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: Reuters
June 18, 2007
Algeria, a treasure house of prehistoric Saharan art, has discovered more neolithic rock etchings in the desert from around 8,000 years ago showing cattle herds, a government newspaper reported Monday.
El Moudjahid daily said local tour guide Hadj Brahim found about 40 images near the town of Bechar, about 800 km (500 miles) southwest of the capital Algiers.
Source: http://en.epochtimes.com
June 25, 2007
Recently, a Chinese archaeological team working in Hanchen City, Shaanxi Province, excavated an ancient tomb from the Zhou Dynasty ((1046-221 B.C.) and discovered many precious historical relics. Inside one chamber they found four wooden figurines with color painted design. To this day, these figurines are the earliest known in China. They have been dated 500 years older than the terracotta soldiers and horses of the Qin Dynasty (221-205 B.C.)
The cemetery of the Zhou Dynasty in Lia
Source: BBC
June 26, 2007
One of the biggest Iron Age roundhouses ever found in Scotland has been uncovered during an archaeological dig near Inverurie in Aberdeenshire.
The 2,000-year-old stone building was found in the Bennachie hills on the site of an earlier Bronze Age fort.
The archaeologists who uncovered it said the size of the building suggested it was inhabited by society's elite.
Source: BBC
June 27, 2007
Archaeologists are excavating the remains of houses believed to date back 2,000 years after they were uncovered by a ferocious storm. Fife-based charity Scottish Coastal Archaeology and the Problem of Erosion (Scape) is leading a community project at the site on North Uist.
Scape is investigating the suspected Iron Age round houses before they vanish in another powerful storm.
The organisation is also carrying out work at another historic site in Brora.
Vio
Source: BBC
June 29, 2007
An ancient Shetland settlement at risk of crumbling into the sea has been rebuilt - despite fears that it will soon be eroded.
The work on the burial site in Sandwick Bay, Unst, follows an excavation led by the Scottish Coastal Archaeology and the Problems of Erosion Trust (Scape).
It teamed up with the Council for Scottish Archaeology's Adopt-a-Monument scheme for the rebuild project.
The new structures will allow visitors to see the excavation findings.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 2, 2007
Lee Harvey Oswald could not have acted alone in assassinating President John F Kennedy, according to a new study by Italian weapons experts of the type of rifle Oswald used in the shootings.
The new findings will encourage conspiracy theorists
In fresh tests of the Mannlicher-Carcano bolt-action weapon, supervised by the Italian army, it was found to be impossible for even an accomplished marksman to fire the shots quickly enough....The official Warren Co
Source: NYT
July 2, 2007
On a hot Sunday evening in June, thousands of fans in a packed stadium here in the Croatian capital gave a Nazi salute as the rock star Marko Perkovic shouted a well-known slogan from World War II.
Some of the fans were wearing the black caps of Croatia’s infamous Nazi puppet Ustashe government, which was responsible for sending tens of thousands of Serbs, Gypsies and Jews to their deaths in concentration camps.
The exchange with the audience is a routine part of Mr. Pe
Source: NYT
July 1, 2007
In an extraordinary open letter directed to Chinese Catholics and released Saturday, Pope Benedict XVI acknowledged the suffering experienced by Catholics under Communist rule but also concluded that it was time to forgive past wrongdoings and for the underground and state-sponsored Catholic churches in China to reconcile.
Openly hoping for a renewal of relations between China and the Vatican, which were suspended in the late 1950s, Pope Benedict reassured the Chinese government th
Source: WaPo
July 1, 2007
The wool pants itch, especially around the inner thighs, especially when you're marching. The rifle's heavy. So's the canteen, kit and bayonet, which dig into your haunches. After a good hour of standing at attention and shifting stances in the militant summer sun, the tendons in your right arm burn, sweat slicks your back under the sack coat, and you might wonder, Why live like a Civil War soldier these days if you don't have to?
"Because they can't," says Ray Wetzel, 55,
Source: NYT
July 1, 2007
ATLANTA — The Wren’s Nest, the ocher-colored home of Joel Chandler Harris and his famous storyteller, Uncle Remus, has long been shunned by the black neighborhood that surrounds it.
