Tomb

HEBRON, Israeli-Occupied West Bank -- Arafat Mohammed listened to the army jeeps whizzing by on the street, delivering tear gas and rubber bullets in booms and sharp cracks.He laughed when asked if he expected justice from the Israeli inquiry commission that yesterday retraced the steps of mass killer Dr. Baruch Goldstein in the Tomb of the Patriarchs a half-mile away.Mr. Mohammed has been unable to open his plumbing supply store for 12 days. He cannot buy milk for his two children. He cannot walk on the street without fear of being arrested or shot.

LUXOR, Egypt -- When Egyptologist Howard Carter chipped a small hole into the wall guarding the inner chamber of the tomb of the young Pharaoh Tutankhamen, he poked his head in for a first look. Could he see anything, his sponsor, standing behind him, wanted to know."Yes," Carter replied. "Wonderful things.""As my eyes grew accustomed to the light," he wrote later, "details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues and gold -- everywhere the glint of gold."Working painstakingly amid the riches of the first intact royal tomb discovered in Luxor's fabled Valley of the Kings, Carter said he became aware of "strange rustling, murmuring, whispering sounds which rose and fell and sometimes wholly died away."

CHICAGO -- Michael Tomb watched his $100,000 stock portfolio surge 55 percent in one month -- not a bad profit for a guy who makes his living writing computer programs for chemical and drug companies.Unfortunately for Tomb, the money isn't real. It's part of a new investment game called "Final Bell" from Sandbox Entertainment Corp. that he plays via the Internet.What is real is the prize. The investor who makes the most money on a phantom stock portfolio by Jan. 10 will win $10,000."All the Internet games that caught my attention are ones that you would actually get something back by winning," Tomb said.

Inspiration in Ireland; My favorite placeIreland is not the Emerald Isle. It is the land of banshee winds and numbing cold. Its gray skies and rocks defy its pastoral reputation. We went at Easter, bringing colds and sore throats from England, where we were living. The ferry butted its way through the Irish Sea from Fishguard to Rosslare.During our 12-day trip, the sun rarely appeared. We visited castles and crystal factories, kissed the Blarney stone and prayed in cathedrals. We sampled Irish hospitality in bed and breakfasts and pubs packed with locals.

Dedication to others redeems war's horror During the Battle of Okinawa, I was an 18-year-old infantry rifleman, reared in a loving, Christian family, learning that war is not the cowboys and Indians games I had played with my neighborhood friends only a few years earlier. As we fought our way down that island, almost yard-by-yard, we often came upon those peculiar Okinawan family tombs, with their plastered domes and walled courtyards and 2-foot-by-3-foot openings. We routinely destroyed these with explosives, because Japanese soldiers sometimes used them as sniper nests.

Of all musical instruments, none has inspired more awe than the trumpet. Its sound has been celebrated for centuries. Trumpets heralded the arrival of kings and emperors and have urged armies on to victory since the time of Tutankhamen. According to the Bible, Joshua used trumpet blasts to bring down the walls of Jericho, while the Book of Revelation promises the angel Gabriel will announce the end of time with a trumpet solo guaranteed to raise the dead. There's something brash and reckless -- macho, even -- about the instrument.

It is time for Israel to crack down on armed fanatic settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, who do not need to live there and who declare themselves a law unto themselves and who dedicate their efforts to destroy the Israel-Palestinian agreement no matter how many Israelis and Palestinians and people the world over fervently pray that peace prevails.Then it is necessary for Israelis and Palestinians to stick to their path to peace and not let policy be dictated by terrorists, be they terrorists from Hamas among Muslim Palestinians or from the Kach movement of the late American Meir Kahane and the Kiryat Arba settlement among Jewish Israelis.

As a movie, "Lara Croft Tomb Raider" is an awesome video game. Perhaps one's expectations should be adjusted accordingly. By video game standards, this is great stuff: a fabulous, pistol-packing babe, running around in form-fitting clothes, doing away with bad guys, dispatching demons, traveling the world in search of mysterious treasure. But this is a movie theater, and therein lies the rub. Once the thrill of seeing Angelina Jolie decked out as the ultra-cool Lara Croft wears off, once you've experienced the third or fourth big-time shootout (Ms. Croft does love her firearms!

Marc Miller survived a motorcycle crash in October near his Baltimore County home, but his foot had been dragged along the pavement and badly damaged. That injury would require both the most advanced medicine and an ancient therapy — leeches. Trauma doctors at Johns Hopkins, the University of Maryland and other U.S. hospitals routinely use leeches as a temporary measure to keep blood flowing as new vessels grow in a damaged area. The animals kept blood moving in and out of a new skin flap sewn onto Miller's foot.

Well, we wanted carnage in the season finale of The Walking Dead , and we got it. I have a feeling most viewers will consider this episode tame, though, since the Governor is still kicking and the war between the prison and Woodbury still hasn't quite been resolved. We'll just have to wait until season four to find out how this story ends! AMC has us eating out of its hands... When you think about it though, this episode was pretty strong. There was an actual skirmish between the prison and Woodbury, the Governor lost his mind and killed off almost all of his troops, two major human characters died (and a boatload of insignificant ones)