Good Afternoon All,
Today I want to point out a new section. I am always happy to recieve article suggestions, but very rarely get them. Today I have included the section titled "Submitted by a Friend". There is one article here, which is now 2 days old, about the world's tallest man recieving a large bike. Thank you to Anna for suggesting the story. :)
Also today we have some news that parents may enjoy. Three articles feature children who were: rescued, found, and identified. The first article is about a toddler who was rescued after 27 hours in a well. The second, about a 16 year old Latvian who was abducted at 1 month old, and is in the process of being returned to family. The third is about the London boy left at the bus station about a week ago. A family from India claims this is their son who has been missing for about 3 years.
Anyway, please enjoy today's articles, and I will see you again tomorrow! :)
Today's Top 5:
1. Toddler Rescued After 27 Hours in a Well (CNN)
2. Kidnapped Boy Found After 16 Years (CNN)
3. Scientists Have Discovered the Oldest Human Remains in Western Europe. (BBC)
4. He’s Our Son, Indian Couple Say After Seeing Mystery Boy on TV (Times Online UK)
5. Hiker Gets Unstuck from Jam in Narrow Utah Canyon (Denver Post)
Honorable Mentions:
1. Swan, Paddleboat Getting Back Together (Yahoo News)
Submitted by a Friend:
World's Tallest Man Receives Help, Giant Bike (WLTX.COM)
Today's Top 5:
Toddler Rescued After 27 Hours in a Well
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/03/26/india.trapped/?iref=hpmostpop
updated 2 hours, 44 minutes ago
(current time 4:47pm Central Standard Time)
AGRA, India (CNN) -- A two-year-old girl was rescued Wednesday after spending 27 hours trapped inside a narrow well outside the Indian capital of New Delhi.
She fell 45 feet into the uncovered well while playing Tuesday night in a village near Agra, a northern Indian city outside New Delhi.
The girl was taken by ambulance to a hospital to be checked out, according to District Magistrate Mukesh Kumar Meshram.
"The girl is normal, according to the doctors, and there is a possibility (she is) suffering from dehydration," Meshram said.
CNN's partner network CNN-IBN reported Vandana's parents were by her side at the hospital.
Her mother was kept away from the well because of rescuers feared she would become emotional and upset the child, but her father was constantly talking to her to keep her conscious, authorities said.
India's army was called in to help, and rescuers dug a parallel well to tunnel into where Vandana was trapped.
Officials said the girl frequently asked for fruits and sweets, which was sent to her with the help of a rope.
Oxygen was also pumped inside the well through tubes to prevent any suffocation, CNN-IBN reported. Watch the dramatic rescue »
It was the sixth time a child had fallen into an open pit or uncovered well in India over the past two years.
On January 30, rescuers successfully retrieved a six-year-old boy from a 40-foot well in the southern Indian state of Karnataka
2. Kidnapped Boy Found After 16 Years
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/03/26/latvia.kidnap.ap/index.html?eref=edition
March 26, 2008
RIGA, Latvia (AP) -- A 16-year-old Latvian boy who was kidnapped as an infant has been placed in foster care and could soon be reunited with his mother after a startling break in the case, authorities said Wednesday.
Investigators made the discovery after the woman who raised the boy in Daugavpils, near the border with Belarus, was arrested in a separate case and questions arose about the boy's identity, police spokeswoman Inguna Dunda said.
The boy had no birth certificate or personal ID code -- obligatory in Latvia -- which prompted investigators to reopen the 1992 kidnapping case that was closed six years ago because of a lack of leads.
Dunda said investigators who worked on the case at the time recalled how the woman had gone shopping and left her child in a baby carriage outside a store. When she came back out, both the child and carriage had disappeared, she said.
A DNA test confirmed that the teenager was the boy who was kidnapped when he was one and a half months old, the State Police said.
The case has shocked Latvia, a country of 2.3 million, and particularly Daugavpils, whose 150,000 residents are mainly ethnic Russians.
The woman who raised the boy denied kidnapping him and told police her husband, who died several years ago, had brought the boy home claiming he came from the Russian region of Dagestan, Dunda said.
Authorities placed the boy in a foster family pending a custody hearing that will determine if he can live with his biological mother, who also lives in Daugavpils, Latvia's second largest city.
