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: Discovery News
June 27, 2011
Stone Age barbecue consumers first went for the bone marrow and then for the ribs, suggest the leftovers of an outdoor 7,700-year-old meaty feast described in the July issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science.The remains, found in the valley of the River Tjonger, Netherlands, provide direct evidence for a prehistoric hunting, butchering, cooking and feasting event. The meal occurred more than 1,000 years before the first farmers with domestic cattle arrived in the region.Although basic BBQ technology hasn't changed much over the millennia, this prehistoric meal centered around the flesh of an aurochs, a wild Eurasian ox that was larger than today's cows. It sported distinctive curved horns....
Source: Bloomberg News
July 1, 2011
For a 90-year-old, China’s Communist Party is hanging with a young crowd.The organization that has ruled China since Mao Zedong’s forces won a civil war in 1949 added 1.24 million university students as members last year, an 8.2 percent increase from 2009. Founded 90 years ago today to build a socialist Utopia for the laboring classes, the party has become a ticket to elite jobs in government and state-owned businesses that offer security, power and a path to wealth.“I joined because it’ll help when looking for jobs,” said Ling, a 24-year-old student at Beijing’s Renmin University who declined to be identified by her full name because of concern that she faces retribution from the government. “Getting a government job is so hard, but if I got an offer I’d definitely jump for it. My second choice would be state-owned companies.”...
Source: WaPo
July 4, 2011
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — He put on a cap, defying the rules of the courtroom. He gestured to the packed public gallery despite a judge ordering him not to. He threatened a boycott because his chosen lawyers weren’t there.A belligerent Ratko Mladic repeatedly disobeyed and shouted at judges Monday during an arraignment at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal. Finally, the former Serb general was thrown out of the hearing and the court entered not guilty pleas on his behalf to 11 charges of masterminding the worst atrocities of the Bosnian war.The 69-year-old’s courtroom theatrics came at the start of a solemn week for survivors of the massacre he is accused of orchestrating — the killing of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in 1995 in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica.Officials are preparing to rebury 600 people whose remains were dug out of mass graves in the past year and identified using DNA tests. The bodies unearthed in the hills surrounding Srebrenica will be laid to rest July 11 at a cemetery for victims of the mass killings....
Source: NYT
July 4, 2011
To the list of things that J.D. Salinger found hard to bear, we can now add these: pompous graduation ceremonies and shlepping overseas to see tulips.“I’ve been going to graduations, and there isn’t much that I find more pretentious or irksome than the sight of ‘faculty’ and graduates in their academic get-ups,’’ he wrote a friend in June 1982, mentioning that it took self-control at one point “not to gag.”He had an equally visceral and unprintable response to the barrage of tulips that greeted him on a three-week spin through Europe in 1994. Writing to the same friend, he expressed relief that Kafka was not alive to see what “a tourist trap” town fathers had made of his house in Prague. Salinger also complained about the time he spent in Europe prowling for restaurants that offered “a decent, huge green salad.”...
Source: NYT
July 4, 2011
SNOWMASS, Colo. — Two different time scales collided in this place.More than 130,000 years ago in the chilled depths of the Illinoian ice age, an errant glacier left a hole atop a 9,000-foot-high ridge near what would become the town of Aspen in the central Colorado Rockies. The depression filled with snowmelt, and for tens of thousands of years, the little lake attracted the giants of the Pleistocene — mammoths, mastodons, ground sloths half again the size of grizzly bears, supersize bison, camels and horses — that came to drink, and in many cases to die, in the high alpine mud.The second time scale was more like a runner’s sprint. Scientists had only 70 days — a number framed by mountain winter weather and lawyerly fine print — to search the old lake bed sediments for remnants of these ancient animals.
Source: NYT
July 4, 2011
ALBERESE, Italy — On a recent dewy morning on this flat stretch near the Tuscan coast, a man rode his horse with the reins in one hand and a long, hooked, wooden stick in the other.
