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The insertion of human stem cells into monkey brains runs a "real risk" of altering the animals' abilities in ways that might make them more like us, scientists said today. A panel of 22 experts -- including primatologists, stem cell researchers, lawyers and philosophers -- debated the possible consequences of the technique for more than a year. While the group agrees it is "unlikely that grafting human stem cells into the brains of non-human primates would alter the animals' abilities in morally relevant ways," the members "also felt strongly that the risk of doing so is real and too ethically...

It turns out your real estate agent was right. In determining the historic reasons why societies thrived and conquered, while others stayed backward, the answer is: location, location, location. At least that's the persuasive theory advanced by Jared Diamond, a UCLA professor, MacArthur "genius" grant winner and author of the best-selling book "Guns, Germs, and Steel." Now, Diamond's book has been adapted into a three-part television series by National Geographic that begins tonight at 10 on Maryland Public Television (Channel 22) and tomorrow at 9 p.m. on WETA (Channel 26). The shows strive for an epic feel, hopscotching the continents...

Could Asia have been the cradle of humanity? By David Ropeik, Globe Correspondent | July 5, 2005 Science continues to struggle with one of the most basic questions of all: Where did humans come from. There isn't much question that modern humans came out of Africa, probably in several waves of migration over the past 100,000 years. But it now appears that the ancient ancestors who gave rise to those African humans might have come from Asia. Until recently the only fossils of anthropoids -- the creatures at the base of the branch of the evolutionary tree that gave rise...

Jon Super/Associated Press The rock star Sir Bob Geldof is leading a drive for aid to Africa. LONDON, June 30 - It is virtually impossible these days to open a newspaper or turn on the television here without confronting the cavalier locks, rumpled visage and hectoring tones of Sir Bob Geldof, the former Boomtown Rats lead singer now cast by friends and foes alike as Africa's savior. With awesome ubiquity - a rock concert here, a documentary there, interviews at every turn - he offers his listeners a blend of profanity, rage and messianic imprecation, urging the political leaders of...

I'll reply to this with details.

The whole world watched as 41-year-old Terri Schiavo was slowly starved and dehydrated to death by order of a judicial system that defied Congress, the president and – many believe – the law itself. But the Terri Schiavo story was not unique, as a stunning new edition of WND's monthly Whistleblower magazine – titled "WHO LIVES, WHO DIES?" – makes frighteningly clear. In fact, Terri's case is only the tip of the iceberg. http://shop.wnd.com/store/item.asp?ITEM_ID=108 Take the case of Marjorie Nighbert, for example. Although she had asked for nothing more than a "little something to eat" and a drink of water,...

The New York Times May 13, 2005 DNA Study Yields Clues on First Migration of Early HumansBy NICHOLAS WADE By studying the DNA of an ancient people in Malaysia, a team of geneticists says it has illuminated many aspects of how modern humans migrated from Africa. The geneticists say there was only one migration of modern humans out of Africa; that it took a southern route to India, Southeast Asia and Australia; and that it consisted of a single band of hunter-gatherers, probably just a few hundred people strong. Because these events occurred in the last Ice Age, when Europe...

A five-year project to reconstruct a genealogy of the world's populations and the migration paths of early humans from their ancestral homeland in Africa will be started today by the National Geographic Society and I.B.M., the society said in a statement. The goal of the program is to collect 100,000 blood samples from indigenous populations around the world and analyze them genetically. Researchers at 10 local centers and at the National Geographic Society in Washington will then assign the people who give blood to lineages that trace the routes traveled by their early ancestors. The program is an effort to...

A woman named Terri Schiavo lies dehydrating in Florida. She is incapable of receiving nutrition through her mouth, and thus must be fed by a tube. Her husband claims that she wishes to die and be free, her parents say otherwise and both the husband and the immediate family are lawyered to the hilt. This has become yet another battleground in the war between so-called Pro Life and so-called Pro-Choice political advocacy groups. In a recent poll on whether Terri should live or dehydrate, ABC News offered the following preamble to the main question. " Schiavo suffered brain damage and...

March 18, 2005 Terri Schiavo's Passion Begins by Thomas A. Droleskey Each of us is called to walk our own Via Dolorosas every day of our lives. Every day is simile for the creation of the world by God and the re-creation of mankind on the wood of the Holy Cross by the Sacrifice offered by the Son to the Father in Spirit and in Truth. We are called to carry the crosses, both great and small, of everyday living by remembering that the graces won for us by the shedding of the God-Man's Most Precious Blood are sufficient for...

