Long before NASA was established in 1958, before JFK's impassioned speech about the space race, and before any of the Apollo missions or space shuttle successes and disasters, Percival Lowell devoted much of his career and considerable fortune to trying to prove that Mars hosted intelligent life. Viewed through his telescopes, the ancient, baleful Red Planet was about the size of a dime. Lowell believed he was seeing a network of canals on its surface. Therefore, he declared, Mars holds intelligent life. It is not necessarily like human life, he emphasized, but it is intelligent enough to build canals.

It is Lowell's vision of Mars that has enthralled and inspired earthlings ever since.

In 1895, Lowell published a book about what he believed he saw. He wrote articles about it for Popular Astronomy and The Atlantic Monthly. He lectured widely about it. He became famous and immensely popular. He was "of medium height, slim and handsome, with an athletic build and an intense expression," his biographer, David Strauss, professor emeritus of history at Kalamazoo College in Michigan, writes in an e-mail. "His erect bearing and fastidious dress contributed to a commanding presence."

Lowell enchanted the public with his charisma and the power and conviction of his beliefs. "He was a very effective popularizer of his ideas," says Robert Millis, director of the Lowell Observatory. "He was the Carl Sagan of his day."

The scientific community was less enthusiastic than the general public about the notion of intelligent life on Mars.

No matter. Wealthy, brilliant, charming when he wanted to be, Percival Lowell was confident in his heritage and convinced of his superiority to the "ruck and rubble" from Southern and Eastern Europe flooding onto America's shores. He was also seriously inner-directed. And with what he was certain was his discovery of the canals, he had found his life's work: to promulgate his sensational belief that Mars was the home of Martians.

The images of voters celebrating the recent election results in Italy were as eloquent as they were alarming: amid the sea of tricolour flags were hundreds of people raising their right arms to the skies, their fingers tense and straight. Everywhere you could see the old fascist salute. It is back in fashion and many are now wondering if the boot-boys themselves are back in power.

t is never easy to understand what is happening in Italian politics, but the past fortnight has been uncharacteristically clear. Silvio Berlusconi, the media magnate, has been swept back to power, winning convincing majorities in both upper and lower houses. This week there have been regional and mayoral elections. The story has been the same almost everywhere: overwhelming victories for the right. They even won the mayoral contest in Rome, where the left had assumed it had a divine right to rule.

Many in Italy are deeply worried by the results. Berlusconi's coalition, they say, wasn't an ordinary rightwing movement, but instead an assortment of far-right extremists and dangerous, deluded rabble-rousers. The Popolo della Libertà coalition, for example, includes Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of you-know-who. It includes the rump of the so-called post-fascist party, the National Alliance. Its leader, Gianfranco Fini, once said that Mussolini was the greatest statesman of the 20th century.

One of the Pacific Northwest's most astonishing archaeological finds in a generation has languished for more than a year, lingering on metal shelves in a Seattle warehouse, unseen by the public and unexamined by scientists.

No one questions the discoveries - artifacts from a 2,700-year-old Native American village excavated from the Port Angeles waterfront amid great public interest - should be exhibited, analyzed and celebrated.

But the 900 boxes of artifacts - such things as spindle whorls carved from whale vertebrae, along with animal bones and shell fragments - remain hung up in a bureaucratic no man's land. Questions about who owns and controls access to the collection are still in dispute.

And there's also another all-too-familiar problem when the government gets involved: The money to study the collection evaporated.

Professor Benny Shanon of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem has written a paper arguing that Moses, the Jewish prophet, was on drugs. Shanon argues that Moses was on Ayahuasca, a mixture of the Acacia tree and harmal plant in conjunction. He argues this based on some very easily obtainable facts. In South America, shamans take a mixture of chemicals as Ayahuasca, a different mix than available in the Middle East, to generate mystical experience. The writer, Professor Shanon, a professor of psychiatry, himself has experienced the kind of highs that are obtainable from this particular drug and in conjunction with other anecdotal evidence, he suggests that lots of the experiences of this type of drug convince those who take it that they are speaking to God or to approaching death. This particular drug creates an impression which is incredibly impressive for the taker but the point is that Shanon doesn't produce any evidence within literature or from studies for this, just the evidence of anecdotal impression.

One man's pride in and loyalty to his Confederate flag has landed him in a free-speech fight with his employer, who doesn't want it displayed on company property.
The flag is attached to Bobby Tillett's pickup truck, which he drives to work every day. Because his employer has banned the flag from his parking lot, Tillett is forced to park far from his job.

"If I take it down, that means you know the politically correct people would have won, and that's wrong," Bobby Tillett said. "If you believe in something that strong (you) should have no problem whatsoever to fly it."

