Mummified maiden wows crowds
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The 500-year-old mummified remains of an Inca girl go on display for the first time since being found in Argentina.
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MAKYBE Diva joined racing&#39;s immortals with a commanding win in the $4.6 million Melbourne Cup today. Backed into 5-2 favouritism by a flood of money from around the country, she became the first mare to win
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One of the world's most bizarre scientific collections has gone on show.
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This object reflects the barbaric trafficking in body parts, the belief that another race was inferior to ours - Rouen deputy mayor Catherine Morin-Desailly PARIS (New York Times) - Since 1875, the mummified, tattooed head of a Maori warrior has been part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Natural History at Rouen in Normandy. But when Rouen's mayor arranged recently to return it to New Zealand as an act of "atonement" for colonial-era trafficking in human remains, the national Ministry of Culture stepped in to block him. The ministry contends that the head is a work of art that belongs to France and that its return could set an unfortunate precedent for a huge swath of national museum collections - from Egyptian mummies in the Louvre to Asian treasures in the MusÃ©e Guimet and African and Oceanic artifacts in the MusÃ©e du Quai Branly. "The mayor of Rouen made his decision without any consultation, and his decision is against the law," Olivier Henrard, the legal adviser for the Ministry of Culture, said.  "There are other Maori heads, there are mummies, there are religious relics in France," he said. "If we don't respect the law today, tomorrow other museums or elected officials might decide to send them back, too." Rouen officials insist that the Maori head is a body part, not artwork, and that due to France's bioethics law it must be returned to its place of origin. "This object reflects the barbaric trafficking in body parts, the belief that another race was inferior to ours," said Catherine Morin-Desailly, Rouen's deputy mayor, who proposed the return. "It belongs to the heritage of humanity, not in storage somewhere in a museum."  The Maoris traditionally preserved the tattooed heads of warriors killed in battle to keep their memory alive. Trade in body parts flourished in the 19th century, as contact with outsiders increased. Europeans collected Maori remains. Some Maori slaves were forcibly tattooed, then decapitated.  Morin-Desailly cites French precedent concerning the return of human remains: Those of Saartjie Baartman - the "Hottentot Venus" as she was labeled in her day. A farmer's slave born in 1789, she was sold to a British Marine surgeon and presented in public in London and later in Paris as a freak because of her oversized buttocks and genitalia.
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Hero splashes love and death in ravishing colors
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The discovery of remains belonging to a tiny species of ancient human has been hailed as one of the most sensational finds of its type in decades.
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Images from two photo sessions in 1962 make a goddess seem human.
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As a stranger draws near,  priest Mesganaw Tarkgn whips on an embroidered cape and raises  an ancient cross in a picture-perfect pose. He is used to the  demands of visitors to one of Ethiopia&#39;s holiest sites.
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Dido, Pink, Jamelia and Keane thrilled the crowds at the V festival in Chelmsford and Staffordshire on Saturday.
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"Bullfighting is a spectacle that is alive, and spectators have a right to see it"  A Miura's bull is dragged away after being killed in a bullfight in the bullring of Pamplona, northern Spain, in this July 8, 2007 file photo. via The South Mississippi Sun Herald
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The Crocoseum was bursting at the seams Wednesday morning in   Australia as more than 5,000 people gathered to celebrate the life of   conservationist, adventurer and devoted family man Steve Irwin.
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Thousands of cheering onlookers gathered outside the royal palace in Stockholm Saturday to greet Crown Princess Victoria, the heir to the Swedish throne, on her 30th birthday.
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Reader Winnie Abraham shares her picture with us.
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MAKYBE Diva joined racings immortals with a commanding win in the|$4.6 million Melbourne Cup yesterday. Backed into 5/2 favouritism by a flood of money from around the country, she became the first mare to
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Roberta Maxwell is so magnificent as an aged sculptor in âThe Shape of Metalâ that itâs easy to see why she would have been drawn to this ramshackle work.
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The superstar springs a surprise.
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Archaeologists unveiled Sunday the tomb of a member of a powerful family that governed a swath of western Egypt about 2,500 years ago, along with a dozen recently discovered mummies from Roman times.