Fireman Punches Handcuffed Man in Face

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was not allowed by the global football governing body FIFA to share a message of peace at the FIFA World Cup final on Sunday, CNN reported quoting a source.  

According to the report, the source confirmed that Zelensky’s office reached out to FIFA regarding a possible address via video link but was surprised with the rejection from the officials.  

“We thought FIFA wanted to use its platform for the greater good,” the source told CNN. 

While the initial request was denied, the source added that the two parties are still in contact regarding his involvement in the summit clash and it is possible that Zelensky may end up playing a role as Argentina and France battle it out for the title at the Lusail Stadium in Lusail in Qatar. 

In the past six months, Zelensky has appeared in various international events – ranging from the G7 summit to the Grammy Awards – to keep the global spotlight on the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.

However, with FIFA already facing a lot of criticism over the human rights violations brought against Qatar, it seems that the football body is not taking a chance with Zelensky’s address. 

FIFA president Gianni Infantino told reporters on Friday that the governing body has already stopped some “political statements” during the tournament because it has to “take care of everyone.” 

“We are a global organization and we don’t discriminate against anyone,” Infantino said. 

“We are defending values, we are defending human rights and rights of everyone at the World Cup. Those fans and the billions watching on TV, they have their own problems.

They just want to watch 90 or 120 minutes without having to think about anything, but just enjoying a little moment of pleasure and joy.

We have to give them a moment when they can forget about their problems and enjoy football.” 

Biden Releases Secret Kennedy Assassination Records – Some Still Withheld

President Joe Biden on Thursday ordered the release of 12,789 previously-undisclosed documents relating to the November 1963 assassination of the 35th president of the United States, John F Kennedy, while allowing fewer than 4,000 remaining undisclosed documents to continue to be reviewed.

The documents were made public by the National Archives and Records Administration (Nara) shortly after Mr Biden issued a memorandum directing their release.

The latest tranche of assassination records – and another released by Nara last December – have been disclosed pursuant to a 1992 law, the President John F Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, which stated that “all government records concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy … should be eventually disclosed to enable the public to become fully informed about the history surrounding the assassination”.

It will take weeks or months for experts to fully comb through the newly released reports, but researchers said they didn’t have any indications so far that the new documents contain evidence that would back up the widely held belief among Americans, confirmed by recent polling, that gunman Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t act alone when he shot JFK. “It’s not going to change the story,” Larry Sabato, author ofThe Kennedy Half Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedytold CNN.

“The truth is not that Oswald was part of a conspiracy to kill Kennedy,” he continued. “The truth is that this assassination was preventable and could have been prevented and should have been prevented if the CIA and FBI were doing their jobs. Really, that’s it. Now that’s serious, but you’re not going to find the names of other conspirators in here.”

Some documents in the new release have piqued the interest of researchers keen to understand exactly what intelligence agencies knew of Oswald in the years they were aware of him in the runup to the assassination.

One document from 1962 captures the CIA making note of an article about Oswald’s failed defection to the Soviet Union, while another describes an “intercepted” phone call in Mexico City between Oswald and the Soviet embassy in Mexico, according to a Washington Post analysis.

As ever, researchers are far more interested in the thousands of documents that intelligence agencies are still refusing to release to the public nearly 60 years after the JFK assassination.

The files of a CIA agent name George Joannides have drawn particular interest.

Joannides served as a CIA liason to the congressional committee that investigated the assassination in the 1970s. It was only later disclosed that the agent led Miami-based spy operations with Cuban exile groups bent on overthrowing Fidel Castro at the same time as JFK was assassinated.

In 1963, Joannides helped guide the operations of a group called Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (Revolutionary Student Directorate) which came into contact with Oswald in Miami in the months just before the assassination in 1963.

Experts argue knowing more about Joannides will shed light on the CIA’s thinking about Oswald in the crucial moments leading up to JFK’s killing.

The Mary Ferrell Foundation, the largest non-government repository for JFK assassination records, has sued for the release of more documents about Joannides, as well as potenitally relevant documents that continue to be withheld surrounding the Watergate burglars, various CIA officers in Texas and Mexico, and memos between senior Washington leaders about reorganising the CIA after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba.

