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The Mojave Desert (search) is not the kind of hard-scrapple place you'd expect to find the latest battle in the culture wars. But that's exactly where the ACLU is battling with locals to tear down a cross that was erected as a tribute to World War I veterans.

FORT HUACHUCA - Fort Huachuca's historic cemetery has introduced 21st century technology in a bid to help visitors. Gone are the days when someone visiting a loved one's grave would have to waste precious time wandering around to try and find it. Now they can visit a purpose-built kiosk located at the cemetery's entrance, where a touch-screen computer will give them the information they need. It will even print out a map telling the inquirer in which sector a grave can be found. The $51,500 project was brought to the cemetery, which has been at its current location since 1883,...

THE rich Roman heritage of Britain's oldest recorded town has been enhanced by the discovery of a “beautifully preserved” room from a bathhouse. A single 2,000-year-old room was discovered beneath Colchester Sixth Form College during work to build a fire access road near the college's information technology block. A leading archaeologist said yesterday it was one of the finest finds of its kind. The room from the bathhouse may now be preserved as an attraction. Philip Crummy, of the Colchester Archaeological Trust, said he and colleagues had been on a “watching brief” as work at the college was carried out....

FBI investigates allegations of false Boy Scout numbers Thursday, December 30, 2004 The FBI is investigating the Greater Alabama Council of the Boy Scouts of America to see if membership numbers have been inflated, board members said Wednesday.Exaggerating membership numbers could lead to greater financial support, board members said.The council is said to serve 50,000 youngsters in 22 counties in central and northern Alabama. This includes 30,000 enrolled in traditional scout units and 20,000 elementary school students receiving in-class character education using resources provided by the Boy Scouts, said Randy Haines, vice chairman of the council, which is led...

Graves become shrines to Taliban, al-Qaida fighters in Afghanistan By James Rupert Newsday MATA CHINA, Afghanistan — Standing before the rows of graves, Afghan men open their hands to the sky. Their lips move in silent prayer to honor the dead. These dead are fighters of the Taliban and al-Qaida, killed in 2001 when an American bomb crushed the mosque nearby where they had mustered outside the eastern Afghan city of Khost. Since then, U.S. officials have paid for the mosque to be rebuilt. It stands freshly painted, but empty, a few hundred yards down the road. There has been...

MADRID, Spain (AP) - Researchers studying DNA from 500-year-old bone slivers said Friday that preliminary data suggests Christopher Columbus might be buried in Spain, rather than in a rival tomb in the Dominican Republic - but for now they cannot be sure. The team insisted it had reached no conclusion and more research was needed. But it said some DNA samples taken from bones that Spain says are the explorer's matched DNA from a body widely believed to be that of his brother, Diego. Both were unearthed in Seville over the past two years as part of a pioneering experiment...

LYON, France (Reuters) - Vandals daubed swastikas and slogans on 56 graves and a war memorial in a Jewish cemetery in eastern France, the latest in a spate of attacks on Jewish, Muslim and Christian property that have shocked France. The attackers also used black paint to scrawl slogans glorifying Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler and declaring "Resistance to the Islamist invasion" on some of the graves on Monday evening in a cemetery in Lyon, France's second city. President Jacques Chirac, the government, opposition and Jewish leaders on Tuesday condemned the attack, which prompted calls for tougher action to prevent such...

On the hunt for grave sites By TRACY MOSS © 2004 THE NEWS-GAZETTE Published Online July 12, 2004 CLICK TO SEE PHOTO CATLIN – Stan Pentecost doesn't believe in ghosts, or UFOs, because he's the kind of guy who needs to see something to believe it. So, when he read that dowsing – using two rods to find underground water – could also be used to locate graves as well as determine the size and gender of the deceased, he had to try it. "I still can't explain it, but it works," said Pentecost, a member of the Illiana Genealogical...

