Temple built 4,000 years ago unearthed in Peru

4,000-year-old temple filled with murals has been unearthed on the northern coast of Peru, making it one of the oldest finds in the Americas, a leading archaeologist said on Saturday. The temple, inside a larger ruin, includes a staircase that leads up to an altar used for fire worship at a site scientists have called Ventarron, said Peruvian archaeologist Walter Alva, who led the dig. It sits in the Lambayeque valley, near the ancient Sipan complex that Alva unearthed in the 1980s. Ventarron was built long before Sipan, about 2,000 years before Christ, he said. "It's a temple that is about 4,000 years old," Alva, director of the Museum Tumbas Reales (Royal Tombs) of Sipan, told Reuters by telephone after announcing the results of carbon dating at a ceremony north of Lima sponsored by Peru's government. "What's surprising are the construction methods, the architectural design and most of all the existence of murals that could be the oldest in the Americas," he said. Lambayeque is 472 miles from Lima, Peru's capital. Discoveries at Sipan, an administrative and religious center of the Moche culture, have included a gold-filled tomb built 1,700 years ago for a pre-Incan king.

Prehistoric women had passion for fashion

If the figurines found in an ancient European settlement are any guide, women have been dressing to impress for at least 7,500 years. Recent excavations at the site -- part of the Vinca culture which was Europe's biggest prehistoric civilization -- point to a metropolis with a great degree of sophistication and a taste for art and fashion, archaeologists say. In the Neolithic settlement in a valley nestled between rivers, mountains and forests in what is now southern Serbia, men rushed around a smoking furnace melting metal for tools. An ox pulled a load of ore, passing by an art workshop and a group of young women in short skirts. "According to the figurines we found, young women were beautifully dressed, like today's girls in short tops and mini skirts, and wore bracelets around their arms," said archaeologist Julka Kuzmanovic-Cvetkovic. The unnamed tribe who lived between 5400 and 4700 BC in the 120-hectare site at what is now Plocnik knew about trade, handcrafts, art and metallurgy. Near the settlement, a thermal well might be evidence of Europe's oldest spa.

Cow plunges off cliff onto moving minivan

cow plunged from a 200-foot (61-metre) cliff onto the hood of a minivan on a highway in central Washington state, according to police. The car's occupants, Charles and Linda Everson, were not hurt in Sunday's accident, but the cow was euthanized at the scene. "If the cow had fallen a split second later, the animal would have landed right in their laps," said Jeff Middleton, criminal deputy of the Chelan County Sheriff's Department. Middleton estimated the animal weighed 600 lbs (272 kilograms), or the average size of a mature cow. It had been missing for two days and wandered 5 miles from home near the popular Lake Chelan tourist area.

What says Christmas like a serial killer?

A German advent calendar for children has become a hot seller since word got out it has a picture of a notorious serial killer on it. The cartoon calendar shows Fritz Haarmann, who murdered 24 young men and boys in the 1920s, lurking under a tree with a hatchet next to the door for December 1. Below him, Santa Claus hands out presents to children in a festive-looking Hanover. A local tourism office included the serial killer alongside 23 other celebrities in the northern city, including philosopher Gottfried Leibniz and hard rock band The Scorpions. Haarmann's depiction featured in last year's edition, but this year it is attracting wider attention because top-selling newspaper Bild questioned whether the use of the murderer in a children's calendar was in good taste. "People are queuing up to buy the calendar now," said a surprised Hans Nolte, director of the city's tourism board. Nolte said he expected the initial 20,000 copy run of the calendar to sell out soon as orders were pouring in from Berlin, Vienna and other parts of Austria. Proceeds from the sales are going towards a local charity for children with cancer. "It's part of our history," Nolte said. Nonetheless, the serial killer, who was beheaded in 1925, will not appear in next year's edition, Nolte said.

