Uncontacted tribe

Members of one of the world’s last uncontacted tribes have been spotted and photographed from the air near the Brazil-Peru border. The photos were taken during several flights over one of the remotest parts of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil’s Acre state.
‘We did the overflight to show their houses, to show they are there, to show they exist,’ said uncontacted tribes expert José Carlos dos Reis Meirelles Júnior. Meirelles works for FUNAI, the Brazilian government’s Indian affairs department. ‘This is very important because there are some who doubt their existence.’
Meirelles says that the group’s numbers are increasing. But other uncontacted groups in the region, whose homes have been photographed from the air, are in severe danger from illegal logging in Peru. Logging is driving uncontacted tribes over the border and could lead to conflict with the estimated five hundred uncontacted Indians already living on the Brazilian side.
‘What is happening in this region [of Peru] is a monumental crime against the natural world, the tribes, the fauna and is further testimony to the complete irrationality with which we, the ‘civilised’ ones, treat the world,’ said Meirelles.
There are more than one hundred uncontacted tribes worldwide, with more than half living in either Brazil or Peru. All are in grave danger of being forced off their land, killed and decimated by new diseases. Survival has launched an urgent campaign to get their land protected, and a unique film narrated by actress Julie Christie.
Survival’s director Stephen Corry said today, ‘These pictures are further evidence that uncontacted tribes really do exist. The world needs to wake up to this, and ensure that their territory is protected in accordance with international law. Otherwise, they will soon be made extinct.’
source: Survival International

Starving may fend off jet lag

Humans have second internal clocks that take over their circadian clocks when deprived of food.Normally, the body's natural circadian clock in the brain dictates when to wake, eat and sleep, all in response to light. But it seems a second clock takes over when food is scarce, and manipulating this clock might help travelers adjust to new time zones, they said."A period of fasting with no food at all for about 16 hours is enough to engage this new clock," said Dr. Clifford Saper of Harvard Medical School, whose study appears in the journal Science.He said a person from the United States traveling to Japan must adjust to a 11-hour time change.

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Find Sunglasses that Complement Your Face

Choosing a haircut for your face shape can be a challenge - particularly because you don't quite know what you're buying until you've already bought it - but sunglasses offer a whole different set of shopping parameters. Most importantly, you can see what you're getting before you buy. To help steer you towards the perfect pair, below are some guidelines for finding sunglasses that tend to flatter four common face shapes.

Face Shape: OblongFrames to try: Round or Square.
Frames that are the same length vertically as horizontally will cover a good portion of your face and give the illusion that it's shorter.

Face Shape: SquareFrames to try: Oval
Choosing a frame shape that contrasts with the lines of your face will soften an angular jawline and hairline, creating a more proportioned silhouette.

Face Shape: RoundFrames to try: Rectangular.
The angles will downplay your face's roundness and make it appear longer.

Face Shape: Heart-ShapedFrames to try: Rimless or Aviator.
They'll accent your eyes and play down the angles on the lower half of your face. Colored lenses will draw even more attention towards the eye area.

Find Sunglasses that Complement Your Face

Marvel to unleash 'Iron Man 2'

Marvel Studios announced Monday it will release “Iron Man 2” on April 30, 2010, following the success of the first in the comic-book franchise, which pulled in $104.2 million domestically since opening last Thursday and $201 million worldwide.Four other films based on Marvel superheroes also were announced: “Thor,” due out June 4, 2010; “The First Avenger: Captain America,” May 6, 2011; “The Avengers,” July 2011; and “Ant-Man,” which is in development but has no release date.Marvel also has “The Incredible Hulk,” starring Edward Norton, coming out this June 13.Just as Robert Downey Jr.’s character, Tony Stark, makes an appearance in “The Incredible Hulk,” the Hulk could turn up in “Iron Man 2,” said David Maisel , Marvel Studios chairman. And “The Avengers” consists of a rotating roster of Marvel heroes that could see the return of virtually any of the franchise’s characters.

