More than 140 people are feared dead after a passenger plane swerved off the runway at Madrid's Barajas airport.

A spokesman for the Spanish emergency services, Herbigio Corral, said only 28 people survived the crash.

The Spanair flight had just taken off for the Canary Islands at about 1420 local time with 172 people on board. It is thought the left engine caught fire.

Helicopters were called in to dump water onto the plane. More than 70 ambulances were seen leaving the scene.

MI5 has concluded that there is no easy way to identify those who become involved in terrorism in Britain, according to a classified internal research document on radicalisation seen by the Guardian.

The sophisticated analysis, based on hundreds of case studies by the security service, says there is no single pathway to violent extremism.

It concludes that it is not possible to draw up a typical profile of the "British terrorist" as most are "demographically unremarkable" and simply reflect the communities in which they live.

The "restricted" MI5 report takes apart many of the common stereotypes about those involved in British terrorism.

They are mostly British nationals, not illegal immigrants and, far from being Islamist fundamentalists, most are religious novices. Nor, the analysis says, are they "mad and bad".

Those over 30 are just as likely to have a wife and children as to be loners with no ties, the research shows.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling coalition has unveiled new far-reaching rules to head off powerful foreign-owned state-controlled funds going on a shopping spree for companies in Europe's biggest economy.

Of particular concern to Merkel's conservative Christian Democrat-led coalition is the threat posed to key German industries, such as telecoms, banks and energy sectors, by cash-rich state funds from Russia, the Middle East and China, so-called sovereign wealth funds.

 

The proposals, which were unveiled on Wednesday, Aug. 20, and still need parliamentary approval, will mean moves from non-European Union controlled investment groups or companies to buy a stake of 25 percent or more in strategic parts of German industry can in future be blocked.

Gas leak raises UK energy price worries

StatoilHydro, Norway's national oil company, said it had discovered a leak in the pipeline bringing gas onshore from the Kvitebjorn offshore field, and that the pipe would have to remain closed for repairs, possibly until the spring of next year.

StatoilHydro said it was "hoping" to repair the pipeline sooner, but spring 2009 was the only target date it could offer.

The fields affected were expected to produce about 7.4bn cubic metres of gas this year, which would have been available for sale in Britain and continental Europe. The UK is expected to use about 90bn cubic metres of gas this year.

Patrick Heren of ICIS Heren, a consultancy, said: "Relative to peak UK supply, the amount of gas affected is a relatively small proportion. But at the margin, when supply is tight over the winter, if you take a small amount out of the market that is going to have a severe effect on prices."

Following the announcement, the futures market price of gas for the coming winter jumped 15 per cent, from 90.75p per therm to 104p, close to the record hit in June.

The wholesale price of electricity, which is strongly influenced by the cost of gas because of its use in power generation, also rose sharply, with baseload power for the first quarter of 2009 rising about 9 per cent, according to Spectron, an energy marketplace.

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW Published by MIT September/October 2008
First Tidal Power Generator
This summer, the first commercial electrical generator to draw power from the ocean tide began supplying Northern Ireland with energy. Installed in an inlet near Belfast, the generator works much like a wind turbine, with massive blades turned by the tide's current. The angle at which the blades meet the current can be changed: rotating the blade face 180º lets the turbine catch the tide in both directions, while smaller rotations lessen the force exerted on the turbine, preventing damage.

Credit: Marine Current Turbines
Product: SeaGen

Cost: 30 to 40 cents per kilowatt-hour; a planned installation with seven turbines will lower that cost to about 20 cents per kilowatt-hour

Source: www.seageneration.co.uk

Company: Marine Current Turbines

Picture at link

If sanity be culturally normative, then by the norms of this culture I claim insanity.

The death of 10 French soldiers has shocked France. The Socialists are demanding a debate about the Afghanistan mission, but President Sarkozy has defended the Hindu Kush deployment as his party lashed out at the opposition for attempting to politicize a national tragedy.

 France's President Nicolas Sarkozy speaks with French soldiers at Camp Warehouse in Kabul on Wednesday. With news sinking in on Wednesday that France suffered its biggest military loss of life in 25 years, the political opposition in Paris is demanding a rethink of the country's mission in Afghanistan.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy rushed to Afghanistan and visited his country's troops on Wednesday morning in a show of support after 10 of their comrades were killed and 21 injured during an ambush on Monday and in fierce fighting that continued into Tuesday. France has about 2,600 soldiers stationed in Afghanistan, and Sarkozy said they must remain there.

