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Papua New Guinea's leader has dismissed Joe Biden's suggestion that his uncle was eaten by cannibals there as 'loose' talk that does not reflect the US president's feelings for the country. 'Sometimes you have loose moments,' PNG leader James Marape said in an interview after Biden's contentious remarks, adding that the relationship was stronger than 'one blurry moment'. Biden said last week that his uncle Ambrose Finnegan was shot down over the Pacific during the second World War: '(He) got shot down in an area where there were a lot of cannibals at the time. They never recovered his body.'

On May 14, 1944, an A-20 havoc (serial number 42-86768), with a crew of three and one passenger, departed Momote Airfield, Los Negros Island, for a courier flight to Nadzab Airfield, New Guinea. For unknown reasons, this plane was forced to ditch in the ocean off the north coast of New Guinea. Both engines failed at low altitude, and the aircraft's nose hit the water hard. Three men failed to emerge from the sinking wreck and were lost in the crash. One crew member survived and was rescued by a passing barge. An aerial search the next day found no...

Attention of brain doctors all over the world is focused on a remote region of malevolently enchanted New Guinea mountains.

President Biden twice implied Wednesday that his uncle Ambrose Finnegan was eaten by cannibals in New Guinea after his plane went down during World War II — even though military records show that the aircraft disappeared over the Pacific. “He got shot down in an area where there were a lot of cannibals at the time,” Biden initially told reporters before boarding Air Force One as he departed Scranton, Pa. “They never recovered his body, but the government went back when I went down there and they checked and found some parts of the plane.” After arriving in Pittsburgh, the...

Russia's UN Ambassador concerned tonight that the US and Allied nations will launch military action against Yemen. This after a resolution condemning Yemeni... At least one killed and others hurt in the Lake Tahoe region of California a massive avalanche... "Total Anarchy" It's now Thursday morning in Papua New Guinea where violence broke out when members of the police and military went on strike... In Ohio a successful override vote in the state House of Representatives. The vote overturns Republican Governor Mike DeWine's... US politics former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie out of the 2024... "no intention of permanently occupying...

The endangered southern cassowary, a giant flightless bird native to Australia and New Guinea, was spotted by onlookers on Oct. 31 along the shores of Bingil Bay in the Australian state of Queensland, according to the local government. Beachgoers in Australia last month initially thought it was a turtle or a shark’s dorsal fin in the ocean. But upon closer inspection, they were stunned to see a cassowary – sometimes dubbed "the world’s most dangerous bird" – emerge from the ocean and shake itself off. The endangered southern cassowary, a giant flightless bird native to Australia and New Guinea, was...

Scientists are celebrating a remarkable discovery -- the Attenborough Echidna can't be extinct, as they thought it was, because it was caught on freakin' camera!!! VIDEO AT LINK................ Check out the extremely rare find, captured on a remote camera placed by Oxford University researchers on an expedition to Indonesia. The footage shows the long-beaked creature just strolling in the woods. Dr. James Kempton told BBC News he and his whole team got the impressive footage on "the very last SD card that we looked at, from the very last camera that we collected, on the very last day of our...

The remains of a 24-year-old U.S. pilot who never returned from a bombing mission in World War II have been accounted for and confirmed, officials from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said Monday. Charles G. Reynolds was a U.S. Army Air Forces first lieutenant from Bridgeport, Ohio, the agency said in a news release. In late 1943, he was a pilot assigned to the 498th Bombardment Squadron in the Pacific Theater. On Nov. 27, 1943, the plane that he was a crewmember of did not return from a bombing mission near Wewak, New Guinea, the agency said, because the aircraft...

Battle of the Coral Sea, (May 4–8, 1942) World War II naval and air engagement in which a U.S. fleet turned back a Japanese invasion force that had been heading for strategic Port Moresby in New Guinea. By the end of April 1942 the Japanese were ready to seize control of the Coral Sea (between Australia and New Caledonia) by establishing air bases at Port Moresby in southeastern New Guinea and at Tulagi in the southern Solomons. But Allied intelligence learned of the Japanese plan to seize Port Moresby and alerted all available sea and air power. When the Japanese...

A fireball that blazed through the skies over Papua New Guinea in 2014 was actually a fast-moving object from another star system, according to a recent memo(opens in new tab) released by the U.S. Space Command (USSC). The object, a small meteorite measuring just 1.5 feet (0.45 meter) across, slammed into Earth's atmosphere on Jan. 8, 2014, after traveling through space at more than 130,000 mph (210,000 km/h) — a speed that far exceeds the average velocity of meteors that orbit within the solar system, according to a 2019 study of the object published in the preprint database arXiv. 2019...

