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It was morning in East Africa. The day was May 26, 1886, and along the shore of Lake Victoria the mist still hung thickly in the jungle undergrowth, although the sun had risen well above the horizon. The night-time cacophony of wildlife had long since subsided, and the land was quiet except for the buzzing of insects and the murmur of hushed voices.In a wide clearing on a hill above the lake, a dramatic scene unfolded. Uganda's King Mwanga was holding court in the open-air gathering place in front of his temporary residence, his royal palace being under repair after...

In the latest twist to the document scandal, investigators said the revelation about translators was among several criticisms of America’s ability to deal with the looming al Qaeda threat contained in the “after action” memo on the millennium terror plot that is at the center of the Berger probe. Officials said an appeal to hire more translators familiar with Arabic, Pashto and other key “counter-terrorism” languages at the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency was among 29 proposals to tighten security contained in the report. The report written by former White House counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke also warned of the...

One U.S. service member and two American Department of Defense contractors were killed in a terror attack on a military base in Kenya that houses some U.S. military personnel. The Somali terror group al-Shabab has claimed responsibility for the attack that Kenyan authorities said had been repelled with four militants killed in the fighting. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of our teammates who lost their lives today," U.S. Army Gen. Stephen Townsend, commander of U.S. Africa Command, said in a statement Sunday afternoon. "As we honor their sacrifice, let's also harden our resolve. Alongside our...

A sign commemorating the arrival of the first Africans is displayed at Chesapeake Bay, in Hampton, Va., August 24, 2019. (Michael A. McCoy/Reuters) It didn’t begin or end in the United States. The same people most obsessed with slavery seem to have little interest in the full scope of its history. There has been an effort for decades now — although with new momentum lately, as exemplified by the New York Times’ 1619 project — to identify the United States and its founding with slavery. To the extent that this campaign excavates uncomfortable truths about our history and underlines...

A multinational law enforcement investigation led to the arrest of three alleged human smugglers in Brazil. The ring is charged with trafficking migrants from East Africa and the Middle East to Brazil and then to the U.S. Officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations announced on Wednesday, the arrest of three alleged human smugglers by law enforcement authorities in Brazil. Statements from ICE and the Department of Justice report that Brazilian authorities executed search warrants leading to the arrests of Abdifatah Hussein Ahmed (a Somalian national); Abdessalem Martani (an Algerian national); and Mohsen Khademi Manesh (an...

Newly discovered archaeological sites in southern and northern India have revealed how people lived before and after the colossal Toba volcanic eruption 74,000 years ago... The seven-year project examines the environment that humans lived in, their stone tools, as well as the plants and animal bones of the time. The team has concluded that many forms of life survived the super-eruption, contrary to other research which has suggested significant animal extinctions and genetic bottlenecks. According to the team, a potentially ground-breaking implication of the new work is that the species responsible for making the stone tools in India was Homo...

"We found the very first evidence for archaeological assemblages in association with the Toba ash", says Petraglia. "We found Middle Palaeolithic assemblages below and above the ash indicating the technologies being used at the time of the event. When the stone tool assemblages were analyzed from contexts above and below the ash, we found that they were very similar........We therefore concluded that the Middle Palaeolithic hominins survived the eruption and there was population continuity. This is not what would have been expected based on general theories that the Toba super-eruption decimated populations." Moreover, similar findings published by Christine Lane, et...

...a team of archaeologists excavating in India then claimed to have found evidence that modern humans were there before the eruption possibly as early as 120,000 years ago, much earlier than Europe or the Near East were colonised. These findings, based on the discovery of stone tools below a layer of Toba ash, were published in Science in 2007. Now Professor Richards working principally with the archaeologist Professor Sir Paul Mellars, of the University of Cambridge and the University of Edinburgh, with a team including Huddersfield University s Dr Martin Carr and colleagues from York and Porto has published his...

The idea that humans nearly became extinct 75,000 ago because of a super-volcano eruption is not supported by new data from Africa, scientists say. In the past, it has been proposed that the so-called Toba event plunged the world into a volcanic winter, killing animal and plant life and squeezing our species to a few thousand individuals. An Oxford University-led team examined ancient sediments in Lake Malawi for traces of this climate catastrophe. It could find none... Researchers estimate some 2,000-3,000 cubic kilometres of rock and ash were thrown from the volcano when it blew its top on what is...

Super-eruption: no problem?Tools found before and after a massive eruption hint at a hardy population. Katharine Sanderson Massive eruptions make it tough for life living under the ash cloud. A stash of ancient tools in India hints that life carried on as usual for humans living in the fall-out of a massive volcanic eruption 74,000 years ago. Michael Petraglia, from the University of Cambridge, UK, and his colleagues found the stone tools at a site called Jwalapuram, in Andhra Pradesh, southern India, above and below a thick layer of ash from the eruption of the Toba volcano in Indonesia —...

