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: http://www.sabanews.net
February 2, 2008
A specialized Turkish team in archeology will visit Yemen on Tuesday for counting the rest of castles, fortresses, mosques, military facilities and Turkish baths built in Yemen with Turkish experiences.
General manger of International Cooperation and Connection in the Ministry of Culture Jamal Mu'ajam told Saba that the team, consisting from three professors in Ankara University, would arrive during this week and will cooperate with specialists form General Organization for Antique
Source: Yahoo News
February 5, 2008
Abdel Kader Haidara carefully picks up one of a dozen small leather-bound books lying on his desk and leafs through the age-weathered pages covered in Arabic calligraphy.
This tiny book is centuries old and one of more than 100,000 manuscripts that can be found on shelves and in boxes in Timbuktu, the ancient Malian city of mud-brick walls nestled between the Niger River and the Sahara Desert.
"The manuscripts are our heritage," says the curator of the Mamma H
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 5, 2008
A German town has sparked an outcry after naming its school after a Nazi scientist who helped to develop the V2 rockets that terrorised London during the Second World War.
Bernstadt auf dem Eigen, on the eastern border with Poland, has dedicated a school to Klaus Riedel, who was instrumental in developing the mobile launch pads for Hitler's wonder weapon that killed some 2,700 civilians in England and injured an estimated 6,500 people.
The honour to Riedel is considered
Source: Evan Thomas in the NYT
February 4, 2008
Philip Shenon, a reporter in the Washington bureau of The New York Times, set out to get behind the scenes of the 9/11 Commission. The inside story of a government commission doesn’t sound very promising; most commission reports wind up unread on dusty shelves....
In “The Commission [The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Commission]” he makes bureaucratic warfare exciting, largely because he has a keen grasp of human frailty and folly. He opens with a desperate, almost pathetic scene o
Source: NYT
February 4, 2008
Recent raids on museums in Southern California have stirred much questioning in the art world about why three federal agencies would devote four years to investigating what seems to be low-level smuggling and penny-ante tax fraud.
Yet tax experts say that the pattern of deceit outlined in court papers — appraising art objects for amounts just below a threshold that sets off higher scrutiny — is frequently investigated by the criminal enforcement arm of the Internal Revenue Service.
Source: NYT
February 5, 2008
Before Zeus hurled his first thunderbolt from Olympus, the pre-Greek people occupying the land presumably paid homage and offered sacrifices to their own gods and goddesses, whose nature and identities are unknown to scholars today.
But archaeologists say they have now found the ashes, bones and other evidence of animal sacrifices to some pre-Zeus deity on the summit of Mount Lykaion, in the region of Greece known as Arcadia. The remains were uncovered last summer at an altar later
Source: NYT
February 5, 2008
An article about the Prophet Muhammad in the English-language Wikipedia has become the subject of an online protest in the last few weeks because of its representations of Muhammad, taken from medieval manuscripts.
In addition to numerous e-mail messages sent to Wikipedia.org, an online petition cites a prohibition in Islam on images of people.
The petition has more than 80,000 “signatures,” though many who submitted them to ThePetitionSite.com, remained anonymous.
Source: Jerusalem Post
February 4, 2008
Thankfully, when the enemy finally hit Dimona, it wasn't quite on the scale that many have foreseen one day striking the relatively isolated and quiet Negev town.
Expressing the shock felt by residents after Monday's suicide bombing, in which one woman was killed and dozens were wounded in the first terror attack of any kind on the town, Dimona Mayor Meir Cohen told Channel 1, "People here aren't used to this kind of thing, but it's part of the new reality that all of us in the
Source: Seattle Times
February 5, 2008
This is going to sound strange, Maxine Box says, but 50 years later, she can't forget it:
Barack Obama's mother used to crack her knuckles."Constantly," Box told me as we sat in her Bellevue home on the eve of Super Tuesday, talking about Stanley Dunham, the girl with the man's name and the son who could be president of the United States.
Box, 65, was Dunham's best friend at Mercer Island High School, where they were members of the Class of 1960.
Source: CNN
February 4, 2008
The federal police force responsible for protecting the Washington Monument, the Statue of Liberty and other national icons is understaffed, under-equipped, under-trained and demoralized, according to an assessment that echoes earlier studies.
