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Archaeologists have discovered vases of perfumed ointment which may have been used by Mary Magdalene to anoint the feet of Jesus. The Italian team have been digging for several months at the ancient Palestinian town of Magdala – from where Mary gets her name. The archaeologists of the Franciscan academic society Studium Biblicum Franciscanum found the unopened vases dating to the first century AD conserved in mud at the bottom of a swimming pool in Magdala's thermal complex. The town is on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee and Mary Magdalene is mentioned several times throughout the Bible....

DETROIT—A federal judge says a Detroit city employee can proceed with a civil suit claiming she couldn't work because of a co-worker's strong perfume. The Detroit News says U.S. District Judge Lawrence Zatkoff determined Susan McBride has a potential claim under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The city is asking to have the suit dismissed. McBride says she's severely sensitive to perfumes and other cosmetics. She says the perfume worn by a co-worker in the city's Planning Department made it difficult for her to breathe. She says the co-worker also used a plugged in room deodorizer. The suit says the...

Petraeus: Al Qaida Trying to 'Come Back In' U.S. military officials said there will be no significant reduction in coalition troops in the Baghdad area as part of an effort to stop the Al Qaida offensive in northern Iraq. They said Al Qaida was trying to reenter Baghdad and reverse its losses in 2007. "Al Qaida is trying to come back in," U.S. military commander Gen. David Petraeus said. "We can feel it and see it, and what we're trying to do is rip out any roots before they can get deeply into the ground." Read More Militants Assert...

Still in Control Pervez Musharraf was calm, confident and—despite a flurry of rumors—not about to announce his resignation. Instead, the Pakistani president's "concession" to his troubled nation was an announcement that he would allow Britain's Scotland Yard to help local law enforcement agencies with their investigation into last week's assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Speaking in a nationally televised address two hours after Pakistan's election commission announced the postponement of the ballot to Feb. 18, six weeks later than had been scheduled, Musharraf was notably deferential in his remarks about Bhutto, often invoking her "martyrdom" and extolling...

Wearing too much perfume 'signals depression' By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor Last Updated: 3:29pm GMT 04/01/2008 Women who wear too much perfume may be suffering from depression, scientists have said. The sense of smell appears to be impaired in people with the condition meaning they use more scent. Smell is already known to have a profound effect on mood and memory with shops and retailers using aromas to induce shoppers to buy certain products. But a team at Tel Aviv University have found that certain diseases cause the body to attack the olfactory system which governs the ability to detect...

PHOENIX (AP) - A smoking suitcase was spotted Tuesday in the cargo area at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, airport officials said. The suitcase was in the cargo hold of a US Airways plane headed to San Antonio when it started emitting smoke, said Claire Simeone, an airport spokeswoman. The plane was moved to a less busy area while authorities investigated the suitcase on the tarmac. -snip- The Phoenix Fire Department called in a hazard materials team and the owner of the suitcase is being questioned by police, Rodriguez said.

U.S. to Offer Turkey Help on PKK The U.S. is to offer Turkey a package of measures to dissuade Ankara from mounting a large-scale military incursion into Iraq to attack PKK Kurdish guerrillas, who have killed scores of Turkish soldiers in recent weeks. Ahead of a meeting in Washington on Monday between President George W. Bush and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, U.S. officials said Ankara would have to get concrete American help to combat the PKK, which has bases in northern Iraq from where it frequently launches attacks into Turkey. “Erdogan has to go back with the...

August 19, 2007 -- IT pays to write a rave review in The New York Times. The paper's perfume critic, Chandler Burr, admits accepting free samples of a French fragrance to which he'd given a 5-star writeup last year - and then giving the perfume to patrons of a $200-a-head dinner he hosted this month.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - An office worker for the US city of Detroit is suing for her colleagues to be banned from wearing perfume which gives her such severe headaches, nausea and coughing fits that she must leave work. Court documents showed Thursday that Susan McBride suffered so acutely from allergy to the chemicals in scents, lotions and sprays that she had to go home sick when a heavily perfumed co-worker shared her office at the city's historic districts department. Her sensitivity is such that she avoids the detergent sections in shops and cannot sit near perfumed people in a movie...

Published: March 16, 2007 at 2:24 PM Ancient perfume found on Venus' island ROME, March 16 (UPI) -- Archaeologists exploring Cyprus, said to be home to Venus, the goddess of love, have stumbled upon the world's oldest known perfume factory. A display of the prehistoric scents and 60 objects from the Cyprus discovery can be seen at Rome's Capitoline Museums, ANSA reported. The distilling equipment is believed to be 4,000 years old. "We were astonished at how big the place was ... Perfumes must have been produced on an industrial scale. No wonder the island got its reputation for possessing...

"The perfume industry has long followed conventions: nice-smelling ingredients, usually derived from flowers and plants, are blended into a harmony of aromas, creating fragrant concoctions to allure and delight. But an emerging trend is seeing perfumers break with tradition, as they look to diversify in an over-flooded market. Cheese, cars and the smell of sweat are just some of the latest scents to be captured and bottled for a market eager to try unique and individual new perfumes. "Savvy fragrance companies have realised that more discerning customers don't want to smell like everyone else," confirms Caroline Brien, beauty features editor...

