Happy Easter

Obese treated like horses

Rio de Janeiro hospitals have been sending obese people to share medical test equipment with horses at the local race track, drawing complaints from activists who say the practice is humiliating. "When people weigh more than the standard equipment can support they have to be directed to the Jockey Club, which is the only place in Rio where they have the appropriate equipment," a spokeswoman for the Rio state health secretariat said on Wednesday. Patients needing stomach reduction surgery require a tomography, or multiple X-raying of body sections, which is normally carried out inside a chamber. Rio hospitals only have standard tomography equipment for people weighing up to 265-287 pounds (120-130 kg). Tomographs used on horses are sturdier and more spacious than common devices.

she set a trap, hid in a toilet, and caught the thief red-handed

95-year-old German woman solved a series of mystery thefts in a retirement home when she set a trap, hid in a toilet, and caught the thief red-handed. "It was a real case of Miss Marple," said a police spokesman in the eastern town of Saalfeld Thursday. "It's good to know there are still courageous old ladies out there." The elderly sleuth left cash out in her room as bait and then withdrew to the toilet to lie in wait. A cleaner then entered and pocketed the money, unaware she was being watched. "Then the old lady hit the alarm button in the toilet and staff in the home nabbed the cleaner," the spokesman said. The cleaner, 36, later confessed to police she was responsible for other thefts from the home near the spa resort of Bad Lobenstein.

ultrasound bill causes questions

Requiring doctors to show women seeking an abortion an ultrasound image of their fetus could be declared unconstitutional if it is interpreted as forcing an unwilling patient, the South Carolina state attorney general told legislators Wednesday in a letter. "In my opinion, it would be illegal and improper for the state to force a person seeking an abortion to view an ultrasound image against her will," wrote McMaster, a Republican, who did not attend the hearing. The bill, already passed by the state House and being considered by a Senate panel, would require women seeking an abortion to get an ultrasound — something usually done already to verify the fetus' age. It would also require that the ultrasound images "be reproduced and reviewed with the mother" by a doctor or technician.

Census: Immigration helps big metros grow

Without immigrants pouring into the nation's big metro areas, places such as New York, Los Angeles and Boston would be shrinking as native-born Americans move farther out. "Immigrants are filling the void as domestic migrants are seeking opportunities in other places," said Mark Mather, a demographer at the Population Reference Bureau, a private research organization. Immigrants long have flocked to major metropolitan areas and helped them grow. But increasingly, native-born Americans are moving from those areas and leaving immigrants to provide the only source of growth Without immigration, the Los Angeles metro area would have lost more than 200,000, the San Francisco area would have lost 188,000 and the Boston area would have lost 101,000.

Devil worship links to mystery man

Police in northern Italy are wrestling with a mystery that brings together a man with memory loss, evidence of devil worship and a blood-drenched flat. One evening a young man wandered into a police station at Vercelli, between Turin and Milan. He said he had no idea who he was, or why he was there. Three days earlier, on March 16, the owner of a bedsit outside Bergamo, more than 70 miles away, had broken into her flat. The tenant had not paid his rent and she wanted to know if he was still there. Devil worship links to mystery manJohn Hooper in RomeFriday March 30, 2007The Guardian Police in northern Italy are wrestling with a mystery that brings together a man with memory loss, evidence of devil worship and a blood-drenched flat. One evening a young man wandered into a police station at Vercelli, between Turin and Milan. He said he had no idea who he was, or why he was there. Three days earlier, on March 16, the owner of a bedsit outside Bergamo, more than 70 miles away, had broken into her flat. The tenant had not paid his rent and she wanted to know if he was still there. Article continues She found signs everywhere that it had been used for a Satanic rite. There were upturned crosses, and the place was smothered with symbols written in blood. Forensic experts estimated that as much as three litres had been splashed around. Only later was it established that all of it belonged to the confused man. He has since been identified as a 22-year-old called Daniele, who, until recently, worked in a factory. His family said his only hobby was UFOs. They told police that, last September, he had suddenly left his job and spent his savings, though his relations with his parents, who he now says he cannot recognise, continued to seem normal. According to a report in the daily Corriere della Sera, doctors have found he has punctures on his body. But there is no evidence that Daniele had taken drugs. Among the puzzles are how a man who had lost almost three litres of blood could have made his way 70 miles across country - and what happened to him in the three days that he was missing. Prosecutors are treating it as case of attempted murder.

