Guardian

Skull discovered in drought-depleted Minnesota River last summer to be returned to Native American officials.

“That period, we don’t know much about it.” Kathleen Blue, a professor of anthropology at Minnesota State University, said Wednesday that the skull was definitely from an ancestor of one of the tribes still living in the area, the New York Times reported. Minnesota Indian Affairs Council cultural resources specialist Dylan Goetsch said in a statement that neither the council nor the state archaeologist were notified about the discovery, which is required by state laws that govern the care and repatriation of Native American remains.

Labour says it is 'simply staggering' department authorised the move amid a cost of living crisis.

All polling is subject to the usual tender process, ensuring the best value for taxpayers’ money.” “He should not need to spend a small fortune on focus groups to hear what the British public are telling him: they want serious action to help with the cost of living crisis, starting with the adoption of Labour’s plan for a windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas to fund cuts in energy bills.” “At the start of the pandemic, the Treasury justified their spending on focus groups and polls as an emergency measure to test the impact of different policy options, but now this is little more than a taxpayer-funded vanity exercise for a chancellor desperate to repair his image.

The lights dimmed, a hush came over the auditorium and the orchestra struck up the first notes of the overture. This ritual has taken place thousands of ...

Kyiv’s opera house has seen a lot over the years, on and off the stage. The second was due to Covid. Otherwise, performances continued even as regimes, empires and ideological slants changed. This ritual has taken place thousands of times at Kyiv’s grand opera house over the past century, but the performance on Saturday afternoon was something out of the ordinary. I feel like I’m coming out on to this stage, which I know so well, for the first time,” she said. Many of the opera troupe are still abroad, and some in the orchestra are fighting on the frontline or serving in the territorial defence forces. In a city that over the past three months became used to wailing air-raid sirens and the thuds of artillery from the suburbs, the audience was instead treated to the frothy melodies of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville.

Clinical trials show that curcumin, present in the spice, may help fight osteoarthritis and other diseases, but there's a catch – bioavailability, ...

“The problem is that there is no consensus on appropriate curcumin levels for therapeutic effect,” he says. In both cases, scientists are keen to emphasise that these trials are very much in the exploratory stage, and even if they produce positive results, far more proof will be needed before curcumin can be officially recommended for cancer patients. “The idea is the same as with osteoarthritis and the goal is to reduce inflammation. The evidence seems to be positive, but once again there is still work to be done.” Scientists at Northumbria University are planning a clinical trial to study this, while in the US, Paultre is already witnessing the rise of curcumin as a sports supplement. While there are now a whole variety of off-the-shelf supplements that combine curcumin and piperine, there are still challenges for scientists looking to use it medically. But there is genuine interest from scientists around the world in curcumin’s potential as a natural treatment for a whole range of chronic illnesses. The compound has notoriously poor bioavailability – the rate at which the body absorbs a substance – making it nearly impossible to get sufficiently high concentrations of curcumin into the blood through oral supplementation alone. One of these is that piperine has been shown to inhibit a variety of enzymes that aid in metabolising drugs, and it remains to be seen whether this could cause an increased risk of side-effects in patients also taking prescription medicines. Most are based on the curcumin turmeric contains, which has been shown to be a potent anti-inflammatory and antioxidant. “As part of the general concept of Ayurvedic medicine and wellness, it’s increased in popularity in lockstep with yoga and meditation,” says Patel. The scientific studies that have made positive health associations use either pure curcumin or turmeric extract that has been designed to contain mostly curcumin.

Since the conflict began in February, YouTube has taken down channels including that of the pro-Kremlin journalist Vladimir Solovyov. Channels associated with ...

YouTube did not provide a breakdown of the taken-down content and channels but Mohan said much of it represented Kremlin narratives about the invasion. “We are not planning to close YouTube,” the minister said. And so we’ve used that policy to take unprecedented action.”

You can't fault the former health secretary's proposals for improving patient care, but his slick prose fails to acknowledge the damage inflicted on the NHS ...

