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: AP
January 22, 2008
Towering above the modern streets and buildings of Irbil, the citadel's narrow alleyways and dusty courtyards stand almost deserted. Its mud-brick houses, built atop layers of ancient civilizations stretching back through millennia, are crumbling.
Irbil's citadel, claimed to be one of the longest continuously inhabited urban areas on Earth with a history of more than 8,000 years, is in danger. Its slopes are eroding and its buildings are collapsing.
But authorities in n
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
January 23, 2008
Two shipping containers' worth of records created by Iraq's Baath Party that have been stored on an American naval facility for the past 21 months are about to find a new home at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank and library affiliated with Stanford University.
Hoover signed a deal on Monday with the Iraq Memory Foundation—a private, nonprofit group that has had custody of the documents since just after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003—for the transfer of about seve
Source: AP
January 23, 2008
The heart of a revered 19th century Argentine friar and patriot was stolen from an urn in the Franciscan monastery where it was kept for years as a religious relic, a church official said.
Whoever scooped up friar Mamerto Esquiu's heart on Tuesday left the urn it was stored in behind, said Jorge Martinez, head of the San Francisco monastery in the northwestern province of Catamarca.
"The theft was carried out because of the heart -- nothing else was stolen," h
Source: Bruce Bartlett, uthor of “Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy,” in the NYT
January 23, 2008
The history of anti-recession efforts is that they are almost always initiated too late to do any good. This chart, based on recession timelines from the National Bureau of Economic Research, shows the enactment of stimulus plans is a fairly accurate indicator that we have hit the bottom of the business cycle, meaning the economy will improve even if the government does nothing.
[HNN Editor: Click on SOURCE link to view chart.]
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
January 22, 2008
On January 22, 2008, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) brought the “Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2007″ (H.R. 1255, S. 886) to the floor under the Senate’s unanimous consent rule that allows non-controversial bills to be considered on an expedited basis. However, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) became the latest Republican senator to publicly put a hold on the bill and blocked floor consideration.
Last September, Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY) blocked a vote in th
Source: AP
January 22, 2008
A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.
The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."
The study was poste
Source: Guardian
January 21, 2008
In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, experts warned Tony Blair that occupying the country and trying to impose a western-style democracy was doomed to failure. He dismissed their objections, convinced that victory was a formality. In the first of three extracts from his new book, Jonathan Steele looks at how Britain went to war unbriefed, unprepared and with no idea of the fallout that would ensue.
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Source: Reuters
January 22, 2008
The victims of human sacrifice by Mexico's ancient Mayans, who threw children into water-filled caverns, were likely boys and young men not virgin girls as previously believed, archeologists said on Tuesday.
The Maya built soaring temples and elaborate palaces in the jungles of Central America and southern Mexico before the Spanish conquest in the early 1500s.
Maya priests in the city of Chichen Itza in the Yucatan peninsula sacrificed children to petition the gods for
Source: NYT
January 22, 2008
What’s in a disease’s name? Long-hidden shame, perhaps.
In most cases, as with lung cancer or heart failure, names are not much more than thumbnail descriptions. But for a few common illnesses like Alzheimer’s disease and for hundreds of rarer ones, doctors and patients often use names honoring the first doctor to publicize the illness or its symptoms.
Some doctors have criticized that as a source of confusion. Different names are used in different countries in some cas
Source: AHA Blog
January 20, 2008
The stock market may be volatile these days, but the Museum of American Finance is bullish on the future of financial history. The museum re-opened its doors on Friday, January 11, after a $9 million renovation project. The museum is located one block from the New York Stock Exchange and operates with the goal “to become a major tourist attraction in lower Manhattan, an educational destination where busloads of school children can learn the basics about the country’s financial system, and an a
Source: Press Release--Council on Contemporary Families Briefing Paper on Teen Pregnancy and Poverty
January 22, 2008
In fairy tales, there are two possible outcomes for a young girl. In the Disney version, the handsome prince rescues her, then marries her, and everyone lives happily ever after. In the dark version, the heroine makes a dreadful mistake that leads to disaster. For the past 15 years, political pundits have been telling us a dark fairy tale about American teens, blaming America's high poverty rates on the actions of teenage girls who have babies out of wedlock. This assumption guided the welfare r
Source: The State
January 17, 2008
A resolution to remove the statue of Ben Tillman from State House grounds is expected to be formally introduced today in the House of Representatives.
