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: ABC Science
April 8, 2008
Aboriginal tools found in Western Australia and dating back 35,000 years are surprisingly sophisticated and varied, archaeologists say.
And they believe the site may yet reveal artefacts up to 45,000 years old, making it older than the internationally famous Mungo Man site found in New South Wales.
Archaeologists hired by one of the traditional owners in the Pilbara region, the Martidja Banyjima people, uncovered the ancient tools at a rock overhang on the site of the A
Source: Manchester Evening News
April 9, 2008
ARCHAEOLOGISTS have unearthed a "mini-Stonehenge"... on the moors of Rochdale.
The two nearby sites - an oval made up of collapsed slabs, and a 30-metre circle of rounded stones - are believed to be ancient burial sites dating back as far as 5,000 years.
They were spotted by archaeologist Stuart Mendelsohn during a walk on the hills in December and could now become a major tourist attraction.
"I suppose you could describe it as Rochdale's ver
Source: Arab News
April 11, 2008
An ancient burial cave was discovered in the Philippine island of Mindanao, south of Manila, and officials have sealed the site to prevent looting of artifacts, many of them jars made from clay.
It was not immediately known whether there are other treasures in the cave which was accidentally discovered by quarry diggers yesterday in Maitum town in Sarangani province.
The latest discovery in the village of Pinol was near another ancient burial site discovered in 1991 whe
Source: AP
April 12, 2008
Workers rebuilding a sports stadium on the site of an 18th century Jewish cemetery in Belarus say they have no choice but to consign the bones to city dumps.
"It's impossible to pack an entire cemetery into sacks," said worker Mikhail Gubets, adding that he stopped counting the skulls when the number went over 100.
But critics say it's part of a pattern of callous indifference toward Belarus' Jewish heritage that was prevalent when the country was a Soviet rep
Source: CNET
April 11, 2008
Just in time for cherry blossom season in Washington, D.C., the Library of Congress on Saturday plans to open a new exhibit, called the Library of Congress Experience, at its historic Thomas Jefferson Building--and online at a new Web site, MyLOC.gov.
At about two dozen touch-screen kiosks sprinkled throughout otherwise analog exhibits, visitors will be able to zoom in on pages from historic bibles, "flip" through books from Thomas Jefferson's vast library, learn about the
Source: NYT
April 13, 2008
Running into Desi Bouterse is not easy to do. He does not frequent this capital’s outdoor cafes. He keeps to his riverfront villa. He grants few interviews.
Still, he is one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in this tiny former Dutch colony on South America’s northeast shoulder, and in his story is a lesson — perhaps — for the rest of the continent in the virtues, and downsides, of patience.
Suriname’s 470,000 people know Mr. Bouterse well. At 62, he is a former m
Source: NYT
April 11, 2008
In the summer of 1996, President Bill Clinton delivered on his pledge to “end welfare as we know it.” Despite howls of protest from some liberals, he signed into law a bill forcing recipients to work and imposing a five-year limit on cash assistance.
As first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton supported her husband’s decision, drawing the wrath of old friends from her days as an advocate for poor children. Some accused the Clintons of throwing vulnerable families to the winds in pursuit o
Source: NYT
April 13, 2008
Joblessness is growing. Millions of homes are sliding into foreclosure. The financial system continues to choke on the toxic leftovers of the mortgage crisis. The downward spiral of the economy is challenging a notion that has underpinned American economic policy for a quarter-century — the idea that prosperity springs from markets left free of government interference.
The modern-day godfather of that credo was Milton Friedman, who attributed the worst economic unraveling in America
Source: Fox News
April 13, 2008
Rev. Jeremiah Wright told a congregation in Norfolk, Va., on Sunday that reporters sneaked into a private funeral service a day before, in which he blasted America’s founding fathers for slavery and white supremacy and received standing ovations for attacking FOX News for covering his anti-American sermons.
Barack Obama’s retiring pastor delivered a sermon at Bank Street Memorial Baptist Church, where his late uncle had been the pastor, about overcoming trouble. The public appearanc
Source: Reuters
April 10, 2008
Germany's chief Nazi prosecutor is now more likely to be consoling the grandchild of a war criminal than chasing Adolf Hitler's murderous henchmen.
