Intel

"We're using our growing intelligence abilities to combat the threat posed by eco-terrorists and animal-rights extremists," the FBI says.

Strait of Hormuz

Voice of America:

The commander of the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet says the United States will not allow Iran to shut down a key oil supply route in the Persian Gulf.

Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff Monday told reporters in Bahrain that Iran will not shut the Strait of Hormuz. The strait is a strategic outlet for oil tankers leaving the Persian Gulf. Cosgriff leads U.S. naval forces in the Middle East and Horn of Africa.

Last week, the head of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, General Mohammad Ali Jafari, said Tehran will respond to an attack against it by striking Israel with missiles and closing the strait.

Real Bullets

"The French government has launched an investigation into how live rounds that injured 17 people were used during a military display in southern France," Voice of America reports.

Night of the Grizzly

A grizzly bear attacked a teenage girl in Alaska. The Times of London has the story.

Stachi

The hunt for Stachi the runaway porcupine is over.

Killorglin

Spiegel Online: "In the town of Killorglin in County Kerry, the reins of power are handed to a wild billy goat once a year."

Russian Bear

A bear killed a man on Russia's Sakhalin Island.

Covert Operations

According to Seymour Hersh, the United States has ramped up covert operations against Iran.

Australian Bomber

"An Australian World War II bomber has been found in the Papua New Guinea jungle more than 66 years after it disappeared on a mission against the Japanese Navy," Australian Broadcasting Corp. reports.

Men of the Night

Asso Ahmed on the Iraq-Iran border:

They are known as the “men of the night.”

A rugged group sits in front of a liquor store in the northern foothills of Iraq, swapping stories and glasses of whiskey as their horses feed nearby. As dusk approaches, they begin strapping heavy cartons onto their animals for the long journey ahead.

Their cargo: bottles of Absolut vodka, Johnnie Walker and Chivas Regal Scotch whiskey destined for Iran.

Read more at the Los Angeles Times.

Business Heritage

In 1947 Hank Greenspun worked for Bugsy Siegel. In the early 1980s one of my ex-wives worked for Hank.

Isla Grande de Chiloé

NPR: "Belief in the supernatural permeates the island of Chiloé, a remote spot where volcanoes rumble to life, earthquakes rock the foundations and tales of sea goddesses, warlocks and trolls abound."

Camels and Elephants

Via People's Daily: "Indian villagers are using smelly camels to protect their farmlands and homes from marauding elephants, saying the beasts' stench was enough to keep the pachyderms at bay."

In Deep Doo–Doo

A woman fell into a tank of manure at a German farm.

Drug Cartels

Cordula Meyer of Der Spiegel wrote an article about the use of small, submarine-like semisubmersibles to smuggle illegal drugs.

Business Heritage

United Mine Workers of America:

The date April 20, 1914, will forever be a day of infamy for American workers. On that day, 20 innocent men, women and children were killed in the Ludlow Massacre.

(Art credit: John Sloan)

Ancient Coffins

Egyptian archaeologists discovered several painted wooden coffins.

Bicyclist

A man on a bicycle suffered minor injuries when he collided with a black bear on a road near Boulder, Colorado. The bear went into the woods after the accident.

Gossip

Todd Venezia at the New York Post: "Sexy CBS siren Lara Logan spent her days covering the heat of the Iraq war — but that was nothing compared to the heat of her nights."

Problems at Work

"With inflation at several million per cent, miles of government red tape and a vanishing domestic market, running a business in Zimbabwe is not easy," notes Ian Brimacombe of the BBC.

A Time for Dieting

BBC News: "The UN World Food Programme has warned it may have to cut food aid to Somalia if it does not receive new naval protection against pirates."

Debate

"Four days after pirates captured a German family off the coast of Somalia — and with German warships deployed nearby — German lawmakers are squabbling over how the navy should intervene," Spiegel Online says.

Previous: Captives

Bear Feet in the Park

A polar bear interrupted a school picnic at a park in northern Canada.

Ship Released

Somali pirates freed the Amiya Scan and its crew.

Previous:
Threat
Foreign Ministry
Dangerous Waters

Business Heritage

Ted Landphair at Voice of America: "Beside a rushing Rocky Mountain trout stream lie two American rarities: a castle and a company town in which a single company once owned every building — even people's homes."

Aggressive Hippo

In Zambia a hippopotamus capsized a canoe, killing five men.

Purse Snatcher

A fox stole a woman's handbag in Switzerland.

