300 children bitten by 'blood sucking' monkeys at famous Indian temple

Link:

Monkeys lurking at an ancient Hindu temple in India's northeast have attacked up to 300 children over three weeks, temple officials said Tuesday.
'They hide in trees and swoop on unsuspecting children loitering about in the temple premises or walking by, clawing them and even sucking a bit of blood,' Bani Kumar Sharma, a priest at the Kamakhya temple in Assam state, told The Associated Press. The temple, one of the most famous in India, is located in Gauhati, Assam's capital.
'I was returning home from school when a monkey suddenly pounced on me, scratched my head and hand and pushed me to the ground,' said Jolly Sharma, a 6-year-old girl.
At least 2,000 rhesus monkeys roam in and around the temple, but none had shown aggressive behavior in the past, the priest said.
Monkeys are often found in tens of thousands of temples across India. They are seen as a symbol of Hanuman, the mythical monkey god, and devotees visiting temples often feed them. While occasional attacks by monkeys are not uncommon at temples, the sudden surge in attacks at the Gauhati temple has experts perplexed.
Some say the Gauhati monkeys may be turning violent because of shrinking living spaces, or because animals once kept as pets might not have been able to adjust to new lives around the temple.
'The loss of habitat due to increased human settlement in the hills around the temple and the release of monkeys kept confined at home ... could be among the reasons for some of the monkeys behaving in a weird manner,' said Narayan Mahanta, a wildlife official in Gauhati.
Three monkeys were randomly tranquilized by wildlife officials over the weekend and have been taken to the Gauhati Zoo where"

Remains of New Species of Hobbit-Sized Human Found

Yahoo! News - Remains of New Species of Hobbit-Sized Human Found



By Patricia Reaney

LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists in Australia have found a new species of hobbit-sized humans who lived about 18,000 years ago on an Indonesian island in a discovery that adds another piece to the complex puzzle of human evolution.


The partial skeleton of Homo floresiensis, found in a cave on the island of Flores, is of an adult female that was a meter (3 feet) tall, had a chimpanzee-sized brain and was substantially different from modern humans.


It shared the isolated island to the east of Java with miniature elephants and Komodo dragons. The creature walked upright, probably evolved into its dwarf size because of environmental conditions and coexisted with modern humans in the region for thousands of years.


"It is an extraordinarily important find," Professor Chris Stringer, of the Natural History Museum in London, told a news conference on Wednesday. "It challenges the whole idea of what it is that makes us human."


Peter Brown of the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, and his colleagues made the discovery of the skull and other bones, and miniature tools in September 2003 while looking for records of modern human migration to Asia. They reported the finding in the science journal Nature.


"Finding these hominins on an isolated island in Asia, and with elements of modern human behavior in tool making and hunting, is truly remarkable and could not have been predicted by previous discoveries," Brown said in a statement.


Local legends tell of hobbit-like creatures existing on islands long ago but there has been no evidence of them.


DESCENDENT OF HOMO ERECTUS


The hominin family tree, which includes humans and pre-humans, diverged from the chimpanzee line about 7 million years ago. Early African hominins walked upright, were small and had tiny brains.


The new species, dubbed "Flores man," is thought to be a descendent of Homo erectus, which had a large brain, was full-sized and spread out from Africa to Asia about 2 million years ago.


The new species became isolated on Flores and evolved into its dwarf form to conform with conditions, such as food shortages. Flores, which was probably never connected to the mainland, was home to a variety of exotic creatures including a dwarf form of the primitive elephant Stegodon.


Modern humans had reached Australia about 45,000 years ago but they may not have passed through Flores. The scientists suspect the new species became extinct after a massive volcanic eruption on the island about 12,000 years ago.


Brown and his colleagues have found the remains of seven other dwarf individuals at the same site since the first find.


"The other individuals all show similar characteristics, and over a time range that now extends from as long ago as 95,000 years to as recently as 13,000 years ago -- a population of hobbits that seemed to disappear at about the same time as the pygmy elephants that they hunted," said Bert Roberts, one of the authors of the Nature study.

Ashlee's Lip-Synch Lapse

FOXNews.com - Foxlife - Fox411 - Ashlee's Lip-Synch Lapse: "Ashlee Simpson's Lip-Synch Lapse
In case you don't know by now, Jessica Simpson's little sister, Ashlee, who happens to have the No. 1 album in the country, had a singing malfunction on Saturday night that may end her career.
Ashlee, the musical guest on 'Saturday Night Live,' was the victim of a snafu when someone in the control room pushed the wrong button and the same song she'd sung in her first segment began playing again.
Ashlee, who had obviously lip-synched the first song, became confused. Her band tried to switch back into the first song, but Simpson just gave up, did a weird little jig and shrugged off the stage.
Later, at the end of the show, she had the audacity to blame the band for playing the wrong song.
It's no surprise that this latest pre-fabricated pop star can't sing live (and at this point has no shame either)."

