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
May 8, 2007
TALLINN, Estonia -- Estonian government ministers laid flowers at a disputed Soviet statue on Tuesday, the first time the Baltic state has paid tribute to the Red Army while commemorating the Allied victory in World War II.
The government was hoping the gesture would begin a process of reconciliation between ethnic Estonians and Russian-speakers, 10 days after Estonia was hit by riots over the decision to move the Bronze Soldier statue from downtown Tallinn to a cemetery outside the city c
Source: BBC News
May 8, 2007
Archaeological finds, possibly from the English Civil War, have delayed the development of one of Bristol's most well-known derelict sites.
The rare defence works on the Westmoreland House site will have to be recorded and removed if they are confirmed as genuine.
The finds have put back Comer Homes' plans for 200 flats and a complex for arts group Kumba on the site.
Source: Newsweek
May 7, 2007
In the basement of the largest of the mud buildings built by the Jamestown colonists starting in 1607, archaeologists stumbled on a mystery. Postholes suggested that there had been a small room under the wooden stairs, while charcoal on the floor plus clay walls that had turned red from heat indicated a fire had once burned there. But there was no evidence of a flue. Stumped by why anyone would be so foolhardy as to have roaring flames in an unventilated space, the researchers then remembered so
Source: Discovery News
May 8, 2007
Ancient Romans built their towns using astronomically aligned grids, an Italian study has concluded.
Published recently on the physics Web site, http://www.arXiv.org, maintained at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, the research examined the orientation of virtually all Roman towns in Italy.
"It emerged that these towns were not laid out at random. On the contrary, they were planned following strong symbolic aspects, all link
Source: Christian Science Monitor
May 9, 2007
SYDNEY -- To white Australians, the flocks of red-tailed black cockatoos which flap above tree canopies are a memorable highlight of any weekend hike. But to Aborigines, the parrots are living, squawking barometers.
"A month ago when the cockatoos were flocking and the wattle bushes were flowering, we saw that as signs of rain," says Jeremy Clark, chief executive of the Brambuk Aboriginal Cultural Centre in the Grampian Mountains of Victoria State. "Sure enough, we've
Source: Haaretz (Tel Aviv)
May 8, 2007
A recently deciphered ancient Greek stele (inscribed stone slab) is currently on display at the Israel Museum. The stele was produced in 178 B.C.E. in Israel at a time when the region was ruled by the Hellenistic Seleucid empire...
The inscription describes King Seleucus IV's appointment of senior Greek clerk Olympiodorus to oversee sanctuaries in Israel and surrounding areas. In the first letter, King Seleucus IV informs his deputy Heliodorus of the appointment and the second and t
Source: AP
May 8, 2007
MERRILLVILLE, Ind. -- A man found trapped unconscious beneath a 1,000-pound tombstone in a cemetery faces charges and might have to pay for damages, police said.
Michael David Schreiber's legs were broken by the stone, and the family name on the gravestone left the letter ''V'' imprinted on his thigh, Merrillville Officer Ray Smith said...
Schreiber, 22, of Merrillville faces charges of criminal trespassing, criminal mischief and public intoxication, police said. He als
Source: AP
May 6, 2007
When it comes to Abraham Lincoln, apparently there's no such thing as enough. After countless books about his boyhood, his presidency, the hunt for his killer and yes, even his feet, maybe it was time for a new book devoted to what happened to Lincoln's body after he was done using it.
As its title implies, Stealing Lincoln's Body by Thomas J. Craughwell (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press) is devoted to Lincoln after, as Craughwell writes in the first sentence, &
Source: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
May 8, 2007
Russia has raised its estimate for the number of Soviet troops killed in World War II to 8.86 million.
The announced was made to the daily Gazeta by General Aleksandr Kirilin, director of the armed forces' commemorative center.
The paper says the figure represents an increase of 200,000 over an estimate issued by the Defense Ministry in 1993.
Estimates put at more than 25 million the total number of Soviet civilian and military war dead.
Source: New York Times
May 8, 2007
WASHINGTON —- Time magazine’s armored truck from the Balkans, pockmarked with bullet holes, has been hoisted into place. The laptop used by Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter murdered in Pakistan in 2002, has arrived. So has the vest that Bob Woodruff of ABC was wearing last year when he was wounded by a roadside bomb in Iraq.
These stark reminders of the hazards of newsgathering will be displayed at the new Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue, scheduled to open on Oct. 15.