The CIA has said it released all “substantive” records about Joannides.

Others argue the government has no reason to continue witholding the records.

“We’re 59 years after President John Kennedy was killed and there’s just no justification for this,” Judge John H Tunheim, former chair of the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992’s Assassination Records Review Board, told NBC News.

Under Mr Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, Nara began readying significant portions of records from the JFK collection for release after Mr Trump announced on Twitter that he’d be allowing “the long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened”, though he allowed records to be withheld if agencies could show that disclosure would harm military operations. By 26 April 2018 (the deadline Mr Trump set for agencies to lobby for continued secrecy) only around 15,000 remained redacted, though the Covid-19 pandemic prevented the archives agency from fully implanting plans to declassify more.

Mr Biden continued the process of disclosing documents required to be released under Section 5 of the JFK Records Act, which states that declassification of assassination records can only be postponed to prevent “identifiable harm to military defence, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations where the identifiable harm is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure”.

In a memorandum authorising further withholding of some remaining documents, Mr Biden said agencies had convinced him that there is still “identifiable harm” that could result from full disclosure at this time, and ordered the documents to be withheld until 30 June 2023.

He further ordered Nara and “relevant agencies” to “jointly review the remaining redactions in the records … with a view to maximising transparency and disclosing all information in records concerning the assassination, except when the strongest possible reasons counsel otherwise”.

Mr Biden also added that anything withheld past the June 2023 deadline would be “limited to the absolute minimum under the statutory standard”.

In a statement, the Archives said all documents required to be disclosed under Section 5 of the JFK Records Act have been released to the public “in their entirety or in part,” and noted that some documents remain secret because of rules governing the secrecy of grand jury proceedings.

“The National Archives and the Department of Justice are working together to determine whether information in five records withheld in full under court seal or for grand jury secrecy … the JFK Act can be released,” the agency said.

The White House said the release of the records has been a “commitment of the president”.

“President Biden believes all information related to President Kennedy’s assassination should be released to the greatest extent possible, consistent with national security,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.

Scientist May Have Discovered Cleopatra’s Lost Tomb

Kathleen Martinez, an archaeologist at the University of Santo Domingo, has been searching for the lost tomb of Cleopatra for nearly 20 years. Now she believes she’s made a pivotal breakthrough.

Martinez and her team uncovered a 1,305-meter (4,281-foot) tunnel, located 13 meters (43 feet) underground, the Egyptian Ministry for Tourism and Antiquities recently announced — an architectural design experts called an “engineering miracle.”

“The excavation revealed a huge religious center with three sanctuaries, a sacred lake, more than 1,500 objects, busts, statues, golden pieces, a huge collection of coins portraying Alexander the Great, Queen Cleopatra and the Ptolemies,” Martinez told CNN.

Kathleen Martinez discovered a tunnel which may lead to the lost tomb.

Kathleen Martinez discovered a tunnel which may lead to the lost tomb. Credit: Kathleen Martinez-Nazar/Taposiris Magna Project


“The most interesting discovery is the complex of tunnels leading to the Mediterranean Sea and sunken structures,” she added. Exploring these underwater structures will be the next stage of her search for the Egyptian queen’s lost tomb — a journey that began in 2005.

“My perseverance cannot be confused with obsession. I admire Cleopatra as a historical character. She was a victim of propaganda by the Romans, aiming to distort her image,” Martinez said.

“She was an educated woman, probably the first one who studied formally at the Museum in Alexandria, the center of culture in her time,” according to Martinez, who said she admires Cleopatra as a student, a linguist, a mother and a philosopher.

When her husband, the Roman general Mark Antony, died in her arms in 30 BCE, Cleopatra took her own life soon after by allowing an asp to bite her, according to popular belief. The moment has been immortalized in art and literature — but, more than two millennia later, little is known about where their remains lie.

Elizabeth Taylor appears as Cleopatra and Richard Burton as Mark Antony in the 1963 movie "Cleopatra."

