Best Software Price

MEXICO CITY – Northern Mexico's Yaqui Indians buried their lost warriors after a two-year effort to rescue the remains from New York's American Museum of Natural History, where the victims of one of North America's last Indian massacres lay in storage for more than a century.
The burial Monday capped an unprecedented joint effort by U.S. and Mexican Indian tribes to press both governments to bring justice and closure to a 1902 massacre by Mexican federal troops that killed about 150 Yaqui men, women and children.
"They would not be at peace with their souls and conscience until they got their people back to their land," said Jose Antonio Pompa of Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History.
The 12 skulls and other blood-spattered remains interred in Vicam, a traditional Yaqui town in western Sonora state, carried some of the first forensic evidence of Mexico's brutal campaign to eliminate the tribe.
As if the horror of the massacre weren't enough, U.S. anthropologist Ales Hrdlicka came upon some of the bodies while they were still decaying, hacked off the heads with a machete and boiled them to remove the flesh for his study of Mexico's "races."
He sent the resulting collection to the New York museum. On Monday afternoon, on the slope of a mountain near the Yaqui village of Vicam, the 12 sets of remains were "baptized" to give them names that have been lost to history.
They were given a warriors' honor guard, and amid drumming, chants and traditional "deer" and "coyote" dances, each was laid to rest in the ground they had been striving to return to when they were slaughtered.
Perhaps best known for the mystical and visionary powers ascribed to them by writer Carlos Castaneda, the Yaquis fought off repeated attempts by the Mexican government to eliminate the tribe.
But they were largely defeated by 1900, and dictator Porfirio Diaz began moving them off their fertile farmland to less valuable territory or to virtual enslavement on haciendas as far away as eastern Yucatan state.
In 1902, about 300 men, women and children escaped from forced exile and started walking back to their lands in Sonora. They were stopped in the mountains near the capital of Hermosillo by 600 heavily armed soldiers, who attacked them from behind. What ensued, long known as "the Battle of the Sierra Mazatan," is now considered one of the last large-scale Indian massacres in North America.
"What soldiers were doing was — instead of wasting ammunition — turning the rifle around and hitting people in the head who were down, to make sure they were dead," said anthropologist Ventura Perez, who did a trauma investigation on the skulls for the American Yaqui tribes.
Some bore execution-style gunshot wounds to the back of the head. Cut marks on the bones indicated troops took ears as trophies, said Perez, a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
The bones were forgotten in museum storage until Perez and anthropologist Andrew Darling, who works for the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona, started to study them in 2007 and realized their gruesome story.
The Pascua Yaqui tribe of Arizona took up the fight to have the bones returned.
"The approach we use is that we are one people ... the border is just an artificial concept," said Robert Valencia, vice chairman of the Pascua Yaquis.
U.S. Indian remains are protected under the North American Indian Graves Protection Act. But because the law doesn't cover Mexican remains held in the U.S., the Arizona tribe contacted the Mexican Yaquis and they in turn contacted the Mexican government, which also decided to get involved.
The museum agreed the bones and other artifacts — including blood-spattered blankets and a baby carrying-board from which Hrdlicka dumped an infant's corpse — should go back, saying "cultural sensitivities and values within the museum community have changed" since Hrdlicka's era.
Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History decided the real owners were the Yaquis and handed over the remains and artifacts last month for burial. The tribe held a memorial ceremony in a wood-paneled hall at the New York museum on Central Park with incense, drums and chants.

"This is the first time that the (natural history museum) has turned over cultural patrimony to a foreign government that immediately returned it to the indigenous people," the museum said in a statement.

The remains were honored by Yaqui on both sides of the border, spurring the tribes' hopes for recognition of their status as a single people who have long lived in both countries — in Sonora and in southern Arizona near Tucson.

The remains were packed into ceremonial wooden boxes and taken first to Tucson, where they were given a hero's welcome by Pascua Yaquis, including an honor guard of Indian veterans of the U.S. Army.

"That is why the warriors' role is important, because when we make territorial claims, it is because Yaqui blood was spilled there," said Mexican Yaqui elder Ernesto Arguelles, 59. "This is the first opportunity we have had to stop and mourn."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) –
An outbreak of food-borne illness, linked to dangerous bacteria in ground beef, sickened 28 people and may have caused two deaths in the U.S. Northeast, health officials said on Monday.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said all but three of the illnesses were in the Northeast and 18 were in the six New England states. A common strain of E. coli bacteria was involved so tests were under way to see if all of the reported cases have the same cause.

State officials said a death in New Hampshire was linked to the ground beef that is being recalled by Fairbank Farms of Ashville, New York. The New York State Health Department said a death in the Albany area from E. coli O157:H7 bacteria was being investigated to see if it is linked.

New Hampshire officials did not release information about the death in their state. The death in New York state last month involved an adult with underlying medical conditions, said the CDC. Two people were hospitalized in New Hampshire.

Fairbank Farms announced the recall on Saturday of 545,699 lbs (248,450 kg) of fresh ground beef products. The beef was produced in mid-September and probably was labeled for sale by the end of the month, said USDA.

The Agriculture Department, which oversees meat safety, said an investigation led it to conclude "there is an association between the fresh ground beef products and illnesses in Connecticut, Maine and Massachusetts." USDA worked with state and federal officials in examining a cluster of E. coli O157:H7 illnesses.

A potentially deadly bacteria, E. coli can cause bloody diarrhea, dehydration and, in severe cases, kidney failure. The very young, the elderly and people with weak immune systems are the most susceptible to foodborne illness.

USDA said it would examine Fairbank Farms' food safety plan this week.

A string of food-borne safety scares led the U.S. House of Representatives to pass legislation this summer to require more inspections and oversight of food manufacturers and would give the government new authority to order recalls.

The Fairbank Farms beef went to retailers including Trader Joe's, Price Chopper, Lancaster and Wild Harvest, Shaw's, a unit of Supervalu, BJ's, Ford Brothers and Giant, a unit of Ahold, in eight states -- Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

A complete list of products is available at:

http://link.reuters.com/vyx27f

The beef was produced September 14-16, and the company urged consumers to check their freezers for products listed in the recall. Labels of the recalled packages will say EST 492 inside the USDA seal.

(Reporting by Charles Abbott; Editing by Christian Wiessner)