Aboriginal Australians, Pacific Islanders carry DNA of unknown human species, research analysis suggests

The analysis suggests the DNA is unlikely to come from Neanderthals or Denisovans, but from a third extinct hominid, previously unknown to archaeologists. Statistical geneticist Ryan Bohlender and his team investigated the percentages of extinct hominid DNA in modern humans. They found discrepancies in previous analyses and found that interbreeding between Neanderthals and Denisovans was not the whole story to our ancestors' genetic makeup.
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How the government lost its case against the Oregon occupiers

What happened at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge earlier this year was no whodunit. By Matt Pearce.
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Mark Twain Has a Historic Haunted Mansion That Offers Spooky Ghost Tours

Iconic American author Mark Twain, best known for his stories about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, has more than just books as a claim to fame. A lesser-known aspect of Twain is that his former residence is haunted. By Sara Barnes.
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The Price of Gold

Over a period of 20 days, Thom Pierce travelled around South Africa's Eastern Cape, into Lesotho and up to Johannesburg to find and photograph the miners, and widows, suffering from silicosis and pulmonary tuberculosis as a result of working in the gold mines.
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What Happens When the Police Misidentify You as the Dallas Shooter

Mark Hughes took his AR-15 to the Dallas Black Lives Matter protest to make a point about gun rights. The police ended up proving it for him. By Darryl Campbell.
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Dribbling in the Dark

What it’s like to be 14 in a new school, a new city away from home—and the wrong ethnicity in a divided country. By Andrew W. Jones.
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Richard Hakluyt and Early English Travel

"The Principle Navigations," Richard Hakluyt's great championing of Elizabethan colonial exploration, remains one of the most important collections of English travel writing ever published. As well as the escapades of famed names such as Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh, Nandini Das looks at how the book preserves many stories of lesser known figures that surely would have been otherwise lost.
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The e-waste mountains - in pictures

Sustainable development goal target 12.5 is to reduce waste, but with a planet increasingly dependent on technology, is that even possible? Kai Loeffelbein’s photographs of e-waste recycling in Guiyu, southern China show what happens to discarded computers
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Paper Trails: Rolled Newspaper Animal Sculptures by Chie Hitotsuyama

In 2007, artist Chie Hitotsuyama took an illustration job with an NGO and traveled to Africa. There she encountered a rhino that had been rescued from poachers who prey on the beautiful animal only for its tusk, which to this day, are bought and sold for high prices. “I still remember the kindness in that Rhino’s eyes,” she says, speaking about the encounter, which inspired her to begin making animal-themed artwork.
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Inside the Shadowy PR Firm That’s Lobbying for Regime Change in Syria

Posing as a non-political solidarity organization, the Syria Campaign leverages local partners and media contacts to push the U.S. into toppling another Middle Eastern government. By Max Blumenthal.
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The Transporting Promise of 20th-Century Travel Posters

Travel posters from the early to mid-20th century.
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Syria’s “Voice of Conscience” Has a Message for the West

Yassin al-Haj Saleh is a fierce critic of an international consensus that has come to see the Syrian conflict in Assad’s terms—as a fight against terrorism. By Murtaza Hussain and Marwan Hisham.
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A Floating, Urban Forest Where the Food Is Free

Conceived of by artist Mary Mattingly, “Swale” models what New York City might look like if food were considered not only an economic good, but a public one.
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The Suburban Horror of the Indian Burial Ground

In the 1970s and 1980s, homeowners were terrified by the idea that they didn't own the land they'd just bought. By Colin Dickey.
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The Rio You Didn’t Know Existed

Vincent Catala Represents the City Beyond Clichés. Breaking News: Rio de Janeiro is not all sun, parties and samba.
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Lady Liberty-Happy 130th Birthday

The sun sets behind the Statue of Liberty in New York's Harbor as seen from Brooklyn.
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Silkpunk Sci-Fi Author Ken Liu Talks Fantasy, Technology and the Future of the Human Race

An interview with the author of The Grace of Kings and The Wall of Storms. By Ken Liu.
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A Book By Its Cover

The strange history of books bound in human skin. By Megan Rosenbloom.
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Happy Halloween, Motherfucker!

It was a nice day for some painting. :-)
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Hunting Wild Pigs Could Save Hawaii's Coral Reefs

Chad Wiggins, Marine Program Director at The Nature Conservancy Hawaii, is working towards solutions to manage the hooved animals’ growing population numbers, and in effect, hopefully provide relief for coral to survive the effects of climate change.
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10 words that don't mean what they used to: when meerkats were monkeys and bimbos were boys

Did you know that alcohol originally meant eyeshadow, clouds were rocks or that a moment once lasted precisely 90 seconds? Read on, girls and bimbos …
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Whaling watchdog shrinks loophole allowing Japan's 'scientific' hunts

Resolution imposes stricter reviews of whales killed under the scientific programme which Japan’s critics say it abuses to hunt for meat
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The 19th Century Yoruba repatriation

In the 19th century freed slaves from Brazil, Cuba and Sierra Leone returned to Nigeria. It was the birth of the Yoruba nation and identity! Read about Nago and Lukumi in Lagos.
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What caused the French Revolution?