Elizabeth Taylor appears as Cleopatra and Richard Burton as Mark Antony in the 1963 movie “Cleopatra.” Credit: Twentieth Century Fox


A series of clues led Martinez to believe Cleopatra’s tomb might be located in the Temple of Osiris in the ruined city of Taposiris Magna, on Egypt’s northern coast, where the Nile River meets the Mediterranean.

Chief among them was the name itself.According to Martinez,Cleopatra was considered in her time to be “the human incarnation of the goddess Isis,” as Antony was considered to be that of the god Orisis, Isis’ husband.

Martinez believes Cleopatra may have chosen to bury her husband in the temple to reflect this myth. Of all the 20 temples around Alexandria she has studied, Martinez said, “no other place, structure or temple combines so many conditions as the temple of Taposiris Magna.”

Excavations so far have unearthed more than 1,500 ancient objects.

Excavations so far have unearthed more than 1,500 ancient objects. Credit: Egyptian Ministry of Tourism


In 2004, Martinez took her theory to Zahi Hawass, an Egyptian archaeologist who was then Egypt’s minister for antiquities affairs. Her project was approved a year later.

And after years of searching, Martinez feels she is getting close.

The excavations so far have revealed that “the temple was dedicated to Isis” — which Martinez believes is another sign that the lost tomb lies nearby — as well as the tunnels below the sea.

The search for the lost tomb has taken Martinez under the Mediterranean Sea.

The search for the lost tomb has taken Martinez under the Mediterranean Sea. Credit: Kathleen Martinez-Nazar/Taposiris Magna Project


Now, Martinez said, she is at “the beginning of a new journey” — underwater excavations.

According to a statement issued by the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, the Egyptian coastline has been battered by earthquakes over the centuries, causing parts of the Taposiris Magna to collapse and sink under the waves.

This is where Martinez and her team are looking next. Although it is “too early to know where these tunnels lead,” she is hopeful.

If the tunnels lead to Cleopatra, “it will be the most important discovery of the century,” she said.

Mass Grave of People Tortured and Executed By The Nazis is Found in Poland’s ‘Forest of Death’

A mass grave containing the remains of 11 people tortured and executed by the Nazis during WWII has been found in a Polish ‘forest of death’.

The grisly discovery near the town of Jedwabne was made by researchers looking for the remains of a father and son who were allegedly shot and buried in the woodland in 1943.

Instead, the researchers found a grave containing the remains of 11 Poles with their hands tied behind their backs and signs of torture.

The mass grave in the north of Poland also contained bullet casing from a German Mauser, a weapon widely used by all branches of Hitler’s military.

Marcin Sochoń from the historical exploration group Wizna 1939 said: ‘We came to Przestrzelski Forest near Jedwabne hoping to find a father and son who had been murdered, but it turned out that it is a mass grave.’

Anthropologist Urszula Okularczyk added: ‘The arrangement of the hands indicates that the victims were bound before they died, the hands were tied behind their backs, the bodies were thrown without care, disrespectfully, and fell one on top of the other.

‘You can also see that the skulls were destroyed by the gunshots, as evidenced by the concentric lines and holes specific to the entry and exit openings.

‘We are not yet able to say whether there are any more bodies under these discovered skeletons. It is possible.

‘Many of the victims have cracked skulls and jawbones.’

The area was dubbed the ‘forest of death’ by locals because of the number of Nazi killings believed to have been carried out there.

It was here that German police officers based in Jedwabne tormented and murdered their victims.

Jedwabne mayor Adam Niebrzydowski said: ‘The forest is located a little bit in the middle of nowhere, between villages, so it was easy to take these people there and murder them in a bestial way.’

The grim find comes just months after the bodies of four other Nazi victims were found in the forest.

Identified as two married couples, they were murdered for helping Poland’s underground resistance movement.

Jedwabne became infamous following the publication of a book by historian Jan Gross which accused Poles of mass murdering the town’s Jews in a 1941 pogrom.

An investigation by Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance concluded that those involved had been forced into it by the local German police and Gestapo.

