This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: Spiegel Online
April 18, 2008
Scrap metal thieves are becoming increasingly audacious, with some even stealing from cemeteries and memorials. Now some 1,000 bronze plaques have gone missing from the former concentration camp at Theresienstadt [in the Czech Republic].
Semi-precious metal, as it happens, is everywhere. It can be found on church roofs; copper pipes run through many a house wall; and wiring is almost ubiquitous. Scrap metal thieves, though, have recently discovered a valuable new source of copper: C
Source: http://www.archaeology.co.uk (date unknown)
April 21, 2008
After a gap of some forty four years, Stonehenge is once again being excavated. Admittedly, this time it is only a very small hole, and is only being dug for a fortnight, but it is a very important hole, and on April the 9th, we were invited down to Stonehenge to inspect it. It was a wonderful trip, not least because the weather was perfect. After the heavy snow fall at the weekend the sun decided to shine and since we were allowed inside the circle, I took the opportunity to take hundreds of p
Source: AP
April 17, 2008
In the eyes of the law, the worshippers were criminals. But to the rabbi who served them, they were simply Jewish men in search of faith and spiritual guidance.
The synagogue behind the walls of Eastern State Penitentiary was a place for inmates to reflect and, perhaps, seek forgiveness. But after the prison closed in 1971, the room remained forgotten even as work began to preserve other parts of the decaying historical site.
Now, officials at the 179-year-old landmark prison
Source: Times (UK)
April 17, 2008
Prehistoric treasures unearthed in the Alps as melting glaciers recede are under threat from looters who are removing many of them.
Such is the concern for the newly revealed objects - which include weapons, clothing and tools - that a task force of archaeologists, anthropologists, mountain climbers and Alpine rescue teams has been formed in an attempt to salvage them.
Franco Nicolis, an archaeologist from Trento, said: “We must be ready to intervene as if we were deali
Source: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg
April 17, 2008
Artefacts immersed in the Nile at Aswan and a 19th-Dynasty funerary collection in Luxor are the most recent discoveries in Egypt, as Nevine El-Aref reports.
***
It is surely in the quiet and relaxing city of Aswan that the Nile is at its most beautiful. The river flows through an amber desert, past granite rocks and round emerald islands smothered in palm groves and tropical plants. This peaceful scene, however, was disturbed last week by archaeologists shouting and yel
Source: AP
April 20, 2008
It's a priceless piece of real estate largely unknown to New York's 8 million inhabitants. From its shore, visitors can see the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and the Brooklyn Bridge.
Situated in the middle of New York Harbor, just a half mile from lower Manhattan, Governors Island is about to undergo an extensive makeover that would turn much of it into lush parkland.
A consortium of five design companies was chosen in December to transform the teardrop-shaped island,
Source: Washington Times
April 21, 2008
As a child, Klaus Schmidt used to grub around in caves in his native Germany in the hope of finding prehistoric paintings. Thirty years later, as a member of the German Archaeological Institute, he found something infinitely more important: a temple complex almost twice as old as anything comparable.
"This place is a supernova," said Mr. Schmidt, standing under a lone tree on a windswept hilltop 35 miles north of the Syrian border.
"Within a minute of fir
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 21, 2008
The law that forces the daughter of a monarch to make way for her younger brother in the succession could be abolished under new equality legislation.
Ministers want to give women equal rights to succeed the throne, ending the rule of primogeniture set down under the provisions of the 1701 Act of Settlement.
The change would not affect the current line of succession, but would mean that if Prince William had a daughter and then a son, his daughter would become Queen.
Source: Statesman Journal
April 8, 2008
Downtown Salem's history will come alive for residents and visitors under a new program featuring a series of historical markers and a revamped walking tour, city officials said.
A $70,000 federal parks grant announced Monday will help fund the program, for which the city will install as many as 50 markers on downtown buildings and sites detailing their historical significance for passers-by.
"I believe that folks think, 'Oh, these are beautiful old buildings, how
Source: Times (UK)
April 21, 2008
Medieval physicians believed that they could diagnose disease by holding up a flask of the patient’s urine to the light and squinting at it. According to scientists at Imperial College London, they could have been on to something.