More than 60 years after World War Two ended, Nazi hunters are running out of targets and increasingly becoming historians who shine a harsh light on dark family secrets. "It's hard to keep prosecutors here," said Kurt Schrimm, who leads Germany's department for prosecuting Nazi war crimes. "I tell them when they start tha
Source: Reuters
April 10, 2008
Ancient open-air theatres across Greece are crumbling due to neglect and need swift government intervention to rescue them, archaeologists said on Thursday.
Greece, where Classical drama was born in the 5th century BC, boasts scores of theatres that form a key part of the country's classical cultural heritage. But while about 30 are in a state to host cultural events, 76 are in need of urgent repair, they said.
"Ancient theatres need to be constantly preserved, som
Source: BBC
April 11, 2008
A rare 2,000-year-old Roman skull has been returned to the cave beneath the Yorkshire Dales where it was discovered by divers in 1996.
Archaeologists were called in after cave divers unearthed human bones in what is believed to be one of the most important cave discoveries ever made.
The skull dates to the 2nd Century and is that of a local woman in her 50s.
Source: Discovery News
April 11, 2008
In seventh century England, a woman's jewelry-draped body was laid out on a specially constructed bed and buried in a grave that formed the center of an Anglo-Saxon cemetery, according to British archaeologists who recently excavated the site in Yorkshire.
Her jewelry, which included a large shield-shaped pendant, the layout and location of the cemetery as well as excavated weaponry, such as knives and a fine langseax (a single-edged Anglo-Saxon sword), lead the scientists to belie
Source: AP
April 11, 2008
Russian officials on Friday unveiled a monument to Laika, a dog whose flight to space more than 50 years ago paved the way for human space missions.
The small monument is near a military research facility in Moscow that prepared Laika's flight to space on Nov. 3, 1957. It features a dog standing on top of a rocket.
Little was known about the impact of space flight on living things at the time Laika's mission was launched. Some believed they would be unable to survive th
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 11, 2008
An island used as a naval base by the Germans in both world wars and flattened by the British Army is to rise again from the sea as a German tourist paradise.
Heligoland, a tiny North Sea island 40 miles off the German coast, was the target of reputedly the largest single non-nuclear explosion in history, when Britain detonated 6,800 tons of left-over ordnance there in 1947.
The aim was to shatter its reinforced submarine base and tunnel network, and end a colourful mil
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 11, 2008
Serb prisoners had their internal organs removed and sold by ethnic Albanians during the Kosovo war, according to allegations in a new book by the world's best known war crimes prosecutor.
Carla Del Ponte, who stepped down in January as chief prosecutor at the Hague tribunal for crimes committed in the Balkan wars of the 1990s, said investigators found a house suspected of being a laboratory for the illegal trade.
A senior adviser to Hashim Thaci, Kosovo's prime ministe
Source: NYT
April 11, 2008
After the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, the demise of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry on a reconnaissance mission in World War II has long ranked as one of aviation’s great mysteries. Now, thanks to the tenacity and luck of a two amateur archaeologists, the final pieces of the puzzle seem to have been filled in.
The story that emerged about the disappearance of Saint-Exupéry, the French aviator, author and émigré from Vichy France, proved to contain several narratives, a complexity tha
Source: Tim Egan in the NYT
April 9, 2008
COOLIDGE, Ariz. — A pair of Brits, a Vietnam vet, a sullen teen and a dozen or so retirees gathered under the Sonoran Desert sun to try to decipher some of the clues left behind by people who lived here nearly 1,000 years ago.
Who were these Hohokam people who thrived in a compact urban village built around a Great House? They knew astronomy and irrigation and how to construct a four-story building with little more than mud. They played sports on their ball courts, fermented wine fr
Source: NYT
April 11, 2008
In the slow-paced towns of Vermont, musty archive vaults are getting a curious amount of foot traffic this year.
With magnifying glasses to decode old handwriting and tissues for dust-induced sneezing, citizen volunteers are poring over record books with a common, increasingly urgent purpose: finding evidence of every road ever legally created in their towns, including many that are now impassable and all but unobservable.
The point is to comply with a 2006 state law th
Source: WaPo
April 11, 2008
In Thomas Jefferson's day, the books he lovingly collected were almost as famous as he was.
Leather-bound tomes on topics as varied as whist, beekeeping and philosophy were gathered from across Europe and colonial America, then brought to Monticello to help fulfill Jefferson's vow to amass the whole of human knowledge. They eventually became the foundation for the Library of Congress, although two-thirds were lost in a fire in 1851.
For the past decade, a small group of