Source: ANI (Asian News International)
May 8, 2007
LAHORE, Pakistan -- A team of American, Pakistani and Japanese archaeologists has claimed the discovery of rare objects in the Cholistan Desert, raising hopes of the presence of ruins identical to the [ancient Indus Valley] civilizations of Mohenjodaro and Harappa.Archaeologists from Wisconsin, the Research Institute of Humanities and Nature, Tokyo and the Department of Archaeology, Punjab University, say they have discovered a rare copper seal, a terracotta block, three wed
Source: Cambridge Evening News
May 8, 2007
Cambridge University is facing calls to hand back ancient skeletal remains.
The Tasmanian Aboriginal community wants the university to follow the lead of the Natural History Museum [in London] and return the specimens.
The museum has agreed to hand over four remains and is currently locked in talks with representatives from the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre (TAC) who are trying to stop them scientifically testing 13 others.
And while representatives are in En
Source: ABC (Australia)
May 5, 2007
Russia's Parliament has voted to restore the communist-era hammer and sickle to the official flag of the Russian Army.
It is expect President Vladimir Putin will ratify the move in time for next week's commemorations marking the end of World War II in Europe.
If so, Russians will again have the Soviet version of the victory banner for next week's Victory in Europe parade in Moscow.
For many Russians, especially the elderly, its symbolism is immense.
Source: AP
May 7, 2007
ELKINS PARK, Pa. -- The only synagogue ever designed by Frank Lloyd Wright has been designated a National Historic Landmark.
Beth Sholom, a soaring glass-and-concrete temple just outside Philadelphia, began welcoming worshippers nearly 50 years ago. On Sunday, the National Park Service recognized it as one of the architect's greatest achievements...The towering, flat-topped spire is constructed out of concrete, steel, aluminum and glass. It's the only synagogue
Source: AP
May 8, 2007
BERLIN -- Barbara Preusch vividly remembers the day the Nazis searched her Berlin home for hidden Jews -- and left without finding the mother and daughter her family was sheltering...
Sixty-two years after the end of World War II on May 8, 1945, people like Preusch -- a teenager when her grandmother began helping fugitive Jews -- are being honored with a museum in Berlin.
Israel recognized gentiles who helped Jews escape the Holocaust as early as 1963, and honored 443 G
Source: Inside Higher Ed
May 8, 2007
Just before last Thanksgiving, Walter Kehowski decided to share some wishes with his colleagues at Glendale Community College. The tenured mathematics professor used a faculty announcement e-mail list to send George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1789. The e-mail that Kehowski sent also indicated his source: the blog of Pat Buchanan.
That e-mail could end up costing Kehowski his job, according to documents released Monday by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Educati
Source: UPI
May 8, 2007
BOSTON -- Five years after Frank J. Goldsmith died his wife found a manuscript describing the sinking of the Titanic stored with his personal papers in their Ohio home.
That 1987 discovery ultimately resulted in a legal battle between Goldsmith's heirs and the Titanic Historical Society in Springfield, Mass. Goldsmith didn't write a fictional account. He was one of the survivors of the 1912 disaster that claimed 1,500 lives, including that of his own father.
Put on a li
Source: New York Times
May 8, 2007
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. —- Conquistadors from Spain came, they saw and they were astonished. They had never seen anything in Europe like the bridges of Peru. Chroniclers wrote that the Spanish soldiers stood in awe and fear before the spans of braided fiber cables suspended across deep gorges in the Andes, narrow walkways sagging and swaying and looking so frail.
Yet the suspension bridges were familiar and vital links in the vast empire of the Inca, as they had been to Andean cultures for
Source: DPA (German Press Agency)
May 8, 2007
JERUSALEM -- It took 35 years, but on Tuesday Professor Ehud Netzer of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem could finally announce that he had solved a 'great mystery' and found the final resting place of the Biblical King Herod the Great, and an elaborate sarcophagus which had been smashed to 'hundreds of pieces.'
'We have located the burial site of Herod, at the Herodium,' Netzer told a packed news conference in Jerusalem, describing the find as a 'high point' for research on Herod.
Source: Raw Story
May 8, 2007
A Texas Republican Congressman invoked a founding Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in a floor speech he delivered yesterday in support of the Iraq War."Nathan Bedford Forrest, successful Confederate general, said it best about winning and victory and the means to do so. He said: 'Get there firstest with the mostest,'" said Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) in a one-minute floor speech at the beginning of Monday's session in the House of Representatives.
He then call