The Ministry for Children and Family Affairs said that the custody court would weigh all factors -- including the teenage boy's wish -- when deciding where he should live until he turns 18.
Dunda said the boy was the only child for both the biological and false mothers.
Police said boy has been removed from school and is receiving psychological help.
3. Scientists Have Discovered the Oldest Human Remains in Western Europe
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7313005.stm
Wednesday, 26 March 2008, 18:28 GMT
A jawbone and teeth discovered at the famous Atapuerca site in northern Spain have been dated between 1.1 and 1.2 million years old.
The finds provide further evidence for the great antiquity of human occupation on the continent, the researchers write in the journal Nature.
Scientists also found stone tools and animal bones with tell-tale cut marks from butchering by humans.
It gives us confidence that Europe was not left out of the picture of the spread of early humans
Prof Chris Stringer, Natural History Museum
The discovery comprises part of a human's lower jawbone. The remains of seven teeth were found still in place; an isolated tooth, belonging to the same individual, was also unearthed.
Its small size suggests it could have belonged to a female.
The find was made in the Sierra de Atapuerca, a region of gently rolling hills near the Spanish city of Burgos which contain a complex of ancient limestone caves.
See one view of human evolution
These caves have yielded abundant, well-preserved evidence of ancient occupation by humans and have been designated a Unesco World Heritage Site.
The new remains were unearthed at the archaeological site of Sima del Elefante, which lies just a few hundred metres from two other locations which have yielded remains of early Europeans.
"It is the oldest human fossil yet found in Western Europe," said co-author Jose Maria Bermudez de Castro, director of Spain's National Research Centre on Human Evolution (CENIEH) in Burgos.
Ancient migration
Dr Bermudez de Castro told BBC News that the latest find had anatomical features linking it to earlier hominins (modern humans, their ancestors and relatives since divergence from apes) discovered in Dmanisi, Georgia - at the gates of Europe.
Several teeth were preserved with the jaw
The Georgian hominins lived some 1.7 million years ago and represent an early expansion of humans outside Africa.
The researchers therefore suggest that Western Europe was settled by a population of hominins coming from the east.
Once these early people had "won the West" they evolved into a distinct species - Homo antecessor, or "Pioneer Man", say the scientists.
The scientists now plan to investigate whether Pioneer Man might have been ancestral to Neanderthals and to even our own species Homo sapiens.
"In terms of European prehistory, this [find] is very significant," said Professor Chris Stringer, research leader in human origins at London's Natural History Museum.
The timing of the earliest human habitation in Europe has been controversial.
"The earliest hominins outside Africa are those from Dmanisi in Georgia. After that, we have occupations in Europe, but the ages are not very precise. They are also without hominin [remains]," said Dr Marina Mosquera, a co-author from the Rovira i Virgili University in Tarragona, Spain.
Reliable date
The Spanish researchers used three different techniques to date the new fossils: palaeomagnetism, cosmogenic nuclide dating and biostratigraphy.
The researchers said the new find represented the earliest reliably dated evidence of human occupation in Europe.
"What we have are the European descendents of the first migration out of Africa," said Dr Mosquera.
Professor Stringer said that until more material was discovered from Atapuerca, he was cautious about assigning the new specimen to the species Homo antecessor.
But he added: "However the specimen is classified, when combined with the emerging archaeological evidence, it suggests that southern Europe began to be colonised from western Asia not long after humans had emerged from Africa - something which many of us would have doubted even five years ago."
"It gives us confidence that Europe was not left out of the picture of the spread of early humans. Early humans got to Java and China by 1.5 million years ago and certainly some of the animal remains found at those Asian sites are found in Western Europe too."
He explained that the people at Sima del Elefante had made primitive stone tools and would have had relatively small brains. The outside of the jawbone had some primitive anatomical features, but the inside displayed some more advanced characteristics, he added.
This suggested they may have been evolving towards humans which are known from much later in time, such as Homo heidelbergensis.
4. He’s Our Son, Indian Couple Say After Seeing Mystery Boy on TV
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3619351.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797093
March 26, 2008
A couple in India have claimed that a nine-year-old boy abandoned at a bus stop in London last week is their son who was kidnapped three years ago.
The couple identified Gurrinder Singh as their son Sintu after photographs of the child were broadcast on Indian television.
