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Film claims discovery of nails from Jesus's cross

Image
© Baz Ratner / Reuters
Investigator Simcha Jacobovici holds one of the two nails that are the focus of his latest documentary film, The Nails of the Cross.
Could two of the nails used to crucify Jesus have been discovered in a 2,000-year-old tomb in Jerusalem?

And could they have mysteriously disappeared for 20 years, only to turn up by chance in a Tel Aviv laboratory?

That is the premise of the new documentary film The Nails of the Cross by veteran investigator Simcha Jacobovici, which even before its release has prompted debate in the Holy Land.

The film follows three years of research during which Jacobovici presents his assertions -- some based on empirical data, others requiring much imagination and a leap of faith.

He hails the find as historic, but most experts and scholars contacted by Reuters dismissed his case as far-fetched, some calling it a publicity stunt.

Many ancient relics, including other nails supposedly traced back to the crucifixion, have been presented over the centuries as having a connection to Jesus. Many were deemed phony, while others were embraced as holy.

Jacobovici, who sparked debate with a previous film that claimed to reveal the lost tomb of Jesus, says this find differs from others because of its historical and archaeological context.

Bad Guys

Oil price drops more than 3 percent

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© AP/Ralph Wilson
A large sign states the property owners stand on a purposed pipeline to prove drinking water to households on Carter Road in Dimock, Pa. in this photo taken Dec. 21, 2010.
New York - Oil tumbled more than 3 percent Tuesday after Goldman Sachs warned investors that crude is due for a "substantial pullback."

Goldman analyst David Greely noted that global supplies remain "adequate" even though the rebellion in Libya shut down production there. Before fighting broke out in February, Libya exported about 1.5 million barrels per day2 percent of global demand - mostly to Europe.

Fears of tightening global supplies have helped push oil prices 33 percent higher since the middle of February.

Benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude for May delivery gave up $3.71, or 3.4 percent, to $106.22 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, shedding nearly two weeks of price increases. At one point it dropped to $105.60. In London, Brent crude lost $3.47, or 2.8 percent, at $119.95 per barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.

Laptop

US: Winklevoss twins must accept Facebook deal-court

Winklevoss twins
© unknown
Mark Zuckerberg won a legal battle against former Harvard classmates who accuse him of stealing their idea for Facebook, but the feud made famous on the silver screen is not over yet.

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss must accept a cash and stock settlement with Facebook that had been valued at $65 million, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Monday. Meanwhile, a New York man filed an amended lawsuit against Zuckerberg on Monday, citing a 2003 email in which Zuckerberg discusses an urgent need to launch his site before "a couple of upperclassmen" could launch theirs, an apparent reference to the Winklevoss twins.

The Winklevoss brothers argued their settlement with Facebook was unfair because the company hid information from them during talks. But the twins were sophisticated negotiators aided by a team of lawyers, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel.

"At some point, litigation must come to an end," Kozinski wrote. "That point has now been reached."

An attorney for the brothers, Jerome Falk Jr., said on Monday his clients would seek a rehearing before a larger, "en banc" group of 9th Circuit judges.

Handcuffs

US: FBI nabs man thought to be synagogue blast suspect

A man believed to be a suspect in the explosion outside a Santa Monica synagogue has been arrested near Cleveland, authorities said Monday.

A man thought to Ron Hirsch, 60, was taken into custody Monday evening in suburban Cleveland Heights after a concerned citizen who came into contact with him called police, said FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller in Los Angeles.

She said the FBI was working with local authorities to confirm the man's identity and had no immediate details of the arrest.

"It's believed to be him but, just as in any arrest scenario, a formal identification must be made," Eimiller said.

A rabbi in the Cleveland area told ABC News that another rabbi who spotted Hirsch at a Cleveland Heights synagogue called police.

"A fellow in our community spotted him in the schul on Taylor Road in Cleveland Heights," said Rabbi Sruly Wolf. "The rabbi who spotted him called the Cleveland Heights police, who immediately responded and called the FBI."

Investigators believed Hirsch boarded a New York-bound Greyhound bus after Thursday's blast near Chabad House Lubavitch of Santa Monica.

Attention

US: 9th body on Long Island beach

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© The Associated Press
Grim task: A State Police officer yesterday examines an object found near Jones Beach during the painstaking search for bodies.
Cops scouring a Long Island beach-turned-graveyard found another set of grisly remains yesterday -- a human skull and torso that were at least a mile apart and might belong to the same body.

"It could be number nine, or it could be number 10, we don't know yet," a source told The Post, in regard to the increasing body count, which could be the work of a serial killer.