Ancient graves found on cliffs Archaeologists used ropes to access the cliff-face graves A 1,250-year-old cliff-face cemetery has been found in Pembrokeshire revealing the county's early Christian past. Two skeletons dating from the Dark Ages of around 750AD have been recovered and a stone with a carefully chiselled cross has also been found. Archaeologists had to work using ropes to reach the site at Longoar Bay, near St Ishmaels. The graves were discovered by chance by Steve Brick who works for the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. "The site was impossible for us to reach but from our researches we realised...

The Defense Ministry announced Thursday that it has organized a special service that will make it easier to locate the graves of the fallen. The new service, which the MOD said is the first of its kind in the world, not only will provide the block and parcel of a fallen soldier's grave, but also give a map on the best route to take from the gates of the military cemeteries. The service is available on a special website sponsored by the Defense Ministry's Department for Commemorating Soldiers and programmed by a civilian firm. The site can be reached at:...

Police charged two men with desecrating graves at a Jewish cemetery in eastern Slovakia, authorities said Tuesday. The two unemployed men, whose names were not released, are accused of damaging the graves at the cemetery in Dobsina, an eastern Slovak town some 330 kilometers (220 miles) from the capital, Bratislava, police spokeswoman Jana Demjanovicova said. The men are also accused of stealing the fence which surrounded the graves, she said. Most of Slovakia's Jews perished in concentration camps during World War II. After the conflict, many of the country's 620 Jewish cemeteries were left unattended, and at times have become...

Australia probe 'looting' of Boer War graves March 07 2004 at 02:33PM Canberra, Australia - Australia will investigate claims that century-old graves of soldiers who died during the Boer War in South Africa have been looted, the government said Sunday. Veterans' Affairs Minister Dana Vale ordered the probe after receiving reports that valuable stones, plaques and crosses had been taken from the graves. Vale didn't say where the reports originated. More than 600 Australians died fighting alongside British and other Commonwealth forces in the 1899-1902 conflict against the Boers in what is present day South Africa. Vale said the protection...

Viking graves in Pskov, North-Western Russia 02/24/2004 13:56 Archaeologists are examining the items found in the ancient burial place of a Viking woman in downtown Pskov. In the last days of 2003 in Pskov during archaeological research of the construction site, burial place related to X century, was discovered. At the depth of 4 meters in the burial chamber the remains of a woman were found along with decoration of bronze and silver, bronze scales, glass beads and several dozens of other items. According to Dr. Of History, Head of Department of Slavic and Finnish Archaeology of Institute of History...

BAGHDAD -- They were killed in their hospital beds and buried in the hospital flower gardens, some with their arms still wrapped in bandages or IVs still connected. And they were killed on long death marches in northern Iraq--Kurdish women and children, separated from their families and carrying the few household items they could drag with them. Wherever they were killed, many were blindfolded and shot in the forehead. Saddam Hussein's whole country became a killing field. Mass graves "are everywhere," said Sandy Hodgkinson, a U.S. State Department attorney who has been working with Iraq's Human Rights Ministry, the agency...

Saddam was captured this morning. No doubt there's been a sigh of relief in Washington. But most importantly, the majority of Iraqis must be feeling more safe and secure. Is it necessary to remind eveyone of why Iraqis would feel relief in light of Saddam's legacy? An estimated 300,000 dead Iraqis lay in some 260 mass graves, 40 of which have been confirmed to date. Saddam's rule meant torture chambers, dropping posion gas on civilians, starting an 8-year war with Iran which claimed a million lives, etc. Imagine if Hitler would've been running around in post-war Germany. Kind of unsettling,...

A company that runs two Jewish cemeteries in South Florida has agreed to a $100 million settlement with families who alleged that graves were desecrated.The world's largest funeral home chain will pay $100 million to Jewish families whose loved ones' remains were mishandled and misplaced at two South Florida cemeteries. The settlement, whose details were still being ironed out, will be presented to Broward Circuit Judge Leonard Fleet on Thursday for his approval. The payout will close a class-action suit against Houston-based Service Corporation International on behalf of families with plots at Menorah Gardens cemeteries in northern Palm Beach and...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi and U.S. rights investigators said on Saturday they suspected Iraq had up to 260 mass graves containing the bodies of at least 300,000 people murdered by the former regime of Saddam Hussein. They told a conference that the task of identifying bodies and preparing evidence for tribunals could take years and millions of dollars, but the long process would be worth it to heal the wounds of three decades of brutal Baath Party rule. "We have reports of 260 mass graves and we have confirmed approximately 40 of them," said Sandra Hodgkinson, director of the Coalition...

