Link Roundup July 2017

Oldest Fossils of Homo Sapiens Found in Morocco, Altering History of Our Species

The people of Jebel Irhoud were certainly sophisticated. They could make fires and craft complex weapons, such as wooden handled spears, needed to kill gazelles and other animals that grazed the savanna that covered the Sahara 300,000 years ago. The flint is interesting for another reason: Researchers traced its origin to another site about 20 miles south of Jebel Irhoud. Early Homo sapiens, then, knew how to search out and to use resources spread over long distances.

Scenes From the Trump Hotel

By 9, the results were trickling in. Cheers went up at every partial projection. The sound level rose and rose, as did chants of “Lock her up!” and “Build that wall!” (Somewhere behind me a young woman clarified that “we should keep the dogs and send back the people!”)

Honoring the Experience of Long-Term Survivors of HIV/AIDS

However, unforeseen longevity has wrought its own set of complications, including survivor guilt, serious side effects from long-term HIV infection and the toxicity of early powerful drugs, loneliness, despair, and the isolation that comes from seeing most of your peer group die before you. Too many long-term survivors get caught in a financial trap, having been forced to go on long-term disability or public assistance benefits when they were too ill to work, and now finding themselves with large gaps in work experience, lacking current job skills, and without savings as they near retirement age. And of course, stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV persists, even within our own communities.

How Illinois became America's most messed-up state

Instead of reform, the compromise "codified the practice of underfunding the pension" and "intentionally" grew the shortfall by $45 billion, Martire said.

The painful truth about teeth

All states are required to provide dental benefits to children on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Obama’s Affordable Care Act currently requires medical plans to offer dental care to those younger than 19. But that requirement — and the dental benefits of 5 million adults newly covered under the ACA — are jeopardized by the Trump-backed health overhaul now being debated in Congress.

Meet the Fantastically Bejeweled Skeletons of Catholicism’s Forgotten Martyrs

Each convent would develop its own flair for enshrouding the bones in gold, gems and fine fabrics. The women and men who decorated the skeletons did so anonymously, for the most part. But as Koudounaris studied more and more bodies, he began recognizing the handiwork of particular convents or individuals. “Even if I couldn’t come up with the name of a specific decorator, I could look at certain relics and tie them stylistically to her handiwork,” he says.

Meet the ‘Neighborhood Medics’ Trained to Save Chicago Shooting Victims Before Ambulances Arrive

Journey and her mother said they worry more about what might happen when police arrive than the possibility that the shooter could come back. That’s a big reason why UMedics are trained in how to interact with police. They’re taught that if an officer says “put your hands in the air,” then you should follow the officer’s instructions — even if it means taking pressure off a wound. “It’s traumatic because they shoot people,” Kenisha Jamison said. “And this is what I train people on, you are in the most dangerous situation because of the police.”

Russian Dirt on Clinton? ‘I Love It,’ Donald Trump Jr. Said

President Trump wrote on Twitter early Wednesday: “My son Donald did a good job last night. He was open, transparent and innocent. This is the greatest Witch Hunt in political history. Sad!” At a White House briefing on Tuesday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy press secretary, referred questions about the meeting to Donald Trump Jr.’s counsel, but read a statement from the president in which he called his son “a high-quality person.”

Hobby Lobby Purchased Thousands of Ancient Artifacts Smuggled Out of Iraq

Hobby Lobby wired $1.6 million to seven different bank accounts associated with five different people to pay for the items. The artifacts were shipped to the United States in multiple packages falsely labeled “Tiles (Sample).” They were also sent to multiple locations. As the complaint notes, “The use of multiple shipping addresses for a single recipient is consistent with methods used by cultural property smugglers to avoid scrutiny by Customs.” On customs forms, the UAE dealer supplied false invoices that substantially undervalued the pieces, presumably as a way to avoid customs inspection.

The lingering effects of NYC's racist city planning

Sometimes transit will allow a person to get close to a given area, but not all the way there, leaving the rider in a dangerous situation. Cynthia Wiggins, a seventeen-year-old woman in Buffalo, was hit and killed by a dump truck while she was attempting to cross a seven-lane highway to get to the mall where she worked. The mall’s owners had actively resisted requests to allow the bus, that Wiggins rode from the inner city, to stop on its property; rather, the bus stopped outside the mall on the other side of the large highway. Documents produced during a subsequent trial revealed that this transit-siting decision was motivated at least in part by race or class bias; a local transport official wrote in an internal document that “[mall decision-makers] feel it will not bring in the type of people they want to come to the mall.”

Meshnet activists rebuilding the internet from scratch

After the extent of the NSA’s clandestine PRISM program was revealed, privacy advocates like the Electronic Frontier Foundation urged users to start using relatively simple email encryption programs like Pretty Good Privacy and GNU Privacy Guard. But even those can be daunting to set up. A better idea would be a decentralised network that relies on encryption by default.

Baltimore Police Caught Planting Drugs In Body-Cam Footage, Public Defender Says

The operation resulted in an arrest and months of jail time for the suspect, who wasn't released until the public defender's office sent the body-cam video to the state attorney's office last week. He was held while unable to post $50,000 bail, the Sun reports. The public defender's office says that despite the prosecutor's claims of being "appalled" by the incident, "Officer Pinheiro was called to testify in another case the following week without any disclosure of this videotape." The office says Pinheiro is named as a witness in some 53 active cases.