Ganga Prasad, who claims to be the boy’s father, told The Times that Gurrinder had a “striking resemblance” to his lost son and he wants to travel to England to bring him home. “We saw on the television news that a child has been found in London. We saw a picture of a child that has a striking resemblance to our son — especially his nose and eyes,” Mr Prasad said.
“His cheeks have become a little bit fatter. His hair is longer. But it is three years since we saw him. The London police say he is aged nine and our son would have turned nine this year.”
Gurrinder has a distinctive mole on his left cheek. Mr Prasad said that his son, Sintu, also had a “small mark” on his cheek.
British police and social services have spent the past week trying to piece together the life of the boy, who could not name any relatives or friends when questioned. He told police that he was deserted at the bus stop in Southall, a busy West London suburb, by a “white uncle” last week.
It was thought originally that the boy was an orphan after he told officers that his parents had died before he came to England about two or three years ago.
According to Mr Prasad, his son came home from school on March 3, 2005, at about 5pm. He left his school satchel inside the house before going out to play. Shortly after 6pm his parents went to lock the doors of their small bungalow in the Sahapur Tikri area of Aurangabad, but realised that they could not find Sintu. On March 6 Mr Prasad filed a missing person report to the local police station. Mr Prasad said that his son was a “naughty but good boy” who had not run away before. “Every day we go to the police station to check, but until now there has been no sighting,” he said.
Sintu’s parents, who have three other children, suspect that Sintu was kidnapped. Although they received telephone calls demanding a ransom in the days after their son’s disappearance, Sintu was not found.
Gurrinder was found last Tuesday in a clinic apparently healthy but exhausted, leading police to believe that he may have travelled from any part of the country or even from abroad. Gurrinder, who is 5ft (1.52m), speaks only Punjabi. Detectives have been working on one theory that he was the victim of child-trafficking.
He said that he had been walking for several hours before reaching the health clinic in Hartingdon Road in the predominantly Asian Southall area of West London. He was at the clinic for about three hours before staff noticed him as they prepared to close. He is currently in the care of a Punjabi-speaking foster family and was due to be given a gentle in-depth interview this week by officers with skills at getting traumatised children to unburden themselves.
Bindia Devi, who believes that she is his mother, told Indian media: “It is a miracle for us and a ray of hope.”
The family have sent photographs of their son to local police and the Government in the hope that officials will be able to help to confirm the link.
Mr Prasad, a small businessman who runs a company that makes steel kitchen equipment, said that he had sought the help of district police to have the boy returned to India. He said that the family were willing to travel to England to ensure the return of the boy. “We know that the authorities in London are keeping him and that his name is changed,” Mr Prasadh said. “We would like to go there and find out what the problem is. We would like to have him back home.”
Police in Britain have called the case a “real conundrum”, and are now working on the developments after only learning of the Indian couple’s claims through the media. A spokesman for Scotland Yard said: “This new information will be reviewed as part of the ongoing investigation.”
It is thought that simple checks, such as a DNA test, will be able to verify the claims of the Indian couple.
The local authorities are asking India’s External Affairs Ministry to contact the British High Commission in Delhi to take the case forward, Ganesh Kumar, a local Indian police spokesman, said.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said yesterday that it had not been contacted by Indian authorities, though it believed that direct contact between British and Indian police would be made if necessary.
The latest developments add further intrigue to a case filled with riddles and unanswered questions. The boy told police last week that he had not been to school in the country and had largely stayed indoors watching television. It is not known where or with whom.
The identity of the “uncle”, who apparently left the boy at a bus stop, is also a mystery. He is described as a slim white man in his thirties.
5. Hiker Gets Unstuck from Jam in Narrow Utah Canyon
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_8697460
By The Denver Post
Article Last Updated: 03/26/2008 01:56:46 AM MDT
Rob Lougee of Brighton, in helmet, is rescued by the Garfield County (Utah) Search and Rescue team. ( Garfield County Sheriff's Office )Rescuers rappelled to a 42-year-old Brighton man after he became stuck on a cliff about 28 miles southeast of Hanksville, Utah, authorities said.
Rob Lougee had gotten stuck Sunday when he rappelled down to narrow rock formations in a slot canyon that he could not pass through and did not have the equipment needed to climb back up, said Becki Bronson, spokeswoman for the Garfield County Sheriff's Office.
