Scientists Find Ancient Hobbit-Sized People

Oct. 27, 2004 — Once upon a time, on an isolated island of Indonesia, there lived a colony of little people — very little people.

Not only did anthropologists find the skeletal remains of a hobbit-sized, 30-year-old adult female, in this fairy-tale-like discovery they also uncovered in the same limestone cave the remains of a Komodo dragon, stone tools and a dwarf elephant.

Subsequent finds of other similarly sized, 3-foot-tall humans with brains the size of grapefruits in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores suggest these 18,000-year-old specimens weren't a quirk of an ancient hominin, but part of an entire species of miniature people whose existence overlapped with that of modern Homo sapiens.

"We now have the remains of at least seven hobbit-sized individuals at the cave site, so the 18,000-year-old skeleton cannot be some kind of 'freak' that we just happened to stumble across first," said Bert Roberts, an anthropologist at the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia, and co-author of the study about the find in this week's issue of the journal "Nature."

Full Article : abcnews.go.com
Science on 10.28.04 @ 10:33 PM CST [link]

179 countries vote against the blockade at the UN

For the 13th consecutive time, the UN General Assembly has passed a resolution calling for an end to the US blockade of Cuba. The voting on the resolution was 179 countries in favor and four against (The United States, Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau), while Micronesia abstained . During the debate at the 59th session of the UN General Assembly, several heads of state and government condemned Washington’s policy of aggression against the small island. Over 75% of the Cuban population were born after the triumph of the Revolution on January 1959, and have had to grow and develop under the brutal effects of a ruthless economic, commercial, and financial US blockade, which knows no limits. The unilateral enforcement of this U.S. policy turned into a sick obsession and a veritable economic war, which has provoked losses to the country amounting to close to $80 billion.

source : granma.cu
Caribbean on 10.28.04 @ 09:47 PM CST [link]

Matt Drudge, Dan Rather, and a Bag of Rovian Dirty Tricks

Poor Matt Drudge. He has not broken a story worth consideration since he ripped off the Monica Lewinsky story from Newsweek in 1998, thus providing himself with a career boost as a right-wing muckraker. Now Drudge posts half-ass stories with page dominating headlines. His latest is really pathetic—60 Minutes had planned to run the Iraq missing explosives story October 31, as if that would somehow impact the election (at this point, the only way Bush will lose the election would be if Karl Rove had been abducted by aliens about six months ago).

Full Article : kurtnimmo.com
USA on 10.28.04 @ 06:47 PM CST [link]

One in four Iraqis on hand-outs

One in four Iraqis is dependent on food rations to survive, and many sell what little they have to buy basic necessities such as medicine and clothes.

In a grim report underscoring troubles in Iraq, the Rome-based UN World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday that support from the state-run Public Distribution System was grossly insufficient to prevent chronic malnourishment.

Full Article : aljazeera.net
Iraq on 10.28.04 @ 01:52 PM CST [link]

US war claims 'over 100,000 Iraqi lives'

Deaths of Iraqis have soared to 100,000 above normal since the Iraq invasion, mainly due to violence while many of the victims have been women and children, public health experts from the United States have said.

"Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100,000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq," researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland said in a report published online by The Lancet medical journal on Thursday.

Full Article : aljazeera.net
Iraq on 10.28.04 @ 01:06 PM CST [link]

Israel: Arafat's re-entry not assured

Israeli officials have been unable to pledge the safe return of Palestinian President Yasir Arafat if he is flown abroad for medical treatment, according to Aljazeera.

Israeli officials said they would let Arafat seek treatment "wherever he wanted" at home or abroad, but the question of his return was "a separate issue after he recuperates".

Full Article : aljazeera.net
Middle East on 10.28.04 @ 01:03 PM CST [link]

The Hatian Coup Connection

By Joshua Kurlantzick

How an organization financed by the U.S. government has been promoting the overthrow of elected leaders abroad

Several leaders of the demonstrations -- some of whom also had links to the armed rebels -- had been getting organizational help and training from a U.S. government-financed organization. The group, the International Republican Institute (IRI), is supposed to focus on nonpartisan, grassroots democratization efforts overseas. But in Haiti and other countries, such as Venezuela and Cambodia, the institute -- which, though not formally affiliated with the GOP, is run by prominent Republicans and staffed by party insiders -- has increasingly sided with groups seeking the overthrow of elected but flawed leaders who are disliked in Washington.

In 2002 and 2003, IRI used funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to organize numerous political training sessions in the Dominican Republic and Miami for some 600 Haitian leaders. Though IRI's work is supposed to be nonpartisan -- it is official U.S. policy not to interfere in foreign elections -- a former U.S. diplomat says organizers of the workshops selected only opponents of Aristide and attempted to mold them into a political force.

The trainings were run by IRI's Haiti program officer, Stanley Lucas, the scion of a powerful Haitian family with long-standing animosity toward Aristide -- Amnesty International says some family members participated in a 1987 peasant massacre. "To have Lucas as your program officer sends a message to archconservatives that you're on their side," says Robert Maguire, a Haiti expert at Trinity College in Washington, D.C.

IRI's anti-Aristide focus appeared to have support from the Bush administration. The former U.S. diplomat in Haiti says Lucas was in constant contact with Roger Noriega, the administration's top Latin America official, who had previously worked for Senator Jesse Helms and had long sought to oust Aristide. Noriega and conservative Republican congressional staffers kept in close touch with IRI-trained opposition leaders and pushed for additional funding for IRI's Haiti activities. "The USAID director in Haiti was under enormous pressure [from Congress] to fund IRI," says the former diplomat.

Full Article : venezuelanalysis.com
Caribbean on 10.28.04 @ 12:57 PM CST [link]

S. Africa channel to air 'Fahrenheit 9/11'

CAPE TOWN, South Africa - An independent television channel in South Africa will air Michael Moore's documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" on the eve of the U.S. presidential elections.

Following the Nov. 1 showing, M-Net will feature a panel discussion broadcast from its Johannesburg studio. The Nov. 2 election pits President Bush against Democratic challenger John Kerry.

Full Article : mercurynews.com
Africa on 10.28.04 @ 12:09 PM CST [link]

Africa power firms join to light up dark continent

JOHANNESBURG – The latest scheme to spread electric light in Africa may sound familiar, but this time African leaders say they have the will, and financial backing, to succeed.

If so, the campaign to link Africa's disparate and often unreliable power grids could be the first big achievement for the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), which some critics dismiss as empty rhetoric.

What everyone agrees on is that a much-talked-of economic renaissance will not happen unless African countries can repair and expand transport and power networks shattered in many parts by decades of war or neglect.

Full Article : signonsandiego.com
Africa on 10.28.04 @ 11:43 AM CST [link]