Smithsonian Magazine

The July issue of Smithsonian magazine is online.

Alligator

An 18-year-old man lost his left arm to an 11-foot alligator at a canal in Okeechobee County, Florida.

Cougar Attack

In New Mexico a mountain lion killed a 55-year-old man near a home in the historic gold-mining town of Pinos Altos. The cougar ate part of the victim's body.

Land of the Dead

Subir Bhaumik of BBC News: "A US team is visiting the remote state of Arunachal Pradesh in northeast India to search for the remains of US pilots who crashed during WWII."

Captives

Pirates kidnapped four European travelers from a yacht off the coast of Somalia. Mohamed Adow Amin of CNN has the details.

Cold War

From the official Russian news agency RIA Novosti:

Russia must be ready to fight wars in the Arctic to protect its national interests in a region that contains large and untapped deposits of natural resources, a high-ranking military official said in an interview published Tuesday.

Hello, Kitty

A man and wife ate stray cats in the central Ukrainian city of Poltava.

Finger Wrestling

Spiegel Online: "It may sound funny, but for some Bavarian and Austrian men finger wrestling is no joke. They take it very seriously: For them it's about prestige and honor."

Forest Residents, Part 2

Survival International:

The British newspaper The Observer claimed this weekend that it’s now "emerged" that the uncontacted tribe whose photos went around the world were neither "lost," nor "undiscovered," nor "unknown."

This is a classic example of journalists getting the wrong end of the stick. The only people who ever claimed that the Indians photographed were "lost" or "undiscovered" were....the press, despite the fact that Survival has been campaigning for the protection of the many isolated Indian tribes on the Peru-Brazil border for more than twenty years.

Continue reading "Lost? Uncontacted tribe knew exactly where they were."

Update: More here.

Previous: Forest Residents

McCain Supporter

From 1970 to 1973 Tran Trong Duyet ran the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" prison in Vietnam. This month he endorsed John McCain for President of the United States.

Cambodian Dogs

Voice of America:

Puppies born recently in Cambodia are the first mine-clearing dogs to be bred and born in Southeast Asia. Most Asian dogs are unsuited for de-mining, so fully trained dogs are imported, mostly from Europe. But that could change if Cambodia's new breeding program succeeds, saving time, money and lives.

Once Upon a Time in India

Sloth Bear

A young sloth bear refused to live in the jungle. The Times of India has the story.

Fact Sheet: Sloth bear

(Photo by J'nie Woosley, NZP)

Newlyweds

Spiegel Online: "It's not unusual for a bridegroom to enjoy a drink or two at his own wedding. But one German man rather overdid things at his nuptials — leading his new wife to abandon him in a field by the side of the road to sleep off his stupor."

Sophisticated Neanderthals

University College London: "Britain’s last Neanderthals were more sophisticated than we thought."

Money for Pet Food

In Japan a man robbed convenience stores to feed his pets. He wore a dog mask.

Monkey God

"A group of Indians are planning to present a statue of the revered Indian monkey God, Hanuman, to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama," BBC News reports.

Journalist

BBC News:

A Macedonian journalist suspected of brutally murdering at least three elderly women and writing about their deaths has been found dead in custody.

Vlado Taneski, 56, committed suicide by putting his head in a bucket full of water, a police spokesman said.

Previous: News Maker

Buns and Guns

BBC News:

A fast-food restaurant in Beirut's war-torn southern suburb has hit upon an explosive way to attract customers.

Buns and Guns is made out to look like a military post and diners eat to the sound of gunfire instead of Muzak.

Pig Tale

RIA Novosti: "A pig, who amazingly survived 36 days under rubble of a collapsed pig farm in China struck by a devastating quake, was bought by a local museum for $438, the Shanghai Daily newspaper reported on Monday."

River Guide

Jim Schaefer of the Detroit Free Press spent a few minutes with a one-armed survivor of a hippo attack.

Kill the Boys Good-Bye

New York Post: "Angie's back! And she's got a gun."

Business Heritage

Carl N. Karcher dropped out of school before the ninth grade. In 1941 he bought a hot-dog cart for USD 326. With hard work he built the business into a major restaurant chain. His wife helped him every step of the way.

Soweto

Two security guards killed each other during a gunfight at a railway station in South Africa.

News Maker

"Police in Macedonia have arrested a journalist on suspicion that he is behind three murders he reported on," the BBC says.

Grave Robber

An old Chinese tomb collapsed, killing a grave robber.

