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Alexandria’s sanitation authority is trying to take more than 10 acres of property through an eminent domain seizure, offering nearly $10 million less than it bid on the land in 2005. The authority needs to expand its wastewater treatment plant, according to a condemnation petition filed in Alexandria Circuit Court in June. But it is not willing to pay the $51 million value of the property located between Eisenhower Avenue and the Beltway, said the property’s owner, Charles Hooff III. The sewer authority has made several offers on the property over more than two years, according to the authority’s petition....

Fairfax County police said they arrested an Alexandria man in connection with the sexual assault of a teenage boy. Raymond Craig Alexander, a 34-year-old Fairfax County Park Authority employee, was arrested Wednesday after property taken during a search of his home established probable cause, according to police. Alexander is charged with aggravated sexual battery, forcible sodomy and custodial indecent liberties with a child. Federal authorities also are investigating Alexander, and more charges could be filed. Anyone with information about the case should call Crime Solvers at 866-411-TIPS/8477 or police at 703-691-2131

Hidden City Found Beneath Alexandria Charles Q. Choi Special to LiveScience LiveScience.com Tue Jul 24, 4:45 PM ET The legendary city of Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great as he swept through Egypt in his quest to conquer the known world. Now scientists have discovered hidden underwater traces of a city that existed at Alexandria at least seven centuries before Alexander the Great arrived, findings hinted at in Homer's Odyssey and that could shed light on the ancient world. Alexandria was founded in Egypt on the shores of the Mediterranean in 332 B.C. to immortalize Alexander the Great. The...

A residents advisory committee is preparing studies on abortion and sexual orientation to be used in classes required for early teens in Alexandria public schools. Proposed additions to the curriculum include studies about why women seek abortions and about homosexuality, heterosexuality and sexual discrimination.... Officials said the answers would be private but provide basis for teachers to explain the differences in philosophies between pro-life and pro-choice groups without using "insulting, attacking or prejudicial language." One lesson would include a history of abortions, beginning in the Colonial era when the practice was permitted under English law and continuing through 1997 when...

A Malian walks out of the Great Mosque in Djenne, Mali in this August 10, 2003 file photo. Researchers in Timbuktu are fighting to preserve tens of thousands of ancient texts which they say prove Africa had a written history at least as old as the European Renaissance. (Yves Herman/Reuters) Researchers in Timbuktu are fighting to preserve tens of thousands of ancient texts which they say prove Africa had a written history at least as old as the European Renaissance. Private and public libraries in the fabled Saharan town in Mali have already collected 150,000 brittle manuscripts, some of...

June 27, 2006 Tuesday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time Psalm: Tuesday 27 Reading 12 Kgs 19:9b-11, 14-21, 31-35a, 36 Sennacherib, king of Assyria, sent envoys to Hezekiahwith this message: “Thus shall you say to Hezekiah, king of Judah:‘Do not let your God on whom you rely deceive youby saying that Jerusalem will not be handed overto the king of Assyria.You have heard what the kings of Assyria have doneto all other countries: they doomed them! Will you, then, be saved?’” Hezekiah took the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it;then he went up to the...

Last weekend the first of the weekly Tridentine Masses was celebrated at St. Lawrence Church in Alexandria. In March, Arlington Bishop Paul S. Loverde granted permission to two parishes to celebrate the pre-Vatican II form of Mass. The Mass was offered on the feast of Pope St. Pius V. The Tridentine form is celebrated in accordance with the 1570 Roman Missal promulgated by Pope Pius V for the Latin West and revised in 1962. Ancient rites, those older than 200 years, were able to retain their traditions. Following the Council of Trent, Pope Pius wanted to standardize worship in...

Alexander wasn't quite so great after all. Sure, he conquered most of the world known to the ancient Greeks, but he didn't found the Egyptian city of Alexandria - he just rebranded it. It now seems that this part of the Nile has been settled for at least 4500 years, pre-dating Alexander's arrival by a good two millennia. Alain Véron from the Paul Cézanne University in Aix-en-Provence, France, and colleagues made the discovery by measuring the variations in lead concentration in a mud core from Alexandria's ancient harbour. They determined how lead levels had changed over time by carbon-dating seashells...

Two employment agencies and nine individuals charged with hiring and harboring illegal aliens, mail fraud and laundering $5.3 million -- ICE agents arrest suspects in New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio -- WASHINGTON, D.C. – Two temporary employment agencies and nine individuals affiliated with the agencies have been charged in a $5.3 million scheme involving the employment of illegal aliens, harboring of illegal aliens, mail fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering, according to a federal indictment unsealed today in the Northern District of Ohio. This morning, agents from the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Department of...

