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When the phrase 'Black History' is mentioned, names that immediately come to mind for most are Dr. King, Rosa Parks or Malcolm X. It's been argued Black History continues to be made daily in 2008 given the ever growing possibility that Barack Obama could become the Democratic nominee and perhaps President of the United States. But are Americans too narrowly focusing the roles blacks played in history to just the 19th and 20th centuries? National Geographic recently expanded the conversation in their February 2008 issue highlighting the reign of the Black Pharaohs in Ancient Egypt. "Just as it should be...

Archeologist explains link between bones found in Ethiopia, Texas Lucy's bones on display at Houston museum By Pamela LeBlancAMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFFSaturday, December 22, 2007 One roamed the forests of East Africa 3.2 million years ago. The other lived in Central Texas more than 9,500 years ago. What's the connection between two skeletons found a world apart? That was the question on a recent visit to Houston, where the famous older skeleton is on display. Though not complete, Lucy does have enough pieces, especially skull bones, for scientists to predict her measurements. This model at the Houston Museum of Natural Science shows...

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - After 3.2 million years in East Africa, one of the world's most famous set of fossils was quietly flown out of Ethiopia overnight for a U.S. tour that some experts say is a dangerous gamble with an irreplaceable relic. Although the fossil known as Lucy had been expected to leave the Ethiopian Natural History Museum this month, some in the nation's capital were surprised the departure took place under cover of darkness with no fanfare Sunday. "This is a national treasure," said Kine Arega, a 29-year-old attorney in Addis Ababa. "How come the public has no...

Jawbones from an early human ancestor, found recently in northeast Ethiopia, could shine light on a murky period of human evolution, paleontologists say. The bones were found in the fossil-rich Afar region, just 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of the spot where the famed skeleton of "Lucy" -- early human ancestor who lived 3.2 million years ago -- was unearthed in 1974... The new bones are believed to date from 3.8 million to 3.5 million years ago. Though more research needs to be done, the group says the bones could bridge the gap between two known human ancestor species. Australopithecus...

'Hugely talented': Lucy Braham pictured at work in her studio when she was still at school The father of a fashion designer hacked to death by her drug-crazed neighbour has condemned Oxford University and Harrow School for failing to tackle his addiction. Old Harrovian William Jaggs, 23, stripped and then stabbed 25-year-old Lucy Braham 66 times at her home after she rejected his gift of a kitten. The two were the children of masters at the public school and had known each other for over 20 years. An Old Bailey judge accepted Jaggs's plea of guilty to manslaughter on...

Tel Aviv University anthropologists say they have disproven the theory that "Lucy" - the world-famous 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton found in Ethiopia 33 years ago - is the last ancestor common to humans and another branch of the great apes family known as the "Robust hominids." The jaw bone of Lucy and the jaw bone of Australopithecus afarensis.

“The Fourth Secret of Fatima”Mainstream Italian Author Argues Third Secret of Fatima Not Entirely RevealedSecretary of Pope John XXIII Admits There Are Two Textsby John Vennari               On November 22, 2006, Antonio Socci’s Il Quarto Segreto di Fatima (The Fourth Secret of Fatima), hit bookstores in Italy. The author, after much investigation, comes to the conclusion that the Vatican has not formally released the entire Third Secret.              The importance of this book cannot be overemphasized. Mr. Socci is a famous, mainstream Italian author and TV anchor man, not associated with any “traditionalist” group. In fact, he began the project firmly believing...

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — One of the world's most famous fossils — the 3.2 million-year-old Lucy skeleton unearthed in Ethiopia in 1974 — is to travel to the United States, going on display abroad for the first time, officials said Tuesday. Even the Ethiopian public has seen Lucy only twice — the Lucy exhibition at the Ethiopian Natural History Museum in the capital, Addis Ababa, is a replica; the real remains are usually locked in a vault.

A deal between the Ethiopian Natural History Museum and the Houston Museum of Natural Science would bring Lucy, accompanied by 190 other fossils and relics, to the United States next September for a six-year tour. She would stay in Houston until August 2008, and then on to six or more other cities. Some scientists oppose the trip, arguing that Lucy's remains are irreplaceable and too fragile to be moved. They say that her remains would be better saved for scientific study rather than put on display as a tourist attraction. But, as has been noted, other fragile and priceless artifacts...