British Mercenary

Voice of America:

The trial in Equatorial Guinea of a British mercenary accused of plotting to overthrow the country's government ended on Friday, but no verdict was announced.

The Associated Press says a verdict in the case of Simon Mann is expected next week.

Previous: Equatorial Guinea

Hogs

Michael Brick of the New York Times put together a story about feral hogs in the United States:

Even to old hands, wild hogs have proved hard to kill and harder to catch. They recognize traps. They move at night. They run quickly over short distances. They evade hunters in the thick brush. When pursued, they lead dogs into the water to drown. Failing that, they back up against a rock or a tree to fight.

Red Zone

Armed rustlers plague Madagascar cattle farmers. Jonny Hogg of BBC News:

The government calls it a "red zone."

Many of the cattle traders who cross it liken it to a war zone, where there is a constant struggle between them and the dahalo — the Malagasy word for cattle thieves — who will attack them without warning.

Read the whole thing.

Prowler

A tiger killed three people in southwestern Bangladesh.

Update: Villagers beat the man-eater to death.

Jakarta

RIA Novosti: "Traffic police on skateboards will began patrolling the Indonesian capital from July 1, the Koran Tempo newspaper reported on Friday."

Hard Day's Night

The BBC has a piece about a woman bouncer in India.

Bees in the Urban Jungle

"Germany is running out of bees," reports Philip Bethge at Spiegel Online. "But urban beekeeping may just be the solution."

Fire Festival

Spiegel Online has a feature about fire, booze, and Vikings in modern-day Scotland.

Up on the Roof

RIA Novosti:

A drunk driver hit a traffic policeman and carried him about a kilometer (0.62 miles) on the roof of his car in Russia's Far Eastern Khabarovsk Territory, a police source said on Friday.

The driver stopped only after the inspector fired eight shots from his government-issued gun.

British Rule in India

Author Amitav Ghosh: "Before the British came, India was one of the world's great economies."

Biography: Amitav Ghosh

Barbaric Revenge

Townspeople set a killer elephant on fire in India's Orissa State. The Times of India has the news.

Toilet

In Australia a black-headed python emerged from a toilet on the 10th floor of an apartment building.

Song of the Kurds

Sarah Rainsford BBC News: "A Turkish judge has thrown out a case against members of a Kurdish children's choir, who faced up five years in prison over a song they sang."

Tug-of-War

"The Irishman who was attacked by a crocodile in Mexico has spoken of being at the center of a tug-of-war as his family and friends fought to pull him free from the jaws of the reptile," reports Breda Heffernan at Independent.ie.

Previous: Lagoon

Houdini Wannabe

Spiegel Online: "A wannabe German escape artist has discovered that getting out of a straitjacket is harder than it looks — especially when you're alone at home."

Alive

In India a dead baby gurgled on the way to a cemetery.

Facial

The Geisha Facial at Shizuka New York uses an unusual ingredient to brighten and cleanse the skin — bird droppings.

Change

IOL in South Africa: "A court on Wednesday issued a landmark ruling classifying Chinese South Africans as black, making them eligible for benefits for those discriminated against under the former apartheid regime."

Ships

"As President Bush considers repealing a ban on offshore drilling, a shortage of ships used for such drilling promises to impede any rapid turnaround in oil exploration," the New York Times says.

Lost Amazon

NPR (National Public Radio): "Richard Evans Schultes went exploring in the Colombian Amazon in the 1940s. His photographs, now on display at the Smithsonian, offer hypnotic insights into the birth of ethnobotany."

Gallery: The Lost Amazon

Equatorial Guinea

Lydia Polgreen of the New York Times writes about the Simon Mann trial: "The plot to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea in 2004 was so improbable that it sounded like something out of a tale from the tropics, too outlandish even for Graham Greene."

Yesterday: Trial of a Mercenary

Trampoline

At a home in England a dog used a trampoline to leap over a garden wall.

Monument

Russians unveiled a monument to enema treatments.

Witch Doctors

In Uganda a magistrate sentenced three witch doctors to four years in prison.

"The witch doctors had human skulls in their possession," a tourist said in an email to me.

Cigars

Thieves stole millions of dollars* worth of cigars from a warehouse in Australia.

* AUD 4 million = USD 3.78 million

Blood and Tears

On Monday a bear mauled a 26-year-old man near a Hindu temple in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.

"Locals ran to help the crying, screaming man," a traveler said. "The bear fled into the woods."

