Bunkers

Excuse me? I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw "Modern Hieroglyphics" (Nov. 8). The 50-year-old bunkers were declared by the archeologist paid for by Koll Co. as "of no historical importance" and the company was granted a permit to demolish the bunkers. Now the vice president of the Koll Real Estate Group is in a hard hat and in the company of the paid archeologist Nancy Whitney-Desautels drooling over the graffiti in the bunkers. The archeologist has taken pictures of the graffiti and she is quoted as saying the paintings in the bunkers are "very similar to the pyramids or American Indian cave paintings."

The Metropole , Hanoi 's legendary colonial hotel built in 1901, is offering four daily tours to its recently reopened underground concrete bunker where guests, staff and anti-war activists such as Joan Baez and Jane Fonda sought safety from U.S air raids during the Vietnam War. The bomb shelter, 12 feet beneath the surface and equipped with ventilation, was sealed and buried after the war. Many old-timers knew about it, but no one had...

When 144 PGA Tour pros arrive at Riviera Country Club for the $5.2-million Nissan Open, they are going to find something different -- every bunker has been renovated. "We've had a long year trying to improve the course," course superintendent Matt Morton said. The faces of the bunkers have all been enhanced, and there is new drainage in each one. Plus, every bunker has new sand, Caltega VII USGA specification silica sand.

Decommissioned military bunkers on national wildlife refuges could be transformed into artificial hibernation chambers for wintering bat populations devastated by the lethal fungus known as white-nose syndrome, according to an investigation by federal biologists. Temperature-controlled bunkers -- decontaminated in summer -- would enable biologists to monitor behavior and administer possible treatments that might delay the progression of the diseaseamong bats housed there the following winter, U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokesman Steve Agius said.

As workers in Huntington Beach recently began dismantling a World War II bunker in Bolsa Chica, officials at Crystal Cove State Park began planning to preserve some of the history being lost to the battering ram. A smaller bunker built into the hillside overlooking Abalone Point to spot and locate enemy ships will be made into an attraction for people interested in the history surrounding the defense of the coastline during the war, they said.

LYTHAM ST. ANNES, England — They don't come with any whimsical names like those found at other British Open venues: the Coffin Bunker, the Spectacles, the Principal's Nose or simply Hell. Taken as a collection, though, the bunkers at Royal Lytham & St. Annes might take the trophy for mass intimidation. Many are deep. The sand is heavy. And there are 206 of them scattered about the property. "You do feel a little bit claustrophobic on a lot of the holes," said Luke Donald, No.1 in the world rankings.

It looks like an ancient pyramid half buried in the sands of time. A huge concrete structure with 16-foot-thick ceilings and 6-foot-thick walls, it has stood as a massive gray monument to a bygone era. Now being demolished, it is yielding archeological treasures just as any real pyramid would. Instead of hieroglyphics, however, archeologists have been trekking here to study graffiti. "I think every 14-year-old in Huntington Beach has been inside this thing," said Larry Brose, vice president of the Koll Real Estate Group, which owns the property upon which the Huntington Beach bunker sits.

Anila Rubiku grew up in a country that no longer exists, at least not the isolated, repressed and paranoid state that was Albania before Eastern Europe's anti-Communist revolutions. The Balkan country that broke away from its iron-fisted mentors in Moscow, Beijing and Belgrade to pursue an even more Stalinist path has changed dramatically in the two decades since democracy began making inroads. But the scars of despotism remain visible on the landscape and in the mentality of Albanians, tens of thousands of them having endured unimaginable brutality in “re-education camps” during the long post-World War II dictatorship of Enver Hoxha . Hoxha sowed fear among the 3 million inhabitants of his remote Adriatic Sea enclave with constant warnings of imminent invasion by Albania's real and imagined enemies.

LYTHAM ST. ANNES, England -- Brandt Snedeker always has tried to embrace the British Open experience. The 31-year-old pro likes to stroll the town, spend a couple nights at the pub, partake of the local ales. He appreciates the fans who turn out in cold and rain to watch. He has even picked the brain of his idol, five-time Open champion Tom Watson. The Open, though, never seemed to love him back. Three appearances, three missed cuts. Then came Friday. A six-under-par 64 - the second consecutive day someone at Royal Lytham took dead aim at the lowest round in a major - not only left Snedeker with a one-stroke lead, but an entry in the record book as co-owner of the Open's 36-hole record.

Little old Sheboygan, Wis., was once best known for a summer extravaganza called Bratwurst Day —100,000 drunks eating too much pork and passing out on the beach. Now, for awhile at least, its notoriety will be as the home of PGA Black Sunday, a day when the wind whistled through the straits and in one ear and out the other of several in the golf world who should have more brain matter blocking the breeze. Let us count the ways. We felt for Dustin Johnson, who would have been in the playoff for the PGA Championship had he not grounded his club in a sand trap he didn't know was a sand trap.