Bananas on Table The scientists believe there are at least three wild ‘mystery ancestors’. Scientists are peeling back ancient layers of banana DNA in order to find the “mystery ancestors” before they go extinct. It is believed that humans domesticated bananas for the first time 7,000 years ago on the island of New Guinea. However, the history of banana domestication is complicated, and the distinction between species and subspecies is often unclear. A new study published in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science reveals that this history is significantly more complicated than previously imagined. The findings show that the genomes...

The quake struck at a depth of 90 kilometers (roughly 56 miles) near Kainantu, a town with a population of roughly 8,500 people, the United States Geological Survey reported. The US National Tsunami Warning Center said there was no threat of tsunami waves. Earlier in the day it had said hazardous tsunami waves were possible within 1,000 kilometers (roughly 621 miles) along the coasts of Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. Papua New Guinea is vulnerable to earthquakes because it lies along the "Ring of Fire" in the Pacific Ocean, where shifting tectonic plates push against each other, causing tremors...It is...

Long ago, almost up until the end of the last ice age, a peculiar giant kangaroo roamed the mountainous rainforests of New Guinea.Now, research published by myself and colleagues suggests this kangaroo was not closely related to modern Australian kangaroos. Rather, it represents a previously unknown type of primitive kangaroo unique to New Guinea.Australia used to be home to all manner of giant animals called megafauna, until most of them went extinct about 40,000 years ago. These megafauna lived alongside animals we now consider characteristic of the Australian bush – kangaroos, koalas, crocodiles and the like – but many were...

Wary Pacific nations are resisting ‘good brother’ China’s offer to expand its scope Round one does not go to China. It failed to convince a group of Pacific island nations to sign an agreement to keep receiving security and economic cooperation from itself. They could not shed their suspicions that China was attempting to show off its ‘partners’ in the South Pacific to square off with the QUAD’s growing presence in the Indo-Pacific. Some nations were opposed to the Chinese offer, titled ‘China-Pacific Island Countries Common Development Vision’. What raised eyebrows were the Chinese proposals to train local police, help...

China is attempting to woo Equatorial Guinea into allowing them to build a military base off their coast, according to a report - a move which would give Beijing a foothold in the Atlantic, and deeply worry Washington.... ...Were China to convert the Bata port into a military base, it would enable Beijing to repair and rearm their warships and other naval equipment in the same waters in which the US Eastern Seaboard sits. ....U.S. government lawyers accused the president's son - whose Instagram account shows him meeting world leaders such as the Pope and Israel's prime minister; playing polo,...

The southern cassowary is an enormous, flightless bird native to the forests of New Guinea and Northern Australia...While one should certainly be wary around a cassowary and its dagger-like claws today, a new study found that humans may have raised the territorial, aggressive birds 18,000 years ago in New Guinea..."This behavior that we are seeing is coming thousands of years before the domestication of the chicken," says study author Kristina Douglass, a Penn State archaeologist, in a statement. "And this is not some small fowl, it is a huge, ornery, flightless bird that can eviscerate you. Most likely the dwarf...

They also warned that the move could worsen the already fragile human rights situation in the easternmost region of the country, amid accusations of numerous incidents of violence.Papua officially became a part of Indonesia in 1969, following a plebiscite in which representatives of various Papuan tribes voted in favor of joining the republic. As their votes were cast under a heavy military presence, Papuan separatists, including the Free Papua Movement (OPM), have since called for a fresh vote on self-determination, prompting military operations and retaliatory attacks against Indonesian personnel.

The New Guinea singing dog looks like a cross between a dingo and a wolf. Its head is on the smaller side with small brown eyes, a flat skull and erect ears that are set far apart. Its neck is strong and thick that goes down to its muscular body with a bushy fox-like tail. Their double-coated fur is normally light or dark brown with patches of white throughout its body and often at the tip of its tail. They can also have black or grey face masks. They’re quite small as they grow between 31-46 centimetres (1-1.5 feet) in...

Signs of a cultural shift in toolmaking and lifestyles sparked by farming, previously found at ancient Asian and European sites, have surfaced for the first time on New Guinea. Excavations at a highland site called Waim produced relics of a cultural transition to village life, which played out on the remote island north of Australia around 5,050 to 4,200 years ago. Archaeologist Ben Shaw of the University of New South Wales in Sydney and colleagues report the findings March 25 in Science Advances. Agriculture on New Guinea originated in the island's highlands an estimated 8,000 to 4,000 years ago. But...

A​ tsunami alert was issued for Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands but was later cancelled. The epicenter of the quake was about 28 miles northeast of Kokopo, in New Britain province. The city is on a smaller island northeast of the main island and about 495 miles from the the capital of Port Moresby. Papua New Guinea sits on the Pacific "Ring of Fire," named for its active volcanoes and earthquakes. About 90 percent of Earth's quakes happen along this 25,000-mile horseshoe that loops from South America to Europe and back down to the coast off Australia