A team there has completed the first worldwide study of the metabolites (breakdown products) that are found in urine, reflecting the diet, inheritance and the lifestyle of the people from whom it came. They call such studies “metabolomics” by analogy with
Source: BBC
April 20, 2008
Rome took a step back in time on Sunday as the city marked the anniversary of its legendary foundation.
[Click on the SOURCE link to view pics.]
Source: AP
April 20, 2008
Could it be the "vast right wing conspiracy" is having second thoughts? Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton was endorsed Sunday by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, whose owner and publisher, billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, personally funded many of the investigations that led to President Clinton's impeachment in 1998.
It was one of a handful of endorsements the New York senator has received from Pennsylvania newspapers before the state's primary Tuesday. Most of the state's
Source: Time
April 19, 2008
The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, that secretive band of Pentagon geeks that searches obsessively for the next big thing in the technology of warfare, is 50 years old. To celebrate, DARPA invited Vice President Dick Cheney, a former Defense Secretary well aware of the Agency's capabilities, to help blow out the candles. "This agency brought forth the Saturn 5 rocket, surveillance satellites, the Internet, stealth technology, guided munitions, unmanned aerial vehicles, night visi
Source: AP
April 19, 2008
A ticket for the Titanic's ill-fated voyage that belonged to the last survivor with memories of the disaster sold to a collector from the United States at a British auction Saturday.
Lillian Asplund, who died in 2006 at the age of 99, was 5 years old when the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank during its maiden voyage from England to New York. Her father and three siblings were among the 1,500 people who died.
She was the last American survivor of the disaster and the last
Source: NYT
April 20, 2008
A new study by a Defense Department contractor shows that divided loyalty, usually on the part of naturalized Americans with roots in a foreign land, has become the dominant motive [for spying against the US, a historic shift].
From 1947 to 1990, the study found, fewer than 1 in 5 Americans charged with spying were acting solely or primarily out of patriotic, as opposed to ideological, loyalty to a foreign country. Since 1990, according to the study’s author, Katherine L. Herbig, di
Source: NYT
April 20, 2008
THE bluebonnets are beginning to bloom here on the central Texas prairie, just in time for Jenna Bush’s wedding on May 10 at her parents’ 1,600-acre ranch. The kitschy tourist shops on Main Street, hoping for an influx of visitors, have ordered commemorative coffee mugs featuring Ms. Bush and her fiancé, Henry Hager — a fresh addition to the Luvya Dubya bumper stickers, Western White House coasters and President Bush bobble-head dolls....
The May issue of Vogue, on the stands last W
Source: TPM Cafe
April 17, 2008
So the Senate has voted to require the Justice Department to investigate how Rep. Don Young's (R-AK) earmark came to be changed after the bill passed both houses of Congress. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), who was pushing a competing solution (an eight-member bicameral committee), says that sets "the troubling and bizarre precedent of turning the Attorney General into the de facto Senate and House Parliamentarian."
And indeed, it does seem to be a first. Associate Senate Historia
Source: Salon
April 19, 2008
Intrigue. Power. Corruption. Death. Sex. The history of oil has nothing on that of the yellow fruit.
***
On a trip to Honduras, journalist Dan Koeppel caught the banana bug. Researching an article for Popular Science about attempts to breed a disease-resistant banana, the American journalist wandered the grounds of the old Chiquita compound, amid the fading colonial mansions and golf course, where he stumbled upon the cheery yellow fruit's unsavory past.
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Source: AP
April 19, 2008
The story of Israel at 60 is the tale of a little town named Sderot whose children play indoors because of Palestinian rockets, of a world-class tech industry that pioneered Wi-Fi and instant messaging, of a nation filled with pride and fierce patriotism, yet living in fear of annihilation from abroad and of a demographic time bomb at home.
Six decades after fighting six Arab armies to realize the ancient dream of a Jewish return to Zion, Israel is still searching for its identity a
Source: AP
April 18, 2008
A federal judge has denied a bid by Florida deep-sea explorers to keep secret the details of a 19th-century shipwreck that has yielded $500 million in treasure, a ruling the Spanish government applauded Friday.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Pizzo threw out Odyssey Marine Exploration's request Thursday to keep information including the identity of the ship sealed as the company argues with Spain over ownership of the 17 tons of silver coins and other artifacts retrieved last year.
The