Girl born with 8 limbs undergoes surgery

Revered by some in her village as the reincarnation of a Hindu goddess, a 2-year-old girl born with four arms and four legs was undergoing surgery Tuesday to leave her with a normal body. The girl named Lakshmi is joined to a "parasitic twin" that stopped developing in the mother's womb. The surviving fetus absorbed the limbs, kidneys and other body parts of the undeveloped fetus. A team of 30 doctors was removing the extra limbs and organs, surgery that if successful would give her a good chance to live past adolescence. They have already separated the fused spines and the next step will be to remove the extra limbs and the rest of the "parasite," said Dr. Sharan Patil, the orthopedic surgeon leading the operation. "As of now, the child has been responding very well," Patil said several hours into the operation. Children born with deformities in deeply traditional rural parts of India, like the remote village in the northern state of Bihar that Lakshmi hails from, are often viewed as reincarnated gods. The young girl is no different — she is named after the four-armed Hindu goddess of wealth and her parents say she is revered in her village. "Everybody considers her a goddess at our village," said her father, Shambhu, who goes by one name. "All this expenditure has happened to make her normal. So far, everything is fine." Others sought to make money from Lakshmi. Her parents kept her in hiding after a circus apparently tried to buy the girl, they said. The complications for Lakshmi's surgery are myriad: The two spines are merged, she has four kidneys, entangled nerves, two stomach cavities and two chest cavities. She cannot stand up or walk. "It's a big team effort of a lot of skilled surgeons who will be putting their heart and soul into solving the problem of Lakshmi," Patil said earlier in the day. "It's going to take many, many hours on a continuous basis to operate on the baby. So, these issues definitely make it complex." Patil put the risk of losing Lakshmi between 20 and 25 percent. Doctors have said the best case scenario after the surgery is that she will walk and function as a normal child. Doctors at Sparsh Hospital in Bangalore, where the girl is undergoing surgery, said she is popular among the staff and patients. The hospital's foundation is paying for the operation because the girl's family could not afford the medical bills. "She's a very cute girl," Dr. Patil Mamatha said. "She's very playful and gets along well with others."

China's version of "Eye's Wide Shut"?

Twenty Chinese men, including several on the country's richest list, paid $8,000 a head to attend a matchmaking party with 30 "single young beauties," state media said Monday. Saturday's controversial party was held at a luxury European-style villa in Shanghai, the birthplace of China's Communist Party in 1921, with guests arriving in stretch limousines and getting the full red-carpet treatment. "To disguise their identities from photographers' cameras, all guests scurried into the venue wearing a face mask, some even using a paper bag," the China Daily said. Market reforms in the past three decades have lifted China out of dire poverty, but they have also fostered a culture of quick wealth and money worship and as the income gap widens, resentment of the rich grows. Each male guest paid a 58,800 yuan ($8,000) entrance fee, while the women, chosen for their "looks, kindness, thought and taste," were selected from tens of thousands of candidates, according to the social network Web site (www.915915.com.cn) which organized the event. The site, which boasts a membership of 100,000, held a similar party on a boat in Shanghai last year, drawing criticism from many observers for treating women as objects. Tan Chao, the site's marketing director, said the company provided different services, including dating arrangements. "For those who pay most, we will try different means, not within our own club, until we find them the right one," he was quoted as saying.

"Cremated son" turns up alive

A mother cremated a body she thought was that of her dead son, only for him to turn up alive later, police said on Friday. Gina Partington's 37-year-old son Thomas Dennison was reported missing last month and a body was found in Rusholme, Manchester, three days later. The 58-year-old mother, from Urmston, Greater Manchester, formally identified the body as that of her son and, following an inquest, the body was cremated on October 30. But police had actually found Dennison, living rough in Nottingham, four days earlier. The case has been referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission to discover why Partington was not told of her son's discovery in the days before she attended the cremation. Inquiries are continuing to formally establish the identity of the body, but Greater Manchester police said they believe they know who he is. Next of kin have been informed. Police said in a statement: "This set of circumstances is clearly distressing and urgent inquiries are ongoing to establish how this happened."