The new report says the 592-officer U.S. Park Police force is torn between acting as an urban police department and protecting national icons, and consequently "has failed to adequately perform either mission."
Many terr
Source: CNN
February 4, 2008
Raymond Jacobs, believed to be the last surviving member of the group of Marines photographed during the original U.S. flag-raising on Iwo Jima during World War II, has died at age 82.
Jacobs died January 29 of natural causes at a Redding hospital, his daughter, Nancy Jacobs, told The Associated Press.
Jacobs had spent his later years working to prove that he was the radio operator photographed looking up at an American flag as it was being raised by other Marines on Mo
Source: Bloomberg News
January 31, 2008
Argentina's navy identified a wreck off the coast of Buenos Aires province as the Ussukuma, a Nazi supply vessel that sank after an encounter with British warships in the early days of World War II.
The Ussukuma, scuttled by its crew in December 1939 after leaving the port of Bahia Blanca, was probably transporting food, fuel and explosives for German warships, according to Argentine historian Carlos De Napoli, who helped identify the wreck.
Source: Daily Mail
January 31, 2008
No one can accuse the Germans of ignoring the horrors of the past. So concerned have they become about a lack of knowledge of the Holocaust among children that they are distributing a new book in schools depicting their country's genocide in an easily accessible graphic novel.
The "comic book" format is seen as the best way to get a whole new generation of teenage children to confront the most dreadful period of their nation's history.
The book - entitled The Search
Source: http://www.abc.net.au
February 2, 2008
Thousands of people are gathering in the Russian city of Volgograd to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the end of one of the most crucial battles of World War II.
The Battle of Stalingrad saw more than 2 million Soviet and German soldiers desperately fighting in the snow and mud for six months.
The Germans eventually surrendered in a battle that not only changed the course of the war but helped forge Russians' sense of who they were and who they continue to be.
Source: ABC News
February 1, 2008
Dozens of German words have for decades been taboo for native speakers because of the way those words were used by the Nazis.
Now, an 800-page dictionary has been published to serve as a guide to avoiding linguistic traps into which Germans can easily fall.
Terms such as "endloesung" (final solution) or "selektion" (selection) can quickly get the user into trouble, because the words acquired specific meanings and associations during the Third Reich.
Source: AP
February 1, 2008
A New York City lawmaker's plan to regulate antique firearms like other weapons could have severe economic repercussions for museums and historical societies around the state and prevent hundreds of living history events and re-enactments staged every year.
If passed in its current form, the proposal by Democratic Assemblyman Michael Gianaris of Queens would make the state the first in the country to require owners of antique guns, black powder weapons and muzzleloading firearms to
Source: Huntsville Times
February 4, 2008
BRIDGEPORT - The remains of people who archaeologists said may have lived along the Tennessee River more than 1,000 years ago will be moved from a Bridgeport plant expansion site.
For the past several months, a Georgia archaeology group has been studying human remains and materials found at the site at U.S. Gypsum, said state archaeologist Stacye Hathorn. The company, which found the remains of several American Indians when it began building a drywall plant in Bridgeport in 1998, di
Source: BBC
February 4, 2008
A project taking thousands of English teenagers to visit Auschwitz is to be funded for another three years, says the government.
Two sixth formers from every school in England are currently funded to visit Auschwitz in Poland, to encourage an understanding of the Holocaust.
The project will receive an extra £4.65m to extend it until 2011.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 4, 2008
The thorny issue of whether to allow television programmes on Sunday afternoons was debated at the highest level of Government more than 50 years ago, documents show today.
The Cabinet acknowledged in 1955 that there was a growing demand from adults to watch the new technology, but was worried about a religious outcry.
The issue was raised at the Cabinet discussion of Feb 17 by the Postmaster General, who said: "Can we have television between 3-4pm on Sundays, desp
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 4, 2008
A unique record of the Royal Navy from the pencil and paintbrush of a senior officer who joined up as a 13-year-old in 1891 and left during the Second World War has been published.
The pictures show the changing nature of the senior service through the eyes of Vice-Admiral Sir Henry Kitson KBE, CB, who began his career as a midshipman under sail and was by 1927 captain of the world's biggest naval vessel, Rodney.
Sir Henry spent 10 years in Queen Victoria's navy, 10 yea
