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WASHINGTON (AFP) - A US-led team of archaeologists said Thursday they had discovered by chance what is believed to be the largest find of Stone Age-era remains ever uncovered in the Sahara Desert. Named Gobero, the site includes remarkably intact human remains as well as the skeletons of fish and crocodiles dating back some 10,000 years to a time when what is now the world's largest desert was a swampy wetland.

Prehistoric Desert Town Found in Western Sahara Thu Aug 19, 2004 01:52 PM ET RABAT (Reuters) - The remains of a prehistoric town believed to date back 15,000 years and belong to an ancient Berber civilization have been discovered in Western Sahara, Moroccan state media said on Thursday. A team of Moroccan scientists stumbled across the sand-covered ruins of the town Arghilas deep in the desert of the Morocco-administered territory. The remains of a place of worship, houses and a necropolis, as well as columns and rock engravings depicting animals, were found at the site near the town of Aousserd...

Once green, the Sahara expanded 5,500 years ago, leading ancient herders to follow the rain and grasslands south to eastern Africa. But about 2,000 years ago, their southward migration stalled out, stopped in its tracks, archaeologists presumed, by tsetse-infested bush and disease. As the theory goes, the tiny tsetse fly altered the course of history, stopping the spread of domesticated animal herding with a bite that carries sleeping sickness and nagana, diseases often fatal for the herder and the herded. Now, isotopic research on animal remains from a nearly 2,000-year-old settlement near Gogo Falls in the present-day bushy woodlands of...

Land of New Opportunity Unlike Silicon Valley, businesses in Ghana are very interested in adding Blacks who live in America with interest and talent in technology. Companies like Blogging Ghana have built a strong social media global platform, making it a viable employment landing place. These firms are interested in changing an ever-emerging industry, meaning the opportunity is there to be a part of something bold and aggressive. Also, English is the official language in Ghana, so there are prime opportunities for teachers.[continued]

NAIROBI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - At least 15 people with albinism, mostly children, have been killed, wounded, abducted or nearly abducted in East Africa in a surge in violence against albinos in the past six months, the United Nations (U.N.) said on Tuesday. The UN said there has been a marked increase in the number of attacks on albinos in Tanzania, Malawi and Burundi, where their body parts are prized in black magic with three incidents in the past week as gangs roam southern Malawi hunting for them. "These attacks are often stunningly vicious, with children in particular being targeted,"...

By Ignatius Ssuuna Bujumbura — More than a week after he disappeared from a Bujumbura prison, Hussein Radjabu, a former rebel commander and powerful politician who enjoys significant popular support, has finally spoken. "I am planning to work with all Burundians [to bring about] a better politics that brings everybody on board, so that we have a better country," he told the Swahili service of Voice of America, putting paid to rumours that he might have been assassinated. His location was not disclosed. Rajdabu's 1 March jailbreak, which was well organised with outside assistance, adds to the uncertainty and tension...

Thakeng Moreki lives in Orange Farm, a sprawling, impoverished shantytown 40 miles south of Johannesburg, the largest city in South Africa—his community a place bypassed by the economic gains that the end of apartheid was supposed to bring to the nation’s poor. Unemployment exceeds 40 percent in Orange Farm, South Africa’s most populous shantytown, with 350,000 residents. And the lack of opportunity evident across the country falls heavily on the “born frees”—those who grew up after apartheid ended in the early 1990s.

Members of Eli Yishai’s Yachad—Ha’am Itanu party and Baruch Marzel with members of his Otzma Yehudit party took a tour of southern Tel Aviv on Sunday, where they surveyed how the massive influx of illegal immigrants from Africa has impacted the neighborhood, which suffers drastically raised crime levels. During the visit, which was guided by Otzma Yehudit member May Golan, who is chairperson of the “Hebrew City” movement and a longtime champion of Jewish rights in the area afflicted by infiltrator settlement, the group came across infiltrators who openly said they were in Israel illegally and were unapologetic about it....

Nigerian militant group Boko Haram has pledged allegiance to Islamic State (IS), according to an audio statement. The message, which could not immediately be verified, was posted on Boko Haram's Twitter account and appeared to be by the group's leader. Boko Haram began a military campaign to impose Islamic rule in northern Nigeria in 2009. The conflict has since spread to neighbouring states.

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In a wide-ranging, at points jaw-dropping interview with Aleteia, Archbishop Charles Palmer-Buckle of Accra, Ghana, signaled his openness to finding a way for remarried Catholics to be readmitted to Communion--and suggested the church might reinterpret Scripture to allow the "unbinding" of marriages. Palmer-Buckle, who is sixty-four years old, was selected by his brother bishops to represent Ghana at this October's Synod on the Family. Early in the interview, the archbishop makes it clear that he takes seriously Pope Francis's call for open discussion of the challenges facing Catholic families today. "There are people in polygamous relationships, who were involved in...