Archaeologist Ryszard Cędrowski said: ‘The Gestapo, which had its headquarters in the market square in Jedwabne, caught Poles who helped or were innocent, or there were denunciations against them. They shot them.’

Now the researchers want to try and identify the victims in their latest discovery.

Dariusz Szymański said: ‘I would like to appeal to the inhabitants of Jedwabne and the surrounding area, to families who know that their relatives were murdered, to report and provide a sample for genetic testing.’

The area was dubbed the ‘forest of death’ by locals because of the number of Nazi killings believed to have been carried out there

Original Article

‘Humanzee’ Created in U.S. Lab by Scientists?

Generally, most of us have always thought that human-animal hybrids are creatures of fantasy or science fiction.

It turns out that there has actually been a rumor circulating for years that a little over a hundred years ago, scientists actually created one. This creature was called a humanzee and was a hybrid of a human and a chimpanzee. Is this rumor true? Some say yes, others aren’t so sure.

The Rumor of the Living, Breathing ‘Humanzee’ 

In 2018, well-known and well-respected evolutionary psychologist Gordon Gallup said that back in 1920, scientists created a human-chimpanzee hybrid, dubbed the humanzee, in a laboratory setting. He said that they did so by inseminating a female chimp with the sperm from a human male.

The experiment, he claims, was successful, and the chimpanzee carried the baby to term. She even delivered the humanzee, but not long after the scientists became conflicted about their experiment and decided to euthanize the creature.

“They inseminated a female chimpanzee with human semen from an undisclosed donor and claimed not only that pregnancy occurred but the pregnancy went full term and resulted in a live birth,” Gallup said. “But in the matter of days, or a few weeks, they began to consider the moral and ethical considerations and the infant was euthanized.” (1)

Gallup says that he learned of this experiment from a professor when he was in the first year of his studies. The prof, he said, claimed to have worked at the lab where they did this experiment. It is not clear whether or not he was involved in the experiment or not.

Oliver the Chimpanzee
Oliver the Chimpanzee | Wikipedia

It was in The United States

Gallup said that the researchers allegedly did the experiment in America’s first-ever primate research center in Orange Park, Florida. Apparently the scientists were hoping to use the humanzee, or part human, part monkey, to grow stem cells.

As already mentioned, however, the researchers had a bit of a moral crisis afterward and so terminated the project. Gallup says that his professor was a credible scientist in his own right and had told him that the rumor was true. None of it, of course, has ever been confirmed. (2)

Other Humanzee Projects

Also in the 1920s in Russia, another humanzee experiment took place. Biologist Ilya Ivanov tried to make “super soldiers” using human sperm and female chimpanzees. He failed. Ivanov then changed his approach and decided to go the opposite way: Inseminate human females with male chimpanzee sperm. He went to French Guinea and came back to Russia with several chimpanzees.

He even had five females willing to volunteer their bodies for the experiment. Unfortunately, the chimps didn’t adjust well to the new environment and quickly four of the five died. The fifth then suffered a brain hemorrhage and died. Ivanov had more chimps set to be shipped to Russia, but before they arrived he was forced to flee to Kazakhstan during a widespread purge of Soviet scientists. (3)

Next, in the 1960s in Maoist China. This time the female chimp reportedly did become pregnant. Unfortunately, she died from neglect. This is because the scientists had to abandon the project due to the cultural evolution that took place in the country.

Oliver The Maybe Humanzee

In the 1970s, there was a famous chimpanzee named Oliver. He was famous because he walked on his hind legs like a human. Rumors naturally began circulating that Oliver was a human-chimpanzee hybrid. This is when the term “humanzee” first appeared.

In 1996, however, scientists finally conducted some genetic tests on Oliver to put the rumors to rest. The tests showed that he had 48 chromosomes, whereas humans have just 46. This test proved once and for all that Oliver was just a chimpanzee that had somehow learned to walk on his hind legs.

Gallup, however, still maintains that humans can be cross-bred with primates. Just not chimpanzees, he says. All the other great apes are possible, however, according to him.

