Philippe Charlier, a forensic medical examiner, addresses reporters during a news conference held near Versailles

Autopsy of 12th-century monarchy reveals heart embalmed in purifying frankincense

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Jericho Jones closes in on the Ark

Jerusalem - The extrovert Texan who inspired the Indiana Jones Hollywood epics believes he has found the lost biblical city of Gilgal, bringing him closer to his quest for the Ark of the Covenant. Vendyl Jones, 64, announced yesterday the discovery of a huge site covering some 21 square miles in the desert south of Jericho. AFP

The man with the golden pen: Lawrence Kasdan

Lawrence Kasdan is best known as the director of 'Body Heat' and 'The BigChill'. But he has also written some of the biggest box-office hits of alltime. In an extract from 'Projections 3', he talks to Graham Fuller about 'The Bodyguard', 'Raiders' and 'The Empire Strikes Back'; while (panel, right) Quentin Curtis looks back at a prolific career

FILM / Rebirth of a salesman: How on earth did the same man make 'Jurassic Park', and then this? David Thomson explains

THERE'S something serene and unnerving, something more, or less, than human about Steven Spielberg. It's as if, rather than just striving to be himself, he was actually responding to some perilous, deep-seated urge: 'I can be anything.' There are ways in which he intrigues the biographer in me, for this is one of the most telling American lives of the last half-century. So far, let me stress, for he's only 46, no matter that he's been a fixture for two decades. He's done so much; yet as a man he's so unremarkable. Is there enough of him that's real or ordinary, or is he maybe as ageless and steeped in alien wisdom as his own ET?

FILM / Raider of the lost heart: At his best, Spielberg can sweeten a disturbed child's view into an uplifting epic. Quentin Curtis assesses the output of the director who never grew up

DUEL (1973): The best TV movie ever made? From the opening shots of a receding garage, an original cinematic talent announces itself. Dennis Weaver plays the businessman motoring to a key meeting, twitchy and a touch louche. But the star is the tanker that stalks him: a great grouchy beast, with bull-snout and steely will. Spielberg's keen eye and swift editing continually startle. There are hints of his later moralism - the driver has rowed with his wife - and his magnetism for symbolists. The truck is: fate, conscience, society, the repressed id - or just a truck.

Obituary: Tip Tipping

Timothy Tipping, actor and stuntman, born 13 February 1958, died Brunton Northumberland 5 February 1993.

Good, awful, and expurgated: When not eating, drinking, or even worshipping, what will you be doing over Christmas? Our writers look at ways of passing the time

ONE OF the most comic scenes in modern cinema - Meg Ryan's simulated orgasm in a restaurant in When Harry Met Sally - will lift the post-festive torpor for BBC 1 viewers shortly before 11 o'clock on Boxing Night. Every moan will be savoured in several million living rooms: yet the film has, in Beebspeak, been 'edited for language' - numerous unarousing four-letter words have been carefully snipped.
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Female aristocrats battle to inherit the title

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Love struck: Photographs of JFK's visit to Berlin 50 years ago reveal a nation instantly smitten

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Mark Hix gets creative with English peas

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Chef Martin Morales: Ceviche with a smile

Morales has turned South America's elegant cuisine into one of London's hottest food trends
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Seasoned to taste: Food institutions

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Anatomy of a waiter: Staff spill their secrets

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Iran election: Farewell Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, we’ll miss you – but not that much...

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