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Skytrax has released the results of its annual World Airport Awards and, once again, Singapore's Changi Airport has taken the top spot. It's no surprise that Changi came out on top again. The international transit hub has incredible amenities, such as a butterfly garden, rooftop pool, movie theaters, hotels, spas, and showers — and even a four-story slide. Skytrax based its rankings on 12.85 million customer nominations across 110 nationalities and included 410 airports worldwide. It incorporated passenger satisfaction across nearly 40 categories, including service and shopping and security and immigration. All the airports commended last year made the 2014...

The analysis of MH370's erratic final movements paints a terrifying picture of the doomed flight's last moments, with an expert saying they fit the pattern of a pilot on a suicide mission who wanted to crash the plane in one of the world's most inaccessible areas. The remote crash site ... means salvage teams might never recover the plane's black box, which would leave the flight's fate forever shrouded in mystery. If that's the case, it would mean the family of a pilot, passenger or crew member responsible would still be eligible for compensation payments.... Authorities have been able to...

I am retiring 1 September from the USAF. My wife has 7 years left as an ICU nurse. Just found out she has orders to Elmendorf AFB! We are super excited! Any FReeper hangouts there? Any incoming advice, i.e housing market, awesome places to check out, best salmon fishing, hiking trails, etc? I am currently at Travis AFB, California. So happy to leave this screwed up blue state and move to a red one.

'Last joyride'The pilot of doomed flight MH370 was devastated over his wife’s decision to move out of their family home, and could have taken the plane for a ‘last joyride’ before it crashed into the southern Indian Ocean killing all 239 people on board, says a long-time friend of the pilot. The friend, also a pilot, said Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah didn’t appear to be in the right state of mind to be flying, warning that it was ‘very possible that neither the passengers nor the other crew on-board knew what was happening until it was too late’. ‘He's one...

Russians getting ready to launch. Live at link.

Die Anstalt - video with English subtitles at link.

'A shot in the dark'A private British satellite company used a wave phenomenon discovered in the nineteenth century to analyse the seven pings its satellite picked up from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 and determine its tragic final destination. The new findings led Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak to conclude that the Boeing 777 ... crashed thousands of miles away in the southern Indian Ocean .... Radar pings from MH370, automatically transmitted every hour from the aircraft after the rest of its communications systems had stopped, indicated it continued flying for hours after it disappeared from its flight path from Kuala...

But who gets to blow out the candles? What’s believed to be a lightly-camouflaged 50th Anniversary Ford Mustang has been spotted out on a test drive just a few weeks before its expected debut at the 2014 New York International Auto Show. The GT-spec ‘Stang features several retro styling cues to mark the occasion, including a unique grille with a horizontal chrome bar and corral around the Mustang logo, what appear to be rear quarter window louvers hidden under a black panel, and forked-spoke wheels reminiscent of the ones seen on

Two additional colossal statues of Amenhotep III were unveiled in Luxor yesterday, along with a carved alabaster head from another Amenhotep III statue. Archaeologists say that the severely damaged statues, carved from red quartzite, are now situated on their original sites at the pharaoh’s funerary temple. The first depicts Amenhotep III in a seated position, wearing a royal pleated kilt held at the waist by a decorated belt. The second shows the king standing and has been placed at the north gate of the temple. “The statues had lain in pieces for centuries in the fields, damaged by destructive forces...

CT scans and the use of infra-red technology on the naturally mummified remains of a woman who lived in in a Christian community in the Sudan 1,300 years ago have revealed a tattoo on her inner thigh. The tattoo is a symbol of the Archangel Michael, assembled from ancient Greek letters. “She is the first evidence of a tattoo from the period. This is a very rare find,” Daniel Antoin, curator of physical anthropology at the British Museum, told The Telegraph. The woman’s remains are part of a special exhibition of eight mummies and what technology has revealed about their...

If you weren't careful, you might end up beaten by grape thieves skulking in the darkness. A University of Cincinnati graduate student writes about the contractual obligations of vineyard guards and researchers from around the world contribute more stories from ancient times in the most recent volumes of the Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists (BASP)... The latest volume of BASP is the 50th in the series and the eighth to have been edited at UC. The recently published journal features 35 contributions from 26 writers from 11 countries. The previous year's volume features 44 contributions from 41 writers...

