For the first time in a generation, Arlington National Cemetery has marked the burial of an unknown on its storied grounds. Only this time, 25 years since the last interment at the Tomb of the Unknowns, the identity of the body remains a mystery not because the ravages of war made identification impossible, but because in a bureaucratic error the cemetery lost the paperwork showing the identity of the remains...

... This is the first time the cemetery has marked an unknown since 1984, when Arlington entombed the remains of a Vietnam veteran in the Tomb of the Unknowns in a ceremony rife with pomp and circumstance. Former President Reagan presided, posthumously awarding that service member the Medal of Honor. And that unknown soldier was supposed to be the last unknown interred in any U.S. military cemetery, given advances in DNA technology and a multimillion dollar effort to account for every soldier and identify all remains. A body that could not be identified was supposed to be a thing of the past.

But Arlington's newest unknown, buried without special ceremony, is the exception to what was intended to be the rule. The cemetery buried someone in grave 449 -- likely relatively recently, since that section is an active part of the cemetery -- and then lost track of the paperwork showing the identity of the remains. In 2003, workers went to bury a newly deceased service member in that plot, only to find unmarked remains in the ground. Paper records had listed the plot as vacant.

Rather than publicly admit this error, Arlington quietly left the remains unmarked for six years. For those six years, passersby saw only an empty plot of green grass in spot 449, surrounded by stones etched with names.

This remained the case until this past summer, when Salon began working on tips from current and former workers at Arlington who said these kinds of mistakes occur with disturbing frequency at the cemetery, which calls itself "our nation's most sacred shrine."...

The remains of an ancient synagogue have been revealed in an archeological dig in Turkey.

The ruins, estimated to be at least 1,500 years old, were unearthed by a team of archeologists from Akdeniz University in September and new artifacts are being discovered daily.

Among those discovered on the site is a marble tablet featuring a menorah flanked by a shofar and a bugle on one side and a palm tree and lemon tree on the other.

Site chief Dr. Nevzat Cevik, an archeology professor at Akdeniz University, told the Anatolia news agency that his team believes the temple is from around the third century.

The ancient temple was found in the town of Demre in the Antalya province, on the southwestern tip of Turkey. The structure is situated on a hilltop overlooking the Andriake harbor. The dimensions of the main room are 7.25 meters by 5.08 meters.

Willard S. Boyle, a McGill University graduate born in Nova Scotia, was a joint recipient of the 2009 Nobel Physics Prize Tuesday morning in Stockholm, Sweden.

Mr. Boyle, a dual citizen of Canada and the U.S., shared the award with two Americans - George E. Smith and Charles K. Kao. In 1966, Mr. Kao figured out how to transmit light over long distances through optical glass fibers, a discovery that made it possible for people to exchange text, music and images around the world within seconds. In 1969, Mr. Boyle and Mr. Smith created the first imaging technology using a digital sensor, a breakthrough for the design of the digital camera.

Stating that the three scientists “helped to shape the foundation of today's networked societies,” the Nobel Foundation named the three scientists the “masters of light” in a statement released Tuesday.

Seventeen other Canadians have won Nobel Prizes since 1923...

When German Chancellor Angela Merkel earlier this week accepted an invitation to address a joint session of the Senate and U.S. House on Nov. 3. Her spokesman, Thomas Steg, called it a "rare honor for foreign guests of state to be able to speak before the Senate and the House of Representatives.”

He added, "Of Germany's chancellors only Konrad Adenauer, who spoke to both houses in May 1957, has had this privilege."

That got us thinking: how many heads of state addressed a joint session of Congress? Is it that rare?

The Office of the House Historian provided On Politics with a list of foreign heads of state that have addressed Congress in the past. The total number: 180.

It all began in 1824. According to the House historian's office: “The first notable address was by Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de LaFayette in 1824. LaFayette served in the Continental Army under General Washington during the American Revolution and was credited for helping to train the Continentals in European war fighting and strategy. In 1824, President James Monroe invited Lafayette to the United States as the ‘nation's guest.’ During the trip, he visited all of the then twenty-four states. Although the Senate had held a formal reception for him 9 December 1824, he addressed Congress on 10 December 1824.”

An Illinois man pleaded guilty Monday to a federal felony and admitted illegally digging up and selling prehistoric artifacts for years.

