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: ANI
March 22, 2008
A new study by anthropologists at the Texas A and M University, suggests that first Americans to come to the country 1,000 to 2,000 years earlier than the 13,500 years ago previously thought.
The team, led by Ted Goebel, an anthropology professor at Texas A and M and associate director of Texas A and M's Center for the Study of the First Americans, said that their theory indicates that the Americas wasn't settled until as late as 15,000 years ago.
He said that their hyp
Source: Independent (UK)
March 22, 2008
On the ancient Syrian island of Arwad, which was settled by the Phoenicians in about 2000BC, men are hard at work hammering wooden pegs into the hull of a ship.
But this vessel will not be taking fishermen on their daily trip up and down the coast. It is destined for a greater adventure – one that could solve a mystery which has baffled archaeologists for centuries.
The adventure begins not in Arwad but in Dorset, where an Englishman has taken it upon himself to try to
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
March 22, 2008
Oblivious to the mud-covered construction machinery rumbling in the background, dirt-smeared archeologists and Songhees Nation members have been chipping away at a 2,850-year-old aboriginal site, one of the oldest to be found on Vancouver Island, experts say.
"This find is quite rare," said Shane Bond, a senior archeologist with Victoria-based I. R. Wilson Consultants, the company leading the archeological work. "I was terribly excited; my adrenalin was jumping."
Source: NYT
March 24, 2008
Senator John McCain never fails to call himself a conservative Republican as he campaigns as his party’s presumptive presidential nominee. He often adds that he was a “foot soldier” in the Reagan revolution and that he believes in the bedrock conservative principles of small government, low taxes and the rights of the unborn.
What Mr. McCain almost never mentions are two extraordinary moments in his political past that are at odds with the candidate of the present: His discussions i
Source: LAT
March 24, 2008
Barack Obama's friend was angry. The high school coaches were benching good black players. Black kids weren't getting dates.
"These girls are A-1, USDA-certified racists. All of 'em," the friend said while the two teenagers wolfed down French fries, as the story goes in Obama's memoir.
As far back as that sort of exchange in high school, a recurring character type has played a role in the life of Obama: a friend or associate who is quick to blame white America
Source: TheCuttingEdge
March 24, 2008
Congressman Chris Smith (R-N.J.) likened Google, Yahoo and other Internet companies to the IBM's cooperation with Hitler's Nazi government to help carry out the Holocaust, according to a report in Information Week.
"Did you ever wonder why the Gestapo always had all those very well-laid-out prints of where the Jews lived?" reporter Paul McDougall quoted Smith as saying. "Because IBM made it happen."
Smith's comments about IBM helping to enable the Holocaus
Source: WSJ editorial
March 24, 2008
Five years on, few Iraq myths are as persistent as the notion that the Bush Administration invented a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Yet a new Pentagon report suggests that Iraq's links to world-wide terror networks, including al Qaeda, were far more extensive than previously understood.
Naturally, it's getting little or no attention. Press accounts have been misleading or outright distortions, while the Bush Administration seems indifferent. Even John McCain has le
Source: WaPo
March 23, 2008
In the months leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration threatened trade reprisals against friendly countries who withheld their support, spied on its allies, and pressed for the recall of U.N. envoys that resisted U.S. pressure to endorse the war, according to an upcoming book by a top Chilean diplomat.
The rough-and-tumble diplomatic strategy has generated lasting"bitterness" and"deep mistrust" in Washington's relations with allies in Europe, Latin Amer
Source: Calgary Herald
March 21, 2008
French explorer Samuel de Champlain - already getting a rough ride in the Canadian media on the 400th anniversary of his establishment of a trading post in Quebec City - doesn't get much respect in his native country either.
Those few French citizens who have heard of the man, sometimes dubbed Canada's founder, don't even consider him the most important native of Brouage, this historic fortified city that draws 400,000 visitors a year.
That title goes to Marie Mancini, King L
Source: Financial Times
March 22, 2008
On the slow descent into the Tigris valley, steep cliff walls rise 100 metres on both sides at the confluence of seven natural gorges. The winding road continues into the Kurdish heartland of south-east Turkey until the Mesopotamian plain unfolds, revealing the first scattering of rock caves, of which there are thousands in the area. On the southern bank of the Tigris the ancient settlement of Hasankeyf overlooks the scene.