Al Qaeda High - Alleged Bush Assassin a Graduate of Local Saudi Madrassa Stella Jatras, who normally follows the Balkans for us, reports on efforts to establish yet another Saudi Madrassa outside Washington, D.C. Nestled snuggly in the Northern hills of Virginia, lies the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA), better known as Al-Qaeda High. ISA's most notable graduate - so far - is Ahmed Omar Abu Ali. Ali was arrested recently for plotting to assassinate President Bush. Ali was born in Houston and later moved to Falls Church, Va., where he was valedictorian of his class at ISA. After graduation, a...

Hamas' victory in Palestinian parliamentary elections is already being sanitized by the politically correct, despite the terrorist group's bloody track record and its fallacious and dubious historical claims to the land of Israel. Thankfully, some Western leaders are condemning the selection of murderers by Palestinians for their government. At the top of a BBC article yesterday regarding the Hamas terrorist group winning Palestinian elections: The win poses problems for efforts to restart peace talks with Israel, say analysts. Israel insists it will not deal with an authority including Hamas. So this is all just Israel's problem/fault because the majority of...

Taddeo CrivelliItalian, Ferrara, about 1469 SAINT CATHERINE OF ALEXANDRIA VIRGIN, MARTYR C. 310 A.D. Feast: November 25 From the tenth century onwards veneration for St. Catherine of Alexandria[1] has been widespread in the Church of the East, and from the time of the Crusades this saint has been popular in the West, where many churches have been dedicated to her and her feast day kept with great solemnity, sometimes as a holy-day of obligation. She is listed as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers of mankind among the saints in Heaven; she is the patroness of young women, philosophers,...

November 25, 2005Friday of the Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time Psalm: Friday 50 Reading IDn 7:2-14 In a vision I, Daniel, saw during the night,the four winds of heaven stirred up the great sea,from which emerged four immense beasts,each different from the others.The first was like a lion, but with eagle’s wings.While I watched, the wings were plucked;it was raised from the ground to stand on two feetlike a man, and given a human mind. The second was like a bear; it was raised up on one side,and among the teeth in its mouth were three tusks.It was given the...

SOUTHWEST ASIA - An Air Force officer was killed Sept. 19, and two Airmen were injured as a result of a motor vehicle accident that occurred along the El Alamein Highway, between Cairo West and Alexandria. They were participating in Exercise Bright Star, a recurring joint/combined training exercise held in Egypt. The cause of the accident is under investigation and the names of the personnel are being withheld pending notification of next-of-kin.

Nothing lasts forever. Just ask Ozymandias, or Nate Fisher. Only the wind inhabits the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde in Colorado, birds and vines the pyramids of the Maya. Sand and silence have swallowed the clamors of frankincense traders and camels in the old desert center of Ubar. Troy was buried for centuries before it was uncovered. Parts of the Great Library of Alexandria, center of learning in the ancient world, might be sleeping with the fishes, off Egypt's coast in the Mediterranean. "Cities rise and fall depending on what made them go in the first place," said Peirce Lewis,...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (Army News Service, August 4, 2005) – The first round of Military Idol competition began this week on U.S. Army installations around the world. The program, a takeoff of FOX Television’s “American Idol,” will determine which Soldier is the inaugural Military Idol after a final week of singing competition Oct. 17 through 23 at Fort Gordon, Ga. To reach the finals, Soldier-vocalists must first win a competition on one of 36 installations. Depending on the number of local competitors, that process could take from one to eight weeks. The Military Idol program is the brainchild of Coleen Amstein,...

Alexandria officials have approved adding a maximum $3-a-month tax on city residents' cell phone bills beginning this fall. The city joins a growing list of local jurisdictions and localities nationwide that are beginning to impose such a levy on their respective cell phone users. So far locally, cell phone users in Baltimore, Montgomery and Prince George's counties in Maryland, and Fairfax, Prince William and Loudoun counties in Virginia must pay up to $3 in taxes each month. "That clearly is a burden to taxpayers, on top of all the other taxes" said James Parmelee, president of Virginia-based Republicans United for...

June 27, 2005Monday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time Psalm: Monday 29 Reading IGn 18:16-33 Abraham and the men who had visited him by the Terebinth of Mamreset out from there and looked down toward Sodom;Abraham was walking with them, to see them on their way.The LORD reflected: "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do,now that he is to become a great and populous nation,and all the nations of the earth are to find blessing in him?Indeed, I have singled him outthat he may direct his children and his household after himto keep the way...

Italy probes possible CIA role in abduction By John Crewdson (Chicago) Tribune senior correspondent An Italian prosecutor investigating the apparent kidnapping of a suspected Islamic militant in the streets of Milan served military authorities this week with a demand for records of flights into and out of a joint U.S.-Italian air base in northern Italy. Italian newspapers have reported that the prosecutor, Armando Spataro, is investigating the possible role of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in the disappearance of Osama Nasr Mostafa Hassan, better known as Abu Omar, a popular figure in Milan's Islamic community who vanished Feb. 17, 2003....