"France is resolved to pursue the fight against terrorism, for democracy and liberty," Sarkozy said. "I don't have any doubt about that. We have to be here."

WASHINGTON, Aug. 20 (UPI) -- French President Nicholas Sarkozy took a leaf out of Margaret Thatcher's guidelines on leadership Wednesday with his surprise visit to Afghanistan following the deaths of 10 French troops in a mountain battle east of Kabul.

It was the largest loss of life for the French armed forces from hostile action in a quarter-century since the dark day when 58 French paratroopers were killed in their sleep in a terrorist attack outside Beirut on Oct. 23, 1983, on the same night that a parallel attack killed 241 U.S. Marines sleeping in their barracks.

Sarkozy's response echoed that of British Prime Minister Thatcher after 18 British soldiers were killed by an Irish Republican Army bomb booby-trap at Warrenpoint, County Down, in Northern Ireland in 1979. Thatcher flew at once to the devastated units to show her personal identification with them.

U.S. President George Bush is again warning Russia that it must not lay claim to the breakaway Georgian republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. VOA White House correspondent Scott Stearns reports, the Bush administration says Russian troops are beginning to withdraw from Georgia but not fast enough.

For nearly two weeks, President Bush says the world has watched a young democracy in Georgia under siege following a Russian invasion that he says was a disproportionate response to a long-simmering conflict in the breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Mr. Bush told a convention of American military veterans meeting in Florida that those republics are part of Georgia's internationally-recognized borders.

"The United States of America will continue to support Georgia's democracy. Our military will continue to provide needed humanitarian aid to the Georgian people. South Ossetia and Abkhazia are part of Georgia, and the United States will work with our allies to ensure Georgia's independence and territorial integrity," he said.

Two devastating suicide bomb attacks in as many days have raised fresh doubts this week about Algeria's ability to deal with a re-branded Islamist insurgency.

The attacks are the latest in a series of car bombings that have halted a slow return towards normality in the North African country.

They expose the failure of a two-pronged policy combining military crackdowns with offers of amnesty to rebel militants, observers say.

The attacks shattered the relative calm that held in Algeria during the first six months of this year.

KARACHI, Aug 20 (IPS) - `'For you it's just another story. If you want the truth go to Ghazni where you will get more than I can ever tell you about my sister," said a distraught Fouzia Siddiqi, speaking with IPS, in a voice breaking with helpless desperation.

Fouzia's younger sister, Aafia Siddiqi, 35, made headlines after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced, on Aug. 4, her "arrest" for attempting to "murder and assault" United States' officers and employees outside the governor's office in Ghazni, Afghanistan, on Jul. 17. No soldiers were reported injured in the incident but Aafia received bullet injuries.

Aafia, a neuroscientist, has since been lodged in a Manhattan jail and the preliminary hearing of her case set for Sep. 3. According to charges framed against her in a New York court, she was, at the time of her arrest, found carrying documents describing how to make explosives and chemical, biological and radiological weapons. She, allegedly, also had a list of landmarks in the U.S. and `'chemical substances'' in sealed containers.

Aafia's resurfacing in Ghazni, five years after her disappearance in the southern port city of Karachi, has shaken the nation. The whereabouts of her three children, who were with her at the time she was kidnapped, remain unclear.

Syria sought to revive its security alliance with Russia today, when President Bashar al-Assad arrived in Moscow to clinch a series of military agreements, raising fears that the new Cold War that has erupted in the Caucasus will spill over into the Middle East.

"Our position is that we are ready to co-operate with Russia in any project that can strengthen its security," the Syrian leader told Russian newspapers at the start of his two-day trip. "I think Russia really has to think of the response it will make when it finds itself closed in a circle."

Mr al-Assad said that he would be discussing the deployment of Russian missiles on Syrian territory, possibly the Iskander system. Syrians is also interested in buying Russian anti-aircraft and tanks missiles.

