Afghan Giant getting photographed with puny American soldier
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Russian Playboy
Little girl carrying both bags?
Projection onto Trump hotel in Washington
Graffiti in Cuba
United States freezing – Pittsburgh
Charleston, South Carolina
South Louisiana
Warmer Greece
This is how Sperm Whales sleep
BBC
Image copyrightBEN POTTERThe 11,500-year-old remains of an infant girl from Alaska have shed new light on the peopling of the Americas.
Genetic analysis of the child, allied to other data, indicates she belonged to a previously unknown, ancient group.
Scientists say what they have learnt from her DNA strongly supports the idea that a single wave of migrants moved into the continent from Siberia just over 20,000 years ago.
Lower sea-levels back then would have created dry land in the Bering Strait.
It would have submerged again only as northern ice sheets melted and retreated.
The pioneering settlers became the ancestors of all today’s Native Americans, say Prof Eske Willerslev and colleagues. His team has published its genetics assessment in the journal Nature.
Image copyrightERIC.S.CARLSON ILLUSTRATIONThe skeleton of the six-week-old infant was unearthed at the Upward Sun River archaeological site in 2013.
The local indigenous community have named her “Xach’itee’aanenh t’eede gay”, or “sunrise girl-child”.
The science team refers to her simply as USR1.
“These are the oldest human remains ever found in Alaska, but what is particularly interesting here is that this individual belonged to a population of humans that we have never seen before,” explained Prof Willerslev, who is affiliated to the universities of Copenhagen and Cambridge.
“It’s a population that is most closely related to modern Native Americans but is still distantly related to them. So, you can say she comes from the earliest, or most original, Native American group – the first Native American group that diversified.
“And that means she can tell us about the ancestors of all Native Americans,” he told BBC News.
Scientists study the history of ancient populations by analysing the mutations, or small errors, that accumulate in DNA down through the generations.
These patterns, when combined with demographic modelling, make it possible to draw connections between different groups of people over time.
Image copyrightSPLThe new study points to the existence of an ancestral population that started to become distinct genetically from East Asians around 34,000 years ago, and which had completed the separation by roughly 25,000 years ago – indicative of the Bering land bridge connecting Siberia and Alaska having been crossed, or at the very least of the ancestral population having become geographically isolated in north-east Siberia.
The analysis further suggests that a group of Ancient Beringians, represented by USR1, then subsequently began to diverge from the pioneer migrants. This genetic separation occurs at about 20,000 years ago and is the result of these people staying put in Alaska for several thousand years.
Others in the pioneer wave, however, moved south to occupy territories beyond the ice.
This onward-moving branch ultimately became the two genetic groups that are recognised as the ancestors of today’s indigenous populations.
Prof Willerslev said: “Before this girl’s genome, we only had more recent Native Americans and ancient Siberians to try to work out the relationships and times of divergence. But now we have an individual from a population between the two; and that really opens the door to address these fundamental questions.”
More definitive answers would only come with the discovery of further remains in north-east Siberia and Alaska, the scientist added.
That is complicated in the case of the north-west American state because its acidic soils are unfavourable to the preservation of skeletons and in particular their DNA material.
In his sixth annual New Years address, Kim Jong Un stated that the United States can’t wage war against his country in any form because he had “the entire mainland of the U.S.” within reach of his intercontinental ballistic missiles and that he has a “nuclear button” always on the desk in his office. The young tyrant emphasized that “this is not a threat but a reality.”
The mental image of North Korea’s already comic book-like super villain leader having a big red button on his desk that would bring about a massive war, and even a nuclear exchange, on a whim is bordering on Dr. Evil territory. But who knows, the ultra paranoid leadership in Pyongyang knows full well that their command and control systems would come under near instant electronic and cyber attack—and eventually kinetic attack—the second hostilities are detected, so simplifying and turbocharging the command release procedure for the country’s nuclear stockpile could very well be a primary goal of the regime. At the very least it would lend credibility to the country’s nuclear deterrent, albeit in a terribly frightening way. At the same time it could mean recalling the country’s nuclear forces once an order is given could be near impossible.
Not to be outdone:
Late on Jan. 2, 2018, Trump took to his preferred outlet, Twitter, to slam Kim over his pronouncement and mock North Korea’s growing nuclear weapons and missile capabilities. In the past, the President has made bold threats of “fire and fury” against the North Korean regime and suggested it might be necessary to “totally destroy” the country if the government in Pyongyang doesn’t abandon its advanced weapons programs.
“North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the “Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.'” Trump Tweeted out. “Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”
Where is this going to end? World leaders that are complete idiots.
Goats are extremely curious animals and great climbers, known for their ability to climb and hold their balance in the most precarious places. Moroccan goats climb the Argan trees to eat argo nuts and Alpine ibex cling to a near-vertical rock face of a northern Italian dam to lick salts. When Charles Back brought goats to his Fairview Cheese and Wine Farm at Fairview in South Africa, he feared that the goats would miss the vertical aspect of their natural habitat in the flat yard of his farm house. So he decided to build a tower for the goats.
