News items for 2007-May

2007-MAY-04: New Zealand: Religious identification: According to a BBC world service program:

2007-MAY -04: USA: Webby Awards announced: Members of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences annually select the best websites on the Internet in almost 70 categories. In the field of religion and spirituality. Religion & Ethics Newsweekly at http://www.pbs.org/religion was the winner; What is the Enlightenment? at: http://www.wie.org is the People's Voice Winner. Beliefnet at http://www.beliefnet.com, JCTV at http://www.jctv.org/flashindex.php, and This I believe at http://www.npr.org/ were nominees. ₂

2007-MAY-07: Israel: Tomb of King Herod found: King Herod  was dictator of Judea from 37 BCE until his death in 4 BCE, when it was under Roman occupation . His best known building project was the enlargement of the temple at Jerusalem. His best known act was perhaps to order the slaughter of all infants two years of age and under in Bethlehem -- an act that most historians doubt ever happened. According to the first century CE historian Josephus Flavius, Herod built a winter palace and his tomb at Herodium in the Judean Desert, south of Jerusalem. The palaces have been located, but his burial place was unknown until now. Ehud Netzer, a professor at Hebrew University who has been working at Herodium since 1972 discovered it in a previously unexcavated location between Herod's two palaces.

The university had wanted to keep the news secret until MAY-08 when it planned to hold a news conference. However, the Haaretz newspaper learned of the finding and published an article about it on its web site before the conference. ₃