In return, Moscow is expected to propose a revival of its Cold War era naval base at the Syrian port of Tartus on the Mediterranean. Some Russian reports even suggest that Moscow is deepening the port it to accommodate a fleet of warships. Russia may have similar ambitions for Latakia. Either port would give the Russian Navy its foothold in the Mediterranean for two decades.

[Murdoch Alert]

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind

Fannie and Freddie crisis deepens

The US Treasury on Wednesday backed away from assurances that it would not have to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as the crisis surrounding the mortgage groups deepened with their shares falling for a third day.

Although it was granted new powers to extend its credit lines to Fannie and Freddie and invest in their equity last month, the Treasury has been adamant it does not expect to have to make use of the new authority.

But on Wednesday, a Treasury spokeswoman declined to repeat that assurance. Instead, she said Treasury was "vigilantly" monitoring market developments and was "focused on efforts that will encourage market stability, mortgage availability and protecting the taxpayer".

(...)

Fannie and Freddie shares have fallen 32.49 and 37.09 per cent respectively since Monday, as investors have grown concerned about a government intervention that would dilute shareholders and could affect holders of the groups' preferred stock and subordinated debt issues.

ICBC set for world record profit

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China is expected to report the biggest profit of any bank in the world when it releases its interim report in Beijing on Thursday.

ICBC, already the largest bank in the world by market capitalisation, has indicated that its first-half net profit grew by more than 50 per cent, from Rmb41bn ($6bn) in the same period last year. But analysts and Chinese bankers estimate profits are likely to have grown by more than 60 per cent to about Rmb67bn ($9.7bn) .

Most of China's state-dominated banking sector has been left virtually unscathed by the global credit crisis because of limited exposure to overseas markets and the absence of sophisticated credit instruments that have caused problems elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the global turmoil has hammered its big western competitors, most of which reported profit falls or losses in the first half. HSBC, which reported the largest profits of any bank last year, recently said first-half net profit fell 29 per cent to $7.72bn from a year earlier.

(ironically, of course, HSBC is the "Hong-Kong and Shanghai Banking Corp.)

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

Lehman Brothers, the beleaguered US investment bank, held secret talks to sell up to 50 per cent of its shares to South Korean or Chinese parties in the first week of August but failed to reach agreement with either.

The South Koreans and Chinese walked away after concluding that Lehman was asking too high a price, said New York-based people familiar with the potential buyers. Lehman declined to comment.

The talks reflect the growing pressure on Dick Fuld, Lehman's chief executive, to raise capital ahead of the mid-September earnings report, which, analysts said, could include more writedowns of $4bn (£2bn), bringing the total so far to $12bn. Lehman shares have fallen nearly 85 per cent since early 2007 and its market value is now about $9.5bn.

In addition to selling a stake in itself, Lehman is considering selling all or part of its holdings, including its troubled $40bn commercial real estate portfolio and its asset management arm, which includes Neuberger Berman. Analysts said the asset management arm was the crown jewel that could be worth up to $10bn.

In the first week of August, Lehman held parallel talks with the government-owned Korea Development Bank and China's Citic Securities at its headquarters in New York's Times Square area.

The South Koreans discussed a two-step process under which KDB would buy a 25 per cent stake directly from Lehman and another 25 per cent of the shares though a market tender.

United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is supposedly a specialist on Russia, yet one would not know that by looking at her triumphal statement that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will defeat Russian aims in Georgia.

Rice proclaimed boldly that Russia "is becoming more and more the outlaw in this conflict", referring to the Russian offensive into Georgia following Georgia's attack on the rebel region of South Ossetia. "They intend and probably still do intend to strangle Georgia and its economy," Rice said in reference to the Russian forces that remain in Georgia.

However, at an emergency summit of NATO's foreign ministers in Brussels, European countries agreed to suspend formal contacts with Moscow until its troops pulled out, but refused to bow to American pressure for more severe penalties. NATO is "considering seriously the implications of Russia's actions for the NATO-Russia relationship", said a statement of the 26-member alliance.

