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HOWELL, Mich. (AP) -- A charge against a man accused of scrawling obscenities on a check to pay a traffic ticket has been dropped after a judge said he didn't want to commit any more of the court's resources to the case. District Judge John Pikkarainen dismissed the contempt of court charge against Eric Wilmoth on Thursday. "I'm definitely relieved and very happy," Wilmoth told The Ann Arbor News. "I was pleasantly surprised by the judge's decision." In his opinion dismissing the charges, Pikkarainen wrote, "If the words written by the respondent were uttered in a courtroom setting before a...

w w w . h a a r e t z d a i l y . c o m Sensation or forgery? Researchers hail dramatic First Temple period finding An inscription attributed to Jehoash, the king of Judea who ruled in Jerusalem at the end of the ninth century B.C.E., has been authenticated by experts from the National Infrastructure Ministry's Geological Survey of Israel following months of examination. The 10-line fragment, which was apparently found on the Temple Mount, is written in the first person on a black stone tablet in ancient Phoenician script. The inscription's description of...

Surveying the Walls of Uruk Can Technology Discover the Ancient City of Gilgamesh? German archaeologists working at the ancient site of Uruk (modern Warka, just east of the Euphrates River in southern Iraq) have begun mapping the canals, walls and building foundations of the sprawling, buried city—without even lifting a spade. Over the past two winters, a team headed by Margarete van Ess of Berlin’s German Archaeology Institute has laid out a grid system over the site and begun to map the buried ruins with a magnetometer an instrument that measures differences in the strength of the earth’s magnetic field...

Translators unravel old scroll's secrets 2003-01-07 By Diane Clay The Oklahoman On a dry day 2,000 years ago, a worker charged with mummifying a body among the tombs of Egypt preserved what would become one of the largest ancient literary finds in history. Experts, including Cincinnati professor Kathryn Gutzwiller, said the worker cut and molded a piece of papyrus -- what to him was a scrap of paper -- into a chest cover that resembled papier-mache. The cover formed a hard layer on the mummy before intricate decorations were added. The mummy was entombed, along with the papyrus, until 1992,...

Larry K. Brown writes stories about the Old West and Wyoming By Becky Orr Published in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle CHEYENNE – Larry K. Brown is about as close as you can get to a time traveler. And while he doesn’t live in the past, Brown spends a lot of time there. During his visits, he has met some fascinating people. Brown is an author and historian who writes about Wyoming and the Old West. His exhaustive research has introduced him to the likes of Cheyenne suffragette and historian Grace Hebard, author Owen Wister, justice of the peace Esther Hobart Morris...

Introduction - Investigations of Bolivia Fuente Magna and the Monolith of Pokotia The following material is reprinted by permission from Bernardo Biadós Yacovazzo & Freddy Arce, OIIB - Omega Institute Investigations (Bolivia), INTI - NonGovernmental Organizacion (Bolivia). A large stone vessel, resembling a libation bowl, and now known as the Fuente Magna, was originally discovered in a rather casual fashion by a country peasant from the ex-hacienda CHUA, property of the Manjon family situated in the surrounding areas of Lake Titicaca about 75/80 km from the city of La Paz. The site where it was found has not been...

Researchers to Seek Origin of Ancient Chinese Civilization 2001.03.29 22:15:00 BEIJING, March 29 (Xinhuanet) -- A grand archaeological project will be launched in China in the coming five years, aiming to seek the origin of ancient Chinese civilization, the world's only ancient civilization that has been developing for 5,000 years without interruption. Researchers will try to find answers to such questions as whether Huangdi and Yandi, two legendary ancestors of the Chinese nation, really existed in history, and whether there were any Chinese characters even older than the inscriptions on animal bones and tortoise shells discovered in the famous...

Tired of hashing and rehashing the current Church scandal? Sick to death of watching our wishy-washy bishops haggle over how not to address the real issue? Well, let's focus on something positive for a bit -- the first ever... Catholic Writer's Festival When: September 13-15, 2002 Where: Franciscan University of Steubenville, Stuebenville, Ohio Many of you know that FUS is a Catholic university that actually attempts to teach Catholic doctrine! I've included below a list of the presenters at this conference. Many of them should be familiar names to those of you who frequently watch or listen to EWTN: Scott...

Authors gather to explore artistic response to terrorism By JAIME SHERMANThe Register-Guard   Recommend this story to others.   As an American, author Annick Smith tends to think of political solutions for ending terrorism. But as a writer, she feels compelled to decide how to respond through literature and art. "After 9-11, a lot of people were writing, `Respond, respond,' " Smith told nearly 500 people who gathered Sunday at the University of Oregon. She and six other noted naturalist authors sought to do just that, concluding a three-day colloquium on "Literary and Artistic Responses to Terrorism" with a reading...