Kenya will fast-track laws to make wildlife poaching a capital offense as part of the country's bid to conserve flora and fauna, a senior government official said late Thursday. Najib Balala, the Minister for Tourism and Wildlife, said that once the laws are enacted, the offenders of the wildlife crimes will face the death penalty in accordance with the laws of the land. "We have in place the Wildlife Conservation Act that was enacted in 2013 and which fetches offenders a life sentence or a fine of 200,000 U.S. dollars. However, this has not been deterrence enough to curb poaching,...

UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA—The massive Toba volcanic eruption on the island of Sumatra about 74,000 years ago did not cause a six-year-long "volcanic winter" in East Africa and thereby cause the human population in the region to plummet, according to new University of Arizona-led research. The new findings disagree with the Toba catastrophe hypothesis, which says the eruption and its aftermath caused drastic, multi-year cooling and severe ecological disruption in East Africa. "This is the first research that provides direct evidence for the effects of the Toba eruption on vegetation just before and just after the eruption," said lead author Chad...

Two workers at Mercy Hospital and Abbot Northwestern Hospital, both located in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area and owned by Allina Health, have been diagnosed with active tuberculosis (TB). “I can confirm that one hospital worker at Mercy Hospital and one hospital worker at Abbott Northwestern Hospital were diagnosed with active TB,” Allina Health Vice President of Marketing and Communications David Kanihan tells Breitbart News.

Hollywood celebrities, global activists and heads of state are set to gather for an anti-poaching summit in Kenya later this year, Kenyan officials announced this week. More than 120 tons of ivory are to be torched during the April event in a display intended to express the East African country’s opposition to the illegal ivory trade, a spokesman for the president told local reporters. Among those expected to attend are actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Nicole Kidman, musician Elton John, financier George Soros, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Chinese former basketball player Yao Ming, Agence France-Presse reported. Several...

NAIROBI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - At least 15 people with albinism, mostly children, have been killed, wounded, abducted or nearly abducted in East Africa in a surge in violence against albinos in the past six months, the United Nations (U.N.) said on Tuesday. The UN said there has been a marked increase in the number of attacks on albinos in Tanzania, Malawi and Burundi, where their body parts are prized in black magic with three incidents in the past week as gangs roam southern Malawi hunting for them. "These attacks are often stunningly vicious, with children in particular being targeted,"...

Is this really enriching anybody besides the Muslim settlers? A village of just 1,000 residents in Switzerland has been forced to raise taxes because an African refugee and her seven children cost the local authority $65,000 in benefits every month.Hagenbuch, in the Swiss canton of Zurich, is understood to be spending close to a third of its total annual budget on the family after they arrived from Eritrea in East Africa three years ago.The Eritrean woman and her family arrived in Hagenbuch three years ago in possession of a visa allowing her to stay in Switzerland for five years, with...

Whole communities of ape-like creatures may have been killed in volcanic disasters that struck East Africa 18 million years ago... It follows a study of rock deposits close to the once active volcano Kisingiri. These contained fossils of what is believed to be a forerunner of humans called Proconsul... research suggests they may have been caught by a pyroclastic flow. These are clouds of hot gas, dust and rubble which travel at huge speeds from erupting volcanoes. Scientists, who report their findings in the Journal of the Geological Society, believe the abundance of the hominoid fossils may represent "death...

The commander of the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa has been fired for misconduct. Army Maj. Gen. Ralph Baker was relieved of his duties on March 28, according to U.S. Africa Command spokesman Benjamin Benson. Gen. Carter Ham, AFRICOM commander, lost confidence in Baker's ability to lead, but the command isn't releasing any further details at this time because the alleged misconduct is being appealed, Benson said. "The allegations remain under adjudication, so it would be inappropriate to comment at this time," he said. Baker assumed command less than a year ago last May. This incident follows on the...

Gen. Carter Ham is head of the U.S. African command. An Army brigade from Fort Riley, Kan., will begin helping train African militaries beat back a growing terrorist threat posed by al-Qaida. An Army brigade from Fort Riley, Kan., some 4,000, soldiers, will begin helping to train African militaries. The idea is to help African troops beat back a growing terrorist threat posed by al-Qaida. The American troops will head over in small teams over the course of the next year. The Dagger Brigade returned to Kansas last year from a deployment to Iraq, where it trained and advised that...

SNIPPET: "Two U.S. planes have flown radical Muslim preacher Abu Hamza al-Masri and four other suspected terrorists to the United States, hours after Britain's High Court cleared the way for their extradition. The planes departed a Royal Air Force base immediately after the British High Court rejected last-minute appeals by Hamza and the others. The five had raised legal questions about human rights and prison conditions they expected to face in the United States. In rejecting the appeals, the British court cited an “overwhelming public interest” in seeing the extraditions carried out. Hamza is wanted on U.S. charges that include...