"'Mazen told me by phone few days before his death that he discovered a mass grave dug by U.S. troops to conceal the bodies of their fellow comrades killed in Iraqi resistance attacks ..'" OCCUPIED JERUSALEM - The brother of Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana said he was deliberately murdered for discovering mass graves of U.S. troops killed in Iraqi resistance attacks. "The U.S. troops killed my brother in cold blood," Nazmi Dana told IslamOnline.net in exclusive statements. "The U.S. occupation troops shot dead my brother on purpose, although he was wearing his press badge, which was also emblazoned on the...

BERLIN More than 50 graves were vandalized over the weekend at a Jewish cemetery in the central German city of Kassel, the police said Monday. Some gravestones were overturned, while other graves had headstones dropped on them, a police statement said. In all, 56 graves were damaged. Investigators were still gathering evidence and had no immediate indication as to who was responsible.

From the DEBKAfile: CIA Adviser Kay Amasses Evidence of Saddam’s WMD DEBKAfile Updates DEBKA-Net-Weekly 118 July 25 Exclusive August 2, 2003, 10:42 PM (GMT+02:00) ... One of the most horrendous discoveries so far is the secret graveyard of convicts abused as human guinea pigs of Saddam’s illegal programs. Kay sent a special team out to Baquba, northeast of Baghdad after a collection of videotapes was discovered in Iraqi central intelligence archives, on some of which Iraqi officers talked freely with dates and locations about prisoners and detainees subjected to biological and chemical weapons experiments. Some involved toxic chemicals or gases;...

A nearly completed memorial walkway cutting through the Belzec death camp in Poland has sparked a legal and religious battle between two American Jewish groups. Condemning what they saw as "the desecration of the holiest Jews of all" inside the 60-acre camp, located in southeast Poland, Rabbis Avi Weiss and Shmuel Herzfeld, of the Coalition for Jewish Concerns Amcha, announced Wednesday in Warsaw they would take legal action against the Polish government in order to halt the construction of the path. Construction of the 200-meter walkway, part of a joint memorial project of the Polish government and the American Jewish...

KUWAIT CITY (AP) - The remains of a Kuwaiti man missing since Iraq's occupation of Kuwait 12 years ago have been discovered at a mass grave near the southern Iraqi city of Samawah, officials said Sunday. Kuwait's minister of cabinet affairs, Mohammad Sharar, said evidence suggests the man was shot sometime between 1991 and 1992. He was identified by DNA as Saad Meshaal Aswad al-Anzi, one of hundreds of Kuwaitis, mostly civilians, whose fate has been in question since they were detained by Iraqi troops during the 1990 invasion that led to the first Gulf War. In meetings with U.N....

New mass grave found in Iraq Relatives of missing people have been excavating bodies at the site Another mass grave has been discovered in Iraq at Salman Pak, just south of Baghdad, in the grounds of what used to be a sprawling military complex. Relatives of missing people have begun excavating the site and on Saturday morning they recovered at least five bodies. Local residents say they helped bury more than 100 bodies at the military complex in April and they believe many more may be hidden underground. They say the victims were young men killed in early April, after...

HILLA, Iraq — Coalition forces have arrested a landowner and tribal chief who locals say was paid a bounty for killing and providing the burial site where Saddam Hussein's security forces dumped the bodies of as many as 10,000 men, women and children after a failed uprising in 1991. The arrest, but not the identity of the man, was revealed by Iraq's new civil administrator, L. Paul Bremer, after a visit to the mass grave yesterday. Also yesterday, coalition forces announced the capture in Baghdad of Aziz Sajih al-Numan, a high-ranking Ba'ath Party official who was No. 8 on their...