The skeleton of the fossilised, 3.2 million-year-old human ancestor known as Lucy, will go on display in the US, Ethiopian officials say. After four years of negotiations with the Houston Museum of Natural Science in Texas, Ethiopia agreed to lend the bones for scientific study until 2013. It is hoped Lucy's 11-leg tour will boost tourism and increase Ethiopia's profile as the "home of all humanity". She will leave her country of origin - and the origin of mankind - in June. As well as Lucy, the travelling exhibition will also include about 190 other Ethiopian artefacts including humankind's earliest...

The 3.3-million-year-old fossilised remains of a human-like child have been unearthed in Ethiopia's Dikika region. The female bones are from the species Australopithecus afarensis , which is popularly known from the adult skeleton nicknamed "Lucy". Scientists are thrilled with the find, reported in the journal Nature. They believe the near-complete remains offer a remarkable opportunity to study growth and development in an important extinct human ancestor. The skeleton was first identified in 2000, locked inside a block of sandstone. It has taken five years of painstaking work to free the bones. "The Dikika fossil is now revealing many secrets about...

Pitt's Jeffrey Schwartz, who with colleague Ian Tattersall compiled the entire human fossil record, says specimen is not from Ethiopia and classification is premature According to University of Pittsburgh anthropology professor Jeffrey Schwartz, author of the four-volume The Human Fossil Record (Wiley-Liss, 2002-05), "the discovery of any largely complete skeleton of an ancient human relative would be unique. The fact that it is a child makes it even more exciting because of what its bones and teeth might reveal that an adult's cannot." However, Schwartz said, there are questions about the species this specimen represents. He explained that the problem...

Britain's new ITV1 show "Trinny and Susannah Undress" has the show's hosts making over a couple's marriage by decking them out with sex toys. The pair, who formerly starred in the BBC's "What Not to Wear," book a room in a hotel and stock it with everything from leopard-print handcuffs to chocolate body paint, the Daily Mail reported Tuesday. Unlike their old BBC show, the focus of "Trinny and Susannah Undress" is to put sexiness back into couples' marriages by updating their wardrobes. The show also features a risqué segment called Naked Truth, during which the couple has to undress...

This little video was shown at the apologetics group at the McLean Bible Church last week and the effect on viewers was rather striking. Lucy is the 40% more-or-less complete australopithicus skeleton which is commonly presented as a missing link of sorts, and the thought processes behind the manner in which reconstructions of lucy are presented indicates a mindset in which, at every juncture at which reality clashes with ideology, it is reality which simply gets tossed. Lucy's actual remains did not included hands or feet and reconstructions are commonly presented with human or near-human hands and feet despite the...

by Carl Wieland, AiG–Australia Did the famous ‘Lucy’ (Australopithecus afarensis) walk truly upright? That has long been a bone of contention, even among evolutionists. Of course, walking upright would hardly prove that Lucy was an ancestor of humans—but it would add some ‘icing on the cake’ to such a claim. Now a computer model published in the Royal Society’s Interface journal1 is said to support the idea that Lucy did walk upright, judging by the most energy-efficient gait. The model was based on a combination of afarensis skeletal features and the famous footprints in volcanic ash at Laetoli. To help...

Faithful AncestorsResearchers debate claims of monogamy for Lucy and her ancient kin Bruce Bower A weird kind of creature strode across the eastern African landscape from around 4 million to 3 million years ago. Known today by the scientific label Australopithecus afarensis, these ancient ancestors of people may have taken the battle of the sexes in a strange direction, for primates at any rate. True, no one can re-create with certainty the court and spark that led to sexual unions between early hominids. Nothing short of a time machine full of scientifically trained paparazzi could manage that trick. All is...

Mel Gibson says he cut scenes from his soon-to-be-re-released blockbuster film, "Passion of the Christ," to tone down the violence that earned it an R rating and kept some people from seeing it. Gibson said he received "truckloads of cards and letters” when the original film was released. "What came up again and again was that a lot of people were turned away because of the brutality in the film and were afraid to watch," he told Raymond Arroyo on EWTN’s "World Over Live" Friday night. "So I thought if I softened it up a bit, I could have a...