Leslie Jones, of Creal Springs, pleaded guilty to the unauthorized excavation, removal or damage of archaeological resources in federal court in Benton. As part of the plea, Jones admitted digging up and selling pottery fragments and other artifacts from the Cypress Creek National Wildlife Refuge from 2004-2007. The refuge is located in southern Illinois north of Cairo.

Jones got between $20 and $40 per item, court documents say.

As part of the plea, Jones also agreed to pay the government $150,326 - $15,941 for the cost of repairing the damage from his digging and $134,385 representing the “archaeological value” lost.

An anti-evolution group is getting ready to unveil a new tactic -- with college students as the target.

Living Waters, an evangelical group that argues for the literal truth of the Bible, is planning to distribute 175,000 copies of The Origin of Species on university campuses next month, just in time for the 150th anniversary of its publication. But these won't be ordinary copies. They will feature a "special introduction" to Darwin's classic.

Materials being used in fund raising by the group say that the introduction "gives a timeline of Darwin's life, and his thoughts on the existence of God. It lists the theories of many hoaxes, exposes the unscientific belief that nothing created everything, points to the incredible structure of DNA, and notes the absence of any undisputed transitional forms. To show the dangerous fruit of evolution, it also mentions Hitler's undeniable connections to the theory, Darwin's racism, and his disdain for women. In addition, it counters the claim that creationists are "anti-science" by citing numerous scientists who believed that God created the universe...."

An Israeli mayor has caused uproar with plans for his town to become the first to twin with a German town which housed a Nazi death camp.

Rosh Ha-Ayin, a middle-class dormitory town about 15 miles from Tel Aviv with a population of 40,000, has twinned with the infamous Bavarian town of Dachau, home of the first Nazi concentration camp about 12 miles from Munich.

More than 200,000 people from 30 countries were imprisoned at Dachau, a third of them Jews. Nearly 60,000 were murdered by the Nazis.

The Nobel Prize is one of the world's most coveted awards, carrying international prestige, a hefty cash award and, at times in its history, considerable controversy.

Named after Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, the prizes have been awarded nearly every year since 1901. (There were breaks during each of the two world wars.)

The Nobel Foundation administers the honours, which were first established in Nobel's will. Prizes are handed out in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace...

... The Nobel Prize has had its controversial moments: the 1994 peace award to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat that he shared with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin garnered widespread criticism.

The decision sparked demonstrations in Israel, and one Nobel judge resigned in protest, arguing that Arafat's violent past disqualified him.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it "one of the low points of the Nobel Prize" in a 2002 interview.

The Nobel committee's secretary, Geir Lundestad, told the Boston Globe: "The Nobel Prize isn't the granting of sainthood. There have been many winners with dark things about their past, but they have managed to raise themselves above them."

Six Nobel laureates have declined the prize, including three German scientists who were ordered not to accept the award at the beginning of the Second World War.

Jean Paul Sartre, the existentialist French philosopher and writer, became the first person to voluntarily refuse the prize in 1964. According to a public statement, Sartre said he had a policy of not accepting public honours and he did not mean to slight the Nobel Foundation.

Washington, DC, October 6, 2009 - On the 33rd anniversary of the bombing of Cubana flight 455, the National Security Archive today posted recently obtained CIA records on Luis Posada Carriles, his ties to "the Company" and role as an informant on other violent exile groups. The documents provide extensive details on a collaboration between Cuban-American militant Jorge Mas Canosa, who rose to become the most powerful leader of the hardline exile community in Miami, and Posada--codenamed AMCLEVE 15--who volunteered to spy on violent exile operations for the CIA.

The documents include a July 1966 memo from Posada, using the name "Pete," to his CIA handler Grover Lythcott requesting permission to join the coordinating junta for four violent exile groups, including RECE run by Mas Canosa. "I will give the Company all the intelligence that I can collect," Posada wrote. "I will gain a more solid position between the exiles and, because of that, I will be in a better position in the future to perform a good job for the company."

In a memo, Grover Lythcott described Posada as "not a typical 'boom and bang' type of individual" who was "acutely aware of the international implications of ill planned or over enthusiastic activities against Cuba." A CIA personnel record suggested that Posada would be "excellent for use in responsible civil position in PBRUMEN"--a codename for Cuba--"should the present government fall."...

The press is coming under considerable fire these days. News organizations are facing a crippling financial crisis and public views of the accuracy of news stories have fallen to their lowest level in more than two decades, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.