In collaboration with the Ministry of Antiquities, a Czech mission working in the area of Abu Seer in Giza discovered a skeleton of a senior statesman called Nefer who lived under rule of the King Nefer-ir-ka-Re of the fifth dynasty from ancient Egypt’s Pharaonic era. The team team was resuming studies on his tomb, which was discovered last year, when Nefer's skeleton was found inside the coffin, according to Minister of Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim. Ali al-Asfar, head of the Egyptian antiquities sector, Nefer’s tomb was rocky and unfinished, located within mortuary complex for burial that consists of four corridors. The...

SYDNEY -- Baseball fans and Dodgers fans have been listening to the musical, knowing voice of Vin Scully for 65 years. If anyone's an authority on the game, it's him. So hearing Scully rave about the entire experience of the Opening Series is a good clue that the first regular-season Major League Baseball action Down Under, and the week-long celebration of Australian culture that surrounded it, amounted to one smashing success. "Everybody talks about the long trip from Los Angeles to Sydney -- 14, 15 hours, whatever it is, and another 14 to 15 back -- but I will tell...

Many major discoveries in Egypt have occurred entirely accidentally, just as in the case of our Valley of the Golden Mummies... Of course, the most recent discovery made by a donkey was the amazing Valley of the Golden Mummies at Bahariaya Oasis... When in 1940 the archaeologist Ahmed Fakhry began to conduct a cursory excavation of the ancient settlement known as El Haiz, he found only a few artifacts, but concluded that "Undoubtedly, the larger oasis fifty kilometers north of El Haiz was also thriving during the new Kingdom and will reap much new information about this time in our...

Sudan's rich but under-developed archaeological heritage has received an unprecedented $135 million (98 million euros) in funding from the Gulf state of Qatar, Sudanese officials said on Sunday. The money will support 29 projects including the rehabilitation of ancient relics, construction of museums and study of the Meroitic language, said Salahaddin Mohammed Ahmed, the project coordinator. He said the funds will support archaeological work by several Western nations as well as Sudan over five years. "This is the biggest amount of money for Sudanese antiquities in their entire history," Abdurrahman Ali, head of the country's museums, told reporters, adding that...

Today the location is known as Tel Abel Beth Maacah, an archaeological site that has been identified by biblical scholars as the likely location of an ancient city that, at one time, may have had important Aramean connections. It is mentioned a number of times in the biblical account, including the battle related to the revolt against David by Sheba ben Bichri. In the early 19th century BCE it was conquered by Ben-hadad of Damascus, and by the Neo-Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III in 733 BCE. Scholars suggest that it may have been at one time the capital of the Aramean...

According to a recent international study, the volcano of the island Santorini, Greece, erupted in the 16th century BC and not earlier. The survey characterized a number of research studies that took place in the past and have indicated that Santorini's volcano may have erupted a century earlier, as unreliable because the method based on tree-ring measurements that they used, could not provide them with accurate results. An international team of researchers led by Paolo Cherubini from the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) has demonstrated in the scientific journal Antiquity, that this method cannot provide...

The Abbey is one of the few places specifically mentioned in the near contemporary accounts of the Battle of Bannockburn. It was here that Robert the Bruce kept his army’s baggage prior to the Battle of Bannockburn, though it is possible that this was also where supplies related to the on-going siege of Stirling Castle by the Scots were stored (it was to relieve the siege that Edward II brought his army to Bannockburn). The Abbey was later the location for a series of important parliaments during the rule of Robert I. The first of these, in November 1314, saw...

China does a lot of business and trade with the United States, and so there are many websites devoted to helping business people navigate American peculiarities. Using Google to translate advice written in “simplified Han” for Chinese readers into English allows Americans a tiny, possibly imprecise peek into how the people of China view life in the United States. As always, we welcome comments and clarifications from Chinese-readings Flossers.1. If an American Goes Silent, You’re in Trouble Americans do not like silence. They will keep talking, so as not to abort the conversation, without a moment’s pause. If you do...

Nearly 300 years ago, two great alliances collided on the Great Plains in a battle that changed the course of American history. But until now, no physical evidence of the storied conflict had ever been found. In the summer of 1720, where the Platte River meets the Loup in eastern Nebraska, Spanish soldiers, New Mexican settlers and their Pueblo and Apache allies clashed with warriors from the Pawnee and Oto nations of the Plains. In a daybreak raid, the Pawnee and the Oto — possibly with the support of French traders — routed the Spanish, killing their commander, Don Pedro...