Harris’s characters, including Br’er Rabbit and the Tar-Baby, may have been based on African folktales, but their antiquated and affectionate portrait of life in the old South is not welcome by detractors, and many neighbors have not forgotten the Wren’s Nest’s history of keeping black people out of the
Source: BBC
June 30, 2007
Scientists in Spain say that they have found a tooth from a distant human ancestor that is more than one million years old.
The tooth, a pre-molar, was discovered on Wednesday at the Atapuerca site in northern Spain's Burgos Province.
It represented western Europe's "oldest human fossil remain", a statement from the Atapuerca Foundation said.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 7, 2007
The tour guide was seething. "Chiang Kai-shek was a psychopathic dictator," she shouted, glaring at the woman in the gift shop of what used to be the main memorial to Taiwan's former leader. "Nonsense," the shopkeeper snapped back. "He was a great historical figure, a great man."
Some 32 years after his death, the man who became synonymous with the island's split with mainland China has been thrust back into the political spotlight, as Taiwan's two main
Source: http://www.radio.cz
June 29, 2007
An ongoing dispute over whether the communist hammer and sickle symbols belong on a wartime memorial to Russian soldiers who died during the liberation of Brno at the end of the Second World War has stumped Czech officials, divided the inhabitants of Brno and elicited an official protest from Russia.
The dispute was set in motion by the deputy mayor of Brno, Rene Pelan, who took it upon himself to remove the hammer and sickle symbols from a monument built to commemorate 326 soldiers
Source: AP
June 26, 2007
The last wishes of a Civil War veteran are being fulfilled almost 80 years after his death, as three nonprofits split a nest egg now worth nearly $10 million.
Authorities had to sort out a complex money trail before awarding the money, some two years after the death of the soldier's last named beneficiary, a grandchild.
"Who would have thought that in 2007, you'd get a gift from a Civil War veteran?" asked Mark Stubis, a spokesman for KidsPeace, the children'
Source: http://www.wbaltv.com
June 29, 2007
An extremely rare photograph featuring President Abraham Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, is heading to the auction block.
The pre-Civil War ambrotype, which came from a collector, was created with a photographic process that was used in the early 1850s, experts said. The photo can be traced back to the home of Union Civil War Gen. Joshua Chamberlain.
The image is directly on the glass and can be viewed because of the black paper behind it in the frame.
Source: AP
June 30, 2007
Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma said the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan by the United States during World War II was an inevitable way to end the war, a news report said Saturday.
"I understand that the bombing ended the war, and I think that it couldn't be helped," Kyodo News agency quoted Kyuma as saying in a speech at a university in Chiba, just east of Tokyo.
Kyuma's remarks drew immediate criticism from Japanese atomic bomb survivors.
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Source: http://www.kath.net
June 29, 2007
According to reliable sources, Pope Benedict XVI. has given green light for an examination of the interior of St. Paul's tomb in the Basilica San Paolo fuori le Mura. The position of the stone coffin has not been altered since the year 390. Soon, it is said, archeologists will remove a plug with which the coffin had been sealed in Antiquity. An endoscopic probe is supposed to transmit images of the content. What they will show nobody knows. This alleged decision of the Pope has to be seen in the
Source: Times Dispatch
June 29, 2007
It's been 30 years since Alex Haley's "Roots" became the top-rated television event of its time, drawing 130 million Americans' eyes to racial issues and enticing African-Americans to uncover their own complex genealogical histories.
But racially, according to Haley's son, little has changed since the author shared his story of African-born Kunta Kinte, his daughter, Kizzie, and her son, Chicken George -- the first freed slave in Haley's family.
"There h
Source: HNN Staff
July 1, 2007
In his weekly column in the NYT Frank Rich notes that Vice President Dick Cheney first indicated he wanted the power to declassify documents in August 2001. But it wasn't until March 2003 that he was given the authority. Why then? Rich claims it was so he could go after the administration's enemies.
Says Rich:
Timing really is everything. By March 2003, this White House knew its hype of Saddam's nonexistent nuclear arsenal was in grave danger of
Source: NYT
July 1, 2007
THE unsealing by the C.I.A last week of the documents it called its “family jewels” was an only-in-America moment. A secret intelligence service freely admitted its crimes and blunders. Americans were reminded of a piece of living history: the time in the 1960s and 1970s when presidents turned the spying powers of American intelligence on the United States itself, searching for an enemy within.
As the “family jewels” make clear, this web of intrigue began in the Kennedy White House.
