DNA test shows Hitler skull is that of a woman

• DNA tests done on Hitler skull fragment
• Result says it's skull of a woman
• Casts doubts on the death of Hitler

ADOLF Hitler may not have died in a bunker after fresh research suggests the skull thought to be the tyrant's was from a woman.

US archaeologist Nick Bellantoni found...

Read more at:

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,26135072-401,00.html

Icebergs

Excerpt from "Icebergs" By Alistair Morgan

While I unpacked the picnic basket Melissa stripped down to her bikini and briefly endured the sharp Atlantic water. For a moment, as she trotted back to her towel, she could have been her mother. She had the same springy rust-colored hair and pale skin; I could clearly see the blue highways of veins that transported her mother’s remaining blood along the contours of her spindly legs. It was only in the eyes that Melissa differed greatly from her mother: her mother’s were a life-giving green, whereas Melissa’s were the color of an overcast sky.
We ate some ham-and-cheese rolls and then settled down on our towels. I had brought the newspaper with me and Melissa had her iPod. She placed the headphones over her ears, removed her bikini top, and lay back to gather what sun she could. I hid behind my newspaper.
Read more here:
http://www.theparisreview.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5814

U.S. Debt Crisis May Cause ‘Fall of Rome’ Scenario

Sept. 23 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. budget deficits will continue to pile up in the next decade, eventually reaching an unsustainable level that may result in an economic collapse, according to Richard Duncan, author of “The Dollar Crisis.”

The U.S. has little chance of resolving its deteriorating financial position because....

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aJ6jnKWHrQgI

BACKWARDS BAILOUT

Feds May Turn To Healthy Banks For Billions In Rescue Funds

WASHINGTON — Tired of the government bailing out banks? Get ready for this: officials may soon ask banks to bail out the government.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/business/22bailout.html

Why I threw the shoe

"I travelled through my burning land and saw with my own eyes the pain of the victims, and heard with my own ears the screams of the orphans and the bereaved. And a feeling of shame haunted me like an ugly name because I was powerless..."

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/17/why-i-threw-shoe-bush

Blackwater involved in Bhutto and Hariri hits: former Pakistani army chief

Pakistan’s former chief of army staff, General Mirza Aslam Beg (ret.), has said the U.S. private security company Blackwater was directly involved in the assassinations of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto and former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.


http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=203224

Drug to erase bad memories could see the end of troubling flashbacks

A memory-cleansing drug that has the ability to remove any recollection of unhappy or embarrassing incidents could be developed by scientists.

Childhood teasing, the unpleasant experience of losing a pet and the upsetting memories of a failed love affair could all be wiped from people's minds.

The possibility of a memory drug for human consumption has been raised following successful animal trials by Andreas Lüthi, of the Friedrich Miescher Institute in.....

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1213266/Lets-just-forget-Drug-erase-bad-memories-end-breakup-flashbacks.html?ITO=1490#ixzz0RMwl5mVv

Where in the World?

We asked six travel writers: Where would you like to go?


http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/What-Is-Your-Dream-Travel-Destination.html

The Great American Road Trip

Excerpt from Paul Theroux's article..."the Great American Road Trip."

"What made Barstow's billboards a peculiar blight was the contrast with everything that lay around them—the landscape that was so stark and dramatic as a brooding expanse of withered shrubs and fat cactuses, the stony roads that seemed to lead nowhere, the bleak and beautiful backdrop that seemed as though no one had laid a hand on it, with lively colorations at a distance and up close so dry, like a valley of bones looking as though they could not support life. I had seen deserts in Patagonia and Turkmenistan, northern Kenya and Xinjiang in western China; but I had never seen anything like this. The revelation of the Mojave Desert was (peering past the billboards) not just its illusion of emptiness but its assertive power of exclusion, the low bald hills and far-off mountains looking toasted and forbidding under the darkening sky.

That sky slipped lower, scattered rain that quickly evaporated on the road, and then gouts of marble-size hailstones swept over the road ahead, like a plague of mothballs. And in that whitening deluge I could make out the Ten Commandments, set out by the roadside in the manner of Burma-Shave signs, You Shall Not Murder... You Shall Not Commit Adultery, like a word to the wise, until the state line into Nevada, and just beyond, the little town of Primm, overshadowed by its big bulking casinos."

Read more:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/The-Long-Way-Home-USA.html?c=y&page=1

MOSUL MEMORIES

I have fond memories of playing dominoes at a tea shop overlooking the Tigris River in the northern city of Mosul. It is right at the end of the iron bridge that connects the old part of the town with the western suburbs, next to a huge market area. A charming open lawn shaded by willow trees, it was a place where men would gather to escape the heat of the sun, chat, and play endless games of dominoes, tiles clacking on the small tables at furious speeds.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/bizarrebazaar/2008/06/mosul-memories.html

China alarmed by US money printing

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/6146957/China-alarmed-by-US-money-printing.html

The US Federal Reserve's policy of printing money to buy Treasury debt threatens to set off a serious decline of the dollar and compel China to redesign its foreign reserve policy, according to a top member of the Communist hierarchy.

"New York Sleeps" and other art...

http://www.curators.de/en/artists
and...more Christopher Thomas here...
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/predawn-images-of-an-eerily-empty-city/ Enjoy!