led them to scrap the latest slogan, explaining that West Virginia and other states previously used "Come See For Yourself." "We are proceeding without the slogan. We will revisit the next steps at the end of...

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (April 19) - For 84-year-old Josephine Crawford, the golden years just got a lot more golden. After a night playing the slot machines, the retired waitress widow was about to call it quits Tuesday when she hit a $10 million jackpot - the biggest in the history of casino gambling in Atlantic City. Crawford, who gambles here twice a week and has been going to the casinos since the first one opened in 1978, had never won more than $1,000 before she came into the big money at the nickel slots at Harrah's Atlantic City. The widow...

Archaeologists unearth 9,000-year-old settlement in Seydiþedir Thursday, March 16, 2006 As a result of four years of painstaking excavation, a settlement dating back 9,000 years was discovered in central Anatolia. The tumulus is unique for the region as it is surrounded by walls ANKARA - Turkish Daily News A settlement dating back 9,000 years was discovered during archaeological excavations in Seydiþehir, a district of the central Anatolian province of Konya. Following a visit to Gökhüyük, where the settlement was unearthed, Konya's Provincial Culture and Tourism Director Abdüssettar Yarar told the Anatolia news agency that excavations have been conducted for the...

MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. (Mar. 2, 2006) -- In late February 2005, a 26-year-old Harrisburg, Penn. native deployed to the western part of the Al Anbar province, Iraq with Regimental Combat Team-2, 2nd Marine Division. One year later, he returned to the U.S. forever changed. Lance Cpl. Shane S. Keller, a combat photographer with RCT-2, recently came home after a year deployed to Iraq, where he had been supporting Marines and Iraqi Forces during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Keller’s job in Iraq consisted of documenting the security and stabilization operations the RCT conducted for historical, training and intelligence purposes....

Qasr'e Shirin's 6,000-Year-Old Mystery Feb 26, 2006 Discovery of some clay relics from Obeid Site (an ancient site in Mesopotamia and current Iraq belonging to the 4th Millennium BC) in the city of Qasr'e Shirin has laid the origin and destination of this city’s migrants about 6,000 years ago under ambiguity. Archeologists want to know whether these migrants came to this region from Mesopotamia or they were traveling among different regions of Zagros Mountains. "Continuation of the surveys and identifications in this city led to the discovery of 75 ancient sites most of which belong to the Obeid Site," said...