“All of the available evidence both fossil, paleontological and biochemical, including DNA itself, suggests that humans can also breed with gorillas and orangutans,” Gallop said. “Humans and all three of the great apes species are all descended from a single common ape-like ancestry.”

So, as far as we know for now, there likely has never existed a humanzee. According to scientists, however, it is possible.

Sources

  1. PLAYING GOD Inside bizarre world of human-chimp hybrids HUMANZEES as creature was ‘born before being killed by scientists in 1920s’.” The Sun. Mark Hodge. May 10, 2021.
  2. Scientist Claims US Lab Engineered ‘Humanzee’ Human-Chimp Hybrid 100 Years Ago.” Science Alert. Peter Dockrill. January 31, 2018.
  3. Ilya Ivanov: The Russian Scientist Who Tried To Create a ‘Humanzee’.” Interesting Engineering. Rupendra Brahambhatt. June 25, 2021.

Was Jared Kushner “Mar-a-Lago Mole”?

Jared Kushner appears to be doing everything he can to dispel rumors that he’s the “Mar-a-Lago” mole who ratted out Donald Trump to the FBI, resulting in the agency searching the ex-president’s Palm Beach, Florida resort earlier this month.

In an appearance on Fox News over the weekend, Kushner told anchor Mark Levin that the raid, which he called an “unfortunate turn of events”, was yet another example of Trump’s “enemies” persecuting him.

“President Trump is a fighter,” Kushner, whose new book Breaking History: A White House Memoir, which is being panned by critics, hits bookstore shelves tomorrow, said. “He’s always been a fighter.”

“In the way that he drives his enemies so crazy, they always over pursue him and make mistakes in trying to get him. That’s basically what happened here.”

Multiple sources close to Trump told The Guardian last week that after the FBI searched his home, aides began frantically speculating about who among them was in cahoots with the agency.

They quickly determined the person had to be close–very close–to the ex-president given what agents already knew when they showed up at the front door, including where his safe was located and to look for a specific leather-bound box.

Shortly after the raid, Mary Trump publicly speculated that Kushner was the confidential informant in an appearance on the podcast The Dean Obeidallah Show.

“We need to look very hard at why Jared got $2 billion,” she said, referring to an investment into Kushner’s private equity firm from a fund belonging to the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman. “We need to look very hard at why he has been so quiet for so many months now.”

She continued, “And we need to think about who could also be implicated in this that would need as big a play as turning Donald in in order to get out of trouble, or at least to mitigate the trouble they’re in.”

“It sounds like somebody in Jared’s position. I’m not saying it’s Jared, but it could be.”

Speaking to Levin, Jared also tried to dispel reports that there is tension between himself and his father-in-law, claiming they just played golf together “a few days ago” before going to to say that leakers are making up “fabulous claims” about his family.

Kushner also took to Twitter to suck up to his father-in-law, tweeting: “Working for @realdonaldtrump was the honor of a lifetime,” along with a photo of the two together on an airplane.

Pregnant Mother and Baby Die After being Sent to ‘Unsuitable Ward’

A pregnant woman and her baby died two days apart after she caught Covid and was transferred to an unsuitable ward to treat her illness, an inquest heard.

Sumera Haq, 37, was eight months pregnant with her third child when she contracted coronavirus and started suffering severe stomach pain and worsening shortness of breath.

She was rushed to Whipps Cross Hospital in Leytonstone, east London, and initially treated on a labour ward.

Two days later, on 9 August last year, the primary school teacher was transferred to a medical ward after her respiratory function worsened, but her condition deteriorated and she suffered a cardiac arrest three days later.

Her daughter Ayra Butt, was delivered by caesarean section, but she had no signs of life and despite medics trying to resuscitate her, the baby was pronounced dead just 15 minutes after being born.

Ms Haq was given emergency treatment, but her condition, caused by Covid pneumonitis, continued to deteriorate and she died on 14 August.

An inquest at East London Coroner’s Court found Ms Haq was inappropriately transferred to a medical ward and died following a lack of clinical leadership.

