In the news this week... Decoding Neanderthal DNA. Wi-Fi mobile phones. Legal offshoring. Living on the Web. Transforming Rwanda. Heat and drought in Europe. Risky migration.

SCIENCE

Top Story: Science Rebuilds DNA of Neanderthals - [The Times] He is 38,000 years old and nothing but a pile of bones, but one day we may be able to rebuild him. Scientists are planning to reconstruct the genetic code of Neanderthal man. Anthropologists plan to apply the forensic techniques used to map the human genome to chart all 3 billion chemical 'base-pairs' in the DNA of man's close but long-dead relative.

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TECHNOLOGY

Top Story: An Alternative to Cellphone Service? Why Not Wi-Fi? - [International Herald Tribune] What if, instead of burning up minutes on your cellphone plan, you could make free or cheap calls over the Internet using wireless access offered in many coffee shops, airports and homes? New phones coming on the market will allow just that. Instead of using cellphone networks, the phones will make use of the anarchic global patchwork of so-called Wi-Fi hotspots. Other models will be able to switch easily between Wi-Fi or the normal cellphone networks.

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BUSINESS

Top Story: Legal Outsourcing: Next Big Thing! - [The Hindu] Except for fighting court cases in New York or London for law firms there, Indian lawyers are doing everything else for their western counterparts -- litigation support, contract review, patent writing and para legal services. Legal process outsourcing (LPO) as it is being called, has very high growth potential.

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SOCIETY

Top Story: Homo Conexus - [Technology Review] A veteran technology commentator attempts to live entirely on Web 2.0 for two weeks.

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GLOBAL POLITICS

Top Story: Poverty-Stricken Rwanda Puts Its Faith and Future into the Wide Wired World - [Guardian Unlimited] Office workers talking over Skype. Fibre-optic cable snaking hundreds of miles underground and to the top of a 4,500-metre volcano. Paperless cabinet meetings with every minister using a laptop. This may sound like an advanced western country rather than a tiny, poor African state. Yet this is Rwanda, now in the midst of an extraordinary development plan to leap into the 21st century.

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ENVIRONMENT

Top Story: Heat Wave is Drying Up Europe's Water Resources - [Deutsche Welle] The record temperatures in July have had a dramatic effect on Europe's water resources. Many lakes and rivers are at record lows, aggravating problems already caused by bad water management.

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THE FUTURE

Top Story: Flocking to the Coast: World's Population Migrating into Danger - [Yahoo News] New maps developed by investigating the relationship between human population and natural resources shows where people will most likely settle through 2025. The number of people living within 60 miles of coastlines will increase by about 35 percent compared to 1995, the mapmakers say.

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Featured Book: The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics by Eric D. Beinhocker Resource Page

Featured Link: Future Glimpse - Scenes from the not-too-distant future at Worth1000.com.

Audio Clip: Struggling for the Future - Part One, Part Two - [BBC] Fifteen years after freeing themselves from Soviet rule, the central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan are struggling for identity.