Liberia’s last Ebola patient was discharged on Thursday after a ceremony in the capital, Monrovia, bringing to zero the number of known cases in the country and marking a milestone in West Africa’s battle against the disease.

A man was arrested in New York City's international airport with uranium destined for Iran hidden in the soles of his shoes, the US Justice Department said. Patrick Campbell, 33, who was arrested Wednesday as he arrived at the John F Kennedy airport from Paris, is accused of trying to act as an intermediary to sell Iran 1,000 tons of purified uranium, in violation of US law. The Sierra Leone-based Campbell had been under surveillance since May 2012, when he responded to an ad on the site Alibaba.com by someone looking to buy uranium 308, or yellow cake. The buyer...

In 2012, U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Scott Gration abruptly stepped down from his post. According to a Foreign Policy report by Josh Rogin (now a reporter for Bloomberg), Gration was the subject of a whithering evaluation from the State Department: The impending release of a highly critical report by the State Department’s Inspector General’s office prompted the sudden resignation Friday of U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Scott Gration, according to administration and congressional sources. Very soon after the Ambassador’s arrival in May 2011, he broadcast his lack of confidence in the information management staff. Because the information management office could not...

When considering what to get Robert Mugabe for his birthday, one first must understand that Zimbabwe’s president is a man who demands the finest. His birthday parties don’t cost hundreds of thousands; they cost millions. His parties aren’t attended by thousands, but by tens of thousands. And they don’t eat elephant; they eat baby elephant. This was the predicament in which one local landowner named Tendai Musasa found himself when figuring out what he would get Mugabe for his 91st birthday party, which cost $1 million and was held this past weekend. “We regard him as our father,” Musasa said...

THE Eternal Love of The Father Virtue upon virtue , line upon line of My Word is truly a River of Life as you walk in My Love and not your own for as your Father in Heaven I AM with you always even onto forever but it is My desire you carry My Heart and not your own for your love can be injured But My Love for you ,in you and through you is an unstoppable Truth that sheds off the lies of the enemy and before which all condemnation Must Fall! For My Love is Sovereign and...

Parton and colleagues writing in Geology, present a unique alluvial fan aggradation record from southeast Arabia spanning the past approx. 160,000 years. Situated along the proposed southern dispersal route, the Al Sibetah alluvial fan sequence provides a unique and sensitive record of landscape change in southeast Arabia. This record is to date the most comprehensive terrestrial archive from the Arabian Peninsula, and provides evidence for multiple humid episodes during both glacial and interglacial periods. Evidence from the Al Sibetah alluvial fan sequence indicates that during insolation maxima, increased monsoon rainfall led to the widespread activation of drainage systems and grassland...

Americans are becoming increasingly more suspicious struggling to find rhyme or reason for Obama’s latest Middle East policies. Rudy Giuliani seems to attribute Obama’s policies to be influenced through his affiliations with radical socialists like Frank Marshall Davis. But serious questions will prove that Obama’s policies are not different than a Muslim who supports the revival of the Muslim grand caliphate. Was Obama influenced only by a Marxist-Leninist agenda or did he also not grow up Muslim, having learned how to recite the Muslim call to prayer in the classical Arabic tongue as he clearly admits? Can anyone even deny...

President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda gave a state banquet late Thursday in honor of North Korea’s ceremonial head of state, praising Pyongyang for what he said was its prominent role in fighting imperialism. Kim Yong Nam, the president of the country’s parliament, is in Uganda as part of a rare tour of Africa, where North Korea has actively tried to cultivate potential allies like the long-serving, increasingly anti-West Museveni. The North Koreans are training Ugandan police in martial arts and Museveni hailed North Korea for helping to mechanize Uganda’s military over the years. North Korea is also training Ugandan military...

“You can’t keep going the way you been going,” Lynn Childers (Michelle Monaghan) says to her husband Sam (Gerard Butler) early on in the new film, “Machine Gun Preacher.” The movie tells the true story of Sam Childers, a former drug-dealer, who turned his life around and began following Christ. Directed by Marc Forster, who previously helmed “The Kite Runner” and “Monster’s Ball,” “Preacher” presents Childers as a complex man whose intentions are noble but whose actions are often controversial. The story begins in South Sudan in 2003 as a child is faced with a nightmarish dilemma. A group of...