121 human skulls puzzle solved

Xinhua
China Daily, China
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The 121 human skulls found in northwest China's Gansu Province were robbed from tombs and used for handicrafts, the public security department of the provincial government confirmed Wednesday.
A gang of farmers, led by a farmer surnamed Qiao from Huzhu County in neighboring Qinghai Province, robbed the skulls from many old and unclaimed tombs in the wild, and sold them to another man in the county surnamed Liang, the state media said, citing the Gansu public security authority.
Liang sawed off the tops of the skulls, and sold them to a man surnamed Liu from Yongjing County in Gansu.
Liu processed the skull tops into handicrafts, and sold them to rake in illegal profits.
Prior to the Spring Festival this year, Liang discarded the remains of the skulls packed in a bag in a forest in Gansu's Tanshanling Town.
Apr 13, 2006

Girl's own heart restarted after donor heart removed

Associated Press
Seattle Post Intelligencer
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London (UK):
A girl who was given a second heart 10 years ago had the extra organ removed after her own heart grew strong enough to pump on its own, her doctor said Thursday.
Hannah Clark suffered from cardiomyopathy, a condition in which her heart became inflamed and weak, and doctors transplanted a donor heart to "piggyback" on her diseased one, said Dr. Victor Tsang, one of the 12-year-old's surgeons.
Hannah developed severe immune system problems recently, and doctors at the Great Ormond Street Hospital decided to remove the donor heart so they could take Hannah off the drugs she needed to keep her body from rejecting it.
The doctors determined that Hannah's own heart had recovered sufficiently to work on its own, Tsang said.
Tsang said Hannah made a quick recovery and went home less than a week after the February operation.
The hospital said it believed Hannah's operation was the first of its kind in Britain.
Apr 13, 2006

Libby Lawyers Demand More Documents in CIA Leak Case

Jennifer Duck
ABC News
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In the latest legal crossfire of the CIA leak investigation, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's defense team used strong words against Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in an attempt to widen their request for classified documents, as stated in court filings late Wednesday night.
Libby's defense team called the government document production "exceptionally meager" and additionally stated, "This case is factually complex and that the government's notion that it involves only Mr. Libby and [the Office of the Vice President] is a fairy tale."
Libby is requesting a wide range of documents from the White House, State Department and CIA. Fitzgerald has previously urged the court to dismiss Libby's request for information outside White House offices on grounds that it is an "irrelevant distraction from the issues of the case."
Libby says, however, that he needs the documents, including documents he hasn't seen, because they may "illuminate potential witness biases." The defense particularly points to former CIA director George Tenet, saying Tenet had a "bias against Mr. Libby."
The "bias" Libby's lawyers refer to in the court filings appears to arise from past disagreements between the CIA and the vice president's office over the credibility of statements on Iraq.
Apr 13, 2006

Scientists discover ape-man missing link

Manchester Evening News, UK
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A cache of fossils found in an Ethiopian desert are to provide the missing link between 3.5 million-year-old ape-men and earlier human ancestors.
The bones belong to the most primitive species of Australopithecus, known as Au. anamensis, and date from about 4.1 million years ago.
Australopithecenes have been dubbed "ape-men" because they were hairy, short, small-brained, and big-toothed but walked on two legs.
The newly discovered fossils fill the gap between Australopithecenes and the much more ape-like Ardipithecenes, which lived between 4.4 million and 7 million years ago.
Since the first Australopithecus skull, the Taung child, was found in South Africa 82 years ago, more of the hominid's fossils spanning a three million-year time period have turned up all over Africa.
The most famous was "Lucy", a 3.5 foot adult skeleton, discovered in the Afar desert of eastern Ethiopia in 1974.
The creature, named Au. afarensis, lived between 3.6 million and 3 million years ago and was unearthed in the same region that yielded the latest finds.
Apr 13, 2006

