The Global Reality

The skeletal remains of an individual living in northern Italy 40,000-30,000 years ago are believed to be that of a human/Neanderthal hybrid, according to a paper in PLoS ONE.

If further analysis proves the theory correct, the remains belonged to the first known such hybrid, providing direct evidence that humans and Neanderthals interbred. Prior genetic research determined the DNA of people with European and Asian ancestry is 1 to 4 percent Neanderthal.

The present study focuses on the individual’s jaw, which was unearthed at a rock-shelter called Riparo di Mezzena in the Monti Lessini region of Italy. Both Neanderthals and modern humans inhabited Europe at the time.

“From the morphology of the lower jaw, the face of the Mezzena individual would have looked somehow intermediate between classic Neanderthals, who had a rather receding lower jaw (no chin), and the modern humans, who present a projecting lower jaw with a strongly developed chin,” co-author Silvana Condemi, an anthropologist, told Discovery News.

Condemi is the CNRS research director at the University of Ai-Marseille. She and her colleagues studied the remains via DNA analysis and 3D imaging. They then compared those results with the same features from Homo sapiens.

The genetic analysis shows that the individual’s mitochondrial DNA is Neanderthal. Since this DNA is transmitted from a mother to her child, the researchers conclude that it was a ‘female Neanderthal who mated with male Homo sapiens.’

Kellogg’s has issued a voluntary recall in the United States for three sizes of its Special K Red Berries cereal because the packages may contain fragments of glass, according to an alert posted by the company. The recall covers certain specified 11.2-oz., 22.4-oz., and 37-oz. boxes.

That pales in comparison to a massive recall issued by Kellogg’s in 2010, where some 28 million boxes of cereal were impacted, including a variety of popular brands, such as Apple Jacks, Corn Pops, Froot Loops and Honey Smacks. The huge recall was sparked when 20 people complained of a strong, unusual odor coming from their cereal boxes, which Kellogg’s eventually traced to higher-than-normal levels of chemicals used in the wax and film for food packaging.

A sixth-grader at West Kearns Elementary School near Salt Lake City, Utah, brought a gun to school on Monday, saying he wanted to protect himself and his friends after Friday’s shooting in Newtown, Conn.

He “continues to assert that he brought the weapon to protect himself and his friends from a ‘Connecticut-style [shooting],’” Granite School District spokesman Ben Horsley said.

Two of the 11-year-old’s classmates told their teacher on Monday afternoon that the student had a gun. The teacher immediately “apprehended” the student and contacted the authorities, Horsley said. The boy is being charged with one count of possession of a firearm on school property and three counts of aggravated assault, for allegedly threatening some of his classmates.

He will be charged in the juvenile system and eventually will be transferred to another school.

Interest in the life of legendary inventor Nikola Tesla has seen a tremendous resurgence in the past two decades. And with good reason. The man was a genius who was able to take so many of the ideas swirling around in the 19th century ether and turn them into fantastic new inventions — both real and imagined. Tesla’s wondrous imagination made him quite the futurist and here at the Paleofuture blog we’ve looked at some of his remarkably prescient predictions over the past few years.

Photo of inventor Nikola Tesla from the February 9, 1935 issue of Liberty magazine

Tesla boosters of the 21st century will tell you that Tesla was the embodiment of all that is good in the world — Matthew Inman of the Oatmeal did just that in one of his more recent comics, “Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived.” They’ll tell you that Tesla’s struggles against professional adversaries like Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse (both of whom Tesla worked for at various points in his life) were the most pure examples of good versus evil. This past year, people have been crowdfunding museums and films and any number of other events in an attempt to raise Tesla’s profile and are constantly couching his work in moralistic terms. But I hope that with this renewed excitement for the life’s work of a great inventor people don’t lose sight of one thing: he was a brilliant man, but he was just a man.

Like any man, Tesla was far from perfect and sometimes had very warped ideas about how the world should operate. One of Tesla’s most disturbing ideas was his belief in using eugenics to purify the human race. In the 1930s, Tesla expressed his belief that the forced sterilization of criminals and the mentally ill — which was occurring in some European countries (most disturbingly Nazi Germany) and in many states in the U.S. — wasn’t going far enough. He believed that by the year 2100 eugenics would be “universally established” as a system of weeding out undesirable people from the population.

Researchers from the U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center have developed malicious software that can remotely seize control of the camera on an infected smartphone and employ it to spy on the phone’s user.

The malware, dubbed “PlaceRaider,” “allows remote hackers to reconstruct rich, three-dimensional models of the smartphone owner’s personal indoor spaces through completely opportunistic use of the camera,” the researchers said in a study published last week.

The program uses images from the camera and positional information from the smartphone’s gyroscopic and other sensors to map spaces the phone’s user spends a lot of time in, such as a home or office.

“Remote burglars” could use these three-dimensional models to “study the environment carefully and steal virtual objects [visible to the camera] … such as as financial documents [or] information on computer monitors,” the researchers reported.