One of the strangest animation-related stories of this year to date has to be the discovery, in Norway, of a set of four watercolor paintings stashed behind the frame of a fifth. This artwork depicted three of Disney's Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio, and would be of no great import unless one knew the identity of the purported painter: Adolf Hitler, supreme leader of the Third Reich. Finding artwork attributable to Hitler is not truly singular; it is estimated that the one-time aspiring art student did perhaps a thousand watercolors over the course of his "career." It is estimated that the Disney watercolors were done between 1938 and 1940. Hitler's choice of subject is not unusual either, since the dictator had an especial interest in Snow White -- and Snow-White.
The latter was, of course, a German fairy tale known as Sneewittchen. Hitler despised modernity; in his heart he harkened back to the tales of the simple Aryan folk. As for the Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Hitler considered it among the greatest movies ever made. During a 1938 visit to Germany, Roy Disney sold the film to the Propaganda Ministry, one of 50 American films bought by the Nazi regime that year. The film was never shown due to growing anti-Americanism, but der Führer had a copy delivered to his private movie theater in Ubersalzberg.

What he saw embarrassed and upset him. Hitler was by no means a total fan of Disney -- he considered Mickey Mouse to be a degenerate tap-dancing idiot -- but even the leader of one of the world's mightiest nations had to bow before the technical perfection and animated wizardry of Snow White. German animation could not have produced anything like it, despite the presence of talented animators such as Kurt Lodel and Wolfgang Kaskeline. Hitler was reportedly furious about this unhappy fact. (Germany did have a studio producing animation under the direction of Joseph Goebbels known as Deutches Zeichenfilm, but the only significant film produced was a forgettable 1942 opus about a canary called Der arme Hansi.)

Philipp von Boeselager, the last survivor of a failed 1944 plot to assassinate Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, has died at the age of 90.

A German army officer, Boeselager said he obtained for the other plotters the explosive that was detonated under a table at Hitler's Wolf's Lair headquarters in present-day Poland on July 20, 1944.

A feature film about the plot, starring Tom Cruise as Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who planted the bomb, is set for release next year.

The blast only injured Hitler. Count Stauffenberg, another of the aristocratic officers who loathed the Nazis, was executed.

In early April, when North Korea called President Lee Myung Bak of South Korea an "impostor," a "traitor" and an "American running dog," the barrage sounded all too familiar to Jin Yong Seon. Jin has a museum filled with such verbiage.

In his Remembrance Museum in this former mining town 140 kilometers, or about 90 miles, east of Seoul, Jin is exhibiting 700 samples of what he calls "paper bombs" - the leaflets North and South Korea fired at each other in the years spanning the 1950-53 Korean War and up to 2000, when reconciliation efforts prompted a cease-fire in the propaganda contest.

In one North Korean leaflet displayed at Jin's museum, a composite photograph shows a former South Korean president in a bedroom tryst with a coquettish actress over the caption: "Kim Young Sam the libertine." Another leaflet gives a cartoon rendition of Kim's predecessor, Roh Tae Woo, kneeling to take orders from his high-seated boss - James Lilley, the U.S. ambassador in Seoul.

Archaeologists are hoping to unearth evidence of what they believe to have been one of Bronze Age Britain's largest axe-making "factories".
Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust (CPAT) said the axes, made from a distinctive type rock - known as picrite - had been found throughout the country.
A three-week survey at the 4,000-year-old site will start soon in Hyssington, near Welshpool, Powys.

Many of Egypt's most famous monuments, such as the Sphinx and Cheops, contain hundreds of thousands of marine fossils, most of which are fully intact and preserved in the walls of the structures, according to a new study.

The study's authors suggest that the stones that make up the examined monuments at Giza plateau, Fayum and Abydos must have been carved out of natural stone since they reveal what chunks of the sea floor must have looked like over 4,000 years ago, when the buildings were erected.

More than 100,000 Civil War-era artifacts were recently unearthed from a small, wooded stretch of land in Silver Spring that is slated to be paved over and made part of the Intercounty Connector.

Archaeologists called the former home of Melinda Jackson one of the best-preserved archaeology sites ever found in Maryland. Jackson, a black woman born into slavery in 1828 who gained her freedom and raised a family, has descendants still living in the area.

Virginia was central to the Civil War, and a state commission plans to make the commonwealth central to a multi-year commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the War Between the States.

"It’s a commemoration, not a celebration," said Speaker of the House of Delegates William J. Howell Jr., R-Fredericksburg, who chairs the Virginia Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War Commission.

The commission was set up two years ago to plan how the state’s role in the events of 1861-65, and those leading up to the war years, should be remembered across Virginia.

"Virginia played a central part" in a war that was significant to the entire country, Howell said on Tuesday.