SISTER LUCY’S CELL ORDERED SEALED BY THE VATICAN by Christopher Ferrara Catholic Family News March 2005 Sister Lucy of Fatima died on February 13, 2005 -- the same day of the month on which the Fatims apparitions occurred each month for six months. (May - October) in 1917, and the same day of the month on which Ali Agca attempted to assassinate the Pope in 1981. The very next day Vito Messori, one of Italy’s top journalists, whose interview of John Paul II became the best-selling book Crossing the threshold of Hope, broke the stunning news in the Italian daily...

HERE'S A CURIOUS THOUGHT. Maybe the single most important person in the 20th century's long struggle against communism wasn't Ronald Reagan. Maybe it wasn't Karol Wojtyla or Margaret Thatcher, Lech Walesa or Václav Havel, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn or Mikhail Gorbachev. Maybe it wasn't anyone whose name might leap to a cold warrior's mind--for the most important figure in that long, dark struggle might have been a 10-year-old girl named Lucia dos Santos. You remember her, of course. It was Lucia who went out one day in 1917 with her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Martos to tend the family's sheep--and ended up...

LISBON, PORTUGAL - Sister Lucia Marto, the last of three children who claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary in a series of 1917 apparitions in the town of Fatima, has died, Portuguese media reported. She was 97. Sister Lucia, a Roman Catholic nun, had been ill for the past three months and died Sunday at the Convent of Carmelitas in Coimbra, 120 miles north of Lisbon, TSF radio reported, citing family sources. Lucia and two of her cousins, siblings Jacinta and Francisco, said in 1917 that the Virgin Mary had been appearing to them once a month and predicting...

HOT TOPICS: Fatima Forebodings about the Death of Sister Lucy Marian T. Horvat The first thing that struck me when I heard that Sister Lucy had died at age 97 on February 13 was: “How sudden and unexpected this news is! It must have been a heart attack, or some other such unforeseen sudden illness.” The last seer died leaving many questions about the Fatima message unresolved. Los Angeles Times, June 27, 2000 But no, it was not. Coimbra Bishop Albino Cleto told Radio Renascença that “she had been weak for several weeks and had not left her cell.”...

In the survey's hypothetical general election pairings, Baxley drew 39% to Riley's 35%. She led Moore 44% to 38%.

Cardinal Bertone Making Contradictions about Fatima, Once Again by Robert SungenisWill the disinformation campaign and cover up of Fatima ever cease? Not if that hierarch happens to be Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the long-time newsmaker and Vatican spokesman on Fatima. Needless to say, my inkling is that Bertone didn't get a chance to see Fr. Gruner's new film on Fatima, but perhaps they don't get PAX television over in Rome. In any case, it still amazes me to see the lengths these prelates will go to in order to dismiss Fatima's ominous portents. Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos: I know exactly what...

Lucy and the Piratesby Mark FellowsFew revelations have been as unconvincing as the Vatican's version of the Third Secret of Fatima. Those who thought, or hoped, that the June 2000 unveiling of the CDF's booklet, The Message of Fatima [1] ended matters are probably surprised by the recent tumult over Fatima in the press. There should be no surprise: For over forty years nearly every tactic------silence, intimidation, bad theology, disinformation, and hired liars------have been used to bury the real Message of Fatima. Yet the cork continues to bob to the surface. The terrorist attacks on September 11 triggered a chain...

Questions For Msgr. Bertone, Cardinal Ratzinger and Other Vatican Officials Regarding The Third Secret of Fatima and the Consecration of Russia Sister Lucy’s Fourth Memoir includes as part of the Fatima Message these words of the Virgin: “In Portugal the dogma of the faith will always be preserved, etc.” The use of “etc.” by Sister Lucy clearly means the Virgin had more to say, perhaps in the Third Secret, many Fatima scholars believed. A. Why does the Vision of the Third Secret published on June 26 contain no further words of Our Lady? B. What happened to the words...

[N.B. click on the Source to get photos and links in the article. --Dajjal] Telling Secrets on the Vatican Controversy Erupts Over Release of Final Fatima Mystery by Jon E. Dougherty WorldNetDaily exclusiveSunday, July 2, 2000 A Catholic priest who says he has seen the original text of the "third secret" of Fatima disputes the official interpretation of the secret released by the Vatican. The Catholic Church says the Virgin Mary passed the secrets of Fatima to three Portuguese children in 1917. (See explanatory sidebar.) The third secret is the final one to be released. [image] A photo, circa 1917,...

http://www.tldm.org/news/lucys_writing.htm Alleged Third Secret Handwriting Attributed to Sister Lucy Appears to be a Forgery! Speckin Forensic Laboratories, an international forensic firm specializing in forgeries and handwriting (famous for the JonBenet Ramsey case) states, "it is my opinion, based on the documents examined, that the Questioned Document 'Third Secret' can not be identified with the purported known writings of Sister Lucy." (Speckin Report, p. 2) [see website for comparisons between the handwriting of the alleged "Third Secret" and samples of known handwriting of the late Sister Lucia.]