Source: NYT
July 4, 2011
MUMBAI, India — A court-ordered search of vaults beneath a south Indian temple has unearthed gold, jewels and statues worth an estimated $22 billion, government officials said Monday.The treasure trove, at the 16th century Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple, is widely believed to be the largest find of its kind in India, catching officials in the state of Kerala by surprise and forcing the government to send two dozen police officers to the previously unguarded shrine for round-the-clock security....
Source: The Huffington Post
July 1, 2011
An old Turkish prison in Jerusalem is briefly opening to the public this weekend, allowing visitors a rare glimpse inside an infamous local landmark. The Kishle prison in Jerusalem's Old City was built by the Ottoman Turks in the mid-1800s. It later served the British as a jail, housing Jewish and Arab prisoners in the stormy years leading up to Israel's creation in 1948.One of those prisoners, Samuel Matza, who was a member of a Jewish underground group as a young man, recalled sleeping on rags on the jail's floor after British police arrested him on weapons charges 64 years ago.Matza, now 84, said Friday he hoped to visit the building again.The old lockup has remained closed because of a lack of funds for restoration and refurbishment. It will open on Saturday for three weeks, having been temporarily transformed into a concert space for a visiting troupe of Swedish musicians...
Source: Live Science
June 29, 2011
Human remains discovered beneath the floors of mud-brick houses at one of the world's first permanent settlements, were not biologically related to one another, a finding that paints a new picture of life 9,000 years ago on a marshy plain in central Turkey.Even children as young as 8 were not buried alongside their parents or other relatives at the site called Çatalhöyük, the researchers found. Çatalhöyük covered 26 acres (10.5 hectares), and its people — estimated to be as many as 10,000 — would have made a living by growing crops and herding domesticated animals. It was built on a marshy plain in central Turkey.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 29, 2011
A 1,400-year-old fresco of St Paul has been discovered in an ancient Roman catacomb.
The fresco was found during restoration work at the Catacombs of San Gennaro (Saint Januarius) in the southern port city of Naples by experts from the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Art.
The announcement was made on the feast day of St Peter and Paul which is traditionally a bank holiday in Rome and details of the discovery were disclosed in the Vatican's official newspaper L'Osservatore Romano.
A photograph released by the Vatican shows the apostle, famous for his conversion to Christianity from Judaism, with a long neck, a slightly pink complexion, thinning hair, a beard and big eyes that give his face a "spiritual air."....
Source: BBC
July 4, 2011
Inspectors unearthing priceless treasures from a South Indian temple have had to halt their search because the final vault cannot be opened.Five vaults replete with precious stones, gold and silver have already been opened in Kerala state's Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple.The haul's value is now thought to have risen from 25 billion rupees ($500m) to 900 billion rupees ($20.3bn).Historians say assessing the treasure's true value will be very difficult.The goods have not been officially valued and inspectors are merely taking an inventory.The inspectors managed to open the outer doors of the sixth vault but found an iron wall inside it. The vault was last opened 136 years ago, according to temple records....
Source: AP
July 3, 2011
Walking along the rows of tombstones here offers a glimpse of the wars America has fought and the men and women who waged them. But most of the grave markers have been half-buried for 20 years, and there is little hope that the volcanic ash obscuring names, dates and epitaphs will be cleared any time soon.
Clark Veterans Cemetery was consigned to oblivion in 1991, when Mount Pinatubo's gigantic eruption forced the U.S. to abandon the sprawling air base surrounding it. Retired U.S. soldiers, Marines and sailors volunteer to keep watch, relying on donations to try to maintain the grounds, but they lament that they're helplessly short on funds to fix things, and that Washington is unwilling to help.
As America marks Independence Day, the U.S. veterans who collect funds to care for the cemetery renewed their calls for Washington to fund and take charge of the work....
Source: Fox News
July 4, 2011
A 10-foot bronze statue of former President Ronald Reagan to commemorate 100 years since his birth has been unveiled in London, the Independent newspaper reports.Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joined British Foreign Secretary William Hague in paying tribute to Reagan Monday at the U.S. Embassy in London.