What rights do people have, and where do they come from? Who gets to make decisions for others, and on what authority? And how can we organize society to meet people’s needs? Tom Mullaney shows how these questions challenged an entire nation during the upheaval of the French Revolution.
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A Chinese billionaire is staking his legacy — and thousands of American jobs — on this factory in Ohio

The next chapter of globalization is already unfolding inside a Chinese billionaire's factory in Ohio.
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To Help More People In Need, Researchers Urge Aid Groups: Do Less

Aid groups are falling short on some of the world's worst crises, says researcher Sara Pantuliano. There is a way to fix it — but it might not be popular.
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The ‘White Helmets’ Controversy

The saturation of propaganda from massive investments by Western interests in NGOs like the “White Helmets” has skewed the public’s understanding of foreign crises, such as Iraq in 2003 and Syria today, writes Rick Sterling.
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We Salted Nannie: A True Southern Ghost Story

In 2014, Tom Maxwell rented a historic home for cheap. Nine months later, he and his family ran away as fast as they could, fleeing a parade of spirits and apparitions. Today, three centuries of bad mojo in a house called Nannie.
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Canadian Mining’s Dark Heart

Tallying the human cost of gold in one of the most remote places on Earth. By Richard Poplak.
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The Caucasian’s Guide to Black Neighborhoods

Harlem is no longer an all-Black mecca and there are scores of White people who are beginning to receive mail at addresses on Martin Luther King Boulevards across this nation. With this integration comes an array of situations that our Caucasian comrades might not be prepared for. Never fear. By Michael Harriot / NegusWhoRead.
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Made in China: three ways Chinese business has evolved from imitation to innovation

There is a tidal wave of competition approaching the developed world from China – and foreign businesses have much to learn how Chinese companies evolved from imitators to innovators.
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Brexit is not the will of the British people – it never has been

The difference between leave and remain was 3.8 percent or 1.3 million in favour of Leave. However, in a close analysis, virtually all the polls show that the UK electorate wants to remain in the EU, and has wanted to remain since referendum day. Moreover, according to predicted demographics, the UK will want to remain in the EU for the foreseeable future.
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American politics at its most uncivil — in 1804

To anyone complaining that American politics in 2016 is uncivil, consider this: in 1804, the vice president of the US shot a founding father in a duel.
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Heroes, Fantasies, and Families: What Went Into the First Korean Novels?

An excerpt from "The Explorer’s History of Korean Fiction in Translation," Charles Montgomery’s book-in-progress that attempts to provide a concise history, and understanding, of Korean literature as represented in translation.
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In the Death Zone

Confronting the true danger on top of the world's tallest mountain. By Gabriel Filippi and Brett Popplewell.
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The crisis in Aleppo, explained

The key battle in the Syrian civil war.
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After South Africa's Withdrawal, How does the ICC Stay Relevant?

The Rainbow Nation's decision to withdraw from the International Criminal Court highlighted its increasingly shaky support from governments across the continent, but their reasons are more complex than headline-grabbing claims the court is racist.
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Dutch to share their dark masterpiece, 70 years on

"The Evenings" is lauded in the Netherlands as a modern classic, while its author, Gerard Reve, is a literary titan. Nearly 70 years after the novel’s publication and 10 years after Reve’s death, it has finally been translated into English. Set in Holland just after the second world war, it is a powerful story of an alienated young office worker who is cynical about his loving, middle-class parents and friends. The novel went on to find such appreciation that it has never been out of print and was ranked by the Society of Dutch Literature as the country’s best novel of all time.
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It's Perfectly Legal To Tell Fred Nile To Fuck Off, Judge Says

Cat Rose, Patrick Wright, and April Holcombe were captured chanting that bigots should “fuck off” at a Community Action Against Homophobia (CAAH) protest against conservative Christian Democrat politician Fred Nile in September 2015. Rose and Wright, both co-convenors of CAAH, were given on-the-spot penalty notices and Holcombe was tracked down by police days later from video footage.
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I went undercover with a militia on the US-Mexico border. Here’s what I saw

A firsthand look inside America's resurgent paramilitary movement. By Shane Bauer.
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Syria and the Cycle of American Intervention

Washington's zeal for humanitarian action ebbs and flows. And many are dying as a result. By Dominic Tierney.
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The genius and stupidity of corporate America are on display when companies rebrand for new countries

When Coca-Cola was first sold in China, some called it “bite the wax tadpole.” To others, it was “female horse fastened with wax,” or “wax-flattened mare.” These inscrutable names were the unfortunate result of shopkeepers’ makeshift translations—they used any set of Chinese characters that sounded vaguely like “Coca-Cola.”
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Candy

Taking the Wrapper off a Texas Legend. By Gary Cartwright. (Dec. 1976)
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Living in China’s Expanding Deserts

People on the edges of the country’s vast seas of sand are being displaced by climate change. By Josh Haner, Edward Wong, Derek Watkins and Jeremy White.
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Explorers find more than 40 ancient shipwrecks in the Black Sea

Amazingly well preserved due to low oxygen levels in the water.
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Russians Rush to Rebuild Bomb Shelters

In Moscow and beyond, taking stock and condition of their bomb shelters.
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Gardens by France’s Most Revered Landscape Designer

Louis Benech looks back on his seminal projects, testaments to his glorious gift and to the constant, occasionally heart-rending, effects of time.
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The terrifying tale of how Britain’s most secret court imprisoned a grandmother

Yet another strange and shocking case has now emerged from the shadowy Court of Protection, the most secretive court in Britain. By Christopher Booker. (Oct. 16, 2016)
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The Demonisation of the Working-Class Shames Our Nation

Something very nasty is happening. A group of people, the most exploited within our society, are under attack. Their marginalisation has been going on for years. But it has accelerated disturbingly since 23 June. Few among the political class really understand them. These people live in modest homes in the grittier parts of the country. They work in factories, call centres and on building sites, often for low wages. They like football and watch Coronation Street. They sometimes hold old-fashioned views around things such as religion, family and nationhood. Some of them drive white vans.
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Soon

The Communist Party wants to harness vast troves of online data to score people and companies on their behavior.
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