The goat tower is basically a multi-story tower built out of brick and mortar with a spiral wooden ramp on the outside leading up to the top. The tower includes windows with shallow floors so the animals can shelter inside in their own ‘rooms’. Since its creation in 1981 the tower has become the most identifiable symbol of Fairview Wine and Cheese.
The first goat tower was built by Fernando Guedes da Silva da Fonseca (1871-1946) at Aveleda, one of the oldest and most famous wineries in the Vinho Verde region of Portugal. The one at Fairview is the second, and now copies of the original have started appearing elsewhere around the world. There are now known goat towers at Ekeby Farm in Moss Norway, at a bar in Memphis, Tennessee called “Silky O’Sullivan”, and the “Tower of Baaa” in Findlay, Illinois.
The “Tower of Baaa”, built in 1998, is reportedly the highest goat tower in existence with a height of 9.5 meters and diameter of about 2.1 meters. Its 276 spiral shaped concrete steps allow the goats to climb up and down with ease passing each other on the ramp.
From Kaushik
A feral pig ransacked a campsite and drank at least 18 cans cans of beer before getting into an altercation with a cow in Australia.
The incident, which happened in a remote area of Western Australia at the DeGray River rest area, prompted officials to warn campers to keep their food and alcohol secure.
The wild pig was seen around the campsite for several days last week, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported, citing officials who said the animal got into multiple six-packs of beer over the course of a few days.
Fionna Findley, from the government highway division Main Roads, told ABC that the people camping overnight at the rest area said that “the pig stole their beers, drank them and then afterwards proceeded to tear apart the bin liners.”
“We just want to remind everyone when you do pull over, make sure [your food and alcohol] is securely stored because there are a lot of animals out there that are keen for a free feed.”
One camper who reportedly spoke with the affected campers told ABC that the pig got into 18 beers, ransacked the campsite’s garbage bins and got into a fight with a cow.
The camper, who was only identified as Merida, said “there was some other people camped right on the river and they saw him running around their vehicle being chased by a cow.
“It was going around and around and then it went into the river and swam across to the middle of the river.”
Findley told ABC that that her crews are not equipped to deal with wild pigs, especially if they are drunk.
The pig was last seen lying beneath a tree, potentially nursing a hangover.
Natureworldnews.com
The Spengler Cup is an annual invitational ice hockey tournament held in Davos, Switzerland. First held in 1923, the Spengler Cup is often cited as the oldest invitational ice hockey tournament in the world. The event is hosted by the Swiss team HC Davos and played each year in Davos, Switzerland, between Christmas (December 25) and New Year’s Day. Currently, all games are held at Vaillant Arena.
In the 2017 tournament, Team Canada once again successfully defended their Spengler Cup championship titles from 2015 and 2016, defeating Team Switzerland 3–0 in the final to win their third straight title. With the win, Team Canada tied HC Davos for most Spengler Cup championships won, with 15 each. At the end of 2018, Canada will attempt to win four Spengler Cup championships in a row, a feat they accomplished from 1995 to 1998 inclusively.
What is unique to the Spengler Cup is the unabashed ads plastered all over the players uniforms. Aside from being very colorful it is actually funny.
A 4 percent decrease in Winnipeg homicides is a start. A 54 percent increase in shootings is not good. Every gang member is packing. Strange how it went from knives to guns so quickly.
Car thefts up 7 percent. Nearly 2,000 stolen vehicles, actually not bad, considering that in 2008 nearly 9,000 were stolen. Since the introduction of mandatory and factory installed immobilizers, the thieves have to really look hard for vehicles that can be stolen.
Winnipeg used to have the dubious distinction of “murder capital of Canada”. But that title has shifted further west. Edmonton has roughly 250,000 more people than Winnipeg, but they had almost double the homicides.
No one factor accounts for all of the 45 homicides in Edmonton in 2017. There are parents who face charges in the death of their little ones and seniors believed to have been randomly killed by strangers.
Some victims were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Others were targeted. There were deaths by stabbing, shooting, beating, drugs, strangulation and fire. Eight were women; the rest were men.
The youngest victim was an 11-day old girl, who died from methamphetamine poisoning. She was one of three children under the age of two to be killed. The oldest was a 76-year-old man who died after a bullet was shot through the door of his suite, located in the same house where a 25-year-old man was found murdered days later.
“There’s domestic violence, there’s gang violence in there, there’s some incidents where two people are fighting and it takes the wrong turn, somebody exercises some force on somebody,” Edmonton police Chief Rod Knecht recently told Postmedia. “We don’t have a definitive pattern on this city for at least 10 years that says this is how we can focus and stop the number of homicides.”
Gunshot wounds were responsible for the greatest number of homicides, with 16 such incidents, not counting police-involved shootings.
Edged weapons were used in 14 homicides.
A baseball bat was used in one homicide and another homicide used a weapon, but the information on the type of weapon was withheld.
“It’s two individuals sitting there drinking a bottle of whisky in the middle of the afternoon and one guy gets up, gets a baseball bat, whacks the other guy in the side of the head — probably has done it before — (but) this time the guy dies,” Knecht said. “How do you prevent that? It’s inexplicable.”
The MarkoZen Blog 