Breaking News

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
July 14, 2011

Ancient, moss-covered canoe found in Alaska forest

An unfinished Indian canoe, apparently abandoned 500 years ago, has been discovered in a remote section of an Alaska rain forest, according to officials.The canoe, carved from cedar, was discovered under a thick layer of moss and is surrounded by trees that are several hundred years old, Sealaska Corp., the Alaska Native corporation that owns the land, said in a statement.The artifact was first spotted last winter by a surveyor checking potential timber-harvest sites, but the discovery was kept confidential until now, the company said....

Source: New York Daily News
July 14, 2011

Feds bust group trying to smuggle Ancient Egyptian mummy coffins

...A group of Egyptian antiquities dealers have been charged with illegally smuggling ancient funerary objects into the U.S., authorities said Thursday.Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn say Mousa "Morris" Khouli, the owner of Windsor Antiques in Manhattan, conspired with dealers in Michigan and Dubai to smuggle sarcophagi and other artifacts for a collector in Virginia.Khouli, 37, is charged with trying to dupe Customs officials by labeling shipments of coffins and other items as "antiques" and "wood panels," prosecutors said.He allegedly bought the items from Salem Alshdaifat, who runs Holyland Numismatics in West Bloomfield, Mich., and Ayman Ramadan, an antiquity dealers in the United Arab Emirates who helped him ship the items to the U.S.

Source: BBC
July 13, 2011

Ivory Coast loses its crown jewel

Museum authorities in Ivory Coast have contacted Interpol after thieves stole historic gold jewellery, masks and statues worth an estimated $6m (£3.7m).The thefts from the country's main museum took place during the recent battle for Abidjan between forces loyal to current President Alassane Ouattara and the former leader Laurent Gbagbo.

Source: BBC
July 14, 2011

Human remains found at Caithness Iron Age broch site

Human remains including parts of a skull and leg bones have been found during an archaeological dig at an Iron Age site in Caithness.The police and procurator fiscal service have been notified of the finds at Thrumster, near Wick, as normal procedure by archaeologists.The remains have still to be radiocarbon dated to determine how old they are.Ancient human remains have previously been uncovered in Caithness....

Source: BBC
July 14, 2011

World's oldest football rulebook auctioned for £881,250

The world's oldest football rulebook, belonging to the first ever club Sheffield FC, has been sold at auction for £881,250.The handwritten pamphlet from 1857 is thought to be one of the earliest instructions on the sport and was sold as part of an archive of the club.It was sold to an anonymous bidder at auctioneer Sotheby's which described it as an important historical document....

Source: BBC
July 14, 2011

Jane Austen manuscript sells for more than £990,000

A rare Jane Austen manuscript has sold for £993,250 ($1.6m) in London, three times more than its estimated price.Auction house Sotheby's had originally valued the unfinished novel - entitled The Watsons - at £200,000-300,000.The manuscript, originally owned privately, was purchased by the Bodelian Libraries of Oxford.It is thought Austen wrote the tale, about a young woman who returns home to her father's household after being brought up by a wealthy aunt, in 1804.The work is particularly important because few of Austen's draft works have survived, with the exception of two draft chapters of Persuasion, Lady Susan, and Sanditon....

Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 13, 2011

102-year-old clock could be stopped in Tasmania because noise is driving tourists away

A Tasmanian city that attracts more than 100,000 Brits each year is planning to stop its 102-year-old clock from chiming at night, because the noise has been driving tourists away.Hoteliers and some councillors in Launceston, one of Australia's oldest cities, want the clock silenced between 11pm and 6am. They say the chimes – which can be heard across the city – are leaving a "bad taste" with tourists, many of whom stay in a cluster of hotels and serviced apartments around the clock tower.Launceston, which has a population of 100,000, is the second-biggest city in Tasmania and a popular gateway to the island's wineries and walking trails. It attracts more than half a million visitors a year, including more than 100,000 from Britain.

Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 14, 2011

Scientists discover lost toad in Malaysian jungle

Scientists have rediscovered a spindly-legged toad species almost 90 years after it was last sighted in Malaysia's Borneo jungle, an environmental group said on Thursday.The Sambas Stream Toad, or Borneo Rainbow Toad, was found by a team of scientists after months of scouring remote forest in Sarawak state on Borneo island, Conservation International (CI) said in a release.The endangered toad was last seen in 1924 and was previously known from only three individuals.The toad was listed as one of the "World's Top 10 Most Wanted Lost Frogs" as part of a campaign by CI and another group to encourage scientists around the world to seek out amphibians that had not been seen in a decade or longer.After months of combing through the jungle, the Sarawak team eventually discovered a small toad up a tree, which turned out to be the missing Sambas Stream Toad. In total, they found three individuals up three different trees....

Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 14, 2011

Phone hacking: FBI launches investigation into Rupert Murdoch's News Corp

The FBI has launched an investigation into allegations that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp tried to hack the mobile phones of September 11 victims, it has been disclosed.Several powerful congressmen had demanded an inquiry into the claims, which had sparked a furious response from the families of those who lost their lives in the atrocity.The FBI inquiry follows the intervention of Peter King, a New York congressman, who wrote directly to the Bureau demanding an inquiry into the 9/11 claims. Reports had suggested that the News of the World attempted to buy the phone records of victims of the 2001 bombings.... 

Source: NYT
July 14, 2011

A History of College Grade Inflation

We’ve written before about some of the work of Stuart Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy, grade inflation chroniclers extraordinaire. They have put together a new, comprehensive study of college grading over the decades, and let me tell you, it is a doozy.The researchers collected historical data on letter grades awarded by more than 200 four-year colleges and universities. Their analysis (published in the Teachers College Record) confirm that the share of A grades awarded has skyrocketed over the years....

Source: Boston Globe
July 14, 2011

Kennedys at odds over compound

The Kennedy clan will gather tomorrow for a wedding at its Cape Cod compound amid tensions about the future of the property and following a public airing of dissension within the storied political family.Negotiations are underway to transfer ownership of the main Kennedy home in coming months to the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, a proposal that has raised concerns among family members who live on adjacent property, according to two associates close to the family who spoke on condition of anonymity.The senator, who died in August 2009, had stated in his will that he ultimately wanted the property to be turned over to the institute, which is now being built next to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library at Columbia Point. He gave the rights to the house to his widow, Vicki, and his three children, and they are expected to relinquish them very soon, according to the family associates.Vicki Kennedy, while carrying out her husband’s wishes, has unsettled other family members in and around the compound, particularly Ethel Kennedy, whose compound home is next to the main house. Delicate negotiations are attempting to placate those concerns, the associates said.

Source: WSJ
July 14, 2011

A Gun Activist Takes Aim at U.S. Regulatory Power

MISSOULA, Mont.—With a homemade .22-caliber rifle he calls the Montana Buckaroo, Gary Marbut dreams of taking down the federal regulatory state.He's not planning to fire his gun. Instead, he wants to sell it, free from federal laws requiring him to record transactions, pay license fees and open his business to government inspectors...."This is really about states' rights and federal power rather than gun control," Mr. Marbut says. There is "an emerging awareness by the people of America that the federal government has gone too far," he maintains, "and it's dependent on a really weird interpretation."He is talking about the 1942 Supreme Court case of Wickard v. Filburn, which looms for him the way the Dred Scott decision denying rights to blacks did to antebellum abolitionists....The narrow question in 1942 was whether the federal government could regulate wheat a farmer grew for use on his own farm. But the constitutional issue concerned how far Congress's authority to oversee interstate commerce stretched....

Source: CS Monitor
July 13, 2011

New museum to memorialize 'Freedom Riders', civil rights heroes of the South

Fifty years ago, on a hot day in late May, 21 tousled men and women stepped off a Greyhound bus and into the clamor of the Montgomery, Ala., bus depot. They called themselves the Freedom Riders, and for the previous few weeks, they had been hurtling by coach through the American South, from Washington, D.C., to Virginia; from Virginia to North Carolina; and from North Carolina over into Tennessee.They were students, most of them, black and white, 20- and 30-somethings, schooled in the ways of nonviolent protest and encouraged by the recent success of the Greensboro, N.C., lunch counter sit-ins. Their aim was to test a Supreme Court ruling banning segregation at bus and railway stations – a ruling that had largely been greeted with a shrug by Southern officials....Now, a half century after the Freedom Riders first arrived in this city, the Montgomery bus depot has been converted, with the help of the Alabama Historical Commission and historians, such as Raymond Arsenault, into the Freedom Rides Museum – a timely monument to a groundbreaking journey.

