Free Republic

Some people in the Brazilian Amazon are very distant relations of indigenous Australians, New Guineans and other Australasians, two groups of scientists who conducted detailed genetic analyses reported Tuesday. But the researchers disagree on the source of that ancestry. The connection is ancient, all agree, and attributable to Eurasian migrants to the Americas who had some Australasian ancestry, the scientists said. But one group said the evidence is clear that two different populations came from Siberia to settle the Americas 15,000 or more years ago. The other scientific team says there was only one founding population from which all indigenous...

Pear trees stripped in raid on orchard 21 March 2006 By MICHAEL CUMMINGS A gang of thieves has stripped bare a Levin orchard of thousands of dollars worth of nashi pears. A Marlborough couple, who asked only to be identified as Glenn and Mary, arrived at their recently purchased lifestyle block on Hokio Sands Road to find the fruit on all but four of the more than 100 nashi trees gone. Four weeks later, after they had moved into their new home, the final four trees were also raided. The couple will run sheep and cattle on the 6-hectare property...

POLICE are being advised to treat Muslim domestic violence cases differently out of respect for Islamic traditions and habits. Officers are also being urged to work with Muslim leaders, who will try to keep the families together. Women's groups are concerned the politically correct policing could give comfort to wife bashers and keep their victims in a cycle of violence. The instructions come in a religious diversity handbook given to Victorian police officers that also recommends special treatment for suspects of Aboriginal, Hindu and Buddhist background. Some police officers have claimed the directives hinder enforcing the law equally. Police are...

It doesn't matter whether John Howard or Mark Latham wins Australia's federal election, a newcomer on the political scene here says. For within a fortnight, the Enslave New Zealand Party or enslavenz for short, says it will take over Australian politics. As its name suggests, this will be bad for New Zealanders. In one of the weirder forays on to the political scene, enslavenz's leader, who wishes to remain anonymous to avoid "vicious New Zealand death squads", said on his Party's website enslavenz.org - that he wanted to conquer and enslave New Zealand, giving every Australian household a Kiwi slave....