Source: Huffington Post
June 29, 2011
JERUSALEM -- Software developed by an Israeli team is giving intriguing new hints about what researchers believe to be the multiple hands that wrote the Bible.The new software analyzes style and word choices to distinguish parts of a single text written by different authors, and when applied to the Bible its algorithm teased out distinct writerly voices in the holy book.The program, part of a sub-field of artificial intelligence studies known as authorship attribution, has a range of potential applications – from helping law enforcement to developing new computer programs for writers. But the Bible provided a tempting test case for the algorithm's creators....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
June 29, 2011
Vatican officials today described the discovery of a 1,400 year old fresco of St Paul in an ancient Roman catacomb as ‘sensational.’The painting was found during restoration work at the Catacombs of San Gennaro (Saint Januarius) in the port city of Naples.A photograph released by the Vatican shows the apostle, famous for his conversion to Christianity from Judaism, with a long neck, a slightly pink complexion, thinning hair, a beard and big eyes that give his face a ‘spiritual air.’News of the discovery was announced on the feast day of St Peter and Paul which is traditionally a bank holiday in Rome....
Source: USA Today
June 24, 2011
The H.L. Hunley, a Confederate submarine, sealed its place in history on a February night in 1864 when it became the world's first sub to sink an enemy warship in combat. Then its own fate was sealed when it sank mysteriously to the bottom of the ocean off the coast of Charleston, S.C., killing its crew of eight.There the Hunley rested on its starboard side at a 45-degree angle until it was lifted from the ocean floor at that exact angle in 2000. Late last week, preservationists finished two painstaking days of work that allowed them to rotate the Hunley to its upright position.Starting Wednesday, conservation specialists at Clemson University's Warren Lasch Conservation Center in Charleston began the process of rotating the 7-ton, 40-foot submarine to expose a side of its hull never before seen in the post-Civil War era....
Source: BBC
June 28, 2011
A survey for a Jamaican newspaper suggests most islanders believe the country would have been better off if it had remained a British colony.The poll, commissioned by The Gleaner, found that 60% of respondents backed this view. But 17% disagreed.A thousand people took part in the survey, out of a population of 2.7m. The poll has a reported margin of error of plus or minus 4%.Jamaica is due to celebrate 50 years of independence next year.It is not clear what main reasons the respondents had for their choices.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 29, 2011
Israeli scholars say they have confirmed the authenticity of a 2,000-year-old burial box bearing the name of a relative of the high priest Caiaphas of the New Testament. The ossuary bears an inscription with the name "Miriam daughter of Yeshua son of Caiaphas, priest of Maaziah from Beth Imri."An ossuary is a stone chest used to store bones. Caiaphas was a temple priest and an adversary of Jesus who played a key role in his crucifixion.The Israel Antiquities Authority says the ossuary was seized from tomb robbers three years ago and has since been undergoing analysis. Forgery is common in the world of biblical artefacts.The IAA says in Wednesday's statement that microscopic tests have confirmed the inscription is "genuine and ancient."....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 30, 2011
China’s Communist Party has bought two of Karl Marx’s letters and scoured Russian archives for film footage of early Communists as it tries to shore up its founding myth ahead of its 90th anniversary. The two handwritten letters will take China’s collection of Marx’s correspondence to five, split between the State Archive and the National Library, and will be put on display in an exhibition on “Marxism in China” during July.The purchase came as the Chinese Communist Party celebrated its 90th anniversary on Thursday, which has seen giant models of the hammer and sickle emblem erected across the country, even as many Chinese wonder whether communism has any relevance at all to their lives. The letter came up at auction in 2009 in the United States, with an estimate of $14,000 (£8,740), but Chinese officials declined to comment whether they had purchased it then or at a subsequent sale....
Source: AP
June 29, 2011
A statue of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan was unveiled Wednesday in Hungary's capital, where he was honored for his leadership in helping to end communism.The bronze 2-meter (7-foot) likeness of the 40th president was erected in Budapest at Freedom Square, near both the U.S.Embassy and a World War II memorial to Soviet soldiers killed during the ouster of the Nazis from Hungary....