Lougee, his wife and two hikers from Salt Lake City had rappelled a half-mile down in the Three Forks Area to some narrow passages in the rock.
Where Lougee was rappelling, a hole in the rock was smaller than 16 inches wide, and he could not pass through, Bronson said. He found a small shelf about the size of a kitchen table and waited there overnight for help. Kirk Mitchell, The Denver Post
Honorable Mention:
1. Swan, Paddleboat Getting Back Together
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080326/ap_on_fe_st/odd_germany_lovesick_swan
53 minutes ago (Current time 4:56pm Central Standard)
BERLIN - Petra the swan has a new home and so does her beloved swan-shaped paddleboat. In 2006, Petra, a black swan, became so attached to the boat — shaped like an outsized white swan — that she refused to leave its side at a lake near a zoo in the German city of Muenster.
Petra and her paddleboat were taken to the zoo.
Zoo officials finally parted bird and boat last week after Petra settled down with a real white swan and the boat was returned to the lake. But the romance was short-lived. The zoo says that, on Saturday, her new beau flew off and sought out the company of other black swans.
A zoo statement says that Petra "appears to feel lonely" and is swimming around in an agitated state. The solution? On Friday, she will be taken back to the nearby lake and her faithful paddleboat
Submitted by a Friend:
World's Tallest Man Receives Help, Giant Bike
http://www.wltx.com/news/story.aspx?storyid=60077
First Posted: 3/24/2008 2:44:34 PM
Podolyantsi, Ukraine (APTN) -- The world's tallest man, Leonid Stadnyk, has been forced to crouch around his house, left without a job and confined to his impoverished village that does not even have heating gas.
But being the world's tallest man, and the problems that come with the extra height, has won Stadnyk with many sympathizers.
People from Ukraine and all over world have sent him clothes, equipped his home with running water and most recently presented him with a giant bicycle.
Last year, Stadnyk beat a Chinese man to the title of the world's tallest person. Stadnik was measured at 2.57 meters tall, 8 feet 5 inches, in 2006.
Stadnyk's growth spurt started at age 14 after a brain operation apparently stimulated the overproduction of the growth hormone. Doctors say that he keeps growing.
To keep his height and weight in check, a Russian engineer has developed a body building machine which suits tall people.
Aleksander Barshulyak, told the Associated Press, "the aim of this machine is to train leg muscles and the strength of the joints."
Stadnyk, said,"I have problems with my weight and my legs tire often. I think this is normal for me, but I'm working on this. I train myself. And this body-building machine that was presented to me will help me fight my aches."
While he may appear intimidating and menacing due to his size, he is nothing like that. With a broad grin and a childlike laughter, Stadnyk comes across as a young boy trapped inside a giant's body. He even keeps stuffed toys on his pillow.
Stadnyk's title has brought him worldwide fame and constant media attention, being the world's tallest person is not easy.
All the doorways in his one-story brick house are too short for him and Stadnyk has to bend down every time he enters or leaves the room. His weight of 440 pounds causes constant knee pain and he often has to move on crutches.
Stadnyk, a lover of all living creatures and nature, had to quit his job as a veterinarian at a cattle farm in a nearby village, after suffering frostbite from walking there in his socks in winter.
He couldn't afford ordering specially made shoes for his 17-inch feet.
But Stadnyk's plight eventually helped broaden his horizons, earned him friends all over the world and taught him not to despair.
A German man who said he was his distant relative invited him for a visit several years ago.
On the trip, Stadnyk got to sample frog legs in an elegant restaurant and saw a roller coaster in an amusement park, all for the first time.
Since then he has made numerous online friends including from the United States, Australia and Russia. Stadnyk hopes to learn English to be able to better communicate with them; right now he relies on computer translations, which he says are often no use.
Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko's tailor has made him two track suits and the president plans to present him with a giant car. Local authorities also promise to supply gas to the village 125 miles west of the capital Kiev.
After he quit his job, Stadnyk has concentrated on running the family's garden and taking care of his three cows, a horse, pigs and chickens with his mother Halyna and sister Larysa.
Stadnyk says his dream now is finding a soul mate, just like the former titleholder, China's Bao Xishun, who got married last year.
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