Daily alternative news articles at the News Desk for GrahamHancock.com. Featuring alternative history, science, archaeology, ancient egypt, paranormal & supernatural, environment, and much more. Check in daily for updates!

In the pitched debate over genetically modified (GM) foods and crops, it can be hard to see where scientific evidence ends and dogma and speculation begin. In the nearly 20 years since they were first commercialized, GM crop technologies have seen dramatic uptake. Advocates say that they have increased agricultural production by more than US$98 billion and saved an estimated 473 million kilograms of pesticides from being sprayed. But critics question their environmental, social and economic impacts.

Pope Celestine V was an elderly, possibly frail man. After living as a self-flagellating hermit in Italy, he served as pontiff for only five months before resigning at the end of the 13th century. Since his death, the so-called "Hermit Pope" has been the subject of much speculation and intrigue, with legend holding that the he was murdered by his successor, Boniface VIII.

During examinations of Celestine's remains, a small, mysterious hole found on his skull led some to believe he died from trauma to the head. But a recent examination of the pope's skeleton suggests this murder theory might be false.

Human cloning has been used to produce early embryos, marking a "significant step" for medicine, say US scientists.

The cloned embryos were used as a source of stem cells, which can make new heart muscle, bone, brain tissue or any other type of cell in the body.

The study, published in the journal Cell, used methods like those that produced Dolly the sheep in the UK.

However, researchers say other sources of stem cells may be easier, cheaper and less controversial.

In news that’s sure to delight young boys everywhere, scientists now have a better grasp on the impressive winds of Uranus. Neptune too. In a Nature study published today astronomers find that the most obvious weather patterns on the two ice giants are relatively shallow, only about 1,100 kilometers (683 miles) deep at most. The finding helps researchers understand the internal dynamics on Uranus, Neptune and similar exoplanets.

"Why are people so fascinated with @Cmdr_Hadfield?" the tweeter asked. "Can someone enlighten me?"

The answers were swift and sharp and unsurprising. "Dude, he's a frigging astronaut!" one replied. "Um, he's an astronaut?" another offered. "What else do you need?" Someone else explained things with a little more detail: "He's inspiring a generation of kids (my kids!) to grow up to be scientists & astronauts and not the Kardashians.".

he Canadian astronaut who became a music sensation when his zero-gravity version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" went viral on the web returned to Earth along with two crewmates on Tuesday after a five-month stint on the International Space Station.

Chris Hadfield landed safely in central Kazakhstan with his American and Russian colleagues. Their Soyuz space capsule descended under an orange parachute and raised clouds of dust as it ignited an engine to cushion its landing about 150 km (90 miles) southeast of the town of Zhezkazgan.

When the British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans discovered the 4,000-year-old Palace of Minos on Crete in 1900, he saw the vestiges of a long-lost civilization whose artefacts set it apart from later Bronze-Age Greeks. The Minoans, as Evans named them, were refugees from Northern Egypt who had been expelled by invaders from the South about 5,000 years ago, he claimed.

A WORLD-RENOWNED archaeologist has warned that people should be concerned about the issue of resurrecting extinct species.

"We are, quite seriously, on the brink of being able to do this, so it's quite an important question for people to start grappling with," she told the Radio Times.

Japanese scientists have already extracted the bone marrow from woolly mammoth remains found in Siberia to look at the DNA with a view to resurrecting a mammoth, she said.

Bacteria that live in the gut have been used to reverse obesity and Type-2 diabetes in animal studies.

Research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that a broth containing a single species of bacteria could dramatically alter the health of obese mice.

It is thought to change the gut lining and the way food is absorbed.

New research in the journal Intelligence suggests the Victorians were naturally cleverer than we are, and draws the startling conclusion that "the Victorian era was marked by an explosion of innovation and genius, per capita rates of which appear to have declined subsequently". Psychologists have studied reaction times – apparently an indicator of intelligence – from the 1880s to the present, and discovered that they are slowing. Other factors such as health and diet mean overall intelligence is increasing, but the researchers insist our genetic IQ is in decline, a trend they attribute to clever people having fewer children than – how can this be put diplomatically? – less clever people.

Deforestation in the Amazon region could significantly reduce the amount of electricity produced from hydropower, says a new study.

Scientists say the rainforest is critical in generating the streams and rivers that ultimately turn turbines.

If trees continue to be felled, the energy produced by one of the world's biggest dams could be cut by a third.

The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.