Ye who weep the first stone.

Indian girl who weeps stones in plea for help
By Justin Huggler in Delhi
19 October 2004


The girl who wept stones: it sounds like something out of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. But according to reports from Jharkhand state in eastern India it is all too real.

A 15-year-old girl called Savitri been admitted to hospital suffering from tiny stones that emerge from the corners of her eyes. Doctors say they have never seen anything like it, and they cannot explain it.

At the girl's village in Jharkhand, they have two explanations. Either she is possessed by an evil spirit, or she is an incarnation of a goddess. But for Savitri, the condition is anything but a blessing. Before the stones emerge, she suffers from excruciating pain in her head. Tiny stones emerge from her ears, nose and mouth as well.

"In some cases, stones have come out from the nose and the ear of some people," said Dr Ragho Saran, an ear, nose and throat specialist who has treated Savitri. "But this is the first time I have even heard of stones coming out of the eyes. Stones are formed due to the high level of calcium in the body. But they are generally found in the gall bladder and kidney."

Savitri and her family are desperate for a cure. Her bedside at the Rajendra Institute of Medical Science has been overrun by reporters, but the family say no one has been able to offer medical help.

Scholars Grapple With Godzilla Legacy

Yahoo! News - Scholars Grapple With Godzilla Legacy: "'I would like people to take Godzilla more seriously,' "


By JOHN HANNA, Associated Press Writer

LAWRENCE, Kan. - He's attacked other monsters and terrorized Japan for decades. Now Godzilla is confronting academics who want to wrestle with his legacy.


The University of Kansas plans to pay homage to the giant lizard later this month, organizing a three-day scholarly conference for the 50th anniversary of his first film.


It's not just about celebrating campy creature features. Planners want to provoke discussion of globalization, Japanese pop culture and Japanese-American relations after World War II.


"I would like people to take Godzilla more seriously," said Bill Tsutsui, a history professor at the University of Kansas and author of the book "Godzilla on My Mind," which discusses the history of the monster's movies.


The conference that begins Oct. 28 will offer speeches, panel discussions and free screenings of Godzilla films, including "Gojira," the Japanese movie that started Godzilla's career in November 1954.


Atop the movie theater will be an inflatable 28-foot Godzilla balloon. Items from Tsutsui's collection of Godzilla memorabilia will be on display in the university's main library.


The notion of a serious Godzilla conference drew puzzled looks on campus.


"It's kind of odd," freshman Kathleen Schafer said. "I didn't think scholars would be interested."


But historians, anthropologists and other academics are coming from universities such as Duke, Harvard and Vanderbilt.


Among the fans in attendance will be Andrew Kar, a technical writer from St. Joseph, Mo., who has been hooked on monster movies since childhood.


"When you're a 35-year-old man and you're still enjoying these films, you have to ask yourself why," he said. "For some of us, it translates. For others, it's gibberish."


Japan's Toho Co. has produced 27 Godzilla films in five decades, with a 28th movie, "Godzilla: Final Wars," to be released in December. An American "Godzilla" was released in 1998, though many aficionados don't consider it a true Godzilla movie.


Yoshikuni Igarashi, director of east Asian studies at Vanderbilt, sees Godzilla films as important cultural artifacts.


For example, the first Godzilla film came only eight months after the United States tested a hydrogen bomb in the South Pacific.


The movie — in which H-bomb testing disturbs Godzilla's undersea habitat and transforms him into a behemoth with fiery, radioactive breath — reflects anxiety and a feeling of helplessness in the face of a nuclear threat, Igarashi said.


The franchise was widely known for its campy special effects. Godzilla films featured men in dinosaur suits stomping around miniature urban landscapes and some monster battles that, Tsutsui acknowledged in his book, seem more like professional wrestling matches.


When an American version of the first film was released in 1956 — re-edited to include new scenes featuring Raymond Burr of "Perry Mason" fame — the New York Times dismissed it as "cheap cinematic horror-stuff."