Hobbit cave digs set to restart

Archaeologists who found the remains of human "Hobbits" have gained permission to restart excavations at the cave where the specimens were found. The researchers claim that the remains belong to a novel species of human.

Finding other specimens in the cave, particularly one with an intact skull, is crucial to resolving the debate over whether the Hobbit's classification as a separate species - Homo floresiensis - is valid.

The Hobbit's discoverers are adamant it is an entirely separate human species that evolved a small size in isolation on its remote Indonesian island home of Flores. Skeletal remains were discovered by an Australian-Indonesian research team in Liang Bua, a limestone cave deep in the Flores jungle, in 2003.

Researchers found one near-complete skeleton, which they named LB1, along with the remains of at least eight other individuals.

Mali relics recovered in France

French customs officials say they have seized more than 650 ancient artefacts smuggled from Mali in one of the largest such finds at a Paris airport.

Described as an "archaeological treasure", the objects were thought to be on their way to private US buyers. The artefacts are thought to have been taken from archaeological sites on the edge of the Sahara desert.

Since 2004 we have observed regular traffic in this kind of contraband. There is a big market and we are pretty sure that these items, which had been neatly sorted and were of very high quality, had been pre-sold," Eric Cailheton said.

French customs officials made two similarly large finds of archaeological items from Niger in March 2004 and December 2005. The 2005 haul included more than 5,000 stone arrowheads and 90 carved stone artefacts, dating back 5,000 years. The items were found in the baggage of a passenger who arrived on a flight from Niger's capital, Niamey.

Roman descendants found in China?

Residents of a remote Chinese village are hoping that DNA tests will prove one of history's most unlikely legends — that they are descended from Roman legionaries lost in antiquity.

Scientists have taken blood samples from 93 people living in and around Liqian, a settlement in north-western China on the fringes of the Gobi desert, more than 200 miles from the nearest city.

They are seeking an explanation for the unusual number of local people with western characteristics — green eyes, big noses, and even blonde hair — mixed with traditional Chinese features. "I really think we are descended from the Romans," said Song Guorong, 48, who with his wavy hair, six-foot frame and strikingly long, hooked nose stands out from his short, round-faced office colleagues.

"There are the residents with these special features, and then there are also historical records about the existence of these people long ago," he said.

The town's link with Rome was first suggested by a professor of Chinese history at Oxford in the 1950s. Homer Dubs pulled together stories from the official histories, which said that Liqian was founded by soldiers captured in a war between the Chinese and the Huns in 36BC, and the legend of the missing army of Marcus Crassus, a Roman general.

In 53BC Crassus was defeated disastrously and beheaded by the Parthians, a tribe occupying what is now Iran, putting an end to Rome's eastward expansion.

But stories persisted that 145 Romans were taken captive and wandered the region for years. Prof Dubs theorised that they made their way as a mercenary troop eastwards, which was how a troop "with a fish-scale formation" came to be captured by the Chinese 17 years later. He said the "fish-scale formation" was a reference to the Roman "tortoise", a phalanx protected by shields on all sides and from above. Gu Jianming, who lives near Liqian, said it had come as a surprise to be told he might be descended from a European imperial army. But then the birth of his daughter was also a surprise. Gu Meina, now six, was born with a shock of blonde hair. "We shaved it off a month after she was born but it just grew back the same colour," he said. "At school they call her 'yellow hair'. Before we were told about the Romans, we had no idea about this. We are poor and have no family temple, so we don't know about our ancestors."

