A newfound male relative of the human ancestor "Lucy" supports the idea that walking upright evolved earlier than thought, a new study says.

Lucy—a 3.2-million-year-old skeleton discovered in 1974—belongs to Australopithecus afarensis, a species which scientists think was an early direct ancestor of modern humans.

An exceptionally petite female—her estimated height was 3.5 feet (1.1 meters)—Lucy's small frame has been interpreted as not being totally adapted for human-like, upright walking.

But the discovery of the 3.6-million-year-old male disproves that idea, said study co-author Yohannes Haile-Selassie, curator of physical anthropology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

"As a result of this discovery, we can now confidently say that 'Lucy' and her relatives were almost as proficient as we are walking on two legs, and that the elongation of our legs came earlier in our evolution than previously thought," Haile-Selassie said in a statement....

Tools made about 11,000 years ago were found at the Maple Avenue site of Keene’s new middle school, which Stoddard archaeologist Robert Goodby said could “easily be one of the most important (archaeological) sites in the state, if not New England.

Goodby began his site review, overseen by the N.H. Division of Historical Resources, in November. The review is a federal requirement for projects that are constructed near wetlands. In addition to the high number of artifacts, few Granite State sites hold older finds, except one in Swanzey where 11,600-year-old stone tools were found....

t was the list that would have sent thousands more Jews to their deaths in Auschwitz and other extermination camps run by Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime during the second world war, but this time the victims were to be Spaniards.

The Spanish dictator, General Francisco Franco, whose apologists usually claim that he protected Jews, ordered his officials to draw up a list of some 6,000 Jews living in Spain and include them in a secret Jewish archive.

That list was handed over to the Nazi architect of the so-called "final solution", the German SS chief Heinrich Himmler, as the two countries negotiated Spain's possible incorporation into the group of Axis powers that included Italy, according to the El País newspaper today.

The newspaper printed the original order, recently unearthed from Spanish archives, that instructed provincial governors to elaborate lists of "all the national and foreign Jews living in the province ... showing their personal and political leanings, means of living, commercial activities, degree of danger and security category".

Provincial governors were ordered to look out especially for Sephardic Jews, descendants of those expelled from Spain in 1492, because their Ladino language and Hispanic background helped them fit into Spanish society....

The riddle began 10 years ago, when Ralf Peters stumbled across an old box full of photographs in a cabinet at the Central Institute of Art History in Munich. Peters, an art history Ph.D., had just begun a new job at the institute and was trying to get an idea as to what the archive might contain. Little did he know that the box he found during his first days on the job would preoccupy him and his colleagues for years to come.

Inside the box were 600 undated black-and-white images. They were disorganized and appeared on no inventory lists. "Nobody knew what they were doing inside the cabinet," Peters recalls. "They weren't in good condition."

The images were of burned out residences, destroyed monuments and crumbled palaces, all taken in Italy during World War II. Peters was initially flummoxed as to the photos' provenance: Who took the pictures? When exactly? And, most importantly, to what end? Peters spent years searching for the answers to these questions, and ultimately they were to provide a unique look at Nazi war propaganda as the Allies inexorably pushed the Germans out of Italy in 1943 and 1944....

From the point of view of Germany's military, the situation was serious. But the Nazis in Berlin then made what must be regarded as one of the most out-of-character decisions of World War II. Despite having spent years disregarding even the most basic elements of the 1899 Hague Conventions -- pillaging and murdering their way through Europe -- the Nazis decided to send German art historians to Italy to fulfil an article of the conventions which called for invading powers to ensure that cultural treasures in occupied territory be protected....

But where did the pictures of ruins found by Peters come from? "There is a striking difference between the art protection measures pursued in France and those undertaken in Italy," Peters says. "In France, the intact buildings were documented. In Italy, only the destroyed ones."...

The images bear witness to the slow shift away from art preservation and toward Nazi regime propaganda undertaken by the German art historians active in Italy during the war. Despite their efforts, many of the monuments and buildings they sought to protect were destroyed by the Allies. The Germans themselves were pushed ever further into northern Italy. Before long, the German military and the Nazi propaganda machinery recognized the potential of using the destroyed buildings to portray the Allies as culturally insensitive barbarians. The US, after all, used a similar strategy on the other side of the front, erecting signs in front of destroyed architectural pearls reading "Destroyed by the Germans."...

Just when did Egyptian pharaohs such as King Tut and Rameses II rule? Historians have heatedly debated the exact dates. Now a radiocarbon study concludes that much of the assumed chronology was right, though it corrects some controversial dates and may overturn a few pet theories.

"This is an extremely important piece of research that shows clearly that historical dating methods and radiocarbon dates are compatible for ancient Egypt," says Kate Spence, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

Egyptian records, such as the writings of the 3rd century B.C.E. historian Manetho and inscriptions found at key sites such as Saqqara and Karnak, provide what are called "floating chronologies" because they are internally consistent but not anchored to absolute dates. On the other hand, they sometimes refer to astronomical events whose dates can be calculated today. Thus, scholars are confident that they are not wildly off the mark. But it's difficult to be precise. For example, the first known pyramid, the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, was built as a tomb for King Djoser, and historians usually put the beginning of his reign between 2667 and 2592 B.C.E. But one recent paper by Spence, based on astronomical calculations, put it as much as 75 years later. Radiocarbon dating has been too imprecise to resolve these contradictions because in this period it usually has error ranges of between 100 and 200 years....

A young boy ducks under a barricade to have his photo taken next to an Israeli tank. A father puts his baby daughter’s hand on the trigger of a piece of artillery. A Shiite sheikh, in full religious dress, strolls past a map of “Occupied Palestine.” Two women silently sob at the site where former Hezbollah leader Abbas al-Musawi, now dead, was said to have prayed.