There was also a lack of “multi-disciplinary planning” and a lack of close monitoring as well as a lack of “appropriate escalation” due to her deterioration before she suffered the cardiac arrest, the hearing heard.

Kasim Butt, her husband, described the last year as “a living nightmare” after suffering the double heartbreak of losing his wife and daughter.

He said: “It’s almost impossible to find the words to describe the hurt and pain our family feels.

“The last year has been a living nightmare which I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

“Sumera was a wonderful wife and the best mum any child could ever want. She went out of her way to help others and her death at an age when she had her best years ahead of her has been particularly difficult to come to terms with.

“Those few days and trying to come to terms with the death of Ayra, while Sumera was also slipping away from us is something I’m not sure I’ll ever get over.

“When I saw Ayra she was beautiful. I just held her and cried my eyes out. I’ll cherish what little but precious time I had with her.”

Ms Haq, who tested positive for Covid-19 in late July was admitted to Whipps Cross by ambulance on 7 August after complaining of severe abdominal pain and increasing shortness of breath.

She had sought medical advice in the previous days because of her symptoms.

Medical observations showed Ms Haq was suffering an acute kidney injury and on 11 August her level of haemoglobin – the protein that carries oxygen around the body – was considered to be concerningly low, the inquest was told.

In the early hours of the following morning, her condition deteriorated, the hearing was told.

At 7am she was administered blood thinners and not long after, the emergency buzzer was pressed and she needed help from healthcare staff.

Her observations were monitored and she continued to deteriorate. Shortly after 9am Ms Haq suffered a cardiac arrest.

A decision was made to deliver Ayra by caesarean section at 9.30am, but Ayra was born with no signs of life and CPR was started.

Resuscitation attempts were unsuccessful and the decision to stop the resuscitation was made at 15 minutes of age.

Ms Haq was rushed to emergency surgery where doctors found a haematoma – a collection of clotted blood – in her abdomen, but could not find the source of the bleeding, the inquest heard.

Surgeons carried out a hysterectomy and Ms Haq was transferred to intensive care and put on a ventilator, but her condition continued to get worse and she died.

The inquest found she died from multiple organ failure, abdominal bleeding, Covid-19 infection and pneumonia.

Coroner Nadia Persaud recorded a narrative conclusion and found the medical ward Ms Haq was transferred to “was not an appropriate clinical setting for her”.

She should not have been given blood thinners and no “adequate emergency action” was taken before she suffered a cardiac arrest, the coroner ruled.

The coroner also said there was no overall named consultant in charge of her care and there was no full multi-disciplinary meeting in planning her treatment.

“Insufficient regard” was taken of her acute kidney injury and no action was taken in response to Ms Haq’s concerningly low haemoglobin and persistent abdominal pain, the coroner added.

Mr Butt said: “Being at Sumera’s bedside and holding her hand as her body shut down in front of my eyes, and knowing there wasn’t anything I could do to help or save her, was heartbreaking.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about our other children and how I was going to tell them their mummy wasn’t coming home.

“For nearly a year we’ve had so many questions about what happened. While the inquest and listening to the evidence has been incredibly traumatic it was something I needed to do to honour Sumera’s memory.

“I know nothing can bring Sumera back, or fill the void in our lives, but our family takes some comfort in at least now having some answers to our questions. I just hope nobody else has to go through the pain we have.”

Mr Butt hired medical negligence lawyers to help get answers and support his family – including the couple’s other children aged eight and five – through an inquest into his wife’s death.

Taylor Hackett, the expert medical negligence lawyer at Irwin Mitchell representing Mr Butt, said: “This is a truly tragic case in which Kasim and the rest of Sumera’s family remain traumatised by their loss.

“Understandably, Kasim has had a number of concerns and questions about the events that unfolded in the lead-up to his wife’s death.

“While nothing can make up for what’s happened we’re pleased to have at least been able to support the family in their search for some answers.

“It’s now vital that lessons are learned following the several concerns that the inquest has identified in Sumera’s care.

“In the meantime, we’ll continue to support the family to help them try and come to terms with their loss the best they can at this distressing time.”

