...Researchers excavating a cave on the southern coast of South Africa discovered a bowl's worth of edible shellfish dating back to about 165,000 years ago, when Africa was colder and drier—pushing back the earliest known seafood meal by 40,000 years.

The team found small stone blades and reddish rocks tossed in with the shells; the rocks were marked in a way that suggests they were ground into powder used to make paint, possibly to adorn the face or body to symbolize status or membership in a group... -- "We've shown pretty strongly that people [were] working with pigments [164,000 years ago], which is a pretty good indicator of symbolic thought," Marean says. ...   more »

Wearing a new hat in Galadima, a hamlet in Abuja, Nigeria [photo added by ronjon]

In November, you’ll be able to buy a new laptop that’s spillproof, rainproof, dustproof and drop-proof. It’s fanless, it’s silent and it weighs 3.2 pounds. One battery charge will power six hours of heavy activity, or 24 hours of reading. The laptop has a built-in video camera, microphone, memory-card slot, graphics tablet, game-pad controllers and a screen that rotates into a tablet configuration.

And this laptop will cost $200... It’s an effort by One Laptop Per Child (laptop.org) to develop a very low-cost, high-potential, extremely rugged computer for the two billion educationally underserved children in poor countries...

OLPC slightly turned its strategy when it decided to offer the machine for sale to the public in the industrialized world — for a period of two weeks, in November. The program is called “Give 1, Get 1,” and it works like this. You pay $400 (www.xogiving.org). One XO laptop (and a tax deduction) comes to you by Christmas, and a second is sent to a student in a poor country. ...   more »

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Initiative unveiled its final industrial prototype of the XO - a laptop computer with a toylike look. But to say it's a toy is misleading. The device is intended to bring the most isolated tribal village into the Information Age, with the ultimate goal of offering one to every child on the planet. [Except for India, whose education bureaucracy vetoed OLPC participation last year.]

By keeping the price low, the OLPC initiative hopes that governments in the developing world will be able to afford them. Already, Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Thailand, Uruguay, and, most recently, Rwanda have committed to participate in the program. Rwanda hopes to have laptops for all of its schoolchildren within five years. ...   more »

Thanks to RY Deshpande for sending this text of Kofi Annan's farewell address, which he delivered today at the Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri, USA.

Nearly 50 years ago, when I arrived in Minnesota as a student fresh from Africa, I had much to learn -- starting with the fact that there is nothing wimpish about wearing earmuffs when it is 15 degrees below zero. All my life since has been a learning experience. Now I want to pass on five lessons I have learned during 10 years as secretary general of the United Nations that I believe the community of nations needs to learn as it confronts the challenges of the 21st century.
First, in today's world we are all responsible for each other's security. Against such threats as nuclear proliferation, climate change, global pandemics or terrorists operating from safe havens in failed states, no nation can make itself secure by seeking supremacy over all others. Only by working to make each other secure can we hope to achieve lasting security for ourselves. This responsibility includes our shared responsibility to protect people from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. That was accepted by all nations at last year's U.N. summit. But when we look at the murder, rape and starvation still being inflicted on the people of Darfur, we realize that such doctrines remain pure rhetoric unless those with the power to intervene effectively -- by exerting political, economic or, in the last resort, military muscle -- are prepared to take the lead. It also includes a responsibility to future generations to preserve resources that belong to them as well as to us. Every day that we do nothing, or too little, to prevent climate change imposes higher costs on our children. ...    more »

...The concept behind the project, which Negroponte unveiled at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, less than two years ago, is as simple as its name: give all children in the developing world laptop computers of their own. If we achieved that, he believes, we could bridge what's usually termed the "digital divide." The laptops would offer children everywhere the opportunity to benefit from the Internet and would enable them to work with and learn from each other in new ways. OLPC, the nonprofit organization that Negroponte set up to manage the project, has taken responsibility for designing the computer and engaging an outside manufacturer to produce it. But the nonprofit is not going to buy the computers. That, at least for now, is the responsibility of governments, ...   more »

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya urged a 189-nation climate change conference on Monday to do more to tackle global warming, which is threatening to undo recent successes in the fight against poverty. -- Kenyan drummers and dancers started the annual November 6-17 U.N. talks of 189 nations, which are also due to seek ways to overcome deep divisions about extending the main U.N. plan for curbing warming - the Kyoto Protocol - beyond 2012. ...   more »

In an initiative to contribute significantly to the AIDS affected, two global brands - Apple Computer and Motorola, have come up with products in collaboration with RED, an organization founded by U2 lead singer, Bono, and Bobby Shriver to fight against AIDS in Africa. ...   more »

The fifth developing country has signed up for MIT's "One Laptop per Child" program. This is the open-source project that India recently opted out of, reportedly because of fears of losing control of the education of their children.

The government of Libya is reported to have agreed to provide its 1.2m school children with a cheap durable laptop computer by June 2008. -- The laptops offer internet access and are powered by a wind-up crank. They cost $100 and manufacturing begins next year, says [the non-profit organization located at MIT's Media Lab] One Laptop per Child. -- The non-profit association's chairman, Nicholas Negroponte, said the deal was reached on Tuesday in Libya.    more »