ARCHAEOLOGISTS investigating a mass burial of 97 infants were 'horrified' to find what they believe to be the skeleton of a dismembered child.

Chiltern Archaeologists suspect the site in Hambleden could have been a Roman brothel – where unwanted babies were systematically killed.

Dr Jill Eyers, who lives in Lane End, said the group has discovered cut marks on the bones of one of the babies.

She added: “These were knife marks and would represent a dismembering of this infant. We are horrified to say the least and are now about to closely check all other infant skeletons....

MOSCOW – Russia remembered two unlikely national heroes Thursday — a pair of skinny street mutts who moved the Soviet Union into the lead of the space race when they became the first living creatures to circle the Earth and come back alive.

The Aug. 19, 1960 mission by Belka and Strelka was a key step in preparations for the flight of Yuri Gagarin, who became the first human in space about a year later.

It showcased the Soviet lead in space exploration and turned the two dogs into global celebrities. Celebrations of the mission's 50th anniversary topped national newscasts on Thursday.

By 1960, Soviet space engineers had designed a returnable spacecraft capable of carrying a human into orbit, but they needed to run an extensive program of animal tests first and many of the dogs died during tests. Only stray mutts were picked up for such flights — doctors believed they were able to adapt quicker to harsh conditions — and they were all very small so they could fit into the tiny capsules....

[Charles A. Stevenson, a lecturer at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, is the author of “Warriors and Politicians: U.S. Civil-Military Relations Under Stress.”]

EARLIER this month the White House recommended that the Senate rehabilitate John D. Lavelle, an Air Force general who in 1972 was removed from his command in Vietnam and demoted to major general after he ordered unauthorized air strikes and created a system to falsely report them.

General Lavelle died in 1979, still professing his innocence. In recent years, though, evidence has emerged that seems to support his case, leading the Air Force to call for his reinstatement as a four-star general.

That would be a grave mistake. Having worked for a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee during its initial investigation into the Lavelle affair, I believe that his rehabilitation could seriously undermine civilian-military relations during our own time of war....

They call it the mystery ship: a wooden vessel that may have sailed the Hudson River and the East Coast, transporting goods between the flourishing Colonies. Its remains were found last month in the ruins of the World Trade Center in New York City. They've since been moved to a science lab in Maryland, where each day brings new discoveries.

The first thing that hits you when you lean toward the enormous tanks filled with water, where scientists use small brushes to clean the timbers, is the smell — a bit like rotten eggs. Or, as Nichole Doub, head conservator at the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory, says, "that deep-woods smell after a really heavy rain." But after weeks of being "up to our knees and elbows" in it, she says, perhaps she's become desensitized to it.

The complex on the shore of the Patuxent River is full of dark, wet timbers from the mystery ship. The largest piece of the ship, called the apron, weighs in at 540 pounds. Doub puts the vessel's size at about 60 feet. She guesses it was a work boat, very solidly built, and used to transport cargo during the 1700s.

"This is a part of our country's history at a point when we had only just recently gained our independence, and where our nation relied very heavily upon our naval vessels as well as our ability to transport goods across water," Doub says. "And that really was a defining feature of who we were and how we were going to become the nation we are today."

South Korean archaeologists said Tuesday they have unearthed a rare neolithic period wooden boat oar, believed to date back about 7,000 years but still in good condition.

The oar was discovered in mud land in Changnyeong, 240 kilometres (140 miles) southeast of Seoul, the Gimhae National Museum said.

One of the oldest boats or related artefacts was found in China's Zhejiang province in 2005 and was believed to date back about 8,000 years....

Archaeologists have discovered, 16 meters from the tomb of the Great Lord of Sipan, the remains of a teenager belonging to the Moche society who was buried over 1600 years ago in Peru.

The discoverer of the Lord of Sipan, Peru's Walter Alva, explained that eight days ago he proceeded to clean the grave in a hitherto unexplored area in northern Peru.

The tomb is located on the same funeral platform where the Lord of Sipan was found in 1987, one of the most important archaeological achievements of the twentieth century.

This site is located in the village of Sipan in the northern province of Lambayeque, the researchers located the entrance to a tomb consisting of a trench two feet wide and four meters long containing a cane coffin.

Inside the coffin, lay the remains of a teenager, apparently male, 1.35 meters high who would have between 12 and 14 years old, said Alva.

In the absence of definitive research, the remains found date from the fourth century AD or so, a date prior to the death of the Lord of Sipan, he added....

Archaeologists in Afghanistan, where Taliban Islamists are fighting the Western-backed government, have uncovered Buddhist-era remains in an area south of Kabul, an official said on Tuesday.