The issue has split the university's history department, with some scholars supporting the claim, some rejecting it. Prof Wang Shaokuan poured scorn on Prof Dubs's thesis, saying the Huns themselves included Caucasians, Asians and Mongols.

5,000-year-old artificial eyeball found

5,000-year-old golden artificial eye that once stared out mesmerisingly from the face of a female soothsayer or priestess in ancient Persia has been unearthed by Iranian and Italian archaeologists. The eyeball — the earliest artificial eye found — would have transfixed those who saw it, convincing them that the woman — thought to have been strikingly tall — had occult powers and could see into the future, archaeologists said. It was found by Mansour Sajjadi, leader of the Iranian team, which has been excavating an ancient necropolis at Shahr-i-Sokhta in the Sistan desert on the Iranian-Afghan border for nine years. Italian archaeologists said yesterday that the prophetess had also been buried with an ornate bronze hand mirror, which she presumably used to check her “startling appearance”. “She must have been a very striking and exotic figure,” Professor Costantini told Corriere della Sera.He said the team had initially thought the eyeball might have been placed in the woman’s eye at burial. But microscopic examination had found an imprint left on her eye socket by prolonged contact with the golden eye. The socket also bore the marks of the thread, further proving that she had worn the eyeball in life. Professor Sajjadi said the skeleton had been dated to between 2900 and 2800BC, when Shahr-i-Sokhta was a bustling, wealthy city and trading post at the crossroads of East and West. He said the woman might have arrived with a caravan from Arabia. Shahr-i-Sokhta means “Burnt City”, a local name referring to the fact that it burnt down and was rebuilt three times during Persia’s turbulent history before being finally destroyed in 2000 BC — about the time that Stonehenge was erected. The archaeologists said it was not clear what caused the woman’s death. Professor Costantini said the articial eye was clearly not intended to mimic a real eye but had “a special purpose . . . It must have glittered spectacularly, conferring on the woman a mysterious and supernatural gaze”. This would have been effective for someone who claimed to see into the future, such as a soothsayer or oracle. Analaysis suggested that the woman may have suffered from an abscess on her eyelid because of long-term contact with the golden eyeball. The archaeologists earlier unearthed what is believed to be the oldest backgammon set in the world, with 60 pieces made of turquoise and agate and a rectangular ebony board, probably imported from India.

Did the Red Sea Part? No Evidence, Archaeologists Say

On the eve of Passover, the Jewish holiday that celebrates the story of Moses leading the Israelites through this wilderness out of slavery, Egypt’s chief archaeologist took a bus full of journalists into the North Sinai to showcase his agency’s latest discovery.

It didn’t look like much — some ancient buried walls of a military fort and a few pieces of volcanic lava. The archaeologist, Dr. Zahi Hawass, often promotes mummies and tombs and pharaonic antiquities that command international attention and high ticket prices. But this bleak landscape, broken only by electric pylons, excited him because it provided physical evidence of stories told in hieroglyphics. It was proof of accounts from antiquity. That prompted a reporter to ask about the Exodus, and if the new evidence was linked in any way to the story of Passover. The archaeological discoveries roughly coincided with the timing of the Israelites’ biblical flight from Egypt and the 40 years of wandering the desert in search of the Promised Land.

“Really, it’s a myth,” Dr. Hawass said of the story of the Exodus, as he stood at the foot of a wall built during what is called the New Kingdom.

Egypt is one of the world’s primary warehouses of ancient history. People here joke that wherever you stick a shovel in the ground you find antiquities. When workers built a sewage system in the downtown Cairo neighborhood of Dokki, they accidentally scattered shards of Roman pottery. In the middle-class neighborhood of Heliopolis, tombs have been discovered beneath homes.

But Egypt is also a spiritual center, where for centuries men have searched for the meaning of life. Sometimes the two converge, and sometimes the archaeological record confirms the history of the faithful. Often it does not, however, as Dr. Hawass said with detached certainty. “If they get upset, I don’t care,” Dr. Hawass said. “This is my career as an archaeologist. I should tell them the truth. If the people are upset, that is not my problem.”