First World War graveyard found at Al Amara The Royal British Legion are welcoming news a lost graveyard has been discovered by the banks of the Tigris river. The cemetery at Al Amara, built for the dead of the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force during the First World War, has been tended by keeper Hassan Hatif Moson Ali in the face of death threats from local Baath officials. It was found by the men of the Royal Irish Regiment whose forebears, the Connaught Rangers, are among the names carved into the simple granite memorial. They are honoured by an unadorned cross which...

UN finds graves of 1,000 villagers in Congo massacre By Rodrique Ngowi in Nairobi 07 April 2003 A preliminary UN investigation has found that at least 966 men, women and children were killed in dawn raids on more than a dozen villages in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo last week, officials said yesterday. The investigators also discovered about 20 mass graves and found that many of the victims had been executed in the attacks on Thursday, the worst atrocity investigated by the UN in the four and a half years of civil war in Congo, said Manodje...

<p>A congressman from Colorado is asking the Department of Veterans Affairs to immediately sever ties with a French-owned marble company that is the main supplier of headstones for national cemeteries in the United States.</p> <p>The effort by Rep. Scott McInnis, Republican, is just the latest of a growing list of official government acts in a backlash against France for actively opposing the U.S.-led war in Iraq. In a wave of protest reminiscent of boycotts of apartheid South Africa in the 1980s, some state legislatures also are threatening to divest state funds from French-owned companies.</p>

OLATHE -- Gov. Bill Graves has jumped into a controversy over a campaign ad attacking the attorney general candidate he has endorsed in the Republican primary. "This ad is dragging Kansas into the politics of personal destruction," Graves told reporters Monday. The ad by the Law Enforcement Alliance of America attacks Sen. David Adkins, of Leawood. It ties Wichita murder suspect Reginald Carr's case to a 2000 law that Adkins supported while a member of the Kansas House. Adkins is opposed in next Tuesday's primary by former state Rep. Phill Kline, of Shawnee, and Topeka attorney Charles McAtee. The winner...

Iron age settlement poses sinister mystery Martin Wainwright Friday July 26, 2002 The Guardian The most baffling settlement ever unearthed from iron age Britain was revealed by English Heritage archaeologists yesterday, inside a prehistoric fort on former marshes by the Humber estuary. Eerily spick and span, the rows of rectangular wooden buildings have yielded an almost complete lack of artefacts, remains or even litter, apart from one macabre find - fragments of crushed human skulls. Guarded by stone and wooden pallisade defences, the complex also had a ceremonial gateway, vast by the standards of 600-400BC when it was built by...

Did Asteroids and Comets Turn the Tides of Civilization? By Mike Baillie The heart of humanity seems at times to have lost its cadence, the rhythmic beat of history collapsing into impotent chaos. Wars raged. Pestilence spread. Famine reigned. Death came early and hard. Dynasties died, and civilization flickered. Such a time came in the sixth century A.D. The Dark Ages settled heavily over Europe. Rome had been beaten back from its empire. Art and science stagnated. Even the sun turned its back. "We marvel to see no shadows of our bodies at noon, to feel the mighty vigor of...

<p>BAGRAM, Afghanistan (AP) --  Canadian troops and U.S. Army forensic specialists excavated 23 elaborate graves they said held the bodies of senior al-Qaida fighters who died in the bombing of the Tora Bora region.</p> <p>The graves, dug into a large, terraced hill, were decorated with headstones, mounds of white pebbles, flags and brightly colored ribbons, said Capt. Philip Nicholson, one of about 400 Canadian soldiers who returned to base Tuesday after a four-day mission in eastern Afghanistan.</p>

SANTA ANA, Calif. - For 31/2 years, Gene-o Platt has perched himself at the Santa Ana Cemetery and pulled out his brushes, chisels and drills, determined to restore the markers of 483 Civil War veterans. (snip) But the trustees of the Orange County Cemetery District have told Platt not to bother anymore. By a unanimous vote in February, the trustees passed a policy to keep Platt from completing his work. They say that he may be damaging the historic markers, and that because Civil War monuments belong to the federal government, he must receive its approval. . .Click here for...