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15th-century shipwreck found full of treasures

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) -- The ship was laden with tons of copper ingots, elephant tusks, gold coins -- and cannons to fend off pirates lurking off Africa some five centuries ago.It had nothing to protect it from the fierce weather off a particularly bleak stretch of inhospitable coast. It sank, only to be found last month by men seeking other treasure."If you're mining on the coast, sooner or later you'll find a wreck," archaeologist Dieter Noli, who is researching the ship's origins, said in an interview Thursday, describing De Beers geologists stumbling on the wreck April 1 as they prospected for diamonds off Namibia's southwest coast.Namdeb Diamond Corp., a joint venture of the government of Namibia and De Beers, had cleared and drained a stretch of seabed, building an earthen wall to keep the water out so geologists could work. Noli said one of the geologists first saw a few ingots, but had no idea what they were. Then they found what looked like cannon barrels, but weren't sure.The geologists stopped the brutal earth-moving work of searching for diamonds and sent photos to Noli, who had done research in the Namibian desert since his university days in Cape Town in the mid-1980s and since 1996 has advised De Beers on the archaeological impact of its operations in Namibia.The find "was what I'd been waiting for for 20 years," Noli said. "Understandably, I was pretty excited. I still am."Noli's original specialty was the desert, but because of Namdeb's offshore explorations, he had been preparing for the possibility of a wreck, even learning to dive. He had also studied maritime artifacts with an expert from his university days, Bruno Werz, whom he has brought in to help research the Namdeb wreck.Judging from the notables depicted on the hoard of Spanish and Portuguese coins and the type of cannons and crude navigational equipment, the ship went down in the late 1400s or early 1500s, around the time Vasco de Gama and Columbus were plying the waters of the New World, "a period when Africa was just being opened up, when the whole world was being opened up," Noli said.Noli compared the remnants found -- the ingots, ivory, coins, coffin-sized timber fragments -- to evidence at a crime scene."The surf would have pounded that wreck to smithereens," he said. "It's not like `Pirates of the Caribbean,' with a ship more or less intact."He and Werz are trying to fit the pieces into a story. They divide their time between inventorying the find in Namibia and researching in museums and libraries in Cape Town in neighboring South Africa, from where Noli spoke by phone Thursday. Eventually, they will go to Portugal, whose ships were particularly active in the area 500 years ago, or Spain to search for records of a vessel with similar cargo that went missing."You don't turn a skipper loose with a cargo of that value and have no record of it," Noli said.The wealth aboard is intriguing. Noli said the large amount of copper could mean the ship had been sent by a government looking for material to build cannons. Trade in ivory was usually controlled by royal families, another indication the ship was on official business.On the other hand, why was the captain still holding so many coins? Shouldn't they have been traded for the ivory and copper?"Either he did a very, very good deal. Or he was a pirate," Noli said. "I'm convinced we'll find out what the ship was and who the captain was."What sent her down may remain a mystery. But Noli has theories, noting the stretch of coast where it met its fate was notorious for fierce storms and disorienting fogs. In later years, sailors with sophisticated navigational tools avoided it. The only tools found aboard Noli's wrecks were astrolabes, which can be used to determine only how far north or south you have sailed."Sending a ship toward Africa in that period, that was venture capital in the extreme," Noli said. "These chaps were very much on the edge as far as navigation. It was still very difficult for them to know where they were."Noli has found signs worms were at work on his ship's timber, and sheets of lead used to patch holes, indications the ship was old when it set out on its last voyage.Imagine a leaky, overladen ship caught in a storm. The copper ingots, shaped like sections of a sphere, would have sat snug. But the tusks -- some 50 have been found -- could have shifted, tipping the ship."And down you go," Noli said, "weighed down by your treasure."Spanish gold coins, Portuguese silver coins minted in the late 1400s or early 1500s were found, as well as dividers used for measuring distance on a map during navigation. The reverse of the some of the gold coins depicts Ferdinand and Isabella, two Spanish monarchs of the time.

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