The fact is, Russia has finally drawn a line in the sand and, for all practical purposes, the buck stops in the South Caucasus. Short of destabilizing Europe, there is practically nothing the US can do about it, except fire more verbal volleys, as Rice has been doing relentlessly since the outbreak of Russia-Georgia hostilities on August 7-8. And even the rhetoric has fallen on deaf ears in Moscow,

PERTILGETE, Venezuela: Venezuela seized control of foreign-owned cement plants Tuesday in a show of strength as President Hugo Chávez moves forward with a plan to extend socialist policies throughout the country.

To the cheers of workers gathered at the gates, the government took over the installations belonging to the Mexican cement company Cemex at midnight after the two sides failed to reach an agreement in negotiations over the nationalization of the cement industry.

As part of the takeover of cement plants, Venezuela struck deals to buy majority stakes in the local operations of the European cement makers Holcim and Lafarge, following a pattern of compensating the targets of government takeovers.

The government said it paid $552 million for an 85 percent stake in Holcim of Switzerland and $267 million for 89 percent of the shares in Lafarge of France. But Venezuela said Cemex was asking for too much.

The Puppet Masters Behind
Georgia President Saakashvili

The famous `Rose Revolution of November 2003 that forced the ageing Edouard Shevardnadze from power and swept the then 36 year old US university graduate into power was run and financed by the US State Department, the Soros Foundations, and agencies tied to the Pentagon and US intelligence community.

Saakashvili was brought to power in a US-engineered coup run on the ground by US-funded NGO's, in an application of a new method of US destabilization of regimes it considered hostile to its foreign policy agenda.

The NGOs were coordinated by the US Ambassador to Georgia, Richard Miles, who had just arrived in Tbilisi fresh from success in orchestrating the CIA-backed toppling of Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade, using the same NGOs. Miles, who is believed to be an undercover intelligence specialist, supervised the Saakashvili coup.

It involved US billionaire George Soros' Open Society Georgia Foundation. It involved the Washington-based Freedom House whose chairman was former CIA chief James Woolsey. It involved generous financing from the US Congress-financed National Endowment for Democracy, an agency created by Ronald Reagan in the 1980's to "do privately what the CIA used to do," namely coups against regimes the US Government finds unfriendly.

The US State Department funded the Georgia Liberty Institute headed by Saakashvili, US approved candidate to succeed the no-longer cooperative Shevardnadze. The Liberty Institute in turn created "Kmara!" which translates "Enough!" According to a BBC report at the time, Kmara! Was organized in spring of 2003 when Saakashvili along with hand-picked Georgia student activists were paid by the Soros Foundation to go to Belgrade to learn from the US-financed Otpor activists that toppled Milosevic. They were trained in Gene Sharp's "non-violence as a method of warfare" by the Belgrade Center for Nonviolent Resistance.

 

Regulators had long classified a private Swiss energy conglomerate called Vitol as a trader that primarily helped industrial firms that needed oil to run their businesses.

But when the Commodity Futures Trading Commission examined Vitol's books last month, it found that the firm was in fact more of a speculator, holding oil contracts as a profit-making investment rather than a means of lining up the actual delivery of fuel. Even more surprising to the commodities markets was the massive size of Vitol's portfolio -- at one point in July, the firm held 11 percent of all the oil contracts on the regulated New York Mercantile Exchange.

The discovery revealed how an individual financial player had gained enormous sway over the oil market without the knowledge of regulators. Other CFTC data showed that a significant amount of trading activity was concentrated in the hands of just a few speculators...

CFTC documents show Vitol was one of the most active traders of oil on NYMEX as prices reached record levels. By June 6, for instance, Vitol had acquired a huge holding in oil contracts, betting prices would rise. The contracts were equal to 57.7 million barrels of oil -- about three times the amount the United States consumes daily. That day, the price of oil spiked $11 to settle at $138.54. Oil prices eventually peaked at $147.27 a barrel on July 11 before falling back to settle at $114.98 yesterday.

Jeremy Jackson, senior scientist emeritus of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, asserts in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that the following steps, if taken immediately, could reverse the demise of the oceans: Establish marine reserves, enforce fishing regulations, implement aquaculture, remove subsidies on fertilizer use, muster human ingenuity to limit fossil fuel consumption, buy time by establishing local conservation measures.

In 2001, Jackson and 18 co-authors published a landmark paper in the journal Science, "Historical Overfishing and the Recent Collapse of Coastal Ecosystems," in which they made the case that environments that we perceive as relatively pristine have, in fact, been radically altered by centuries of human exploitation.

