Free Republic

But hair sample could have been from a wandering mercenary. An early wave of migration into the New World and the Arctic has been identified by sequencing a genome from a frozen hair excavated in Greenland. Archaeological evidence shows that there were two waves of migration to Greenland starting 4,500 years ago, first with the Saqqaq and then the Dorset groups, collectively known as the Paleo-Eskimos. Later, around 1,000 years ago, came the Thule culture which led to the current native population. The relationship between these three groups has been uncertain. Some theories hold that Paleo-Eskimos derived from the populations...

Russia's emergency situations ministry says it is dispatching experts to a Siberian province to find out why yellow and orange snow has been falling in several villages, the ITAR-TASS news agency has reported. "A chemical test unit will be sent to Omsk ... it's main task will be to investigate pollution in the region and establish the degree of danger represented by the anomalous snow fall," the agency quoted an unnamed official from the ministry as saying. Snow ranging in colour from light yellow to orange and carrying a distinctive "musty"

KUUJJUAQ, Nunavik - ''I have nothing, I have nothing,'' Johnny Munick cried out, remembering the day in 1960 when his team of sled dogs, in their harnesses and ready for a hunting trip, was shot by government authorities. The incident was part of an extermination of Inuit huskies - and, as a result, the abrupt end of their owners' ability to provide for their families - that took place from the mid-1950s until the late 1960s. Arms flung wide, an anguished figure in a heavy black parka, the elderly Inuk was standing on the auditorium stage following the Jan. 19...

The Maori Party is already driving a larger and considerably more dangerous wedge into the New Zealand Left than anything so far inserted by the National Party. As it grows in strength and consolidates its already powerful grip on the Maori imagination, the Maori Party has the potential to split Labour into two hostile camps, aggravate racial sensitivities within the trade union movement, and push the Greens below the all-important 5% MMP threshold. The Left's vulnerability to the Maori Party is entirely of its own making. From the early-1980s, the critical "sites of struggle" for most progressive political activists shifted...

Tomorrow morning, Meir and Dafna Ben Sira, residents of the village of Nir Etzion south of Haifa, will take their oldest daughter Eva to an induction center and, like all the other proud parents, will watch her get on the bus to commence two years of army service. Eva is headed for a squad commanders' course, somewhere in the south. The Ben Siras realize that, during her service, Eva is in for some astonished questioning; after all, the smiling, quiet young woman with the long black hair and dark, almond-shaped eyes looks a little different from the average Israeli female...

Satellite trackers find Kerry the goose in Eskimo freezer British conservationists are mourning the loss of Kerry the goose after tracking him by satellite all the way from Ireland to an Eskimo's kitchen in Arctic Canada. He was found by researchers who tracked the beeps from a £3,000 transmitter on his back to a hunter's home on remote Cornwallis Island. Kerry was one of six light-bellied Brent Geese being followed on their 4,500-mile migration by the British-based Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust. Senior research officer Dr James Robinson said: "We have some Canadian colleagues in an area called Resolute Bay on...