The town’s history dates back at least 7,000 years, with tr
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 23, 2008
Vladimir Putin is to fulfil an unrealised dream of Joseph Stalin's by creating a grandiose state cemetery.
In a corner of northern Moscow bulldozers began churning the earth his week in a section of wasteland where Mr Putin and Stalin, the dictator he is said to revere, could one day be laid side by side.
The Federal Military Memorial Cemetery, its designers boast, will be Russia's answer to America's Arlington. Arguably the most ambitious architectural project undertak
Source: http://www.azzaman.com
March 19, 2008
Iraqi archaeologists have discovered a new Babylonian town 180 kilometers south of Baghdad.
The head archaeologist Mohammed Yahya said the town is more than 20,000 square meters in area and includes administrative quarters, temples and other buildings of “magnificent and splendid design”
Yahya, who is the head of the provincial Antiquities Department in the Province of Diwaniya, where the new Babylonian town was discovered, said he still lacks evidence on the town’s anc
Source: Fox News
March 22, 2008
When a noose was found hanging outside of the Nyumburu Cultural Center on the University of Maryland's College Park campus in September, police classified it as a hate crime but never named — or found — a suspect.
It might not have mattered if they had.
Current state law does not specifically list hanging a noose as a crime. The No Nooses Act attempts to change that by adding the hanging of a noose to a list of actions already specifically identified as crimes, includin
Source: BBC
March 21, 2008
European colonisation of South America resulted in a dramatic shift from a native American population to a largely mixed one, a genetic study has shown.
It suggests male European settlers mated with native and African women, and slaughtered the men.
But it adds that areas like Mexico City "still preserve the genetic heritage" because these areas had a high number of natives at the time of colonisation.
The findings appear in the journal Public Li
Source: NYT
March 23, 2008
Americans and their political leaders have been tongue-tied on the subject of race. We were reminded of that last week when Senator Barack Obama, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, took the almost unimaginable step of going before a national audience at a precarious juncture in a close campaign and speaking explicitly about what race means to blacks and whites. He spoke of black anger and white resentment and the significance of race in American history; his purpose was
Source: NYT op ed
March 23, 2008
As Mrs. Clinton runs for president, a central theme of her candidacy has been that her years in the White House gave her firsthand experience in dealing with foreign crises. In her now-famous TV advertisements that ran before the Ohio and Texas primaries, she portrayed herself as the candidate best prepared to answer a 3 a.m. phone call to address a sudden crisis.
While there is no doubt that she had an intimate view of foreign policy during her husband’s presidency, her claims that she wa
Source: AP
March 21, 2008
Older White House computer hard drives have been destroyed, the White House disclosed to a federal court Friday in a controversy over millions of possibly missing e-mails from 2003 to 2005.
The White House revealed new information about how it handles its computers in an effort to persuade a federal magistrate it would be fruitless to undertake an e-mail recovery plan that the court proposed.
"When workstations are at the end of their lifecycle and retired ... the
Source: The Newsletter of the New York American Revolution Round Table
March 19, 2008
The New London (CT) Historical Society has recently discovered it owns an American flag that may be worth millions. It's an antique 13 star banner made of faded white and red silk ribbons hand stitched together. It's been part of the Society's collection for decades and until lately hung over the mantle in the front parlor of the Shaw Mansion in downtown New London. In 2006 it was restored by experts in Rhode Island. Gradually, it dawned on them that it was one of only a very small number of 13
Source: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk
March 20, 2008
The Queen created another piece of history for Northern Ireland today with a show of religious and social unity at the Maundy Thursday service in Armagh.
The leaders of the four main churches in Ireland - including Catholic Cardinal Sean Brady - came together at St Patrick's Church of Ireland Cathedral in Armagh, Ireland's ecclesiastical capital, to watch Her Majesty distribute Maundy Money at the traditional pre-Easter religious service.
It was the first time that the
Source: http://news.yahoo.com
March 21, 2008
Germany's Cabinet adopted a plan Wednesday for a $45.5 million museum to commemorate the plight of Germans uprooted from their homes in eastern Europe after World War II.
The program comes after years of heated debate with Germany's neighbors on how best to memorialize the hardship suffered by millions of Germans left homeless after borders shifted westward in 1945, without diminishing the crimes of the Nazis during the war.
The center in downtown Berlin will include a permanent exh