Villagers took the badly injured victim to a hospital.

White Bear

Another polar bear showed up in Iceland.

Update: Cops shot the animal.

Previous: Bear Shooters

Northern White Rhino

"African rhinos have reached record numbers for the first time in decades, but the northern white rhino (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) is on the brink of extinction," the IUCN reports.

On Dangerous Ground

Giant panda

Voice of America:

Forestry officials in China say they estimate that the powerful May 12 earthquake destroyed or damaged more than 80 percent of the giant panda's remaining habitat.

A senior forestry official told a Hong Kong newspaper the South China Morning Post that about two-thirds of the wild population is likely dead, injured or facing starvation.

(Photo by Ann Batdorf, NZP)

Searching for India's Elusive Yeti

Alastair Lawson of BBC News:

In the U.S. it's known as bigfoot, in Canada as sasquatch, in Brazil as mapinguary, in Australia as a yowie, in Indonesia as sajarang gigi and, most famously of all, in Nepal as a yeti.

The little-known Indian version of this legendary ape-like creature is called mande barung — or forest man — and is reputed to live in the remote West Garo hills of the northeastern state of Meghalaya.

The rest is here.

Dark Side of the Street

Juergen Dahlkamp, John Goetz and Holger Stark at Spiegel Online:

An engineer is on trial in Germany for allegedly attempting to help Libya develop a nuclear bomb. But the network the man was allegedly part of was under surveillance by intelligency agencies, with the CIA getting involved early on. The Swiss government has even gone so far as to eliminate evidence by secretly shredding thousands of documents.

Nunu the White Terrier

NPR:

In Iraq one of the connections NPR's Baghdad bureau has made centers on a white terrier that sought refuge from the mayhem of Sadr City. The staff took him, and named him Nunu. But their decision to have him neutered shocked their Iraqi co-workers — and brought up questions of cultural difference.

Badge

Pat Garrett's sheriff badge fetched USD 100,000 at a San Francisco auction.

Religion

Religious news at Australian Broadcasting Corp.:

Egypt: "An historic church in the Nile Delta where the Holy Family is said to have stopped during their flight to Egypt, leaving Christ's footprint, has been damaged by fire, a security official said."

Nepal: "A week after Nepal's former king was forced to leave the royal palace, government officials are deciding what to with the deposed monarch's cows."

Most Nepalese are Hindus.

Trial of a Mercenary

Prosecutors in Equatorial Guinea want Simon Mann to spend 30 years in prison.

The mercenary deserves his problems. If you want to run with the big dogs, you can't act like a puppy. If you decide to overthrow an African government, you damn well better have a foolproof plan.

Previous: Simon Mann

Wet Feet

BBC News:

A human foot has been found on a beach near the west-coast city of Vancouver, Canadian police say.

It is the fifth human foot to wash up on beaches in the area in the past year. The latest find is a left foot, whereas the other four were right feet.

Previous: Foot

Airport

RIA Novosti: "Lizards, jackals and birds of prey caused delays of up to three hours for some 100 flights at an airport in the Indian capital of New Delhi, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported on Tuesday."

Happy Family

A cat adopted a rat in China.

Green Beads

Some of the first farmers in the Near East probably used green beads as amulets.

Lagoon

In Mexico a crocodile injured a 23-year-old Irishman at a lagoon.

Hotel

"A Berlin hotel is trying to figure out how to deal with an unusual guest — a raccoon who has moved into its garage," Spiegel Online reports. "According to German law, the hotel does not have the right to evict the furry trespasser."

Love Machines

China Daily: "Romantic human-robot relationships are no longer the stuff of science fiction — researchers expect them to become reality within four decades."

Police Beat

At the age of 15 I became a writer. I sold articles to girlie magazines. (My parents refused to show my work to their friends.)

I landed my first newspaper job a little more than two years later. I covered the police beat on a part-time basis after school. The paper was a weekly rag in Pennsylvania.

On my 18th birthday a cop told me about a double murder in a rural area near the city. "State police found two dead men in the dining room of an old clapboard house," he said. "One gunshot victim has his face in a plate of spaghetti. The other gunshot victim is on the floor."

I rushed to the scene. When I entered the house, I stumbled over the body on the floor. I apologized to the investigators in the room.

One investigator chuckled. "That's okay," he said. "We're done here."

A 16-year-old girl had witnessed the murders. She escaped during the shooting. The lawmen had nobody to drive her to her aunt's home. I volunteered. I wanted to interview her in the car.