The excavation site extends over 12 km (7.5 miles) in the Aynak region of Logar province just south of Kabul, where China is mining copper ore as part of its multi-billion dollar investments in the Central Asian country.

Rasouli said the mining work had not harmed the sites -- which were known but had not been examined in detail -- but smugglers managed to loot and destroy some relics before the government excavation work began last year....

With Republicans already viewing controversy over the proposed Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero in New York as an opportunity to mobilize discontented voters, Democrats are fighting back with their own accusations: namely, that the GOP is exploiting the September 11 attacks by politicizing the mosque debate.

Unfortunately, disagreement over the mosque (or whatever it’s being called) isn’t the first occasion that campaigners have used to kick around the 9/11 political football....

Dubai Ports: In February 2006 Congress and President George W. Bush butted heads over a business deal that would have given Dubai Ports World (or DP World), a company from the United Arab Emirates, managerial control of terminal operations at ports in several major American cities. Lawmakers from both the Republican and Democratic parties argued that having a foreign company run U.S. ports was a national-security risk; some pointed to the fact that two of the 9/11 hijackers were from the U.A.E....

They were arch enemies, fighting each other for their very survival. But five years after bomber pilot William Ross was shot down and killed in the Second World War, it was a German soldier who showed compassion to the fiancee left behind.

Gernot Knop had witnessed the 28-year-old RAF sergeant’s death in anti-aircraft fire as he attacked a Nazi fuel ship.

And writing in English to Dorothy Bird, he told her of Sergeant Ross’s heroic last mission and returned to her the few possessions he had with him when he died at a seaport in eastern Libya in 1941.

Showing the respect troops on opposing sides had for each other, the letter told how he was buried by his enemies with ‘military honours’ and was saluted for his bravery by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, leader of the German forces in the North Africa campaign.

The letter began: ‘This war being finished, I feel myself obliged to send you these things, which I found by the Sgt W A Ross...’

Herr Knop’s letter was sent from Hamburg on June 3, 1946. And although Miss Bird had already been officially informed of Sergeant Ross’s death, relatives said it was a comfort to her to know all she could about her ‘darling Bill’s’ death.

Herr Knop, an engineer, said of the pilot’s final seconds: ‘He flew over the rock and rushed towards the ship, but the bombs plunged into the water, and then he came in about 10m’s hight(sic) over us trying to escape.

‘I saw how one of his motors got hit and stopped. The pilot pointed at our anti-aircraft cannon to show it to his shooter.

‘In that moment the fate of the Bristol Blenheim was made sure....

A summer archeological field program at Great Smoky Mountains National Park offered more than science for a group of students from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI)—it also allowed them to connect with their ancestral past.

At first glance, a description of the topics covered in the program is quite impressive: "Students participated in archeological excavations and were provided an opportunity to learn archeological field methods and regional culture history. Afternoon lectures in topics such as tribal, federal, State, and contract archeology, Cherokee archeology, geology, zoo-archeology, and plant ecology provide the students with a holistic view of the science of archeology, as well as job opportunities in archeology."

For this group of high schoolers, however, it wasn't just about science. The students, from the Cherokee and Snowbird communities, had a personal connection with the "dig" because they helped excavate a tenth century ancestral Cherokee house.

According to the archeologists supervising the project, "This site offered an opportunity to learn about a poorly understood period in Cherokee prehistory. Archeologists use the term Mississippian (AD 1000- 1350) to describe this period in prehistory. Populations during the Mississippian period moved to large scale agriculture with crops of corn, beans, and squash supplying a large portion of their diet. Mississippian populations concentrated around large ceremonial mound complexes. Social complexity, trade networks, communal cooperation and warfare all expanded during the Mississippian period."

The site involved in this project is old even by those standards. "Radiocarbon dates indicated that this structure occurs just prior to this period (AD 970 ±70 years). The site occurs on a small landform isolated from any known Mississippian mound center and could be considered to have occurred in a ‘rural’ setting. Therefore, it offered an opportunity to examine what is proto-Mississippian and what was life like somewhat distanced from people’s image of the mound builders in the Midwest and Southern Appalachians."...

Fearing the U.S. is a sinking ship, a man from North Carolina's Piedmont has set out on a mission to teach everyday Americans how to shoot a rifle and how to embrace their Revolutionary War history.

