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: NYT
June 20, 2007
Even though his supposed fund-raising acumen was used to justify his ballooning salary, the chief executive of the Smithsonian Institution raised less private money for the museum complex last year than his predecessor did in 1999, an independent committee said in a scathing report issued today.
Salary and other compensation for the executive, Lawrence M. Small, whose formal title was Smithsonian secretary, soared from $536,000 in 2000 to $915,000 in 2006, the report said. But ultim
Source: News Max
June 20, 2007
Japan has changed the name of the Pacific island of Iwo Jima, site of the famous World War II battle, to its original name of Iwo To after residents there were prodded into action by two recent Clint Eastwood movies.
The new name in Japanese looks and means the same as Iwo Jima - or Sulfur Island - but sounds different, the Japanese Geographical Survey Institute said.The institute announced the name change Monday after discussing the issue with Japan
Source: Reuters
June 20, 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: Discovery Channel
June 20, 2007
Just as a U.S. Presidential state dinner does not reflect how most Americans eat and socialize, researchers think the formal, decadent image of wining and dining in ancient Rome mostly just applied to the elite.
According to archaeologist Penelope Allison of the University of Leicester, the majority of the population consumed food "on the run."
Allison excavated an entire neighborhood block in Pompeii, a city frozen in time after the eruption of volcano Mount
Source: Live Science
June 19, 2007
For every generation in the United States there has been a war. And with wars come millions of records that can shed light on family history, detailing everything from the color of soldiers' eyes to what their neighbors may have said about them.
On Thursday, Ancestry.com unveils more than 90 million U.S. war records from the first English settlement at Jamestown in 1607 through the Vietnam War's end in 1975. The site also has the names of 3.5 million U.S. soldiers killed in action,
Source: Live Science
June 19, 2007
Satellites hovering above Egypt have zoomed in on a 1,600-year-old metropolis, archaeologists say.
Images captured from space pinpoint telltale signs of previous habitation in the swatch of land 200 miles south of Cairo, which digging recently confirmed as an ancient settlement dating from about 400 A.D. The find is part of a larger project aiming to map as much of ancient Egypt's archaeological sites, or "tells," as possible before they are des
Source: International Herald Tribune
June 19, 2007
A group of about 100 lawmakers from Japan's ruling party claimed Tuesday that after a monthlong review they have determined the number of people killed by Japanese troops during the infamous "Rape of Nanking" has been grossly inflated.
Nariaki Nakayama, head of the group created to study World War II historical issues and education, said documents from the Japanese government's archives indicated some 20,000 people were killed about one-tenth of the more commonly cited fi
Source: Live Science
June 19, 2007
Europe's prehistoric hunter-gatherers may have practiced human sacrifice, a new study claims.
Investigating a collection of graves from the Upper Paleolithic (about 26,000 to 8,000 BC), archaeologists found several that contained pairs or even groups of people with rich burial offerings and decoration. Many of the remains were young or had deformities, such as dwarfism. The diversity of the individuals buried together and the special treatment they
Source: NYT
June 19, 2007
Archaeologists in Peru have uncovered the human skeleton of what they conclude is the earliest known gunshot victim in the New World.
Digging in an Inca cemetery in the suburbs of Lima, they came on well-preserved remains of an individual with holes less than an inch in diameter in the back and front of the skull. Forensic scientists in Connecticut said the position of the round holes and some minuscule iron particles showed that the person most likely was shot and killed by a Spani
Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch
June 19, 2007
For the first time since the early 1990s, the nonprofit will finish this fiscal year, ending June 30, with an operating profit. But the struggling downtown institution still plans on relocating its Civil War collection.
The museum finished last fiscal year with an operating loss of $389,000, forcing cutbacks. Doors were closed on Wednesdays, the magazine was cut from four issues to three, and the annual journal was axed.
But thanks to an emergency fund drive that raise
Source: Agence France Presse
June 19, 2007
Japan voiced regret Tuesday as the US Congress moved forward with a resolution demanding an unambiguous apology from Tokyo for forcing Asian women into sexual slavery before and during World War II.