The killer was a middle-aged man. He eluded cops and bloodhounds. According to the girl, he wanted to shoot her, too.

In a newspaper article I wrote that I knew the location of the only witness to the murders. I hoped to interview the killer.

The murderer never tried to contact me. Cops captured him after a 23-day manhunt. I photographed him shortly after his arrest.

Before my 28th birthday I left the newspaper business. I earned more money after my career change. But I seldom had more fun.

The Beatles

During my college years I worked as a reporter-photographer at a tabloid. On August 30, 1964, I decided to cover the Beatles' concert in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Beatlemania was at its peak. However, with the help of television's Dick Clark, Steel Pier's George Hamid, and Beatles' road manager Neil Aspinall, I managed to attend the crowded press conference before the concert. I also managed to obtain a free fifth-row seat at the show.

So great was the crush at the news conference that even the Beatles' press agent, Derek Taylor, had trouble getting into the room.

Quite frankly, John, Paul, George, and Ringo failed to impress me during the question-and-answer session. The four musicians said nothing clever. They looked like they needed to bathe.

I liked Dick Clark. Several hours before the events, I was unable to reach Aspinall on the phone to obtain press credentials. I spotted Clark in a coffee shop. I introduced myself and explained my problem. Clark took care of everything.

A Story for Father's Day

Michael Constantine is an Emmy-winning American actor. He played Windex-toting Gus Portokalos in the 2002 hit movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

In 1970 the actor won an Emmy for his role in the popular television series Room 222. I talked to him in June 1970.

He said:

I wasn't excited about going to the Emmy Awards until my daughter, Thea, bought a new dress for it. She's 12. She was feeling so good about it. I decided to go all the way. So I went out and rented an old Rolls-Royce with a chauffeur. It was the kind of car that if it rained, the chauffeur got wet, but you didn't.

When I won, Thea was very excited. We went to a CBS party and I took her around and introduced her to celebrities. She called her girl friends to tell them where she was. Afterward, we drove around, down Sunset Boulevard and other places. It was perfect.

India's Richest Man

Anand Giridharadas of the New York Times: "India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, is shaping his country via capitalism, with echoes of Mohandas Gandhi."

Business Heritage

Flamboyant Melvin Belli (1907-1996) was one of San Francisco's most famous lawyers. To celebrate victory in court, he raised a pirate flag at his office building and fired two loud blasts from a signal cannon.

“I was nothing until I became a screwball," he told a writer.

Related: Mourners wore red

Exploring Namibia

Joshua Hammer retraced the steps of German colonizers in Namibia:

In August 1904, four columns of German troops surrounded about 80,000 Herero men, women and children in a field at the foot of Waterberg called Hamakari. Thousands died under a machine-gun and artillery attack; the survivors fled east into the desert, pursued relentlessly by the Germans; most died of thirst.

The New York Times has Hammer's article.

Lake Ontario

Underwater explorers found the remains of an old British warship at the bottom of Lake Ontario. Thomas H. Maugh II of the Los Angeles Times has the story.

Spider Monkey

A spider monkey escaped from an Indiana zoo.

Life's Raw Materials

Imperial College London:

Scientists have confirmed for the first time that an important component of early genetic material which has been found in meteorite fragments is extraterrestrial in origin, in a paper published on 15 June 2008.

The finding suggests that parts of the raw materials to make the first molecules of DNA and RNA may have come from the stars.

The scientists, from Europe and the USA, say that their research, published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, provides evidence that life’s raw materials came from sources beyond the Earth.

Seed

"Scientists have grown a plant from a 2,000-year-old seed excavated from the ruins of Masada, the ancient Jewish fortress near the Dead Sea," Voice of America reports.

News from Uganda

Last week a crocodile killed a male bather in Lake Victoria. The man-eater submerged with the adult victim, leaving a trail of blood on the surface of the water.

Old and Young

Egyptian authorities put the kibosh on a planned marriage between a 92-year-old man and a 17-year-old girl.

Amboseli Lions

National Geographic Society:

Lion populations in and around Kenya's Amboseli National Park have dropped so low due to spearing and poisoning by local Maasai that conservationists fear the animals could become locally extinct in just a few years. Amboseli, located at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro near the Kenya/Tanzania border, is one of Kenya's most important tourist destinations, with lions being the primary attraction for visitors.