Source: WaPo
July 13, 2011

Memory of Medal of Honor recipient could soon fade away at Walter Reed

For 20 years, Walter Reed Army Medical Center has celebrated the memory of Deborah Joel’s father, the first African American combat medic to receive the Medal of Honor. But the honor, it seems, is about to come to an end.Her father, Lawrence Joel, who served in the Army in the Vietnam War, was presented with the distinction in 1967. And for the past two decades, the Joel Auditorium at Walter Reed has been a testament to his service.But the hospital is moving in the fall. And when the new Walter Reed National Military Medical Center opens in Bethesda, there will be no more auditorium named in her father’s honor. The Joel head bust and bronze wall plaque kept at the old hospital will be returned to his family....

Source: NYT
July 13, 2011

Freed Chinese Artist Accepts Job in Berlin

BEIJING — Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist and recently imprisoned dissident, said Wednesday that he had agreed to become a visiting lecturer at the Berlin University of the Arts in 2012, but that he did not know whether China’s government would allow him to leave the country to work there.He said he was concerned about how the Chinese authorities would react to the offer because “it shows strong support for my moral position.”Caught up in China’s broad crackdown on political dissension after the revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa this year, Mr. Ai was detained by state security officials in April, held incommunicado this spring and later charged with tax evasion. A hearing on his case is to be held on Thursday in Beijing....

Source: NYT
July 13, 2011

Egypt Purges Mubarak-Era Police Officers

CAIRO — Egypt’s transitional military government announced the early retirement of more than 600 senior police officers on Wednesday. It was an effort to mollify thousands of protesters at a six-day-old protest in Cairo’s Tahrir Square who have been demanding swifter justice for those complicit in wrongdoing under President Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted in February.The Interior Ministry said 18 police generals and 9 other senior officers were forced into early retirement because they were accused of killing protesters during the 18-day uprising. For the same reason, 54 lower-ranking officers were shifted to jobs where they would no longer interact with civilians, officials said....

Source: BBC News
July 10, 2011

Debt fears over medieval St Mary's Church, Rhuddlan

There are fears for the future of a 700-year-old Denbighshire church, a year after a £120,000 refurbishment.St Mary's Church in Rhuddlan owes £13,500 to the diocese of St Asaph, and the debt is expected to rise to at least £20,000.Priest-in-charge, the Reverend Peter Allsworth, said the church needed to almost quadruple its £173 weekly income to remain viable.The Diocese of St Asaph said it had "no intention of seeing the church shut".Despite the £120,000 restoration which was completed a year ago, the church is heavily in arrears with its parish share - a sum paid by all churches to the central diocese....

Source: NYT
July 12, 2011

Revolution Dims Star Power of Egypt’s Antiquities Chief

Until recently Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s antiquities minister, was a global symbol of Egyptian national pride. A famous archaeologist in an Indiana Jones hat, he was virtually unassailable in the old Egypt, protected by his success in boosting tourism, his efforts to reclaim lost artifacts and his closeness to the country’s first lady, Suzanne Mubarak.But the revolution changed all that.Now demonstrators in Cairo are calling for his resignation as the interim government faces disaffected crowds in Tahrir Square.Their primary complaint is his association with the Mubaraks, whom he defended in the early days of the revolution. But the upheaval has also drawn attention to the ways he has increased his profile over the years, often with the help of organizations and companies with which he has done business as a government official.

Source: WaPo
July 12, 2011

National Archives displays WWI secret ink papers

Newly declassified documents that date to World War I are going on display at the National Archives in Washington.The 1918 documents detail Germany's secret ink formulas from World War I. They went on display this week and will remain on view through the end of July....

Source: NYT
July 13, 2011

In China, a History Too Recent to Be Written?

BEIJING — In the end, the silences in the official “History of the Chinese Communist Party, 1949-1978,” speak louder than its nearly one million words.Because the extraordinary thing about this two-volume work, published in January and widely discussed this month as the party celebrates its 90th anniversary, is that, while it contains some new details regarding controversial events in the first three decades of Communist rule, one gigantic subject is passed over in almost total silence: the deaths of tens of millions of people from political campaigns.“Not less than 60 million,” said Frank Dikötter, a historian at the University of Hong Kong who is writing a book about the first years of the People’s Republic.The new history matters to the party because it tells 82 million members what to believe, as the party seeks to enhance its credibility in an age when multiple information sources are available online....