Nonetheless, most Americans continue to support the so-called "watchdog role" for the press. In fact, the percentage of Americans saying that press criticism of political leaders keeps them "from doing things that should not be done" is nearly as high now -- at 62% -- as it was in Pew Research's first poll in 1985 (67%) when views of the news media were far less negative than they are today.

In 15 surveys since that initial poll, majorities have said that press criticism of political leaders keeps them from doing things that should not be done. Support for the press's watchdog role has continued even as positive views of press performance have plummeted. In Pew Research's most recent survey of press attitudes, released Sept. 13, just 29% said that news organizations get the facts straight; in 1985, nearly double that percentage (55%) said news stories were accurate.

Partisan opinions about press criticism of political leaders have shifted, depending on which party controls the White House. In the most recent survey, 65% of Republicans said press criticism of political leaders does more good than harm; in four surveys during the Bush administration, far fewer Republicans expressed this view (51% in 2001; 43% in 2003; 44% each in 2005 and 2007)....

Fifty-five percent (55%) of likely voters say the nation’s current economic problems are due to the recession which began under President George W. Bush, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Thirty-seven percent (37%) say the current economic problems are caused by the policies President Obama has put in place since taking office. These findings have remained relatively stable since May.

Eighty-seven percent (87%) of Democratic voters blame Bush; 65% of Republicans blame Obama. Fifty percent (50%) of unaffiliated voters attribute the current economic situation to the Bush administration.

... In May, the Pew Hispanic Center released a study of first-, second- and third-generation Hispanics in the U.S. — a look at how the Latin-American population has grown and assimilated over the past three decades. As recently as 1980, just 9% of U.S. kids under 18 were Hispanic, compared with 22% today. Only about a tenth of that population are first-generation Latin Americans — meaning they were born outside the U.S. More than half (52%) are second generation — born in the U.S. to at least one foreign-born parent; and 37% were born in America to American-born parents. By 2025, the study estimates that close to 30% of all American kids will have some Latino ancestry.

What happens, of course, when an immigrant group heads toward assimilation, is that each successive generation gets more educated (82% of first-generation Latin-American kids ages 15 to 17 attend school, compared with 97% of second-generation kids — hardly perfect but moving toward parity) and more proficient in the national language (by the third generation, 95% of Latino kids ages 15 to 17 speak English exclusively or very well). Another thing that happens is that parents start moving away from baby names like Guillermo and closer to names like William. "When [immigrant or later-generation] parents name their children, they are combining their own attachments and affinities with their hopes and aspirations for their children," says Guillermina Jasso, a sociology professor at New York University and a second-generation Hispanic American. The emotional complexity of that cultural changeover means that parents don't just switch from Latin names to English ones in a single go. Rather, says Jasso, they may pass through a three-stage process, "with bilingual names becoming popular for a while. Those are names like Hector and Daniel for boys and Sandra and Cecilia for girls."

The Social Security Administration has tracked the fashions in baby-naming since 1880, and confirms that many such bridge names are currently enjoying an uptick. On the yearly list of 1,000 most popular names, Hector has improved from No. 193 in 1981 to 181st most popular in 2008; Daniel has gone from 12th place to 5th over the past decade; and Cecilia has similarly risen from slot No. 300 to 270. Sandra has bounced around in the top 40 for decades, but since 1990 has inched up from No. 33 to 27...

The tyrannosaurid family just keeps growing. Following the surprise discovery last month of a human-sized Tyrannosaurus ancestor, paleontologists have unearthed yet another T. rex cousin from the Gobi desert. Previously unknown to scientists, Alioramus altai had eight horns, a long snout, and a sleek physique: "Instead of [its] big bad boy... relatives, this one is more like a ballerina," said American Museum of Natural History’s Stephen Brusatte. Alioramus had two horns above each eye and two extended downwards from each cheek—a first for carnivorous dinosaurs. The cheek horns likely served as sexual ornamentation for attracting mates, much like a peacock's feathers. National Geographic reports that alioramus had an "unusually airy skeleton" and "thinner, steak knife-like teeth," suggesting a more diverse picture of the tyrannosaurids than scientists had previously imagined.

For one of today's winners of the Nobel Prize in Medicine, Elizabeth H. Blackburn of the University of California at San Francisco, the news isn't her first exposure to widespread public attention.