Japan voiced regret Tuesday as the US Congress moved forward with a resolution demanding an unambiguous apology from Tokyo for forcing Asian women into sexual slavery before and during World War II."It is regrettable," Foreign Minister Taro Aso
Source: BBC News
June 19, 2007
Iran has stepped up its protest over the knighthood awarded by Britain to Salman Rushdie, whose 1988 novel The Satanic Verses outraged many Muslims.
Iran's foreign ministry summoned the UK ambassador in Tehran and said the knighthood was a "provocative act".
Pakistan voiced similar protests, telling the UK envoy in Islamabad the honour showed the British government's "utter lack of sensitivity".
Britain denied that the award was intended to
Source: BBC News
June 19, 2007
Archaeologists who set out to put up a safety fence at Rochester's medieval castle have unexpectedly uncovered a Roman city wall. The team had "barely taken the turf off when they unearthed a solid mass of stone masonry", Medway Council said.
Castle archaeologist Graham Keevill called it "a very important discovery". He said: "We don't have many Roman city walls surviving in England. To get an unexpected one like this is fantastic. It is also a perfect exam
Source: Washington Post
June 19, 2007
President Bush has asserted that he is not necessarily bound by the bills he signs into law, and yesterday a congressional study found multiple examples in which the administration has not complied with the requirements of the new statutes.
Bush has been criticized for his use of "signing statements," in which he invokes presidential authority to challenge provisions of legislation passed by Congress. The president has challenged a federal ban on torture, a request for dat
Source: BBC News
June 19, 2007
Members of Italy's Jewish community have been protesting outside a lawyer's office in Rome where a former Nazi officer has begun work.
Shouts of "Murderer!" greeted Erich Priebke, 93, as he arrived for his first day on the back of a scooter.
A court ruled last week that Priebke, who is serving a sentence for multiple murders, could work on day release. Priebke was jailed for life in 1998 for his role in the massacre of 335 Italians in 19
Source: LA Times
June 19, 2007
Archeologists have unearthed a 4,000-year-old gold-processing center along the middle Nile in Sudan that suggests the ancient kingdom of Kush was much larger than scholars previously believed and would have rivaled the domain of the Egyptians to the north.
Kush, which was called Nubia by the Greeks, was the first urban civilization in sub-Saharan Africa. The discovery of the gold center and a related graveyard is providing new information about the relationship between rulers in the
Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer
June 19, 2007
A battered old hat, a pair of stained gloves, a child's silly rhyme - hardly the stuff of history. Except that this hat is a stovepipe hat, the gloves are stained with a president's blood and the rhyme was written by a young Abraham Lincoln.
All three items are part of an immense private collection put together by a Lincoln fan over 35 years. Now the collection is about to go public after being purchased for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. The collection contain
Source: Toronto Star
June 19, 2007
On Thursday, 160 years on, at the official opening of the memorial site to famine victims at Ireland Park at the foot of Bathurst St., near where the fever sheds on the wharves once stood, there will be a remembering of that unspeakable human suffering - and of the failures and the heroism in dealing with it.
The memorial - a stone monument by architect Jonathan Kearns, four life-sized bronze figures by Rowan Gillespie depicting the Irish in all their misery, a wall carved with the
Source: Diverse
June 18, 2007
One of the more controversial debates now going on in intellectual circles is over Afrocentrism, a movement that argues that traditional history has undervalued the contributions of Black Africa to ancient Greek and Western thought. At the center of the debate are Afrocentrists and those attacking them, most recently Mary Lefkowitz, who wrote "Not Out of Africa."
Recently Lefkowitz's publisher, New Republic Books, sponsored a debate between her and a leading Afrocentrist,
Source: Washington Post
June 18, 2007
Congress is moving to change the direction of the Bush administration's nuclear weapons program by demanding the development of a comprehensive post-Sept. 11, 2001, nuclear strategy before it approves funding a new generation of warheads.
"Currently there exists no convincing rationale for maintaining the large number of existing Cold War nuclear weapons, much less producing additional warheads," the House Appropriations Committee said in its report, released last week, on
