It was somewhat held that Neanderthals were completely different to us, Homo Sapiens. There's a new twist to this story arising from the studies made by the team/s led by Dr Svante Paabo, of the Max Planck Institute in Munich, Germany and Dr David Reich, of Harvard Medical School in Boston.

• The prevailing scientific theory at the moment is that human beings first evolved in Africa.
• A part of this group of individuals migrated out of Africa and they populated the rest of the world.
• With the recent study, Neanderthal DNA was found in the blood of Europeans, Asians and Australasians. Neanderthal DNA, however, is not found in the blood of Africans whose ancestors remained in the continent.
• This implies that the group of Africans who migrated out of Africa interbred with Neanderthals at some stage during their migration out of Africa around 80,000 years ago.

Notes: Previously, getting DNA from the remains of Neanderthals themselves is difficult because their DNA did not preserve too well. Scientists have Neanderthal bones that are 30,000 to 40,000 years old. So in this study, 97% of the Neanderthal DNA was gathered using a new method that allowed them to collect Neanderthal DNA from bacteria and fungi, something which would be interesting to read about in the future.

There has been an amazing discovery made studying the DNA of the remains of a Neandertal, dated 38,000 to 44,000 years ago. Scientists found that many of us have Neandertal ancestors. They inter-bred with our ancestors until about 400,000 years ago before their lineage separated from us. This inter-breeding occurred in the Middle-East but not in Africa. This means that human beings with ancestors that originated from the Middle-East (almost the rest of the world) have more neandertal genes in them than descendants of the Africans who refused to migrate and instead, chose to stay in the African continent. (Source)

Jacob Bronowski (18 January 1908 – 22 August 1974) was a British mathematician and biologist of Polish-Jewish origin. Just recently, I have started watching a documentary he made called, The Ascent Of Man on DVD. I have only finished watching the second episode and it is turning out to be a wonderful documentary. It is very powerful, very insightful and I want everyone to watch it. I found the links for it in Google so you can preview it for yourself. I have orderred them according to how they were titled in the series. 

1. Lower than the Angels — Evolution of man from proto-ape to 400,000 years ago.
2. The Harvest of the Seasons — Early human migration, agriculture and the first settlements, war.
3. The Grain in the Stone — Tools, development of architecture and sculpture.
4. The Hidden Structure — Fire, metals and alchemy.
5. Music of the Spheres — The language of numbers.
6. The Starry Messenger — Galileo's universe.
7. The Majestic Clockwork — Explores Kepler and Newton's laws.
8. The Drive for Power — The Industrial Revolution.
9. The Ladder of Creation — Darwin and Wallace's ideas on the origin of species.
10. World within World — The story of the periodic table.
11. Knowledge or Certainty — Physics and the clash of absolute knowledge, the oppressive state, and its misgivings realizing the result of its terrible outcome.
12. Generation upon Generation — Life, genetics, and the cloning of identical forms.
13. The Long Childhood — Bronowski's treatise on the commitment of man.

Saudi woman poet attracts fame and threats after taking the opportunity to reach out to the world on national TV.She wore a full-face veil while deliverying poetry denouncing attitudes to women in her country. "I have seen evil in the eyes of fatwas: now the lawful and unlawful are confused...When I unveil the truth, a monster appears from his hiding place; barbaric in thinking and action, angry and blind; wearing death as a dress and covering it with a belt." (Source)

"There is a God; this is worth checking out," says Glenn Stevens, governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia.But God may not be omnipotent, for God was not responsible for the Global Financial Crisis, Mr Stevens told a Wesley Mission breakfast today. (Source)

PERSONAL COMMENT:

Is this news is it? I cannot believe that a major newspaper deems it newsworthy to report someone providing a silly answer to a silly question.

No, God is not to be blamed for anything because he does not exist. The GFC happened because of the maliciousness of sellers repackaging toxic assets to sell to ignorant buyers while regulators and quality assurers failed to do what they've been set in place to do. If we are patient and are willing to take the time to understand the world, we can find answers that actually do make sense. When we blame or attribute things to gods, human beings fail to take responsibility for their own shortcomings.