Mystery man found in desert

Emma Gumbleton
NEWS.com.au, Australia
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Northern Territory Police are trying to piece together how a mystery man apparently survived up to three months lost in one of the most isolated places in Australia.
The 35-year-old man - believed to be from Queensland and calling himself Ricky Megee - was suffering from severe malnutrition and exposure when he was found at a remote cattle station near the West Australian border on April 4.
It is not known exactly how long the man, who claimed to have survived on frogs and lizards, had spent in the Outback. Workers at Birrindudu Station, which borders WA and the Tanami Desert, came across the emaciated man more than 50km from the homestead last Tuesday night.
"He was skeletal, he was really emaciated and when the boys found him he could only walk and fall and stumble. He was really weak."
Station manager Mark Clifford said the man had built a crude shelter into the side of a dam wall and had stretched out his T-shirt to provide shade. He said the man told workers he had experienced car problems on an isolated stretch of road and tried to walk to the homestead. No car has been found.
"The last date he can remember being on the road is the 23rd of January, so I think that works out to about 12 weeks," Mr Clifford said. "I guess he walked for a week or 10 days and so it could be up to 10 weeks he's just sat in that one place."
Apr 13, 2006

The Latest on Ricky >>>

Are the S. Korean and 'Yokota's husband' one and the same?

Toshimitsu Ishima and Yuichiro Nakamura
The Daily Yomiuri
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Though government DNA tests identified South Korean abductee Kim Young Nam as the father of Megumi Yokota's daughter--making it highly likely the two abductees to North Korea were husband and wife--the question remains over whether Kim and the man North Korea claims to have been Yokota's husband, Kim Chol Jun, are one and the same.
Kim Chol Jun's name initially came up during a summit meeting between Japan and North Korea in September 2002. In a November 2004 working-level meeting in Pyongyang, Japanese officials demanded their North Korean counterparts hand over blood samples and hair to be used in a DNA test to determine paternity of Yokota's 18-year-old daughter, Kim Hye Gyong.
The officials refused to provide the samples and would not allow Kim Chol Jun to be photographed, saying his identity was sensitive, as he belonged to an "intelligence agency."
A few of the Japanese delegates, however, did get a chance to meet the man, and the Japanese government was able to create a composite picture of him based on the testimony of Kaoru Hasuike, a former abductee who knew Yokota's husband during his time in North Korea.
None of these efforts, though, have provided conclusive evidence as to whether Kim Chol Jun was Kim Young Nam, who was abducted from a South Korean island in August 1978 at the age of 16.
Choi Son Yong, who heads the South Korean association of abductees' families, says he had been told by a North Korean official that Kim Chol Jun--the man who the Japanese officials met--was not Kim Young Nam.
Apr 13, 2006

Eye Fungus a Mystery to Bausch & Lomb

Ben Dobbin
AP
Pierceland Herald
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Rochester, New York (US):
The source of a spike in dangerous fungal eye infections linked by federal health officials to a contact lens solution sold by Bausch & Lomb Inc. remains a mystery, the eye-care products maker said Wednesday.
"Every additional test we‘ve run suggests that the formulation is as safe and effective as anything on the market and in particular with regard to Fusarium."
The agency has made no direct link between ReNu and the infections, traced back to June 2005, but a high incidence of the affected people had used the solution.
Fusarium is commonly found in plant material and soil in tropical and subtropical regions. Without eye-drop treatment, which can last two to three months, the infection can scar the cornea and blind its victims.
Bausch & Lomb had already been grappling with accounting troubles in recent months, and Zarrella said the company was unlikely to meet an April 30 deadline to file its annual report for 2005.
Apr 12, 2006

Man questioned over rapper death

BBC News, UK
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A man has volunteered for questioning by police in Detroit over the death of a member of Eminem's rap collective D12 in a nightclub shooting.
The man spoke to officers investigating the death of Proof, real name Deshaun Holton, who was shot at a club on the famous Eight Mile Road.
The police said they believed Proof, the best man at Eminem's wedding, fired the first shot in the exchange.
A second man shot in the incident is in a critical condition in hospital.
Keith Bender, 28, is being treated at a hospital in Detroit, following the early hours shooting on Tuesday.
The Wayne County medical examiner's office, which examined Proof's body, said he was shot three times in the head and chest.
The rapper was credited with the idea of forming D12 with a group of friends from Detroit.
Apr 13, 2006