"How do you measure the value of liberty to a society?" Appleseed Project founder Jack Dailey asked a small group of families and individuals that gathered this past weekend at the West Georgia Youth Range in Georgia's Haralson County. "Wouldn't you measure it by the number of people who care enough about it to show up to defend it? And if that's the case, how does America in the 21st Century stack up to the America of the 18th Century? I've got to tell you, if you look at the difference, I'm not sure you'd use the word 'progress.'"
Dailey's criticism is not specifically directed at the Obama administration (he founded the Appleseed Project in 2005 during the second term of President George W. Bush), but "ignorance, apathy and laziness" which he believes have allowed government to grow and stray from the interests of the people.

"You run across a lot of Americans nowadays who feel that the freedoms we have now are considerably diminished from the freedoms that we had even 50 years ago," Dailey said.

Over its five years of existence, the Appleseed Project has taught 20 thousand students at events scattered around the country, usually in small groups of 10 to 20 people at a time. The sessions alternate between lectures on the American Revolution and marksmanship clinics. According to Dailey, shooting is the hook.
"If I put an item in the paper saying that Wednesday night I'm going to tell the story of April 19, 1775... I may have a dozen people show up," Daily said. "But if we promote the notion that if you come to an Appleseed you'll learn how to shoot your rifle, cumulatively, we have thousands of people who show up."

Randy Farmer, who drove an hour from the Atlanta suburb of Marietta to attend the Haralson County event, said shooting was the primary lure. "But I like the fact that the shooting is backed up with the history and the purpose for being a rifleman."

"This is the good side of guns," said Kayla Schlemmer of Decatur, another Atlanta suburb. As a woman, Schlemmer gets free admission to Appleseed classes -- an offer that also applies to children and active duty members of the military. "This is guns out in the open. Anybody can come to these things. And it's a very apolitical philosophy," Schlemmer said....

Fossils of what could be the oldest animal bodies have been discovered in Australia, pushing back the clock on when animal life first appeared on Earth to at least 70 million years earlier than previously thought.

The results suggest that primitive sponge-like creatures lived in ocean reefs about 650 million years ago. Digital images of the fossils suggest the animals were about a centimeter in size (the width of your small fingertip) and had irregularly shaped bodies with a network of internal canals.

The shelly fossils, found beneath a 635 million-year-old glacial deposit in South Australia, represent the earliest evidence of animal body forms in the current fossil record. Previously, the oldest known fossils of hard-bodied animals were from two reef-dwelling organisms that lived around 550 million years ago.

Researchers have identified controversial fossils of soft-bodied animals that date to the latter part of the Ediacaran period between 577 and 542 million years ago.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Earth Sciences....

It's one of the ironies of history that even as India celebrated its independence, the man who had led its unique struggle stayed away from the festivities. On August 15, 1947, Mahatma Gandhi was in Calcutta, where he had gone to calm Hindu-Muslim communal violence. Through the day, he fasted and prayed....

Gandhi almost collapsed. But even as he fell down, he recited some lines from the Quran. On hearing them, the Muslim said, “I am sorry. I am prepared to protect you. Give me any work. Tell me what should I do?” Gandhi replied, “Do only one thing. When you go back home, do not tell anyone what you tried to do to me. Otherwise there will be Hindu-Muslim riots. Forget me and forgive yourself.”

A U.K. archivist has uncovered clues that may prove Quasimodo -- the disfigured bell-ringer hero of Victor Hugo's 1831 classic "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame" -- really did exist.

According to reports, Adrian Glew, who works on the Tate collection's archives in London, was studying the seven-volume autobiography of 19th century British sculpter Henry Sibson. Sibson had been employed in the 1820s to help renovate Paris's Notre Dame cathedral, which had been heavily damaged in the French Revolution....

A team of top scientists, launching what is billed as the most ambitious and advanced survey of the Titanic, sets out next week to map in photographic detail the entire wreck site, and reconstruct in electronic form the ruins scattered on the seabed.

By melding photographs, high-definition video and computer imaging, scientists — including experts at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute — plan to create a three-dimensional computer model that will allow scientists and members of the public to “swim’’ through the wreckage online, as though they were at the site more than 2 miles below the ocean surface.

Scientific research on this scale, Delgado and others said, has never been attempted at these depths, where the pressure is more than 400 times that on earth’s surface, and the temperature never moves far from 39 degrees. There is no sunlight and little life.

Since the wreckage was discovered in 1985, expeditions have focused on recovering relics from the world-famous shipwreck and capturing footage of its sundered bow and stern.

The upcoming 20-day voyage, scheduled to set forth from Newfoundland Sunday, is far more ambitious, a groundbreaking attempt to probe nearly every aspect of the site, from the giant ship’s iconic bow to the colonies of microbes eating away at its iron hull. The mission will also catalog the countless artifacts strewn across the ocean floor....