Jackson has been on the lecture circuit since then. "Our amnesia about what is natural is the greatest threat to the environment," said Jackson, in the youTube version of his talk "The State of the Ocean," delivered at Middlebury College, in Vermont, in 2007.

The habitats of wild bird species are shifting in response to global warming, but not fast enough to keep pace with rising temperatures, according to a study released Wednesday.

Researchers in France also found that the delicate balance of wildlife in different ecosystems is changing up to eight times more quickly than previously suspected, with potentially severe consequences for some species.

"The flora and fauna around us are shifting over time due to climate change," said lead author Victor Devictor, a researcher at the French National Museum of Natural History.

"The result is desynchronisation. If birds and the insects upon which they depend do not react in the same way, we are headed for an upheaval in the interaction between species," he explained in a telephone interview.

These "mismatches" are likely to become greater over time, and could eventually threaten some birds with extinction, he added.

The west is strategically wrong on Georgia

In Georgia, Russia has loudly declared that it will no longer capitulate to the west. After two decades of humiliation Russia has decided to snap back. Before long, other forces will do the same. As a result of its overwhelming power, the west has intruded into the geopolitical spaces of other dormant countries. They are no longer dormant, especially in Asia.

Indeed, most of the world is bemused by western moralising on Georgia. America would not tolerate Russia intruding into its geopolitical sphere in Latin America. Hence Latin Americans see American double standards clearly. So do all the Muslim commentaries that note that the US invaded Iraq illegally, too. Neither India nor China is moved to protest against Russia. It shows how isolated is the western view on Georgia: that the world should support the underdog, Georgia, against Russia. In reality, most support Russia against the bullying west. The gap between the western narrative and the rest of the world could not be greater.

It is therefore critical for the west to learn the right lessons from Georgia. It needs to think strategically about the limited options it has. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, western thinkers assumed the west would never need to make geopolitical compromises. It could dictate terms. Now it must recognise reality. The combined western population in North America, the European Union and Australasia is 700m, about 10 per cent of the world's population. The remaining 90 per cent have gone from being objects of world history to subjects. The Financial Times headline of August 18 2008 proclaimed: "West in united front over Georgia". It should have read: "Rest of the world faults west on Georgia". Why? A lack of strategic thinking.

(...)

Western thinkers must decide where the real long-term challenge is. If it is the Islamic world, the US should stop intruding into Russia's geopolitical space and work out a long-term engagement with China. If it is China, the US must win over Russia and the Islamic world and resolve the Israel-Palestine issue. This will enable Islamic governments to work more closely with the west in the battle against al-Qaeda.

The biggest paradox facing the west is that it is at last possible to create a safer world order. The number of countries wanting to become "responsible stakeholders" has never been higher. Most, including China and India, want to work with the US and the west. But the absence of a long-term coherent western strategy towards the world and the inability to make geopolitical compromises are the biggest obstacles to a stable world order. Western leaders say the world is becoming a more dangerous place, yet few admit that their flawed thinking is bringing this about. Georgia illustrates the results of a lack of strategic thinking.

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW Published by MIT Friday, August 15, 2008
Natural Gas to Gasoline
A firm claims to have a cheaper way to harness natural gas.

By Tyler Hamilton

A Texas company says that it has developed a cheaper and cleaner way to convert natural gas into gasoline and other liquid fuels, making it economical to tap natural-gas reserves that in the past have been too small or remote to develop.

The company behind the technology, Dallas-based Synfuels International, says that the process uses fewer steps and is far more efficient than more established techniques based on the Fischer-Tropsch process.....

A Synfuels gas-to-liquids (GTL) refinery goes through several steps to convert natural gas into gasoline but claims to do so with better overall efficiency. First, natural gas is broken down, or "cracked," under high temperatures into acetylene, a simpler hydrocarbon. A separate liquid-phase step involving a proprietary catalyst then converts 98 percent of the acetylene into ethylene, a more complex hydrocarbon. This ethylene can then easily be converted into a number of fuel products, including high-octane gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. And the end product is free of sulfur.

