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TIME reporter travels deep into the African jungle in search of a mysterious chimp called the lion killer By STEPHAN FARIS Monday, Jan. 17, 2005 Ron Pintier was flying light and low above the northern wilds of the Democratic Republic of Congo when he saw a dark shape racing between two patches of tropical forest. "It was huge," says Pontier, a missionary pilot. "It was black. The skin was kind of bouncing up and down on it." From its bulk and color, Pontier thought it was a buffalo until he circled down for another look. "I saw it again just...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An ape that lived 13 million years ago in what is now Spain may have been the last common ancestor of all apes, including chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and humans, researchers said on Thursday. The fossil provides a missing link, not directly between humans and an apelike ancestor, but between great apes and lesser apes such as gibbons, the researchers said. The creature, named Pierolapithecus catalaunicus, had a stiff lower spine and flexible wrists that would have made it a tree-climbing specialist, the researchers write in this week's issue of the journal Science. "This probably is very close...

This morning brought this wire story from the Associated Press: by Ron Fournier BOSTON (AP) - Sen. John Kerry accused President Bush on Thursday of relying on front groups to challenge his record of valor in Vietnam, asserting, "He wants them to do his dirty work." (snip) [John Kerry said] "But here's what you really need to know about them. They're funded by hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Republican contributor out of Texas. They're a front for the Bush campaign. And the fact that the President won't denounce what they're up to tells you everything you need to...

Papers have been flapping with new headlines about the latest in a long line of alleged dinosaur ancestors of birds. This one is claimed to be a sensational dinosaur with feathers on its hind legs, thus four ‘wings’.1 This was named Microraptor gui—the name is derived from words meaning ‘little plunderer of Gu’ after the paleontologist Gu Zhiwei. Like so many of the alleged feathered dinosaurs, it comes from Liaoning province of northeastern China. It was about 3 feet (1 meter) long from its head to the tip of its long tail, but its body was only about the size...

DALLAS -- Astronomers have discovered a planet orbiting a star in the constellation Orion. They used the Hobby-Eberly Telescope in West Texas to capture the 123rd planet known beyond the solar system. Planet hunting is one of astronomy's hottest fields. "This will be the first of many planets coming out of the HET," said William Cochran, an astronomer at the University of Texas at Austin and leader of the research team. The planet orbits a star called HD 37605, near the bright star Betelgeuse, The Dallas Morning News reported in Thursday's online edition. The newfound planet, called HD 37605b, is...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tiny genetic changes add up to huge differences when human DNA is compared to that of chimpanzees, researchers said on Wednesday in a report that explains how people and apes can be so close, yet so far apart. Genetically, chimpanzees are 98.5 percent identical to humans. But the differences between the species are clearly profound and geneticists have been laboring to find out how such subtle variations in DNA can be so important. "Clearly, the genomic differences between humans and chimps are much more complicated than conventional wisdom has portrayed," Asao Fujiyama of the RIKEN Genomic Sciences...

Friday prayers at the mosque: A Jew is hiding behind me, come and cut off his head video Transcript: I advise you, oh America, Britain, and those whom Allah said about you: Allah's wrath upon you, the Jews, oh the sons of apes and pigs - there is no strife on the face of the earth that you have not sparked - Whenever they start the fire of strife, Allah extinguished it. May Allah extinguish your light and your fires. But we, we are the men whom Allah has chosen, and wanted, and made us strong, so as to pluck...

By comparing the human genome with that of chimpanzees, people's closest living relative, scientists have identified a partial list of the genes that make people human. They include genes for hearing and speech, genes that wire the developing brain, genes for detecting odors and genes that shape bone structure. The comparison, reported yesterday in Science, was undertaken by Dr. Michele Cargill and colleagues at Celera Diagnostics in Alameda, Calif., who decoded most of the genes in the chimp's genome, and Dr. Andrew G. Clark and colleagues at Cornell, who made the analysis. A more complete version of the chimp genome...