Alright, who’s ready to see more fallacies from Alt-Hollywood POX and the MI-5 Watson?

Back in June, Douglas Hagmann, a private investigator, claimed that the “Obama Truth Team” order GoDaddy to shut down Hagmann’s site because it contained information that was deemed “maliciously harmful to government.”

This is a screeshot of the e-mail sent to Hagmann about the issue from GoDaddy:

When you look to identify the nature of the notice, it states that Hagmann’s site was in violation of Section 7 of the Domain Registration Agreement. Now, what exactly does domain registration have to do with the site being harmful to government?

From the Go Daddy Domain Name Registration Agreement:

7. suspension of services; breach of agreement

You agree that, in addition to other events set forth in this Agreement:

Your ability to use any of the services provided by Go Daddy is subject to cancellation or suspension in the event there is an unresolved breach of this Agreement and/or suspension or cancellation is required by any policy now in effect or adopted later by ICANN;
Your registration of any domain names shall be subject to suspension, cancellation or transfer pursuant to any ICANN adopted specification or policy, or pursuant to any Go Daddy procedure not inconsistent with an ICANN adopted specification or policy (a) to correct mistakes by Go Daddy or the registry operator in registering any domain name; or (b) for the resolution of disputes concerning any domain name.

You agree that your failure to comply completely with the terms and conditions of this Agreement and any Go Daddy rule or policy may be considered by Go Daddy to be a material breach of this Agreement and Go Daddy may provide you with notice of such breach either in writing or electronically (i.e. email). In the event you do not provide Go Daddy with material evidence that you have not breached your obligations to Go Daddy within ten (10) business days, Go Daddy may terminate its relationship with you and take any remedial action available to Go Daddy under the applicable laws. Such remedial action may be implemented without notice to you and may include, but is not limited to, cancelling the registration of any of your domain names and discontinuing any services provided by Go Daddy to you. No fees will be refunded to you should your Services be cancelled or terminated because of a breach.

Go Daddy’s failure to act upon or notify you of any event, which may constitute a breach, shall not relieve you from or excuse you of the fact that you have committed a breach.

From this, it doesn’t help matters from GoDaddy’s side of things due to this section of the registration agreement being quite vague. There is no detail presented here as to what policy Hagmann’s site had violated other than what can be assumed as inaccurate or misleading information associated with the domain name.

There is one interesting aspect about Hagmann’s domain name:

homelandsecurityus.com

At first sight, one would presume that this domain is affiliated with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Upon entering the site, it’s title reads: Northeast Intelligence Network

It’s clear that the title and content of the site indicate no affiliation with DHS. This site would be considered, by its domain name, a misrepresentation of DHS and the US Government, which is close to a trade name violation. It’s clear that a trade name dispute occurred against Hagmann and therefore the request to move or even to take down his site would have been legitimate.

However, upon looking at whois records, the domain registration was moved from GoDaddy to Network Solutions the day prior to the release of MI-5 Watson’s wonderful and creative display of yellow journalism. This would indicate, for now, that a domain registration violation was specific only to the terms set by GoDaddy.

A detail from the 8th century BC Assyrian clay tablet bearing the 45 mystery names written in cuneiform script which have now been deciphered at Cambridge University.

The discovery is important because it may help reveal the ethnic and cultural origins of some of history’s first ‘barbarians’ – mountain tribes which had, in previous millennia, preyed on the world’s first great civilizations, the cultures of early Mesopotamia in what is now Iraq.

Evidence of the long-lost language – probably spoken by a hitherto unknown people from the Zagros Mountains of western Iran – was found by a Cambridge University archaeologist as he deciphered an ancient clay writing tablet unearthed by an international archaeological team excavating an Assyrian imperial governors’ palace in the ancient city of Tushan, south-east Turkey.

The tablet revealed the names of 60 women – probably prisoners-of-war or victims of an Assyrian forced population transfer program. But when the Cambridge archaeologist – Dr. John MacGinnis – began to examine the names in detail, he realized that 45 of them bore no resemblance to any of the thousands of ancient Middle Eastern names already known to scholars.

The number of hate and anti-government groups in the United States continued to rise last year, fueled by racial tensions, conspiracy theories and anger over economic inequality, according to a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The most explosive growth came from the so-called Patriot movement, whose adherents view the federal government as their enemy.

The Patriot movement reached a peak in 1996, a year after right-wing extremist Timothy McVeigh set off a truck bomb outside the Oklahoma City federal building, killing 168 people. McVeigh and a co-conspirator were convicted, and McVeigh was executed.

The number of Patriot groups, a largely rural phenomenon sometimes referred to as the militia movement, increased to 1,274 groups in 2011 from 824 in 2010, the report released on Thursday said.

The number of those organizations has swelled in recent years since the economy slumped into recession and Democratic President Barack Obama, the country’s first black president, was elected in 2008, said the law center, which has tracked extremist groups for three decades.

