Free Republic

London: A giant jade boulder that could be worth billions of pounds has been discovered in Burma. The 50-tonne block was found half buried in soil and rock in the gem-rich north of the country. Villagers discovered the 5.5 metre-wide boulder in the mountainous state of Kachin, where rebels have been fighting the government for more than 50 years. It is now under armed guard as officials negotiate with rebels about what to do with it. Burma, also known as Myanmar, is one of the world’s biggest producers of precious stones. Jade expert Jason Holt, of Holts Jewellers in Hatton...

Special to the Star-Telegram One year after his death, hundreds of items from the estate of Van Cliburn are going on sale at Christie’s auction house in New York. The pianist, who died in February 2013, filled his Westover Hills home with items encountered during his world travels — fine art, furnishings, tableware — and selected with a veteran collector’s eye. Two years ago, Cliburn parted with some of his most valuable treasures at a Christie’s auction of what was billed as “The Van Cliburn Collection.” That sale earned almost $4.4 million, beating a presale estimate of $3 million. The...

This striking composite photo from the riots in Ukraine helps put the extreme devastation occurring in Kiev right now into perspective. The lighter image on the left is of Independence Square in Kiev before the riots and the seemingly post-apocalyptic half of the image was taken in the same square by Olga Yakimovich for Reuters on Feb. 19th.(via: Imgur)

Debris scattered on ground was actually part of display (Newser) – Whoops: A cleaner at an art exhibition in Italy threw away some pieces of cardboard, cookies, and newspaper that were strewn on the floor ... not realizing they were actually part of artist Sala Murat's display. She assumed the debris was trash left behind while the display was being set up; security noticed pieces of the work were missing when the exhibit opened yesterday, but by then it had already been given to trash collectors, the BBC reports, citing local media. A rep from the cleaning firm says...

Muslim Wonder Woman Redesign Puts Diana in a Headscarf Artist flowercrownprincess envisions Wonder Woman as a hijab-wearing Muslim superhero, who is ready to battle evil in both armor and a headscarf.

They've spent four years training for the chance to win Winter Olympics gold, so spare a thought for these athletes who have come a cropper on the snow and ice in Sochi. Britain's Rowan Cheshire has posted a pictured of her injuries on Twitter after becoming the latest freestyle skier to be injured at the Sochi Olympics. Cheshire was knocked unconscious after falling heavily on her face during a training session at the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park. The 18 year-old, who is due to compete in the ski halfpipe, is understood to have remained unconscious for several minutes after crashing...

Sports Illustrated is marking the 50th anniversary of its swimsuit issue with three models on the cover. Chrissy Teigen, Nina Agdal and Lily Aldridge strike a playful pose in the picture topping the magazine's annual swimsuit edition. The image was to be unveiled Thursday on ABC's ''Jimmy Kimmel Live!'' The issue hits newsstands and digital formats next week. Aldridge said in an interview Thursday she was ''in shock'' over her selection. ''It's the most incredible honor to be a Sports Illustrated cover model,'' she said. Especially since it's the 28-year-old Victoria's Secret model's first time in the magazine. Even though...

You're looking at a newly released 8-frame movie of Saturn's enigmatic "hexagon." It is the highest-resolution footage ever acquired of the massive six-sided maelstrom atop the ringed planet's north pole, and boy howdy is it gorgeous. For the uninitiated, Saturn's uncannily symmetric cloud system measures roughly 20,000-miles across, and is utterly unique in our solar system. Its dimensions and dynamics are just bizarre. At the hexagon's center whirls a tightly wound hurricane roughly fifty-times larger than the average hurricane-eye on Earth. About it spins an assortment of smaller vortices, caught up in the hexagon's jet stream, that rotate clockwise, even...

LONG BEACH (CBSLA.com) — A taste of Scotland is coming to the Southland. The ScotsFestival and International Highland Games will take place this weekend at the Queen Mary in Long Beach. The event showcases some of Scotland’s most famous foods, music and sports. It’s all part of the celebration honoring the history of the legendary ship, which was built in Clydebank, Scotland in the 1930s. The festival runs from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

Former Hollywood child star Shirley Temple has died at the age of 85. The actress found fame as a young girl in the 1930s in films like Bright Eyes, Stand Up and Cheer and Curly Top. After retiring from films in 1950 at the age of 21, Temple returned to the public eye as a Republican candidate for Congress and as a US diplomat. She died on Monday at home in Woodside, California, from natural causes. "She was surrounded by her family and caregivers," a statement said. Born in 1928, the sweet-faced, curly-haired Temple was one of the most popular...