PARIS (AP) -- Poachers shoot them. Smugglers sell their babies as exotic pets. Illegal loggers wipe out the rain forests where they live. And civil wars drive them away. The great apes -- gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans -- are in great danger, the United Nations says. On Friday, the U.N.'s environment and cultural agencies closed a meeting in Paris on how to protect the closest relative to humans in the animal world. The talks in Paris drew representatives from 18 countries for what organizers said was the most wide-ranging meeting ever on endangered great apes. Over three days, they...

Last Updated: Wednesday, 26 November, 2003, 00:43 GMT UN's clarion call for great apes By Alex Kirby BBC News Online environment correspondent Satellites are pinpointing gorilla forests The clock now stands at one minute to midnight for the world's four great ape species, the United Nations says. It is launching an appeal for $25m, the minimum it says is needed to avert their extinction within a few decades. All the apes - gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos (pygmy chimps), and orang-utans - face a very high risk of extinction within 50 years at most, the UN says. It hopes to establish areas...

L O N D O N, Nov. 14— Some consider gorillas to be man's closest cousin in the animal kingdom — but they're not the kind of cousin you might invite over for a night of baby-sitting. That is unless you're rich, famous and count the hairy beasts as some of your closest friends. An eccentric British multimillionaire and his TV-host girlfriend are reportedly about to hand over their baby to a hairy 200-pound nanny who lives in a cage. Damien Aspinall — a rich Londoner who has inherited a chain of zoos from his father — and his girlfriend,...

Greedy American Trial Lawyers to Increase South African Poverty Through Apartheid Lawsuits That Will Only Make Them Rich America's 34-million African-Americans should be outraged by the campaign of economic blackmail that a handful of profit-driven personal injury lawyers are waging against the financially beleaguered Republic of South Africa. Against the expressed wishes of the revered Nelson Mandela and President Thabo Mbeki, the lawyers are filing class-action lawsuits in courts against U.S. corporations who did business in South Africa during apartheid - unjustly claiming that their mere presence in the country aided and abetted that nation's racist government. In fact, the...

Orangutans Facing Extinction Logging has been increasing in recent years, moving away from the river edges into the interior of the forests where the orangutans live, Cheryl Knott said in a telephone interview. Knott studies orangutans in Indonesia's Gunung Palung National Park, home to about 2,500 of the animals, about one-tenth of those in the world. Orangutans live only in Indonesia and Malaysia, said Knott, whose work is sponsored by the National Geographic (news - web sites) Society. While the government of Indonesia has a commitment to protect orangutans, sending in national police periodically, the loggers return when the police...

<p>Four young girls had the fright of their lives when a pack of thirsty baboons attacked them for their water containers in a northern region of Kenya ravaged by a long dry spell, a local official said on Tuesday.</p> <p>Aisha Wako, 12, suffered cuts and bruises to the face as she tried to fight off the animals while Mumina Golicha had her clothes ripped by the baboons' claws.</p>

Elusive African Apes: Giant Chimps or New Species? John Roach for National Geographic News April 14, 2003 A mysterious group of apes found in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo in central Africa has scientists and conservationist scratching their heads. The apes nest on the ground like gorillas but have a diet and features characteristic of chimpanzees. The apes are most likely a group of giant chimpanzees that display gorilla-like behavior. A far more remote possibility is that they represent a new subspecies of great ape. Researchers plan to return to the region later this month to collect more clues...

PARIS, July 2 (AFP) - Destruction of tropical African forests and poaching of primates could be a significant new threat in the war against the AIDS pandemic, some scientists believe. A dominant theory among AIDS researchers is that HIV emerged from a very similar pathogen that exists among monkeys and apes called the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV). One idea is that SIV leapt the species barrier in central or western Africa, perhaps in the 1920s, when a human being was bitten by a monkey or ate part-cooked bushmeat. It then spread among humans through sexual contact, and is now accelerating...

Abandoned baby 'adopted by chimps' April 15 2002 AFP A disabled Nigerian boy believed to have been adopted and raised by chimpanzees for 18 months is in care in a specialist children's home in this northern city. Named Bello by nursing staff at the Tudun Maliki Torrey home in Kano, he was brought to them six years ago by hunters after being found with a chimpanzee family in the Falgore forest, 150 kilometres south of Kano, according to staff. Believed to have been aged around two years when he was taken in, Bello is probably the son of nomadic ethnic...