Sister Lucy writes letter to Pope saying his life is in danger and Third Secret of Fatima is not fully revealed...Inside the Vatican News Service October 26, 2001 ROME -- News has just emerged that Sister Lucia dos Santos, the last surviving Fatima visionary, several weeks ago sent Pope John Paul II a letter reportedly warning him that his life is in danger. According to Vatican sources, the letter, claiming that events spoken of in the "Third Secret" of Fatima had not yet occurred, was delivered sometime after September 11 to John Paul by the bishop emeritus of Fatima, Alberto...

LISBON (Reuters) - Portugal has declared Tuesday a day of mourning and politicians have cut back election campaigning to mark the death of Lucia de Jesus dos Santos, the last of three children who claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary at Fatima. Dos Santos, who as a child in 1917 described visions which, decades later, the Catholic Church said foretold the attempt to kill Pope John Paul in 1981, died aged 97 on Sunday at her Carmelite convent in Coimbra, 150 km (95 miles) north of Lisbon. She is to be buried at the convent on Tuesday and her...

I just heard...Sister Lucia passed away! I can't find anything online yet, however...

Sister Lucia Marto, the last of three children who claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary in a series of 1917 apparitions in the town of Fatima, has died, Portuguese media reported. She was 97. Sister Lucia, a Roman Catholic nun, had been ill for the past three months and died Sunday at the Convent of Carmelitas in Coimbra, 190 kilometers (120 miles) north of Lisbon, TSF radio reported, citing family sources. Prime Minister Pedro Santana Lopes called Lucia's death "very emotional news." Lucia and two of her cousins, siblings Jacinta and Francisco, said in 1917 that the Virgin Mary...

LISBON (AFP) - Sister Lucia, the last survivor of the three shepherd children to whom the Virgin Mary is said to have made a series of apparitions in 1917, has died of old age, state television RTP reported. She was 97. She had lived in virtual isolation since 1948 in an old convent in the central Portuguese city of Coimbra that houses the order of the Carmelita Sisters where she dedicated her life to prayer and meditation. Named Lucia de Jesus dos Santos when she was born on March 22, 1907, in recent years she suffered from blindness and deafness....

Well, I've dug around a bit and found how Dan Blather tracked down Lucy Ramirez, Bill Burkett's source for the Bush memos.

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Ethiopia is to allow "Lucy" its world-famous, 3.2-million-year-old skeleton to travel abroad for the first time for an exhibition in the United States that it hopes will encourage more visits by American tourists. The fossil's discovery in 1974 was a landmark in the history of uncovering the origins of humanity, representing the most complete human-like fossil to have been found until that time. Lucy, stored in a vault in an Ethiopian museum, and other Ethiopian artifacts including crowns and scepters of ancient monarchs are due to be put on display at the Houston Museum of Natural...

Home Secretary goes soft over Lucy David Blunkett has said goodbye to his guide dog Lucy as she retired after eight-and-a-half years of loyal service. In an emotionally-charged meeting, Mr Blunkett said farewell to his curly-coated retriever cross and welcomed her bouncy two-and-a-half-year-old sister Sadie. A sprightly version of Lucy, Sadie did not appear in the least bit fazed by all the attention and flashing cameras. Holding on to Sadie's reins, Mr Blunkett spoke of how much he would miss his old companion. "For me it is going to be a terrific wrench," he said. "It is one of those...

Yes. Restrictions on 'unrestricted access'. Fetters on 'unfettered access'. Iraq fooled Charlie Brown again, but not Bush. Rush reported this at 3:30, referring to an article I've yet to find. Hannity at 3:30 said he 'Almost drove off the road' when he heard Rush's find. There's an article out there somewhere that the 'unlimited inspection' offer is limited, to military bases. Inspections are, in fact, limited only to military bases, which makes them useless.