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Peking Man's skullcap on display in China September 22 2003 at 06:39AM Beijing - A crucial skull fragment belonging to the famous 500 000-year-old Peking Man is being shown to the public for the first time ever, Chinese state media said on Monday. The priceless bone fragment is on display at a museum 48km south-west of Beijing, near the place where Peking Man was first discovered almost a century ago, the Xinhua news agency reported. Although the bone is little more than the size of a palm and shows only the front part of an individual's skull, it is one...

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- A man who thought he had hatched a perfect alibi to charges that he murdered a man in a barroom shooting two years ago had his scheme foiled when a letter asking a friend to lie for him was returned and was read by jail guards. Demetrius Murrell, 24, of Pittsburgh, pleaded guilty Thursday to a charge of third-degree murder after prosecutors read the letter in court. In the letter, Murrell asked his friend for "a little alibi" during his upcoming trial on charges that he shot and killed a 19-year-old man in a Pittsburgh bar on...

After 43 years of blindness, Michael May can see again. HE CAN play soccer with his sons, enjoy movies and, for the first time, gaze on the Sierra Nevada slopes he has expertly skied — sightless — since the late 1970s. But May can’t recognize his sons, Carson, 11, and Wyndham, 9, by their faces alone. The same goes for identifying Jennifer, his wife of 15 years. People “can’t fathom that,” said May, who owns a company in Davis, Calif., that makes navigational software for the blind. Three years after surgery restored sight to May’s right eye, researchers say May’s...

Officer cleared of wrongdoing Video from surveillance cameras showed the jury the incident exactly as it happened   Posted: 08/13/2003 06:16 pm Story filed by NewsCenter16 Reporter Mark Peterson Today former inmate George Staggs, who suffered injuries while in custody at the St. Joseph County Jail, asked for $330,000 in damages. Staggs alleged that a member of the Mishawaka Police force used excessive force against him when he was an inmate at the jail. Much of the treatment of Staggs while he was an inmate was captured on videotape by the jail surveillance cameras in October of 2000. The video shows Staggs...

<p>TAMPA -- While their wives drove Rolls-Royces and moved among Tampa's elite, Douglas S. Cone and Donald Carlson always seemed busy with business.</p> <p>Cone, the 74-year-old millionaire owner of a Tampa highway construction company, was gone most weekdays.</p> <p>Carlson was also frequently away from home -- an absence his family attributed to a sensitive government job that required him to travel for long stretches.</p>

Total Disbelief’ Penis Removal Just Latest In Series of Surgical Mistakes, But Patients Can Protect Themselves Aug. 11— After 67-year-old Hurshell Ralls went into surgery for bladder cancer, he came out of surgery missing more than he ever expected. His penis and testicles were gone "My wife had to hold my hand in the bed there. And she said 'Honey it's over. They got all the cancer.' And she waited a few minutes and then said 'But they had to remove your penis.' And I was one mad dude, you know," Ralls said on ABCNEWS' Good Morning America. Ralls, a...

Two years ago, Deloris Roberts' son died in a controversial police shooting in the Central District. Now Gregory Neubert, one of the Seattle officers involved in the incident, is suing her, contending that he was injured when her son dragged him alongside a car. Roberts, who was served with the suit this week, said Neubert's claims against her and the state of Washington have only brought back her anger and pain. "He wants me to pay for the murder of my son," she said yesterday. "I have never, in all my days, heard of anything like this. It just brings...

Wednesday, 20 November, 2002, 13:16 GMTElephant man's descendant found Joseph Merrick and Pat Selby will share similar genes Experts have traced a descendant of the the "Elephant Man" Joseph Merrick who could help determine what caused his disfigurements. A television research team called in the help of geneologists in Leicestershire to trace people related to Merrick, who was once exhibited as a circus freak in the 19th Century. Following a BBC appeal, Pat Selby, from Leicester, contacted her local family history society. Now the research team will take DNA samples from her and, using the latest genetic techniques, try to...