The story of the Exodus is celebrated as the pivotal moment in the creation of the Jewish people. As the Bible tells it, Moses was born the son of a Jewish slave, who cast him into the Nile in a basket so the baby could escape being killed by the pharaoh. He was saved by the pharaoh’s daughter, raised in the royal court, discovered his Jewish roots and, with divine help, led the Jewish people to freedom. Moses is said to have ascended Mt. Sinai, where God appeared in a burning bush and Moses received the Ten Commandments.

In Egypt today, visitors to Mount Sinai are sometimes shown a bush by tour guides and told it is the actual bush that burned before Moses.

But archaeologists who have worked here have never turned up evidence to support the account in the Bible, and there is only one archaeological find that even suggests the Jews were ever in Egypt. Books have been written on the topic, but the discussion has, for the most part, remained low-key as the empirically minded have tried not to incite the spiritually minded.

“Sometimes as archaeologists we have to say that never happened because there is no historical evidence,” Dr. Hawass said, as he led the journalists across a rutted field of stiff and rocky sand. The site was a two-hour drive from Cairo, over the Mubarak Peace Bridge into the Northern Sinai area called Qantara East. For nearly 10 years, Egyptian archaeologists have scratched away at the soil here, using day laborers from nearby towns to help unearth bits of history. It is a vast expanse of nothingness, a flat desert moonscape. Two human skeletons were recently uncovered, their bones positioned besides pottery and Egyptian scarabs.

As archaeological sites go, it is clearly a stepchild to the more sought-after digs in other parts of the country that have revealed treasures of pharaonic times. A barefoot worker in a track suit tried to press through the crowd to get the officials leading the tour to give him his pay, and tramped off angrily when he was rebuffed.

Recently, diggers found evidence of lava from a volcano in the Mediterranean Sea that erupted in 1500 B.C. and is believed to have killed 35,000 people and wiped out villages in Egypt, Palestine and the Arabian Peninsula, officials here said. The same diggers found evidence of a military fort with four rectangular towers, now considered the oldest fort on the Horus military road.

But nothing was showing up that might help prove the Old Testament story of Moses and the Israelites fleeing Egypt, or wandering in the desert. Dr. Hawass said he was not surprised, given the lack of archaeological evidence to date. But even scientists can find room to hold on to beliefs. Dr. Mohamed Abdel-Maqsoud, the head of the excavation, seemed to sense that such a conclusion might disappoint some. People always have doubts until something is discovered to confirm it, he noted.

Then he offered another theory, one that he said he drew from modern Egypt. “A pharaoh drowned and a whole army was killed,” he said recounting the portion of the story that holds that God parted the Red Sea to allow the Israelites to escape, then closed the waters on the pursuing army.

“This is a crisis for Egypt, and Egyptians do not document their crises.”

Archaeologists on Greek island uncover ancient tomb

Greek archaeologists have uncovered an intact tomb and what was likely a Roman theatre on the Ionian Sea island of Cephalonia, the culture ministry announced Wednesday. Archaeologists found gold earrings and rings, gold leaves that may have been attached to ceremonial clothing, as well as glass and clay pots, bronze artifacts decorated with masks, a bronze lock and copper coins. The vaulted grave, a house-shaped structure, had a small stone door that still works perfectly — turning on stone pivots. On a nearby plot, archaeologists also located traces of what may have been a small theater with four rows of stone seats, the ministry said. Previous excavations in the area have uncovered remains of houses, a baths complex and a cemetery, all dating to Roman times — between 146 B.C. and 330 A.D. Further digging will occur to better identify the monument, the ministry said. It is the first of its kind to be discovered on a Greek island in the Ionian Sea which separates Greece from Italy, according to the ministry. It is similar to theatres found in Ambracia in western Greece and Alexandria in Egypt. Fiskardo, the village on the island where the discoveries were made, was an important maritime port in the ancient world between Italy and Greece.