The commission has plans to kick off its six-year retrospective a year from now, on April 29, 2009, with the first of seven free conferences on Civil War subjects.

"It’s an opportunity for both education and economic development," Howell said.

Legislation to create an Abraham Lincoln National Heritage Area that would be spread out over the many Illinois counties where he spent his pre-White House years is awaiting President Bush's signature.

The House approved the measure this week after it passed the Senate as part of a bill involving public lands from coast to coast.

The provision was co-sponsored by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, and Rep. Ray LaHood, the Peoria Republican whose congressional district includes the 11 counties Lincoln represented for one term in the U.S. House some 160 years ago.

The legislation calls for up to $15 million in federal money over 15 years to fund grants to help keep alive the story of Lincoln through the heritage area, which will include 42 counties in central Illinois.

A senior Iraqi official has accused the West of not doing enough to stop the thriving trade in antiquities smuggled out of the country's depleted archeological sites and sold in auction houses across Britain, America and Europe.

Dr Bahaa Mayah, a special adviser to Iraq's Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, called for an immediate global ban on the sale of at least 100,000 artefacts that have been stolen since the invasion.

Speaking at the British Museum, he said it was the responsibility of the occupying forces to retrieve the valuable artefacts that had been plundered from southern Iraq's archaeologically rich sites since 2003.

Hitler's "Mein Kampf" should be released in Germany, says a German Jewish leader.

Stephan Kramer, the secretary general of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, has urged that a
critically annotated edition be issued online of Hitler's diatribe, which has been banned in Germany since 1945.

Kramer told Deutschlandfunk Radio that the Central Council would work on such an annotation, even for an Internet publication, of the volume Hitler wrote in prison in 1924. The book became a staple of the Nazi movement and was a required wedding gift. Today it is available on the Internet, but virtually only from far-right and Islamic extremist groups outside Germany.

Nobel Peace Prize winner and international symbol of freedom Nelson Mandela is flagged on U.S. terrorist watch lists and needs special permission to visit the USA. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calls the situation "embarrassing," and some members of Congress vow to fix it.

The requirement applies to former South African leader Mandela and other members of South Africa's governing African National Congress (ANC), the once-banned anti-Apartheid organization. In the 1970s and '80s, the ANC was officially designated a terrorist group by the country's ruling white minority. Other countries, including the United States, followed suit.

Because of this, Rice told a Senate committee recently, her department has to issue waivers for ANC members to travel to the USA.

"This is a country with which we now have excellent relations, South Africa, but it's frankly a rather embarrassing matter that I still have to waive in my own counterpart, the foreign minister of South Africa, not to mention the great leader Nelson Mandela," Rice said.

About 50 to 75 members and supporters of the sovereignty group Hawaiian Kingdom Government occupied the mauka-ewa corner of the 'Iolani Palace grounds from early this morning but did not try to stop others from going onto the property as they did yesterday.

Group members, including leader Mahealani Kahau, declined to speak to media, saying they were inaccurately and unfairly portrayed regarding their actions yesterday.

The group said its action was not a protest or demonstration but a reoccupying of its legitimate seat of government, unidentified security officers told The Advertiser today.

Most of us may believe that Robert Mugabe's undermining of democracy is bad news for Zimbabwe's economy.

But if we conclude that China created material prosperity and spawned wildly successful entrepreneurial ventures such as computer maker Lenovo Group Ltd. without constitutional democracy and its appurtenances, then we can't -- at least on purely economic grounds -- argue that Zimbabwe needs them.

Equally useless then would be the heaps of empirical evidence that economists have uncovered suggesting a causal relationship between property rights and growth.

If the most fascinating economic miracle of our times can soar in an institutional vacuum, then surely others can, too.

Now, that may only sound right to Mugabe and his cronies. So what's missing here?

The answer, according to Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Yasheng Huang, is simple: The conventional view of China is deeply flawed.

Institutions, as Huang argues in his forthcoming book, titled ``Capitalism With Chinese Characteristics,'' have mattered as much in China as elsewhere, only their effect doesn't show up as neatly....

Huang has dug into China's Ministry of Agriculture data to show that in 1985, out of the 12 million businesses classified as ``town and village enterprises,'' more than 10 million were privately owned. The conventional view that Chinese TVEs were controlled by local governments is a myth.

So what exactly changed in the relationship between the government and the people to cause this extraordinary surge in rural capitalism? And that, too, just a few years after Mao's Cultural Revolution, when private possession of a book -- let alone a business -- could get a person arrested.

``China then and now does not have well-specified property rights security,'' Huang says. ``But China in the early 1980s moved very far and fast toward establishing security of the proprietor. One should never underestimate the incentive effect of not getting arrested.''