Barts Health NHS Trust, which runs Whipps Cross Hospital, said the standard of care Ms Haq received was not good enough but improvements had since been made.

A spokesperson added: “We offer our sincere condolences to the family of Sumera Haq. The standard of care she should have received was not met on this occasion.”

Were Native Americans Chinese?

For the first time, researchers successfully sequenced the genome of ancient human fossils from the Late Pleistocene in southern China. The data, published July 14 in the journal Current Biology, suggests that the mysterious hominin belonged to an extinct maternal branch of modern humans that might have contributed to the origin of Native Americans.

“Ancient DNA technique is a really powerful tool,” Su says. “It tells us quite definitively that the Red Deer Cave people were modern humans instead of an archaic species, such as Neanderthals or Denisovans, despite their unusual morphological features,” he says.

The researchers compared the genome of these fossils to that of people from around the world. They found that the bones belonged to an individual that was linked deeply to the East Asian ancestry of Native Americans. Combined with previous research data, this finding led the team to propose that some of the southern East Asia people had traveled north along the coastline of present-day eastern China through Japan and reached Siberia tens of thousands of years ago. They then crossed the Bering Strait between the continents of Asia and North America and became the first people to arrive in the New World.

The journey to making this discovery started over three decades ago, when a group of archaeologists in China discovered a large set of bones in the Maludong, or Red Deer Cave, in southern China’s Yunnan Province. Carbon dating showed that the fossils were from the Late Pleistocene about 14,000 years ago, a period of time when modern humans had migrated to many parts of the world.

From the cave, researchers recovered a hominin skull cap with characteristics of both modern humans and archaic humans. For example, the shape of the skull resembled that of Neanderthals, and its brain appeared to be smaller than that of modern humans. As a result, some anthropologists had thought the skull probably belonged to an unknown archaic human species that lived until fairly recently or to a hybrid population of archaic and modern humans.

In 2018, in collaboration with Xueping Ji, an archaeologist at Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, Bing Su at Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his colleagues successfully extracted ancient DNA from the skull. Genomic sequencing shows that the hominin belonged to an extinct maternal lineage of a group of modern humans whose surviving decedents are now found in East Asia, the Indo-China peninsula, and Southeast Asia islands.

The finding also shows that during the Late Pleistocene, hominins living in southern East Asia had rich genetic and morphologic diversity, the degree of which is greater than that in northern East Asia during the same period. It suggests that early humans who first arrived in eastern Asia had initially settled in the south before some of them moved to the north, Su says.

“It’s an important piece of evidence for understanding early human migration,” he says.

Next, the team plans to sequence more ancient human DNA by using fossils from southern East Asia, especially ones that predated the Red Deer Cave people.

“Such data will not only help us paint a more complete picture of how our ancestors migrate but also contain important information about how humans change their physical appearance by adapting to local environments over time, such as the variations in skin color in response to changes in sunlight exposure,” Su says.

Bill Clinton Sent Officials to Area 51 to Check for Aliens?

Former President Bill Clinton this week revealed he sent his national security adviser to inspect Area 51 in Nevada for aliens when he served as president.

During an appearance on “The Late Late Show with James Corden” that aired on Thursday, Clinton said he and his former chief of staff, John Podesta — who he said “loved science fiction” — “made every attempt to find out everything about Roswell.”

“We also sent people to Area 51 to make sure there were no aliens,” he said, to which Corden questioned who went to the once-top secret military base.

“Oh, if I told you that…” Clinton joked, before revealing he sent his national security adviser, Sandy Berger, who died in 2015 from cancer.

“I said, ‘We gotta find out how we’re gonna deal with this because that’s where we do a lot of our invisibility research, in terms of technology, like how do we fly airplanes that aren’t picked up by radar and all that,'” the 42nd president said.

“So that’s why they’re so secretive. But there’s no aliens, as I know.”

Clinton went on to recall a vacation he and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, took in Hawaii in 2018, during which they visited the W. M. Keck Observatory. After touring the telescopes on the mountain, he said he met with scientists, asking them if they fought about “the likelihood of life in outer space.”