A State Police officer with a cadaver dog found the torso at 11:30 a.m. in Nassau County, five to six miles west of where eight other decomposed bodies have been found in Suffolk County since December, said State Police Capt. James Dewar.

Four hours later, a Nassau cop found bones in the JFK Bird and Wildlife Sanctuary at least a mile east of the torso.

"It appears to be a skull," Nassau Detective Lt. Kevin Smith said of the second find. "It's all been very startling. We have a lot of work to do."

The bones were taken to the Nassau County Medical Examiner's Office.

The latest grim discoveries came as roughly 125 Nassau and state cops teamed up to widen the search for missing New Jersey call girl Shannan Gilbert, 24, last seen screaming for help as she ran from the gated community at Oak Beach after meeting a john for sex.

Bomb

Belarus subway blast kills 11

An explosion believed to have been caused by a bomb ripped through a subway station next to the office of Belarus' authoritarian president Monday evening, killing at least 11 people, wounding more than 100 and worsening an already tense political situation there.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the explosion, in Minsk, the Belarus capital, but witnesses described being hit by a wave of shrapnel that they said was contained in a bomb. Several victims' limbs were torn off by the blast's force, paramedics said.

President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko indicated that he believed that the explosion was terrorism. Prosecutors said an inquiry was focusing on a bomb. The station, in Minsk's center, is very close to major government offices, including Mr. Lukashenko's, as well as to his official residence.

Investigators and witnesses said the blast occurred on a platform just as passengers were leaving a train in the Oktyabrskaya station about 6 p.m., at the height of the evening rush. Witnesses reported that just after the explosion, smoke poured from the station's exits, as bodies were carried out on stretchers.

While Muslim separatists from southern Russia have carried out suicide bombings in Moscow's subway system, including one last year, they have never done so in Minsk. Belarus, a former Soviet republic with a population of 10 million, does not have a Muslim insurgency, and Mr. Lukashenko, who has tightly controlled the country since 1994, has portrayed himself as a stabilizing force.

But Belarus has faced political turmoil since Mr. Lukashenko's re-election in December, which rivals denounced as rigged. When opposition parties conducted a major protest on election night, the security services -- still called the KGB in Belarus -- responded with a far-reaching crackdown, sending riot police to break it up violently and arresting hundreds of people. Several presidential candidates were detained for weeks.

Family

Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System

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© PZS /Lin Pernille Photography
A nation that destroys its systems of education, degrades its public information, guts its public libraries and turns its airwaves into vehicles for cheap, mindless amusement becomes deaf, dumb and blind. It prizes test scores above critical thinking and literacy. It celebrates rote vocational training and the singular, amoral skill of making money. It churns out stunted human products, lacking the capacity and vocabulary to challenge the assumptions and structures of the corporate state. It funnels them into a caste system of drones and systems managers. It transforms a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and serfs.

Teachers, their unions under attack, are becoming as replaceable as minimum-wage employees at Burger King. We spurn real teachers - those with the capacity to inspire children to think, those who help the young discover their gifts and potential - and replace them with instructors who teach to narrow, standardized tests. These instructors obey. They teach children to obey. And that is the point. The No Child Left Behind program, modeled on the "Texas Miracle," is a fraud. It worked no better than our deregulated financial system. But when you shut out debate these dead ideas are self-perpetuating.

Alarm Clock

Canada: A Conversation between killers


Nuke

US: Three workers exposed to radiation at Nebraska nuclear plant

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced Monday afternoon that it was investigating the "unplanned radiation exposures" of three workers on April 3, a week earlier, at the Cooper Nuclear Station near Brownville, Neb.

The NRC said it did not believe the exposure exceeded its limits.

"Workers removed a long tube contaminated with highly radioactive material through the bottom of the reactor vessel, rather than through the top as is usually done, triggering radiation alarms," the NRC reported. "The workers set the tube down and immediately left the area."

The Cooper plant has a single boiling-water reactor of General Electric design. (GE is a part owner of NBCUniversal, which owns half of msnbc.com.)

Here's a map of the plant, which is about 25 miles from Nebraska City, Neb., and south of Omaha.

Eye 1

France bans full Muslim face-veil

muslim,face,veil

Paris - France, home to Europe's biggest Muslim population, banned the wearing of full-face veils in public Monday, despite threats of protest from a group that already feels stigmatised.

The draconian new law, the first of its kind to be enforced in Europe, was immediately broken by a young woman from the southern city of Avignon, who has become the media symbol of France's tiny community of niqab wearers.

"I had been invited to take part in a television programme which I am going for and I find that today is April 11, the first day of the application of the ban," Kenza Drider, 32, told reporters before boarding a train for Paris.