It’s opening day at Hezbollah’s war museum in the southern Lebanese town of Mlita.

Museum construction isn’t finished yet — workers are still putting a cafeteria together and the gift shop lies empty — but Hezbollah officials opened it anyway to mark the 10-year anniversary of Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon.

“The Israeli forces occupied those hills,” said museum tour guide Abu Ahmed, who said he was under orders not to give his full name. “The hurricane of the resistance attacked the eight Israeli teams and drove them into the abyss.”

In fact, the museum’s centerpiece is an exhibit called “The Abyss.” It’s a cratered area, surrounded by a ramp for visitors, covered with overturned Israeli tanks and leftover Israeli munitions.

Planning for the museum began in 2006. It now sits on a hilltop that served as a main staging ground for Hezbollah operations against Israel.

On opening day recently, the museum was jammed with supporters of the militant group. Many carried green and white Hezbollah flags. Others wore Hezbollah hats. Traffic was clogged a mile down the country road with cars of revelers....

The Vatican newspaper has celebrated the 30th anniversary of the release of The Blues Brothers by calling it a “Catholic” film.

The John Landis film has a bit of a cult following in Italy, which may part of the reason the paper, the Osservatore Romano, decided to single it out.

The movie stars John Belushi and Dan Akryod as Jake and Elwood, both of them on a “mission from God.”

They have to get their rhythm and blues band back together for a benefit concert to save the Catholic orphanage they grew up in.

The Blues Brothers doesn’t appear especially spiritual on first glance, and is more of a musical comedy. The music is extraordinary (or is that heavenly?) with the likes of Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and James Brown belting them out.

The film is a blast, with Belushi at his best, but why is it Catholic? It’s a far cry from The Ten Commandments or The Passion.

“Of course it’s Catholic,” said one Vatican official. “It’s two guys saving a Catholic orphanage and being chased by a bunch of Nazis. What could be more Catholic than that? It’s just a different kind of Catholic than The Passion.”

The Osservatore argues that The Blues Brothers deals with the theme of the prodigal son – Jake has just been let out of jail – and of “redemption obtained by sacrifice.”...

Experts have used scientific dating techniques to verify the historical chronology of ancient Egypt.

Radiocarbon dating was used to show that the chronology of Egypt's Old, Middle and New Kingdoms is indeed accurate.

The researchers dated seeds found in pharaohs' tombs, including some from the tomb of the King Tutankhamun.

They write in the journal Science that some of the samples are more than 4,500 years old.

Radiocarbon dating of ancient Egyptian objects is nothing new.

But this time, the scientists say, they were able to use a very precise statistical technique to actually verify the Egyptian history.

"The very first dating done with radiocarbon was dating Egyptian material of known dates, to check that [the method] worked," said Andrew Shortland from Cranfield University in the UK.

"Now, for the very first time, [we] managed to get radiocarbon techniques so good, that we can do it completely the opposite way around. We can say, from using radiocarbon, whether the Egyptian history is correct or not.

"Previously radiocarbon hasn't had a voice on this because the errors had been so great. Now radiocarbon is able to distinguish between different ideas of reconstructing the history."

The study brought together researchers from the UK, France, Austria and Israel....

...Seventy years ago, on June 18, 1940, Winston Churchill, barely six weeks in office as Britain’s prime minister and confronted with the threat of invasion from Nazi-occupied France, rose in the House of Commons and, in 36 minutes of soaring oratory, sought to rally his countrymen with what has gone down in history as his “finest hour” speech....

The original 23-page typescript of the speech, heavily edited by Churchill in scrawls of blue and red ink, rests now in one of 2,500 boxes of documents and artifacts, numbering more than a million in all, that cram the carefully guarded upper floors of the Churchill Archives Center of Cambridge University’s Churchill College, founded in 1960, five years before Churchill died.

In recent days, the speech and other related documents, including an admonishing letter about his ill-tempered behavior toward his staff from Churchill’s wife, Clementine, and diary entries from the time by his private secretary, John Colville, have been pulled together and put on display for visiting scholars, journalists and others for the insights they offer into how Churchill wrote the speech — intensively redrafting it right up to the minute he rose to deliver it — and into his fractious and quarrelsome state of mind at the time....

Churchill, after all, was already an iconic, if controversial, figure when he took office, and has long since taken his place in history’s pantheon. In a poll of more than one million television viewers in 2002, he was voted the greatest Englishman or woman who ever lived (outranking, among the first 10 finishers, Isaac Newton; Admiral Lord Nelson, Diana, Princess of Wales; and John Lennon).

What the Churchill College documents reveal, perhaps surprisingly for those accustomed to the confident sweep of Churchill’s oratory, is the last-minute reworking that he applied to his speech, adding phrases here, rewriting others and adding yet others on the fly as he delivered the speech.

In the famous last passage of the speech, the phrase he used to describe the world into which Europe and the United States would be plunged if Hitler prevailed — “the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more prolonged, by the lights of perverted science” — were amended, perhaps in the last moments before he rose in the Commons, with red-ink handwriting that perfected the alliteration....

Two distinct groups from Asia settled in the New World and not one single migration as suggested by previous genetic studies, experts said Monday after comparing the skulls of early Americans.

Paleoanthropologists from Brazil, Chile and Germany compared the skulls of several dozen Paleoamericans, dating back to the early days of migration 11,000 years ago, with the more recent remains of more than 300 Amerindians.

Their landmark research found differences in the cranial morphology that could only be explained by the fact that the last common ancestor of the Early and Late Native American groups came from outside the continent....