Anila Rubiku grew up in a country that no longer exists, at least not the isolated, repressed and paranoid state that was Albania before Eastern Europe's anti-Communist revolutions. The Balkan country that broke away from its iron-fisted mentors in Moscow, Beijing and Belgrade to pursue an even more Stalinist path has changed dramatically in the two decades since democracy began making inroads. But the scars of despotism remain visible on the landscape and in the mentality of Albanians, tens of thousands of them having endured unimaginable brutality in “re-education camps” during the long post-World War II dictatorship of Enver Hoxha . Hoxha sowed fear among the 3 million inhabitants of his remote Adriatic Sea enclave with constant warnings of imminent invasion by Albania's real and imagined enemies.

Where: Departs from Lincoln Heights Cypress Gold Line station When: 1 to 6 p.m. Saturday and July 22 Price: $55 Info: (323) 223-2767, www.esotouric.com/fante

The 5-year-old Alabama boy who was held hostage in an underground bunker saw his kidnapper shot to death, his mother told TV personality Dr. Phil McGraw in an interview set to broadcast Wednesday. The exclusive interview deflates the last of the privacy cocoon that had been erected around Ethan, now 6, and his mother after 65-year-old Jimmy Lee Dykes boarded a school bus Jan. 29, shot its driver and took the boy hostage. In excerpts of the interview released to promote Dr. Phil's Wednesday show -- bumpered by Jerry Bruckheimer-esque action-movie music -- the boy's mother, Jennifer Kirkland, said that she wanted to take the boy's place in the bunker and that she asked to speak with Dykes.

The child who was held hostage in Alabama celebrated his sixth birthday at home on Wednesday, recuperating from his almost weeklong ordeal as a hostage. Ethan, who was freed from an underground bunker on Monday, was described by family and officials as physically unharmed. For almost a week, he was held captive in a 6-foot-by-8-foot shelter, playing with toys that officials sent in through a 4-inch PVC pipe. His neighbors were still working out how to celebrate his birthday and some were raising money to send the child to Disney World.

A child being held hostage in a bunker buried beneath the red dirt of rural Alabama will turn 6 this week, even as his neighbors and friends hope the birthday celebration will take place somewhere other than in the small cell where he has been kept prisoner since last week. The standoff between police and an elderly military veteran who kidnapped the boy off a school bus after shooting the driver to death, continued on Monday, the seventh day that the gunman and the boy have been in six-by-eight-foot bunker, buried at least four feet below the surface.

Federal Bureau of Investigation negotiators were watching Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65, "the whole time" as they prepared to enter the bunker where Dykes was holding a 5-year-old boy hostage, CBS News reported in its Monday evening broadcast. Officials rescued the boy, named Ethan, early Monday evening in a surprise raid that left Dykes dead, ending a nearly weeklong standoff that began after Dykes boarded a bus and killed a bus driver before taking the boy to his underground bunker. Citing unnamed federal sources, CBS News reported that the FBI rescue team created two diversions to distract Dykes before they entered the bunker from the top. Officials said at a news conference that negotiations had deteriorated over the past 24 hours and that they had seen Dykes with a gun inside the bunker.

18th hole, South Course, Par 5, 570 yards Tiger's tee shot was a booming one, 309 yards, but to the left rough. He managed to avoid the trio bunkers on that side of the fairway. And his second shot was a pretty one and it got him back on the fairway, to the right. With his next shot he was on the green, about 18 feet away for a birdie. Will he make it this time or will it go long again? This time the putt was short, by about a foot and a half. Another collective sigh from the gallery.

"I just told a couple guys here that I'd give 'em three shots a hole, but you gotta beat me at every hole for 18 holes." That's Sam Snead talking. He'd just sat down, put his straw hat under the chair and smoothed the top of his tanned, freckled head as if it had some hair. He was talking golf, about putting some 4-iron shot over the top of some sugar-maple tree one day a long time ao. At 77 (come May 27), Snead plays golf almost as well as he used to and talks golf better than ever.

A 5-year-old Alabama boy held hostage in an underground bunker for nearly a week was rescued Monday in a swift operation that left the kidnapper dead, federal authorities said. The boy, identified only as Ethan, was whisked to safety and was "doing fine," an FBI agent told reporters in Midland City, Ala. Agents feared the boy was in "imminent danger" after they saw that his abductor, 65-year-old Jimmy Lee Dykes, was holding a gun. Negotiations with the gunman had deteriorated over the previous 24 hours, according to FBI Special Agent Stephen E. Richardson, prompting agents to storm the bunker at 3:12 p.m. PHOTOS: Boy held in bunker freed "The subject is deceased," Richardson said of Dykes, but he declined to provide details during a brief news conference Monday afternoon.

MIDLAND CITY, Ala. - Midland City is a place where things have always gone more or less according to plan. There was that time the Beck house burned down, but even then two Bibles and a picture of Christ remained untouched. So the current crisis - a little boy kidnapped and held prisoner underground for days - has left people here struggling to find a purpose behind it. They have found none on their televisions or in local newspapers, because authorities have released little information.