The prose, in a word, is emollient. But this is also the work of a consummate politician. Specifically, he writes, he wants to eliminate the 150 avoidable deaths that occur in the NHS every week. If I read this correctly, Hunt is suggesting that his blueprint for the health service is so radical it may transform the provision of healthcare for the British public as dramatically as the inception of the NHS three-quarters of a century ago. To my surprise, he sat and actually listened, even when I told him that pretending to the public he could build a safer “seven-day NHS” without increasing doctor numbers was not only dishonest but “completely moronic”. Zero, it turns out, is a thoughtful, serious and well-written book that tackles an immensely important subject. In the worst cases – and Hunt describes numerous examples of neonatal deaths and failures of care in painstaking, heartrending detail – bereaved relatives can be left fighting for years as NHS institutions close ranks, covering up their wrongdoing. More disconcertingly still, while researching this book, Hunt contacted me to ask if he could discuss where he’d gone wrong in the junior doctor dispute. Given that he was the longest serving health secretary in NHS history, why didn’t he impose his vision while in office, rather than waiting for the tumbleweed of the backbenches to write about it? Even today, six years after the dispute limped to an ignominious end (Hunt duly imposed his despised new contract), my casual mention in the doctors’ mess that he has written a book about, of all things, patient safety triggered a volley of anatomically robust invective. “Delivering the safest, highest quality care in the NHS post-pandemic could be our very own 1948 moment.” On a bitterly cold weekend in October 2015, the views of 20,000 junior doctors, freezing in our scrubs as we marched on Downing Street, were encapsulated in one unforgettable placard. No other health secretary in NHS history has incensed the medical profession quite like its longest serving incumbent.

Only a 10-minute drive apart but cut off by war, Serhi Belyaev took a perilous road trip to be with his loved ones again.

“They were suspicious of the blankets and the state of my car. “It was the first time I had driven alone,” says Belyaev. “I found it hard.” In Poltava, he picked up medicines for his parents and he was now en route to the very frontline of the war in Ukraine, where his village remained cut off and the battle of Kharkiv raged. He reached Kyiv at noon on 15 April and slept at a friend’s – in a bed for the first time in 11 days. “But they accepted it and waved us on.” “I saw its birth and I saw its death,” he adds. It was the FSB, the successor to the Soviet KGB. “Every single one of us was interrogated again,” says Belyaev. “But I knew my phone was clean. “We had to cross a bridge at the village of Rubizhne. I saw it being built when I was 10 when my brother took me fishing,” Belyaev says. His phone was also broken because of the humidity in the cellar where he had hidden from the bombardments.” But the group were finally handed the documents they needed at 4pm on the first day of the journey. I sent locations of Russian military convoys to friends in the territorial defence.” “It made terrible noises, but there was no other option.” “That 70km was the hardest,” says Belyaev. “There were lots of checkpoints and, halfway there, we came to some Russian soldiers who wouldn’t let us through.”

Analysts question Home Office strategy after it emerged that a review of its Prevent programme was pushing for it to refocus on Islamist threats.

“The review, led by William Shawcross, will ensure we continue to improve our response and better protect people from being drawn into poisonous and dangerous ideologies. Home Office said: “Prevent remains a vital tool for early intervention and safeguarding. Even before the attack, the security services were monitoring a growing number of individuals with unstable, unclear or “blended” ideologies who might pose a terrorism risk.

With sobering crises like Ukraine and the cost of living, it's no surprise the appetite for venting behind a microphone is waning, says Guardian columnist ...

In that context, who cares about a view of the world that seems to extend no further than a set of studio walls? The war in Ukraine has provided a sobering reminder of the importance of on-the-ground reporting and journalistic expertise. Morgan’s ratings suggest that, in the UK at least, the appeal of endless “talk” has its limits. If something happens, the point is not to go out and understand it, but to quickly take a position and sound off about it: your job is not really to cover the news, but to see if you can make headlines yourself. Talk-based radio has probably never been as high-profile as it is now, and the millions who listen to such voices as the US podcaster Joe Rogan – said to have sold his show to Spotify for £75m – shows that the market for a mixture of comedy, ranting, conspiracy theory and “debate” is huge. Even if Morgan’s show – and, indeed, TalkTV itself – prove beyond rescue, they are one small part of a change that may well be here to stay, born in the madly polarised world of American news broadcasting and then taken to its logical conclusion by social media.

