Daily alternative news articles at the News Desk for GrahamHancock.com. Featuring alternative history, science, archaeology, ancient egypt, paranormal & supernatural, environment, and much more. Check in daily for updates!

A Shiite king ruled northern Syria more than a millennium ago from behind the towering walls of the citadel in Aleppo. In later centuries, Arab armies repelled medieval crusaders from the hilltop fortress, Mongol invaders damaged it and Ottomans used it as military barracks.

By 2011, the citadel had settled into what seemed a comfortable retirement as a UNESCO world heritage site and tourist attraction, illuminated at night by artistic ground lights and surrounded by the bustling cafes of Aleppo’s old city below.

Almost a year ago, headlines proclaiming the sale of a largely complete T. rex-like dinosaur sparked an international custody battle that featured a confrontation at a public auction, a federal seizure of the fossils, charges related to smuggling against Eric Prokopi, the man who attempted to sell them — and, finally, his guilty plea.

This case appears to be winding down. Prokopi is awaiting sentencing, and during a ceremony in New York City on Monday (May 6), Mongolia — the country from which Prokopi admitted he took the ill-gotten fossils— will take formal possession of the finds.

For close to 400 years, the painting was closed off to the world. For the past 124 years, millions of visitors walked by without noticing an intriguing scene covered with centuries of grime.

Only now, the Vatican says a detail in a newly cleaned 15th century fresco shows what may be one of the first European depictions of Native Americans.

The fresco, The Resurrection, was painted by the Renaissance master in 1494 — just two years after Christopher Columbus first set foot in what came to be called the New World.

A passenger aircraft had a narrow miss with an unidentified object over Glasgow, a report has revealed.

The Airbus A320 was making its final approach to Glasgow Airport on 2 December when an object passed about 300ft underneath it.

The pilot of the aircraft said the risk of collision with the object, which did not show up on radar, had been "high".

A report by the UK Airprox Board said investigators were unable to establish what the object had been.

A Swiss-made, solar-powered airplane called Solar Impulse completed an 18-hour flight from San Francisco to Phoenix on Saturday, marking the first leg of a fuel-free odyssey across America.

Adventurer Bertrand Piccard piloted the craft, which has the wingspan of a jumbo jet but the weight of a typical passenger car, to its landing at Phoenix's Sky Harbor International Airport at 12:30 a.m. MST (3:30 a.m. EDT).

In the wake of the marijuana legalization victories in Colorado and Washington last November, and buoyed by a series of national public opinion polls showing support for pot legalization going over the tipping point, marijuana reform legislation is being introduced at state houses across the land at levels never seen before.

While the mere fact that a bill has been introduced is no guarantee it's going to pass, that such bills are being introduced in record numbers speaks to how far the marijuana reform movement has come.

Our Milky Way galaxy, and the billions of others beyond, is chock-a-block with extra-solar planets, scientists have learned in recent decades. But whether any of them can support life is a far more complex and contentious issue.

Many researchers hold that potentially "habitable" planets have to be rocky and within a limited zone in relation to their central sun—conditions that allow for the continuing presence of liquid water on their surfaces.

Scientists have found a way to use thin slices of graphene to convert solar energy to direct current electricity. The discovery could lead to a whole array of new applications, including a whole new method of creating a sustainable energy source to power buildings of the future.

Senior US government officials are to be briefed at the White House this week on the danger of an ice-free Arctic in the summer within two years.

The meeting is bringing together Nasa's acting chief scientist, Gale Allen, the director of the US National Science Foundation, Cora Marett, as well as representatives from the US Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon.

This is the latest indication that US officials are increasingly concerned about the international and domestic security implications of climate change.

The United Nations has put the Queensland and federal governments on notice that the Great Barrier Reef could be added to a list of endangered world heritage sites.

In a draft decision released Friday night, expected to be adopted when UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee meets in Cambodia next month, it will be recommended the Great Barrier Reef be included in the List of World Heritage in Danger in 2014 ‘‘in the absence of a firm and demonstrable commitment’’ from the state and federal governments to take action.

That action included halting coastal development project that could impact the ‘‘outstanding universal value’’ of the site.

A record number of endangered manatees are dying in Florida's algae-choked waterways. So far this year, 582 manatees have died, more year-to-date than any year on record, according to preliminary numbers from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC).

A total of 247 of these have died in the southwest of the state due to an explosion of a red-hued algae called Karenia brevis, also known as a red tide.