“I just don’t think his statue should be on State House grounds,” said Rep. Todd Rutherford, D-Richland, noting Tillman for years made speeches about killing African-Americans who sought their rights.
Some lawmakers don’t expect the resolution to pass but prefer adding a plaque that would explain Tillman’s history accurat
Source: NYT
January 22, 2008
Rudolph W. Giuliani likens himself to a boxer who never takes a punch without swinging back. As mayor, he made the vengeful roundhouse an instrument of government, clipping anyone who crossed him....
Mr. Giuliani was a pugilist in a city of political brawlers. But far more than his predecessors, historians and politicians say, his toughness edged toward ruthlessnessand became a defining aspect of his mayoralty. One result: New York City spent at least $7 million in settling civil rights laws
Source: BBC
January 22, 2008
Laser technology is being used to locate potential archaeological sites hidden by woodland in Worcestershire.
The hope is that ancient settlements and farms across the Wyre Forest will be detected by lasers fired from aircraft 3,300ft (1,000m) up.
The results are processed by computers and turned into images of the ground, currently hidden by trees.
Source: LAT
January 22, 2008
He works as a blacksmith in one of Baghdad's swarming Shiite slums. But at least once a month, Abu Saif tucks a pistol into his belt, hops into a minibus taxi and speeds south.
His goal: to unearth ancient treasures from thousands of archaeological sites scattered across southern Iraq.
Images of Baghdad's ransacked National Museum, custodian of a collection dating back to the beginning of civilization, provoked an international outcry in the early days of the war in 200
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 22, 2008
An amateur treasure hunter has unearthed a hoard of bronze age axe heads thought to be worth about £80,000.
Tom Peirce started combing a field with his metal detector after dropping off a school coach party at a farm.
Within a few minutes it began beeping and he found the first axe head fragment 10in into the soil.
When he dug deeper, Mr Peirce found dozens more and, over the following two days, he and a colleague, Les Keith, uncovered nearly 500 bronze art
Source: Irish Sun
January 22, 2008
The long-held notion that agriculture in Europe started a good 5,000 years before developing in the Americas, has been challenged by new evidence suggesting that farming started in the Old World and New World almost simultaneously.
The evidence, in the form of Peruvian squash seeds, signifies that planting, watering, weeding, and harvesting in the New and Old Worlds was almost concurrent.
In a paper published in the journal Science last June, anthropological archaeolog
Source: http://www.eadt.co.uk
January 17, 2008
ARCHAEOLOGISTS digging in the grounds of a Cambridge University college have unearthed the first hard evidence that the area of the ancient city was occupied during the Bronze Age.
The remains were discovered during a dig at Fitzwilliam College, off Huntingdon Road, and probably belonged to a farmstead which thrived 3,500 years ago.
Plenty of Bronze Age remains have been found elsewhere in Cambridgeshire - notably in the Addenbrooke's and Peterborough areas, and the lo
Source: NYT
January 22, 2008
When engineers began poking and prodding at the Utah Capitol a few years ago, sounding the structure for how it might fare in the earthquake that seismologists say will surely strike here one day, they grew increasingly scared as they moved higher toward the dome.
The quality of the concrete varied — solid at the foundation, crumbling near the top — and that finding could mean only one thing: There had been only so much building material, and construction crews, in finishing the dom
Source: AP
January 21, 2008
While the nation honors the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday, three states celebrate another man as well.
In Arkansas, Alabama and Mississippi, the slain civil rights leader shares a state holiday with Robert E. Lee, commanding officer of the Confederate Army.
The two figures seem to coexist in the very fabric of the Arkansas' capital city, where streets bear each of their names.