Fewer than 100 lions are now estimated to live in Kenya's Amboseli-Tsavo ecosystem, a 2,200-square-mile area that includes Amboseli National Park and the Maasai grazing lands up to the border of Tsavo National Park. Although there are no reliable data on exact numbers of lions from earlier years, researchers agree that current numbers represent a dramatic decline in populations for this region.

The rest is here.

Night Fight

Villagers ambushed a gang of bandits in Bangladesh.

Chariot

Via Australian Broadcasting Corp.: "Archaeologists have dug up the skeletons of 16 horses and a two-wheeled chariot in a grave dating back to the Roman Empire in northeast Greece, the culture ministry announced."

Nigeria

Chinedu Offor at Voice of America: "A maritime watchdog group is calling the coastline of Nigeria the most dangerous in the world. The UN agency, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), says pirate attacks have increased from four in 2003 to 107 last year."

Prince and Princess

This week I stumbled upon the Web site Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan. He is the brother of the late King Hussein.

I met Prince Hassan when I was a young executive at California's Lion Country Safari in Irvine. Before the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, he and his wife toured the African wildlife park during a trip to see President Richard M. Nixon in San Clemente.

At the park I told the couple to pick out a souvenir in the gift shop. I told the manager of the shop to send me the bill. I almost had a heart attack when I received the invoice. My gesture of kindness cost me two weeks' pay.

Previous: Celebrities

Babes

Here is a good idea from a Democrat.

Unicorn

A roe deer with one horn lives in Italy.

Park

At a Southern California park a rattlesnake bit a young man twice.

Burning Brightly

Mike Carney of USA Today: "It was 45 years ago today that a monk named Thich Quang Duc burned himself to death in Saigon to protest the way South Vietnamese officials treated Buddhists."

Flying Saucer

A University of Florida professor designed a flying saucer.

Switzerland

From RIA Novosti: "The last woman executed in Europe for witchcraft is to be exonerated more than 200 years after she was beheaded in Switzerland, national media reported on Wednesday."

Tough

RIA Novosti:

A court in the Republic of Karelia in Russia's north has given a nine-month suspended sentence to a woman who accidentally killed her common-law husband with two slaps, prosecutors said on Wednesday.

While trying to bring the drunken man to his senses, the woman hit him backhand across the face twice. The man died of an intracranial hemorrhage.

England

This piggy wears boots.

Mediterranean Sharks

Richard Black of BBC News:

Sharks in the Mediterranean Sea have undergone a massive decline over the last two centuries, scientists have discovered from historical records.

Some species shrunk by more than 99 percent over the period, mainly due to fishing.

Predators in the Suburbs

Katie Zezima of the New York Times reports from Rhode Island:

Last summer, Kerry Beaudry heard yelping from her German shepherd, Holly, and went outside to investigate. What she found still gives her chills. A small, mangy creature was on top of Holly, digging its claws into the scruff of her neck and gnawing at her face.

“I had never seen anything like it,” Ms. Beaudry recalled.

Read more.

People from Distant Places

University of Copenhagen:

A team of forensic scientists has studied human remains found in two ancient Danish burial grounds dating back to the Iron Age, and discovered a man who appears to be of Arabian origin. The findings suggest that human beings were as genetically diverse 2,000 years ago as they are today and indicate greater mobility among Iron Age populations than was previously thought. They also suggest that people in the Danish Iron Age did not live and die in small, isolated villages but, on the contrary, were in constant contact with the wider world.

Church

"Archaeologists in Rihab, Jordan, say they have discovered a cave that could be the world's oldest Christian church," Matt McGrath of the BBC reports.

Raid

Armed rustlers from Kenya stole more than 100 head of cattle during a raid on a village in Tanzania.

Beheaded Bunnies

Charles Hawley at Spiegel Online in Germany: "A disgusting spree of brutal killings continues to haunt Dortmund. Over 40 pet rabbits have been killed, with many bled dry and decapitated. So far, police are clueless."

Plantation

Yesterday a wild elephant took the life of a 10-year-old girl at a tea plantation in India's state of West Bengal.

Village Violence

A mob of angry villagers killed four members of a family in the Indian state of Assam.

Powerful Lizards

On an Indonesian island a group of divers had to fight off a Komodo dragon. How dangerous is the reptile? The answer is here.

What's Cooking?

A tiger walked into the kitchen of a home in the Indian state of West Bengal. Forest rangers used nets to trap the cat.

