Free Republic

Hackers have breached a database containing a wealth of sensitive information from federal employees’ security background checks, the Obama administration said Friday — news that experts say could deal a devastating blow to U.S. intelligence gathering. The revelations came just a week after officials disclosed a previous massive cyber intrusion into the same federal personnel office, compromising records of more than 4 million current and past employees in a breach that administration officials have privately blamed on Chinese hackers. The stolen records in the hack disclosed Friday included data on intelligence and military personnel, The Associated Press reported. A senior...

The story of the missing Russian crown jewels begins, as so many great adventures do, in a library. In this case, it was the U.S. Geological Survey Library in Reston, Va. Richard Huffine, the director, was looking through the library's rare-book collection when he came upon an oversized volume. "And there's no markings on the outside, there's no spine label or anything like that," he says. "This one caught our eye, and we pulled it aside to take a further look at it." Researcher Jenna Nolt was one of those who took a look. "The title page is completely hand...

He was a giant of a man, a chieftain who ruled with a royal sceptre and a warrior's axe. When they laid him to rest they dressed him in his finest regalia and placed his weapons at his side. Then they turned his face towards the setting sun and sealed him in a burial mound that would keep him safe for the next 4,000 years. In his grave were some of the most exquisitely fashioned artefacts of the Bronze Age, intricately crafted to honour the status of a figure who bore them in life in death. For this may have...