"We're able to produce a barrel of gasoline for much cheaper than Fischer-Tropsch can," says Kenneth Hall, coinventor of the process and former head of Texas A&M University's department of chemical engineering. Hall says that a Fischer-Tropsch plant is lucky to produce a barrel of gasoline for $35 but that a much smaller Synfuels refinery could produce the same barrel for $25. Under current fuel prices, such a plant could pay for itself in as little as four years, the company says.

-Skip-

Ali Mansoori, a professor of chemical engineering and physics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, says that the process seems far less complicated than those found in a Fischer-Tropsch plant. "The numbers reported for conversion efficiency and selectivity look quite promising," he adds.

But Synfuels isn't alone in trying to make GTL more economical. Gas Reaction Technologies, a spinoff from the University of California, Santa Barbara, has developed a process that converts natural gas into bromine-based compounds that are later converted into liquid fuels.

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW has gotten rather "entreprenurial" since I last subscribed to it.  You can find links to investment tips following the articles. Caveat emptor!


If sanity be culturally normative, then by the norms of this culture I claim insanity.

Traces of a dinosaur found a German quarry suggest the creatures may have been 15 million years older than previously believed.

 Dinosaurs may have been around longer than first thought. Dinasaurs are old. That much we knew. But a new find in a limestone quarry located in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt may show that they are fully 15 million years older than scientists currently believe.

According to a Tuesday report in the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung, a local paper in the region, archaeologists working in the quarry found traces of a dinosaur that they believe are 250 million years old -- older than any known evidence of dinosaurs. So far, officials from the state's Office for Preservation of Monuments and Archaeology have declined to confirm the find. A spokeswoman there has merely pointed out that the quarry is still in operation and that hobby diggers should stay away.

The scientific community, though, is electrified. Should the age of the traces be confirmed, the find could shed light on the very beginnings of dinosaurs. One expert told the paper that the find is of "sensational importance to science."

A Liberal Shock Doctrine

Progressive political change in American history is rarely incremental. With important exceptions, most of the reforms that have advanced our nation's status as a modern, liberalizing social democracy were pushed through during narrow windows of progressive opportunity--which subsequently slammed shut with the work not yet complete. The post-Civil War reconstruction of the apartheid South, the Progressive Era remaking of the institutions of democratic deliberation, the New Deal, the Great Society: They were all blunt shocks. Then, before reformers knew what had happened, the seemingly sturdy reform mandate faded and Washington returned to its habits of stasis and reaction.

The Oval Office's most effective inhabitants have always understood this. Franklin D. Roosevelt hurled down executive orders and legislative proposals like thunderbolts during his First Hundred Days, hardly slowing down for another four years before his window slammed shut; Lyndon Johnson, aided by John F. Kennedy's martyrdom and the landslide of 1964, legislated at such a breakneck pace his aides were in awe. Both presidents understood that there are too many choke points--our minority-enabling constitutional system, our national tendency toward individualism, and our concentration of vested interests--to make change possible any other way.

That is a fact. A fact too many Democrats have trained themselves to ignore. And it sometimes feels like Barack Obama, whose first instinct when faced with ideological resistance seems to be to extend the right hand of fellowship, understands it least of all. Does he grasp that unless all the monuments of lasting, structural change in the American state--banking regulation, public-power generation, Social Security, the minimum wage, the right to join a union, federal funding of education, Medicare, desegregation, Southern voting rights--had happened fast, they wouldn't have happened at all?

The Lichtenstein Cave is a short drive away from Manfred's village, deep in the Harz mountains.

This is the spot where Manfred's relatives, dating back 3,000 years, were buried. The cave remained hidden from view until 1980, and it was only later, in 1993, that archaeologists discovered 40 Bronze Age skeletons.

The 3,000-year-old skeletons were in such good condition that anthropologists at the University of Goettingen managed to extract a sample of DNA. That was then matched to two men living nearby: Uwe Lange, a surveyor, and Manfred Huchthausen, a teacher. The two men have now become local celebrities.

"It's odd, standing here in the same area where my ancestors were buried. I felt really strange when I had the bones, the skull of my great-great-great grandfather dating back 120 generations, in my hands," said Manfred.

Not sure this is really news, but it makes a good story anyway.

Somewhere in cyberspace, the ghost of de Chardin is smiling.