Earliest

Researchers taking a second look at skull fragments in an Ethiopian museum have made a startling discovery: They're the oldest remains of modern human ever found. Tests on two partial skulls unearthed from wind-swept rock formations on opposite sides of Ethiopia's Omo River show that both are 195,000 years old - which pushes back the earliest known date for the emergence of modern humans by 35,000 years. In a report published today in the journal Nature, researchers say their new age estimates are based on dating techniques far more precise than those available when paleontologist Richard E. Leakey and colleagues unearthed the skulls in 1967.

Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, was the name given to history's first recorded goddess by the ancient Sumerians, a Babylonian people who lived some 4,000 years ago between what is today Baghdad and the Persian Gulf. Inanna possessed awesome powers as well as great wisdom, so it's no wonder painter Edna Emmet, whose lovely exhibition opens at Resurgam Gallery tonight, was inspired to create dozens of abstract-expressionist paintings inspired by this female deity's legend. Emmet, who teaches art at the Waldorf School and other area institutions, scrupulously avoids recognizable images in her paintings, which are full of saturated colors and sensual, abstract forms and whose passionate intensity approaches that with which the ancients must have worshipped their goddess.

The mainstream electronic media, still bruised from making bad calls in the 2000 election, ceded the dirty work to the new kid yesterday, allowing Internet news sites and Web logs to rule political reporting for much of the day - for better or worse. By early afternoon, online bloggers had started listing early, and sometimes questionable, exit poll information that showed Sen. John Kerry leading President Bush in the three key swing states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida. By early evening, before most polls closed and the TV networks resumed reporting, a few blogs and news Web sites had called the race for Kerry.

NEW YORK - Justine Henin-Hardenne fought hard to win the 2003 U.S. Open and battled to be back on court to defend her crown this year. She was fighting herself too much in just the fourth round last night, and the struggle proved too great. She was upset by Nadia Petrova, another of the young Russian contingent. The 6-3, 6-2 win by Petrova, the No. 14 seed, was hardly ever in doubt. After breaking Henin-Hardenne to go up 5-3 in the first set, Petrova served out the first and broke again at 1-all in the second.

Call it the great-granddaddy of every candle, furnace and backyard grill ever invented. Archaeologists digging on the banks of the Jordan River in northern Israel say they have found the earliest evidence outside Africa of the controlled use of fire by our ancestors - and perhaps the strongest such evidence anywhere. Their discoveries, in lake sediments laid down as long as 790,000 years ago, included tool-making debris - flint chips - that were crazed and cracked by fire, as well as charred fruits and grains, and pieces of Syrian ash and wild olive evidently used as firewood.

These days, most scientists don't worry about being denounced as witches, vampires or body snatchers. Sarah Tishkoff is an exception. In the course of her DNA research travels around Africa, she has been accused of these offenses and more. One tribe in Tanzania refused to let her into their village. "They thought that white people were coming to steal their children, or to kill them, or to take their body parts or their blood," Tishkoff recalled. "And I did want to take their blood. So, then it's really scary."

JAMESTOWN, Va. -- Twelve years after colonists landed here in 1607 to establish the first permanent English settlement in North America, Jamestown remained a small, struggling enterprise on the banks of the James River. No one in August 1619 understood the consequences of joining a few hundred white, European, mostly English settlers with what Colony secretary John Rolfe famously described as "20. and odd negroes." Only a few, fragmented records of these newcomers survive, mostly in the form of early census documents that list the first Africans by race, occupation and on several tantalizingly concrete occasions by name.

These galaxies are not only long ago and far away. They're also the earliest and most distant ever photographed. And there are thousands of them. They're the galaxies of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field - the first fruits of a continuing project at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. Eventually, astronomers expect to capture the glow of tens of thousands of them. And the systems are all waiting in what looks like an "empty" spot of sky just one-tenth of the diameter of the moon.

ONCE GIRLS START smoking, they find it's much harder to quit than they expect. All the more reason they shouldn't start in the first place. One-quarter of women ages 16 to 24 nationwide are smokers. Although 83 percent said they believe they can quit the habit, and 60 percent tried to quit in 2002, less than 3 percent succeeded in quitting smoking for at least one year. The data are from two nationwide surveys by the American Legacy Foundation, paid for by tobacco industry settlement money.