A backlash against federal bail outs of the bank and auto industries, and discredited allegations that Obama was not born in the United States and therefore disqualified to be president, provided believers with the rationale to join such groups, according to the report.

Pat Robertson and marijuana legalization make for strange bedfellows, but he’s actually been championing the cause—specifically its place in the conversation about prison reform—since 2010.

Yes, according to an interview with The New York Times on Wednesday, the strict evangelical who believes gay people cause hurricanes and that mac ‘n cheese may be a “black thing,” is also for the legalization of marijuana. But it isn’t because he’s tried the stuff. It’s a bit more complicated than that. “I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol,” Robertson told The Times. “I’ve never used marijuana and I don’t intend to, but it’s just one of those things that I think: this war on drugs just hasn’t succeeded.” This has been a talking point for Robertson for some time now.

The Bishop of Tenerife provided an interesting explanation for the vast numbers of children raped by Catholic priests: They asked for it.

In 2007, when the American Catholic Church was reeling from sex abuse scandals but not so much Europe, the Bishop of Tenerife, Bernardo Álvarez, made some interesting Christmas holiday comments.

In a Christmas Eve interview with La Opinión de Tenerife, Bishop Alvarez said that there are children who want to be abused:

There are 13 year old adolescents who are under age and who are perfectly in agreement with, and what’s more wanting it, and if you are careless they will even provoke you.

That’s right, the rapists aren’t the priests. It’s those seductive tempters and temptresses, fresh-faced whores all, bending over in front of priests, flaunting their taut, young, moist flesh, just begging to be used as the sexual playthings of perverted pedophiles (and hebephiles) who have sworn to their imaginary friend that they will be celibate for life.

It’s probably their plan to sue later and retire on the Catholic Cult’s ill-gotten loot. After all, so many seem to be doing it!

Ancestors: Farmers from Iraq and Syria in 8000 BC built up communities in Britain

Most Britons are direct descendants of farmers who left modern day Iraq and Syria 10,000 years ago, a new study has shown.

After studying the DNA of more than 2,000 men, researchers say they have compelling evidence that four out of five white Europeans can trace their roots to the Near East.

The discovery is shedding light on one of the most important periods of human history – the time when our ancient ancestors abandoned hunting and began to domesticate animals.

The invention of farming led to the first towns and paved the way for the dawn of civilisation.

The Leicester University study looked at a common genetic mutation on the Y chromosome, the DNA that is passed down from fathers to sons.

They found that 80 per cent of European men shared the same Y chromosone mutation and after analysing how the mutation was distributed across Europe, were able to retrace how Europe was colonised around 8,000BC.

Spooky: Two Swiss brothers have 'revealed' how the theme tune from the film Titanic was playing on the Costa Concordia (pictured) as it struck rocks and started to keel over

Of all the stories to emerge from the Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster, it’s possibly the hardest to believe.

The human bridge created by British dancer James Thomas and the bizarre antics of captain Francesco Schettino pale in comparison to the claims of two Swiss brothers.

For they have revealed how the theme tune from the film Titanic was playing onboard as it struck rocks and started to keel over.

They said survivors of the disaster were ‘astonished’ by the eerie coincidence which saw them listening to Celine Dion’s hit My Heart Will Go On as the cruise ship began to founder.

The song was made internationally famous in 1997 as the theme of James Cameron’s epic movie about the 1912 sinking of the Titanic, starring Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet.

North Carolina will become the first state to compensate victims of a mass sterilization program that targeted poor minorities in a 20th century eugenics program, offering a $50,000 a person.

In a vote today, the Eugenics Compensation Task Force recommended the lump-sum amount, putting a three-year statute of limitations on claiming those funds.

The task force also established a pool to fund mental health services for sterilization victims.

The state has located 72 such victims, according to Jill Lucas, communications director for the North Carolina Department of Administration.

A final report on today’s recommendations will be given to Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue to consider. She will pass along her recommendations to the Generally Assembly, which will make a final decision about compensation.

Some lawmakers had urged as much as $1 million for each victim.

“The state recognizes that a wrong has been done and while these actions can never be reversed, the governor has made it a priority to reach out and help identify and compensate victims for their experience,” said Lucas.

A hypersonic flying missile that can strike a target anywhere in the world in just 30 minutes has been unveiled by the U.S. military.

The Advanced Hypersonic Weapon (AHW), which travels five times the speed of sound, was successfully tested yesterday.

It was launched by rocket from Hawaii at 11.30am, glided south westwards through the upper atmosphere over the Pacific at ‘hypersonic speed’ before hitting its target on the Kwajalein atoll in the Marshall Islands – some 2,500 miles away.

It comes hot on the heels of the U.S. Air Force announcement that it has taken delivery of eight, 15-ton bunker buster bombs, called the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, that can blow apart 200ft of concrete.

And if it is rolled out by the U.S. military, it will mean America will no longer have to rely on stationing missiles in foreign countries.

The Pentagon did not reveal how fast the AHW, which unlike traditional ballistic missiles can be manoeuvred, reached.