Barrel bombs – crude explosives packed in to a drum and dropped from a helicopter – were used to devastating effect throughout the Syrian war. The regime was ...

“I asked my uncle that,” said the relative who refused to be named. European officials say that the Russian government had given a green light for the attack. Ever since though, Wagner has been central to Russia’s actions. Wagner has been prominent in Libya and eastern Syria supporting Russia’s interests. The regime was also regularly accused of filling canisters with chlorine and dropping them on opposition held towns and cities, causing hundreds of deaths and sparking widespread alarm. “This is probably why we haven’t seen them cross the border,” said one European official.

Ukrainian forces have built a new line of defences along the country's previously unfortified northern border with Belarus amid signs of another attack.

“And then the other part of the unit is younger guys like Maksym.” Ihor and Maksym were working on a construction site in Kyiv on the morning of the invasion. The miles-long narrow roads that lead down from the border are surrounded by thick forests which cover the deep, swampy ground. In almost every other case, there is only a few degrees of separation. Vova signed up to fight alongside his brother, Ihor, and his brother’s son, Maksym, on the second day of the war. Two days after the invasion, Ukraine closed all its border crossings with Belarus and Russia.

Wasps have always had a bad press. But Dr Seirian Sumner, who has spent her life studying them, argues they are sophisticated, socially complex and ...

In the UK, Sumner has been sequencing DNA from the guts of wasp larva (an elegant pastime if ever there was one), in order to understand what exactly wasps eat, and what pests they might best control. If Sumner were to produce a film about wasp research – one that could outshine the hokey science of The Wasp Woman – it would be a period drama starring a pair of American entomologists named George and Elizabeth Peckham. During the early 1900s this charismatic husband-and-wife team made sport of chasing wasps around Wisconsin in their attempts to understand the hunting behaviour of the insect. Bees are a crucial cog in the mechanics of global agriculture. As Sumner writes: “Of all the social insects, it is these simple-societied wasps that we humans have most in common with.” And they may contribute in lesser ways to the pollination of many other plants. A solitary hunting wasp gave rise to the social wasp (at some point in time, a wasp lost the ability to hunt and gained the ability to exploit pollen: the “original bee”). Boutique wasp societies, such as the hover wasp, which live in groups of around half a dozen, or the Polistes, which Sumner has studied in Panama for more than 15 years, offer an easy-to-manipulate testing ground for hypotheses about the emergence of social living. She was recommended to Professor Jeremy Field, a world expert in social wasps who was recruiting for a project in Southeast Asia. Sumner was excited about the adventure, but uneasy about the occupational hazards. Sumner tells me that one PhD student of hers, Robin Southon, observed that the odd male Polistes will even hang out at the nest and help feed the brood (albeit only briefly). “Perhaps it’s a trade-off,” she says, “where they get to stay at home a bit longer, provided that they help out.” It’s impossible not to draw parallels with the negotiations we make in our own lives. In Malaysia, Sumner hand-painted thousands of hover wasps in order to keep track of them. She too once feared their presence: “I was the one to scream and run away, probably louder than anyone else, to be honest.” In fact, she tells me, she was “tricked” into studying them. Aristotle, Shakespeare, The Wasp Woman – it’s all part of a vast catalogue of anti-wasp media that she wearily describes in her book Endless Forms: The Secret World of Wasps. We disparage the snobbishness of WASPs. The Wasp Woman epitomised the nightmarish (and somewhat sexist) association we have with the archetype.

The German capital's liberal reputation has been derailed by clashes between subcontracted ticket inspectors and black people.

“Public transport shouldn’t feel scary,” Kim said in an Instagram post in which she recounted the incident. “No one outside a certain socioeconomic context wants to do this job.” Instead of focusing on the subcontractors, she says change needs to come from Berlin’s majority state-owned transport company. The operator points out that ticket controllers are regularly subject to verbal and physical aggression themselves, with 118 cases leading to criminal charges over the past two years. “The doctor who operated on me said I had been lucky,” Odunlami said. At about 7pm one day, Osborne was on a train on the U2 underground line between Spittelmarkt and Hausvogteiplatz when four plainclothes ticket controllers stepped into his carriage. Berlin’s underground train network does not have ticket barriers, which BVG says it cannot install because of fire safety regulations and building preservation orders.