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Academics at The University of Manchester have dismissed the long-held argument that the ancient Egyptian queen Cleopatra was killed by a snake bite. Andrew Gray, curator of herpetology at Manchester Museum, says venomous snakes in Egypt -- cobras or vipers -- would have been too large to get unseen into the queen's palace. He was speaking to Egyptologist Dr Joyce Tyldesley in a new video which is part of a new online course introducing ancient Egyptian history, using six items from the Museum's collection. According to Dr Tyldesley, the ancient accounts say a snake hid in a basket of figs...

Our prehistoric forebears are often portrayed as spear-wielding savages, but the earliest human societies are likely to have been founded on enlightened egalitarian principles, according to scientists. A study has shown that in contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes, men and women tend to have equal influence on where their group lives and who they live with. The findings challenge the idea that sexual equality is a recent invention, suggesting that it has been the norm for humans for most of our evolutionary history. Mark Dyble, an anthropologist who led the study at University College London, said: “There is still this wider perception...

A soldier has been awarded the Military Cross after sprinting 300ft under enemy fire to save a critically wounded boy from the battlefield in Afghanistan. Lance Corporal Andrew Wardle, 22, sprang into action after the five-year-old wandered into the middle of a vicious firefight. He saw the boy running towards him just as a Taliban bullet tore into the lad’s lower back and knocked him into a crumpled heap. L/Cpl Wardle, from Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, leapt from his position and raced to scoop up the boy, ignoring bullets slamming into the ground at his feet. The Military Cross (MC)...

The Republicans What's wrong with America's right Too much anger and too few ideas. America needs a better alternative to Barack Obama Jun 10th 2010 HAPPY days are here again for the Republicans, or so you might think. Barack Obama’s popularity rating is sagging well below 50%. Passing health-care reform has done nothing to help him; most Americans believe he has wasted their money—and their view of how he is dealing with the economy is no less jaded. Although growth has returned, the latest jobs figures are dismal and house repossessions continue to rise. And now his perceived failure to...

Geoff Huish, 26, was so convinced England would win Saturday's match he told fellow drinkers at a social club, "If Wales win I'll cut my balls off", the paper said on Tuesday. Friends at the club in Caerphilly, south Wales, thought he was joking. But after the game Huish went home, severed his testicles with a knife, and walked 200 metres back to the bar with the testicles to show the shocked drinkers what he had done. Huish was taken to hospital where he remained in a seriously ill condition, the paper said. Police told the paper he had a...

The war in Iraq has left neither Iraq nor the world a safer place, the Vatican said on Wednesday, disputing a key claim of President George W. Bush a little over a month before the Nov. 2 U.S. election. "Everyone can see that it did not lead to a safer world, either inside or outside Iraq," Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, secretary for the Holy See's Relations with States, told the U.N. General Assembly. "The Holy See believes it is now imperative to support the present government in its efforts to bring the country to normality and to a political system that...