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The August 2008 war between Georgia and Russia was fought at sea, in the air, on land … and in the press, as both sides tried to spin events in their favor. The shooting has ended. The propaganda war continues. More »
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Our hominid ancestors Homo erectus turned rocks like this into complex tools nearly two million years ago...hundreds of thousands years earlier than previously thought. The new find helps fill in some crucial blanks in our evolutionary history. More »
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Russian photographer Slesarev Oleg Victorovitch took these photos of Gagra, a once-thriving resort town on the coast of Black Sea. Gagra was a palatial tourist destination until 1992, when the area was at the forefront of the War in Abkhazia. More »
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One of the unintended consequences of having constant satellite surveillance over every centimeter of the globe is that it's easy to see how governments screw up. Here is a UNOSAT image from a report on the damage done to villages in Georgia after the bombings. All the destruction tracked here is in residential areas. Click through to see full-size map, or read whole report, with detailed map analysis, here (it's a PDF). Buildings with less than 50 percent their roofs still intact are labeled red; those with visible structural damage to a wall or roof are labeled with orange. This time, at least, somebody was watching the watchers. [via Foreign Policy] More »
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