ATLANTA — She trembled with fear before the armed man who was wanted in the shooting deaths of a judge and three others. But Ashley Smith kept her head, even when Brian Gene Nichols pushed into her home by sticking a gun in her ribs, and bound her with masking tape, an extension cord and a curtain. "I didn't want to die," she said Sunday. "I didn't want him to hurt anybody else." The 26-year-old woman, credited by police for bringing a massive search for Nichols to a nonviolent end Saturday, resurfaced a day later with a harrowing account of...

Rwanda Leader Gets 6 Years for Role in Genocide Mon Mar 14, 7:11 AM ET World - Reuters By Helen Nyambura DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania (Reuters) - The U.N. tribunal for Rwanda sentenced a former local leader to six years in prison on Monday after he pleaded guilty to a charge of extermination by omission under a plea bargain with prosecutors. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda convicted Vincent Rutaganira of aiding and abetting the killings of ethnic Tutsis who came to hide in a church in Muguga, Kibuye province, between 8 and 15 April, 1994. "We find you guilty...

A girl in Iran, accused of having sex was sentenced with 100 lashes. The government of this country is just as bad if not worse than Hitler's. I pray to God that those people will rise up for their rights and set up a democratic government. The worst part is how we deal with them, they harbor terrorists, threaten the world with Nuclear Weapons, torture thier own people, and we threaten them with sanctions. Sanctions should have employed a long time ago, and like they are going to do anything anyways. This government is set rock hard on destroying everything...

RICHMOND, Va. - A 9-year-old boy who nicknamed his brain tumor "Frank" and whose mother launched an online auction to help pay for his medical bills is now cancer-free, his mother said Tuesday. "Frank is dead!" an elated Tiffini Dingman-Grover said by telephone from her Sterling home as the family prepared to head to a press conference in Washington, D.C. David Dingman-Grover had most of his tumor removed Feb. 2 at the Skull Base Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The family learned the results of a biopsy on the tumor at midnight Monday. The family was crowded...

 Is the United Nations attempting self-parody?   How else to explain the announcement that a panel has been elected to decide which complaints will be heard by the U.N. Human Rights Commission at its annual meeting in Geneva this spring -- and that three of the five members are Cuba, Zimbabwe and Saudi Arabia? Placement on the diplomatically-named Working Group on Situations virtually guarantees that these abject human rights abusers won't be criticized, censured or sanctioned no matter what crimes they have committed, are committing or plan to commit. If any senior U.N. officials are troubled by this system, they are too discreet...

The two most abundant things in the universe are Hydrogen and Stupidity. (not necessarily in that order) If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking. He who hesitates is probably right. For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism. The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard. No one is listening until you make a mistake. Finding a job is easy, if you already have one. Success always occurs in private, and failure in full view. To steal ideas...

In "Better Answers: The Case For Judao-Christian Values," http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42234 Dennis Prager said....."There is an epic battle taking place in the world over what value system humanity will embrace. There are essentially three competitors: European secularism, American Judeo-Christianity and Islam. I have described this battle in previous columns." Under the aegis of European secularism, Americans have been lured and seduced into liberating themselves from the social constraints of America's traditional Judao-Christian moral ethics, which served as both eternally unchanging moral anchor and as the anchor to objective reality. "This much needed liberation," we were told, "is a sign of social enlightenment."...

US helicopters arrive at the airport in Banda Aceh Aid agencies and military transports are beginning to deliver aid to the areas of Indonesia and Sri Lanka worst hit by the Asian tsunami, six days after the giant wave killed at least 124,000 people. But the scale of the devastation and the difficulty in co-ordinating relief efforts has meant that aid workers are facing major problems in reaching areas outside major towns. Indonesia, which bore the brunt of the tsunami last Sunday, has confirmed that 80,000 people died in the disaster, but has warned that it may never know...

Translated since it's in Spanish... Maariv Newspaper from Tel Aviv posted a story today of an Israeli couple, who having barely survived the tsunami, were aided by a Palestinian couple who were also in the same area, Phuket Island in Thailand. The recently married Israeli couple had only been there for a day, when the huge wave stormed into their room, and literally imploded on top of them. While extremely lucky to have escaped without major injury, the couple did lose everything they had with them, including money. That is when a Palestinian couple from Jerusalem offered help, including money...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!