"It is true there were some bad, bad films produced, particularly in the late '60s and early '70s," said Igarashi, who plans to lecture at the conference on the 1964 movie "Godzilla vs. the Thing," in which Godzilla battles the giant moth, Mothra, and its offspring.

Two Japanese foundations provided $35,000 to help fund the conference.

Takao Shibata, the Japanese consul general in Kansas City, Mo., said the meeting will help educate people about his nation but acknowledged: "The idea of this kind of serious analysis of the evolution of Godzilla — it never occurred to me."

____

On the Net:

Conference Web site: http://www.g2004.net/godzilla/

Pilgrims Flock to Honor Idiot Savant Saint

Yahoo! News - Pilgrims Flock to Honor Idiot Savant Saint

By Tim Gaynor

EL ESPINAZO, Mexico (Reuters) - Thousands of barefoot penitents walked, rolled and even shuffled on all fours to a desert shrine in northern Mexico on Friday to pay homage to a long-dead healer hailed as an idiot savant saint.



Pilgrims from across the Americas descend on the village of El Espinazo each October to visit the tomb of El Nino Fidencio, an eerie man-child figure famed for his playful cures and folk wisdom dispensed in a shrill contralto during the 1920s and 1930s.


"Many regard him as a saint, others as a being of light or spirit guide, and they come to pay off a debt for a favor that he granted," Magdalena Ibarra, a descendant of a local family who adopted Fidencio as a youngster, said at his shrine.


"The festival is celebrated with a great deal of religious fervor and is getting bigger each year. People are coming from as far away as the United States, Canada, Cuba and El Salvador (news - web sites)," she added above the sound of pilgrims singing Mexican folk anthem Las Mananitas.


This year the Ibarra family expect 50,000 pilgrims to attend the three-day bash, which culminates on Sunday -- the anniversary of a divine revelation that the Nino Fidencio said marked his "spiritual rebirth."


Fidencio is not recognized as a saint by the Vatican (news - web sites). He gained an early reputation for faith healing and clairvoyance and won fame throughout Mexico for his playful and unorthodox cures for a range of maladies including cancer and lameness.


He diagnosed the sick by rocking them on a swing in the village, and sometimes lobbed pieces of fruit at them from a rooftop to cure them. Other whimsies included curative country walks, elaborate religious stage shows, and ducking followers in a murky pond behind his single-story adobe home.


Since his death at age 40 in 1938, some followers claim to channel his spirit from the afterlife. They offer pilgrims visiting the mountain-ringed village cures and advice in the folk saint's high-pitched warble.


"He's like a child, he is playful and he talks in a sweet voice," said Maria Guadalupe Galvan, 75, a medium or "materia" who claims to have channeled Fidencio's spirit for more than five decades. "For those that have faith, just hearing his voice helps."


Many believers drive for days to visit the shrine at his home, which includes his cot-like bed, a chipped enamel bathtub that is claimed to cure cancer, and a collection of dozens of wooden crutches discarded by the cured lame.


"The Nino has performed a lot of miracles," emergency room technician Tomas Castro said at the end of a two-day drive from his home in Fresno, California. "Faith brought us here."

Yahoo! News - Prostitutes' Soccer Team Loses to Cops

Yahoo! News - Prostitutes' Soccer Team Loses to Cops


GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - A soccer team made up of Guatemalan prostitutes, formed to call attention to their poor working conditions, lost 3-1 to policewomen on Saturday.



The women get paid as little as $2.50 for sex and complain of frequent police harassment, despite their profession being legal and widespread in Guatemala.


"We get much more attention from the public now our faces are known; people come up and congratulate us and tell us to keep up the good work," said Valeria, 27, who scored the prostitutes' goal on Saturday.


"It's good to feel the power of being united; when we work, we are more isolated in our rooms," said defender Beatriz, 37.


The prostitutes, the Stars of the Tracks, were kicked out of an elite amateur league last month because of allegations that their fans used profanity.

Good luck? Not unless there is a Chinese Trial Lawyers association I don't know about.

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Satellite smashes Chinese house: "Satellite smashes Chinese house

A Chinese satellite has smashed into a villager's house on its return to earth, the country's media reports.
The satellite destroyed the building in Sichuan province, but officials say no-one was hurt.
A local newspaper printed a picture of a kettle-shaped capsule which appeared to be about two metres long, lying amid broken bricks, beams and roof tiles.
The satellite was part of a space probe to carry out land surveys and other research, Xinhua news agency said.
'The satellite landed in our home. Maybe this means we'll have good luck this year,' the tenant of the wrecked apartment was quoted as saying by the newspaper"