Rockets

Spiegel Online has a story about Easter celebrations on the Greek island of Chios:

Two opposing parishes in the town of Vrodados spend the evening just before Orthodox Easter Sunday firing thousands of homemade rockets at each other's church — while the more pious among them attend mass inside.

A Snake and a Condom

Safe sex failed to save a 40-year-old Thai man from a cobra.

Cowgirls

"A record number of young Australian women are signing up for jobs as cattle hands on vast outback farms," says Phil Mercer of the BBC.

Khmer Rouge

In a dusty town on Cambodia's border with Thailand, Philippa Fogarty of the BBC talked to former Khmer Rouge fighters.

Celebrities

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has a special exhibit about the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.

During the 1970s Jesse Owens stopped by my office at California's Lion Country Safari in Orange County. He was a likable guy. I gave him free tickets to the African wildlife preserve.

Celebrities often wanted complimentary tickets. Only a few famous visitors refused to accept free passes. Actors Gene Barry and Vincent Price insisted on paying at the gate.

The wildlife park closed in the mid-1980s. By that time, I was VP of export services at a major international bank.

Previous: Never Park Your Car on a Lion's Tail

Raccoons

Ranpaging raccoons have become the scourge of Harlem. Eden Univer ot the New York Daily News has the details.

Business School

Hanuman, the revered Hindu monkey god, is the official chairman of the recently opened Sardar Bhagat Singh College of Technology and Management in northern India.

Easy Money

Sea pirates have no recruiting problems in Puntland.

From Voice of America:

The mayor of a coastal town in Somalia's semi-autonomous region of Puntland reports that poorly paid government security force members are joining forces with local pirates, who are earning millions of dollars from ransom payments. Puntland officials acknowledge that huge ransoms from shipowners are encouraging more and more people to view piracy as a quick way to make money.

Zookeeper

A tiger killed a zookeeper in Japan.

Sulawesi

On the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, a volcano spewed smoke and debris.

Gone Forever

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: "After a five-year review, NOAA’s Fisheries Service has determined that the Caribbean monk seal, which has not been seen for more than 50 years, has gone extinct — the first type of seal to go extinct from human causes."

Sunflower State

A posse captured two runaway elephants in Kansas.

Waiting

"The appointment of Nepal's new 'living goddess' is being held up the recent abolition of the monarchy," says Charles Haviland of the BBC.

Bear Shooters

Staff writer Amanda L. Pentler at the New York Daily News: "A polar bear that swam more than 200 miles through near-freezing water to reach Iceland was shot by local police — just in case it posed a danger to humans."

Offshore Banking

You can't trust anybody these days. Too bad Paul Erdman isn't around to write a novel about it.

Cow Fights

Spiegel Online: "Forget bullfights. In the Alps, it is the female cows that get to enter the ring."

Machu Picchu

"A team of historians say the Inca city of Machu Picchu in Peru might have been ransacked by an adventurer decades before a 20th-century expedition brought it to the world's attention," the BBC reports.

Feast in India

To please the gods, an old woman spent thousands of dollars on a feast for 100,000 people.

Mahout Dies

A circus elephant killed a mahout in Bangladesh.

Let It Be

"No one has to starve in Africa," Thilo Thielke says. "Hunger there results from the failures of unscrupulous rulers — and their friends in the West. Paradoxically, it is the aid workers who are standing in the way of progress."

Read the whole thing at Spiegel Online.

Sharks

The New York Times has an article about the recent shark attacks in Mexico.

Surgery

Doctors accidentally left a surgical towel inside a patient.

Terror in Berlin

"A number of German bathers in Berlin's Schlachtensee lake have been bitten by what is believed to be a giant catfish," Spiegel Online reports.

Clothes

Jason Beaubien:

Mexico has seen a huge surge in violence recently as the government attempts to crack down on the nation's powerful drug cartels.

This year alone, nearly 1,400 people have been killed in drug-related shootings. Mexico also has a kidnapping problem and high levels of car theft and street crime.

For a Colombian clothing maker who recently opened up shop in Mexico City, all of this has been great for business.

Read more at NPR.

Zambia

A crocodile killed a 6-year-old girl in Zambia.

Snails

Independent Online: "Hundreds of migrating snails caused a six-car pileup as they swarmed across a busy dual carriageway in Germany."

It Happened in Brooklyn

From the New York Daily News: "A car slammed into an 88-year-old man in Brooklyn Monday and swerved for a block to shake him off the windshield, critically injuring him in the process, police and witnesses said."