I presume — but could be wrong — that city Coun. Alex Cullen wears deodorant, maybe even aftershave, maybe even cologne, but he’s scaring me. If Cullen gets his way, watch out for signs on the outside walls of all city buildings saying: “No Smelling Nice Within Five Metres of Building.” And: “B.O. Preferred and Acceptable Inside.” Cullen’s giving voice to the city’s latest MAJOR MUST-TACKLE ISSUE that keeps city taxpayers awake all night, fretting. People who use deodorants, perfumes, colognes, aftershaves, and sundry sweet-smelling scents: Council is going to debate whether the fragrances should be banned from city facilities...

Brescia and Naples, 18 Nov. (AKI) - The three Algerians detained on Tuesday in the Italian cities of Brescia and Naples were planning a massive terror attack - "on a ship as big as the Titanic, packed with explosives" - that aimed to kill "at least 10,000 people", as well as an attack on "Italian citizens and interests" in Tunisia, according phone conversations between the three men, which Italian anti-terror police say they intercepted after al-Qaeda's deadly 7 July attacks on London and on the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh. In their tapped phone conversations, Yamine Bouhrama, Mohamed...

DETROIT -- A former disc jockey at a Detroit country radio station has seen her award in a perfume lawsuit dramatically reduced. A federal jury this spring awarded Erin Weber (pictured, right) $10.6 million. She said station owner Infinity Broadcasting fired her in 2001 after complaining about an allergic reaction to another host's perfume at 99.5 FM WYCD. Infinity said Weber was fired for not coming to work. A federal judge reduced the award to $814,000. He said he was tempted to throw the jury's entire verdict out because he questions whether Weber really has a perfume allergy. Weber's lawyers...

$215,000 & SCENTS: The Clive Christian perfume bottle, including crystal stopper, gold collar and diamond stud, gets the kid-glove treatment yesterday at Bergdorf. Photo: Thomas Hinton The most expensive perfume in the world just got more obnoxious. Clive Christian yesterday unveiled a $215,000 bottle of luxury perfume with a five-carat brilliant cut diamond on the neck, an 18-carat solid-gold collar, and a Baccarat crystal stopper, styled like Queen Victoria's crown. The British perfume company, Crown Perfumery, which normally charges $2,510 for one ounce of No. 1 perfume, unveiled a limited edition of only 10 bottles called the Imperial Majesty...

MUSKY, with a woody tone and spicy hints of cinnamon - the perfect fragrance for a Bronze Age date. Italian archaeologists have discovered the world’s oldest perfumery and have identified the smells popular with the people of the time. The perfumery was found at a sprawling archaeological site on a hillside overlooking the Mediterranean at Pyrgos-Mavroraki, 55 miles south-west of Nicosia. "This is 4,000 years old. Without a doubt, it is the oldest production site for perfume in the world," said Maria Rosario Belgiorno, the excavation team leader. The site was destroyed by an earthquake in antiquity but the calamity...

GENEVA (Reuters) - Swiss authorities have ruled that a Geneva-based half-brother of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) has the right to use the family name as a trademark. But businessman Yeslam Bin Ladin said he had no immediate plans to bring out any goods under the name. "I don't intend to exploit the brand Bin Ladin commercially for the time being, but registering it will prevent others from using my name to bad effect," the daily Tribune de Geneve quoted him as saying. In July 2002 the Federal Intellectual Property Institute revoked the trademark which...

Move over, Elizabeth Taylor, Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears and all the others who have traded on their fame to sell a perfume. There is a new name on the counter: ‘‘Yeslam.’’ The recognition factor may seem low, but it is probably better than ‘‘Bin Ladin,’’ the marketer’s nightmare first proposed for the scent. Back in pre-9/11 days, Yeslam Bin Ladin, a half-brother of the world’s most wanted terrorist, hatched the idea of bringing out the perfume and a line of other luxury items under the Bin Ladin brand. (Most of the family favors that spelling, he says.) ‘‘Bin Ladin is...

£1,000 will buy perfume of a tragic royalA FRAGRANCE worn by Marie-Antoinette, a woman sometimes described as the world’s first fashion victim, has been re-created by a French perfume-maker for an exhibition at the Palace of Versailles. The perfume, Sillage de la Reine (In the Queen’s Wake), is likely to be put on a sale by the palace, which has been inundated with requests from people who want to smell like the Austrian-born Queen beheaded during the French Revolution. A thousand flacons are set to be made available at a price of around €1,500 (£1,050) each, with the profits being...

The Iraqi Survey Group also found that supposed "humanitarian" imports under Oil-for-Food gave Saddam the ability to restart his biological and chemical warfare programs at a moment's notice. Spertzel said what scared him the most in Iraq was the discovery of secret labs to make deadly weapons like the nerve agent, sarin, and the biological poison, ricin, in spray form. "If that were released in a closed [area], such as Madison Square Garden or, even some, some of your smaller closed malls, shopping malls, it would have a devastating effect … killing hundreds or thousands," Spertzel said. But Spertzel believes...