US reportedly to search again for Amelia Earhart's plane

[MSNBC]  The State Department plans to join a new effort to find the plane of pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart, 75 years after she mysteriously disappeared over the South Pacific.

Vikings spread mice wherever they went

[Scientific American]  A new study, published online March 18 in BMC Evolutionary Biology, shows that Norwegian Vikings brought mice along in their conquests, some of whose descendants persist to this day in the far-flung destinations visited.

Satellites reveal thousands of ancient human settlements

[MSNBC] By examining satellite images for these two features, [scientists] have found evidence of about 9,500 possible human settlements across an area of 8,880 square miles (23,000 square kilometers) in northern Mesopotamia, located in the northeast of modern Syria. 

Excavations begin at mysterious Mound of Down

[Belfast Telegraph]  The Mound has never been excavated by archaeologists but the earthwork is thought to be a pre-Norman fortification, most likely a royal stronghold of the Dál Fiatach, the clan that ruled this part of Co Down in the first millennium AD.