Back in 2004, during the Bush administration, Ms. Blackburn was one of two scientists dismissed from the President's Council on Bioethics, after they dissented from the panel by arguing that the federal government should not bar scientists from creating cloned embryos as a source of stem cells for medical research.

Today, along with two other American researchers—Carol W. Greider of the Johns Hopkins University, and Jack W. Szostak of the Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital—she won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery, in the 1980s, of how chromosomes are duplicated during cell division and how telomeres—the caps at the ends of chromosome strands—prevent the copying from being degraded.

BOSTON—Massachusetts, which boasts a history of abolitionism, is considering legislation to determine how much the state and local institutions profited from the African slave trade.

A bill before the legislature would require some of Massachusetts oldest banking, financial and insurance companies to look deep into their history -- and the histories of subsidiaries and predecessor companies -- to uncover links to the slave trade, as a condition of doing business with the state.

It also would authorize the secretary of state to produce a book documenting to what extent the state, since the times of the Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies, benefited from slavery, whether through taxes or economic growth.

The bill's sponsor, Rep. Byron Rushing, D-Boston, said understanding that difficult history is key to any future discussion of apologies or reparation claims tied to slavery. He said most people underestimate the economic significance of slavery to the growth of the country and the state.

JERUSALEM – Unknown vandals damaged an ancient ruin in the Israeli desert recognized by the United Nations as a World Heritage site, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority said Monday.

One official called the damage to Avdat, an ancient Nabatean city dating back to the third century B.C., "irreversible."

The vandals sprayed black and yellow graffiti, destroyed signs, tipped over ancient stone pillars and destroyed a 1,700-year-old marble altar, spokesman Omri Gal said.

Police are currently investigating the incident, Gal said. The vandals could have entered the site any time during the night since it is open and unfenced, he said.

"We don't know when they came, but they did a lot of damage in a very short time," he said.

Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday the alleged terror plot disrupted in New York was "one of the most serious in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001" — but he gave no indication when more arrests might be made.

In a question-and-answer session with reporters, Holder said prosecutors will bring all those involved in the plot to justice.

So far, one suspect, Colorado shuttle bus driver Najibullah Zazi, has been charged with conspiring to detonate bombs in the United States. Zazi, who has denied any terrorist plotting, is being held without bond.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will focus "at the right time" on how to overturn the "don't ask, don't tell" ban on gays serving openly in the military, his national security adviser said Sunday.

"I don't think it's going to be — it's not years, but I think it will be teed up appropriately," James Jones said.

The Democratic-led Congress is considering repealing the 1993 law. Action isn't expected on the issue until early next year.

Washington - For all the recent uproar over Iran's nuclear program, little attention has been paid to the fact that the country which first provided Tehran with nuclear equipment was the United States.

In 1967, under the "Atoms for Peace" program launched by President Eisenhower, the US sold the Shah of Iran's government a 5-megawatt, light-water type research reactor. This small dome-shaped structure, located in the Tehran suburbs, was the foundation of Iran's nuclear program. It remains at the center of the controversy over Iranian intentions, even today...

... The Shah of Iran was a US ally. But even so, the US had qualms about providing him with nuclear technology. The worries were very like those of today: officials thought it possible that Iran would build on nuclear power programs to develop nuclear weapons technology.

A 1974 Defense Department memorandum, recently declassified and posted on-line by the National Security Archive, noted that stability in Iran depended heavily on the Shah's personality. Should he fall, "domestic dissidents or foreign terrorists might easily be able to seize any special nuclear materials stored in Iran for use in bombs"...

Scientists have reproduced the Shroud of Turin — revered as the cloth that covered Jesus in the tomb — and say the experiment proves the relic was man-made, a group of Italian debunkers claimed Monday.

The shroud bears the figure of a crucified man, complete with blood seeping out of nailed hands and feet, and believers say Christ's image was recorded on the linen fibers at the time of his resurrection.

Scientists have reproduced the shroud using materials and methods that were available in the 14th century, the Italian Committee for Checking Claims on the Paranormal said.

The group said in a statement this is further evidence the shroud is a medieval forgery. In 1988, scientists used radiocarbon dating to determine it was made in the 13th or 14th century.

But the dispute continued because experts couldn't explain how the faint brown discoloration was produced, imprinting on the cloth a negative image centuries before the invention of photography.