Large Statue

Prachi Pinglay of BBC News: "The government of the Indian state of Maharashtra says it plans to build a statue off the Mumbai (Bombay) coast to rival New York's Statue of Liberty."

Island of Death

Elephants continue to die from gunshot wounds in Sri Lanka.

Previous: War Strategy

Weird Ways

Spiegel Online shines a spotlight some of Europe's weird ways:

Greece: "Each year on the first Monday of Lent, the people of the tiny Greek town of Tyrnavos go crazy about penises, singing lewd songs and urging passersby to kiss their model phalluses. The pagan fertility festival is one of the most famous parties in Greece."

Belgium: "Come to the little Belgian town of Geraardsbergen in February and you will be able to witness the townsfolk slurp down live fish as part of the Krakelingen festival."

United Kingdom: "Every year a bunch of fearless men and women hurl themselves down a near-vertical English hill in pursuit of a giant rolling cheese."

Beyond a Coral Reef

A shark ripped off a Brazilian teenager's right hand. The fish also bit a large chunk from the 14-year-old boy's butt.

Women

News release from Durham University in the United Kingdom:

Men may usually settle it over a drunken brawl in the pub or perhaps a verbal spat — but new evidence has shown for the first time that fighting over women in prehistoric times could have been worse than that.

A mass grave of skeletons investigated by Durham University-led researchers suggests that neighboring tribes from prehistoric times were prepared to brutally kill their male rivals to secure their women.

The research, described in the academic journal Antiquity, focused on 34 skeletons found buried in the village of Talheim in the southwest of Germany. Genetic evidence inferred from the skeletons' teeth suggests they were of people killed in an attack between rival tribes around 5000 BC.

The researchers found that, although there were adult females among the immigrant skeletons, within the local group of skeletons there were men and children only. They conclude the absence of local females indicates that they were spared execution and captured instead which may have indeed been the primary motivation for the attack.

Lead author Dr Alex Bentley from Durham University's Anthropology Department said: "It seems this community was specifically targeted, as could happen in a cycle of revenge between rival groups. Although resources and population were undoubtedly factors in central Europe around that time, women appear to be the immediate reason for the attack.

"Our analysis points to the local women being regarded as somehow special and were therefore kept alive."

The Durham University-led team, with researchers from University College London, University of Wisconsin and a German government body, came to their conclusions after analyzing the strontium, carbon and oxygen isotopes signatures of the skeletons' teeth. These give vital information about the skeletons' geological origin and diet.

There have been many witness accounts of fighting over women in the last hundred years but most archaeological evidence points to violence erupting over resources, overcrowding and property. The archaeological findings from this study for the first time strongly suggest violence took place over mates as early as prehistoric times, according to the scientists.

The skeletons from the mass grave in Talheim, which were excavated in the 1980s, were all buried in a single pit of three metres long. The deliberateness of the prehistoric attack was first realized when German skeletal experts determined that the majority had been killed by a blow to the left side of the head, suggesting the victims were bound and killed, probably with a stone axe. Others may have been killed from arrow wounds from behind as if the victims had tried to flee.

Hungry Tiger

A tiger killed a 24-year-old man and seriously injured the victim's 45-year-old father in the Indian state of West Bengal. The cat dragged the dead man's body into a forest.

Berlin Airlift

Voice of America: "June marks the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the Berlin Airlift, an extraordinary, 11-month effort by the United States, Great Britain and France to defy the Soviet Union's blockade of the former Nazi capital."

Warships

"The UN Security Council has unanimously voted to allow countries to send warships into Somalia's territorial waters to tackle pirates," the BBC reports.

Wire

A low-hanging wire electrocuted a female elephant and her calf near a lake in the Indian state of Jharkhand.

Threat

RIA Novosti:

The pirates who seized a Dutch cargo vessel off the Somali coast last week have threatened to kill the Russian-Filipino crew if any rescue attempt is made, a Dutch agency said on Monday, citing Somali radio.

ANP said the hijackers, who are demanding a ransom for the crew consisting of four Russians and five Filipinos, claim the Dutch vessel, the Amiya Scan, was fishing in Somali waters.

A spokesman for Reider Shipping, the ship's owners, said the claims were "nonsense" since the vessel is a cargo ship delivering drilling platform components and not a fishing trawler.

Hell of a Woman

Angelina Jolie says she has no qualms about using her guns to protect her kids.

Attacks on Yachts

The Los Angeles Times has a report about pirates in the Caribbean.