Month: August 2021

A new study conducted by a team of archaeologists and paleoanthropologists from Germany, Italy, Iran, and Britain delves into the discovery of an in-situ Neanderthal tooth, which was discovered in 2017 in a rock shelter, western Iran. The research is described in a paper in the online journal PLOS ONE that was published last Thursday. The tooth, which is a lower left deciduous canine that belongs to a 6 years old child, was found at a depth of 2.5 m from the surface of the Bawa Yawan shelter in association with animal bones and stone tools near Kermanshah. Performed by senior Iranian archaeologist Saman Heydari-Guran based in the Neanderthal Museum in Mettmann, and his international fellows such as Stefano Benazzi, who is a physical anthropologist at the University of Bologna, analysis shows that the tooth has Neanderthal affinities.

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The high-level meeting between Israel’s Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas has prompted outrage from both Israeli lawmakers and Hamas, which termed it a “betrayal of martyr blood.” In the first such talks in over a decade, Gantz and Abbas met on Sunday evening in the West Bank city of Ramallah to discuss a range of issues. But right-wing Israeli politicians expressed anger with Gantz over meeting with Abbas, who they reportedly accused of being a “Holocaust denier and terrorist.” Similarly, a number of Palestinian groups – most of which are opposed to peace talks – denounced the PA leader for meeting with Gantz, who was labeled “the criminal Zionist minister of war.” Prior to entering politics, Gantz had been a chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Comment: To be fair, here they have a point.

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A national shortage and a 10-fold increase in Australians importing ivermectin in August warned the Therapeutic Goods Department of the use of drugs commonly used to exterminate livestock as a treatment for Covid-19. With increasing reports in the United States over the last few weeks of people calling the toxic information hotline over self-medication with ivermectin as a treatment for Covid-19, TGA spokespersons are seeing a significant number of people bringing drugs to Guardian Australia. Australia said it had increased to. “TGA works closely with the Australian Border Force to detect potentially illegal imports of therapeutic products for evaluation by the TGA. As a result of this study, ivermectin detection has increased significantly, more than 10-fold. “It’s now,” said a spokeswoman.

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SOTT Editors: We are publishing below, with permission, an email from a top executive at an American company whose clients include 100 of the Fortune 500 companies. The email was sent in reply to another executive asking for the writer’s thoughts on whether he plans to be vaccinated himself or mandate it for his employees as a requirement for returning to the office. All names and company references have been redacted for privacy reasons. Unlike most of us who are worried about being on the receiving end of vaccine mandates by employers, this executive also has to worry about pressure from other executives and investors to mandate it on others. Few such business leaders are actively fighting for the rights, dignity, peace, and financial security of their employees. This exec is currently the only voice in his company opposing the madness. Email to the executive: Hey [REDACTED] – are you giving any thoughts to getting vaccinated with all this Delta variant stuff going on? We’ve been…

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A former CIA counterintelligence expert who claimed to be the first person to call the coronavirus a hoax has died — after testing positive for COVID-19 and denying it is real until the very end, according to a report and his pal. Robert David Steele, a QAnon devotee who was touring the US “to awaken the nation in truth,” blogged about his doomed battle with the contagion Aug. 17. “I will not take the vaccination, though I did test positive for whatever they’re calling ‘COVID’ today,” he wrote alongside an image that appeared to show him hooked up to a ventilator “The bottom line is that my lungs are not functioning,” he wrote, admitting even then that it had been a “near-death experience. “We will never be the same because now we know that we’ve all been lied to about everything,” added Steele, who calls himself a former spy and Marine. His friend Mark Tassi revealed the death of the “great patriot” in an Instagram post Sunday — calling it “very suspicious” that Steele died from…

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Heavy rains fell across the island this morning and the north of Mallorca remains on bad weather alert. Magalluf´s famous Punta Ballena street was hit hard with shops and bars reporting flood damage. Eyewitnesses said that the rain-water was ankle high in some areas of Magalluf. There was flooding in other parts of the island also with the fire brigade having to do with hundreds of calls.

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Bangpoo Industrial Estate in Muang district of this coastal province south of Bangkok was heavily flooded, Industrial Estate Authority of Thailand (IEAT) governor Veeris Ammarapala said on Sunday. Mr Veeris said the inundation began at about 2am after a long and heavy downpour. Many roads around the estate were flooded, including Sukhumvit, Srinakarin, Puttharaksa and Theparak. The estate is located on a large area of about 5,400 rai at Moo 4 in tambon Phraeksa of Muang district. The entire estate was about 1 metre under water, with numerous cars and motorcycles submerged.

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At least 5 people have lost their lives in flooding the North East Region of Ghana over the last few days. According to media reports, 3 fatalities occurred in Chereponi district on 28 August. Two people died attempting to cross a swollen river in Bunkpurugu Nakpanduri district on 26 August. Three other people died as a result of lightning strikes. Flooding has also affected parts of neighbouring Northern Region, in particular in the region’s capital Tamale where dozens of homes were damaged or destroyed and residents forced to flee.

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Ancient humans could do some impressive things with elephant bones. In a new study, University of Colorado Boulder archaeologist Paola Villa and her colleagues surveyed tools excavated from a site in Italy where large numbers of elephants had died. The team discovered that humans at this site roughly 400,000 years ago appropriated those carcasses to produce an unprecedented array of bone tools — some crafted with sophisticated methods that wouldn’t become common for another 100,000 years. “We see other sites with bone tools at this time,” said Villa, an adjoint curator at the CU Boulder Museum of Natural History. “But there isn’t this variety of well-defined shapes.” Villa and her colleagues published their results this month in the journal PLOS ONE. The study zeroes in on a site called Castel di Guido not far from modern-day Rome. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, it was the location of a gully that had been carved by an ephemeral stream — an environment where 13-foot-tall…

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The unceremonious exit of US forces from Afghanistan marks the end of nearly two decades of foreign military intervention in the country, leaving behind a trail of destruction and waste difficult to comprehend. The last three US military transport departed the Hamid Karzai Airport late on Monday, just ahead of the August 31 deadline set for full withdrawal. For years, Washington and media outlets described the conflict in Afghanistan as a stalemate that had provided enough security to kindle social progress, security and stability. But a post-mortem of the last twenty years tells a different story – one of bloodshed, instability and grift, at a total cost of more than $2 trillion.

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