The scientists, Clinton told the crowd, said they have “huge arguments” about it.

“He said, ‘There are those of us who think it’s 85% likely and those of us who think it’s 95% likely,'” Clinton said. “These are people who spend their lives doing this.

“He said, ‘We think in other words, it’s very unlikely that there is not life.’ There are a billion — not a billion planets — a billion solar-like systems. There are lots of mysteries out there, which is why I think we should take good care of this planet; I think we oughta kind of hang on to it if we can. But I also think it should keep us humble. There’s a lot of stuff we don’t know,” he told the audience.

In May, Congress held its first hearing on UFOs in more than 50 years. While it didn’t reveal the existence of extraterrestrial life, it did affirm that the U.S. military is taking sightings of unknown craft seriously as a national security threat.

And last week, NASA announced that it was launching a team to study the mysterious sightings. Researchers will gather data on “events in the sky that cannot be identified as aircraft or known natural phenomena — from a scientific perspective.”

NASA’s science mission chief, Thomas Zurbuchen, said: “Our strong belief is that the biggest challenge of these phenomena is that it’s a data-poor field.”

The study, which will start this fall and last nine months, will be open to the public, with no classified data used.

Man Hated His Mother So Much He Blew Up Her Flight With Dynamite

On 1 November, 1955, the United States recorded one of its first attacks on a commercial airliner after a man packed 25 sticks of dynamite into his mother’s suitcase.

Daisie E. King, a 54-year-old woman from Denver, boarded the plane that day to fly to Alaska with plans to visit her daughter. Her 23-year-old son, John ‘Jack’ Gilbert Graham, told police afterwards he didn’t know what his mother had packed in her luggage other than shotgun shells and other ammunition for hunting.

In reality, he had spent the day of the flight searching for what he described as an ‘early Christmas present’ for his mother before taking the package to the basement, where King had been packing.

The family then headed to Denver’s Stapleton Airport, from which the plane took off at 6:52pm local time. It was only 11 minutes later that an employee in the Stapleton control tower reported seeing a bright flash of white and a flare in the sky, according to an accident report cited by The Denver Channel.

The explosion marked the deadliest act of mass murder in Colorado history, resulting in the deaths of all 44 people on board, including a 13-month old boy.

Investigators working on the case began searching through the remains of the luggage to look for the most badly-damaged items or those which were coated in foreign residue. The search led them to King’s case and consequently to her son, with who she was found to have a tumultuous relationship.

Graham was set to receive an inheritance from his mother, but the pair had fought ‘like cats and dogs’ for years, the FBI said.

Graham had packed the dynamite into his mother's suitcase. Credit: FBI Denver
Graham had packed the dynamite into his mother’s suitcase. Credit: FBI Denver

The son had lived with various family members through the years and left home at 16, before returning to work in his mother’s restaurant which, two months before the flight, was damaged by an explosion Graham blamed on a disconnected gas line. 

During questioning, the FBI asked Graham about the gift, first thought to be a toolset, he had bought for his mother, and about why he purchased a trip insurance policy of $37,500 in his mother’s name, with himself as the beneficiary, at the airport. A search also revealed a small roll of copper wire similar to the type found on a detonating primer cap in one of Graham’s shirts.

Agents began to find holes in Graham’s story, and the son admitted to causing the explosion at his mother’s restaurant months earlier. He then admitted to causing the explosion on board the plane, saying he had built a time bomb using 25 sticks of dynamite.

All 44 people on board the plane died. Credit: Denver District Attorney's Office
All 44 people on board the plane died. Credit: Denver District Attorney’s Office

Speaking later with psychiatrists, Graham described having put the bomb into his mother’s suitcase before dropping his family off at the airport door and driving to a car park. He set the timer on the bomb to 90 minutes, then took the bag to the baggage drop, where he paid a fee due to it being overweight.

“The number of people to be killed made no difference to me,” Graham told psychiatrists, saying: “It could have been a thousand. When their time comes, there is nothing they can do about it.”

Graham was sentenced to death for murder, and he was executed in a gas chamber on 11 January, 1957.

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