Get those telescopes ready: the coming months offer Earthbound viewers some great views of the planet Mars. Mars reaches opposition for 2014 on April 8th. This is approaching season represents the best time to observe Mars, as the Red Planet is closest to us in April and rises in the east as the Sun sets opposite to it in the west. Mars reaches 10” in apparent size this week. Mars is already beginning to show surface detail through a moderate-sized telescope as it continues to grow. In mid-February, Mars currently rises at around midnight local, and rides high to the...

RANCHO PALOS VERDES (CBSLA.com) — A record number of whales are migrating southbound through the waters off the Palos Verdes Peninsula, according to scientists with the American Cetacean Society Los Angeles Gray Whale Census and Behavior Report. Some 1,055 gray whales have been tracked southbound en route to nursing and calving waters off Baja California so far this season, compared to 704 at the same time last year. Scientists also said December was the highest month on record. This weekend marked the third highest count of southbound gray whales since the ACS/LA Gray Whale Census and Behavior Project began 31...

Captain Robert Posey and Pfc. Lincoln Kirstein were the first through the small gap in the rubble blocking the ancient salt mine at Altausee, high in the Austrian Alps in 1945 as World War II drew to a close in May 1945. They walked past one sidechamber in the cool damp air and entered a second one, the flames of their lamps guiding the way. There, resting on empty cardboard boxes a foot off the ground, were eight panels of The Adoration of the Lamb by Jan van Eyck, considered one of the masterpieces of 15th-century European art. In one...

VIDEO: Jimi Hendrix sings "The Wind Cries Mary" in a montage with Edward Hopper paintings. Taking a great song with poetic lyrics by Hendrix and combining it with great art by Hopper seems right, and I haven't found anything like it before. The third Hopper painting shown is called "Nighthawks" and has been featured in past Freepathon threads. It looks like the paintings in the video have been processed with a photo effect that, while not unpleasant, is not the same as the original paintings.

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — An 89-year-old man has sold his assemblage of rare, 19th-century photographs to a collections-based educational and research institute. The Huntington Library, Art Collection, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino acquired Ernest Marquez’s one-of-a-kind collection. The undisclosed purchase amount for the photos, which span from the 1860s to the 1950s, was made possible with help from the library’s Collectors’ Council. As CBS2′s Amy Johnson reports, Marquez’s collection began with his desire to collect pictures of his family’s Santa Monica property obtained through a Mexican land grant. From there, he found pictures at antique shops, flee markets, and...

Does the following charter allow for non-discrimination against polygamous heterosexual people? "The practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practicing sport, without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play."

Julia Randall says she is "45 going on 12," an apt summation of her current artistic inspiration on view at Real Art Ways in Hartford. Randall starts by chewing bubble gum and blowing a bubble, then biting the end of the bubble to seal it. Then she takes the bubble out of her mouth and photographs it.

Student took the photo during a school field trip to the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s biology department. LIMESTONE COUNTY, Ala., Feb. 5 (UPI) -- If they want to discipline her, administrators have this student dead to rights… An Alabama high school senior could be suspended after she posted an Instagram selfie with a cadaver while on a school field trip to the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s biology department. The student, who attends Clements High School in Limestone County, used her cellphone to take a photo of herself with a dead body that had been donated to the school....

Four years after Farrah Fawcett’s death, her alma mater and her former partner, Ryan O’Neal, went to court over an Andy Warhol painting of the blond pop icon. In December a jury settled the case, but it had no hope of deciding on the question at the heart of the dispute: Whom did Farrah really love? It was a Monday morning in mid-December at the Los Angeles County Superior Court, the day of closing arguments in the matter of the Board of Regents of the University of Texas System v. Ryan O’Neal, and the show was just minutes from getting...