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: ABC News (Australia)
Mar 10, 2010
Archaeologists say they may have found proof of the oldest and most southerly human habitation in the world at the site of a major road project in Tasmania.
Archaeologists and Aboriginal heritage officers have been removing sediment from eight trenches along the Jordan River levee at the Brighton roadworks site, north of Hobart.
Initial findings suggest the sediment is between 28,000 and 40,000 years old, making it the oldest, most southern site of human habitation in t
Source: AP
Mar 10, 2010
They flew planes during World War II but weren't considered "real" military pilots. No flags were draped over their coffins when they died on duty. And when their service ended, they had to pay their own bus fare home.
These aviators - all women - got long-overdue recognition on Wednesday. They received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor given by Congress, in a ceremony on Capitol Hill.
About 200 women who served as Women Airforce Service
Source: AP
Mar 10, 2010
Google said Wednesday it will scan up to 1 million old books in national libraries in Rome and Florence, including works by astronomer Galileo Galilei, in what's being described as the first deal of its kind.
Officials from Google and the Italian culture ministry said it was the first time Google Books and a culture ministry have had such a partnership....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 10, 2010
The Prime Minister has recognised 27 British men and women as "Heroes of the Holocaust". Here are their stories of extraordinary bravery in the face of Nazi persecution.
Denis Avey
Imprisoned in the Auschwitz prisoner of war camp during the Second World War, Denis Avey arranged to swap one night at a time with Jewish inmates from the nearby concentration camp.
Youngest casualty of WW2
Unsung British heroes of the Holocaust awarded med
Source: BBC News
Mar 10, 2010
Researchers have found that eggshells of extinct bird species are a rich source of preserved DNA.
An international team isolated the delicate DNA molecules of species including the massive "elephant birds" of the genus Aepyorni .
The Proceedings of the Royal Society B research demonstrated the approach also on emu, ducks and the extinct moa.
The team says that the technique will enable researchers to learn more about ancient birds and why they die
Source: BBC News
Mar 10, 2010
The Lemba people of Zimbabwe and South Africa may look like their compatriots, but they follow a very different set of customs and traditions.
They do not eat pork, they practise male circumcision, they ritually slaughter their animals, some of their men wear skull caps and they put the Star of David on their gravestones.
Their oral traditions claim that their ancestors were Jews who fled the Holy Land about 2,500 years ago.
It may sound like another myth o
Source: BBC News
Mar 10, 2010
Deforestation has revealed what could be a giant impact crater in Central Africa, scientists say.
The 36-46km-wide feature, identified in DR Congo, may be one of the largest such structures discovered in the last decade.
Italian researchers considered other origins for the ring, but say these are unlikely.
They presented their findings at the recent Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas, US.
The ring shape is clearly visible in the sa
Source: CNN
Mar 10, 2010
Actor Corey Haim, who appeared in a number of movies during the 1980s, died early Wednesday of a possible drug overdose after being taken to a hospital, authorities said.
Haim, 38, was taken to Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, California, where he was pronounced dead at 2:15 a.m. PT (5:15 a.m. ET), said Lt. Cheryl MacWillie, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County coroner's office. The hospital is a mile from Haim's apartment.
His death appears to be ac
Source: BBC
Mar 10, 2010
Mrs Mandela was quoted in UK newspaper the Evening Standard as saying former President Mr Mandela was a "sell-out" who had agreed a "bad deal for blacks".
The Mandelas were leaders of the struggle against the apartheid regime of the white-minority government.
The ANC said it wanted to verify the report before commenting further.
Mrs Mandela is thought to be in the US, and her office has refused to comment on the report.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 10, 2010
Following Cabinet approval last week, the sites at Anlong Veng will be protected from destruction by local people and illegal encroachment, provincial Gov. Yim Phana said.
Anlong Veng, about 185 miles (300 kilometres) north of Phnom Penh, fell to government forces in 1998 after nearly 20 years of fighting.
The Khmer Rouge regime, under which an estimated 1.7 million people died from execution, disease and malnutrition, was toppled in 1979 but its guerrillas fought on
Source: Times (UK)
Mar 10, 2010
A former head of MI5 has claimed that US intelligence agencies deliberately concealed their mistreatment of terror suspects.
Baroness Manningham-Buller said she learnt that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, had been waterboarded only after she retired from the Security Service in 2007.
In a speech to the Mile End Group at the House of Lords, Lady Manningham-Buller said: “The Americans were very keen that people like us did not discover wh
Source: Guardian (UK)
Mar 9, 2010
Film attempts to recreate the terror of the 1942 Rafle du Vel d'Hiv, in which 13,000 Jews were rounded up in Paris
When, in 1995, Joseph Weismann reflected on the chances of a film being made about the horrors he witnessed in the thick heat of a Parisian summer more than 50 years earlier, his answer was uttered through tears: "I don't think that anyone would ever dare."
Tomorrow, 15 years after his words were broadcast on television, and almost 70 years on fro
Source: National Geographic
Mar 9, 2010
According to the first known evidence of "double burials," ancient people in what is now Mexico routinely dug up decomposing bodies and took off their arms, legs, and heads, then reburied the bodies, new research shows.
Indigenous peoples of the Cape Region of Baja California Sur (see map) practiced these double burials for about 4,500 years, from about 300 B.C. to the 16th-century A.D, when Europeans first arrived in the region, anthropologists say.
To the na
Source: Live Science
Mar 9, 2010
Scientists think they've finally found the real location of a city called Neta'im mentioned in the Bible.
Based on its proximity to another biblical town, and archaeological ruins dating from the time of the biblical King David's rule, researchers think Neta'im might have been located at the modern site called Khirbet Qeiyafa, in Israel.
Khirbet Qeiyafa contains the ruins of an ancient fortress city on top of a hill overlooking the Elah Valley. Pottery shards and burned
Source: Discovery News
Mar 9, 2010
Egypt will shoulder the costs of restoring the country's Jewish houses of worship said the culture minister Tuesday, two days after a historic synagogue in Cairo's ancient Jewish quarter was rededicated in a private ceremony.
Farouk Hosny said in a statement that his ministry views Jewish sites as much a part of Egypt's culture as Muslim mosques or Coptic churches, and the restorations would not require any foreign funding.
On Sunday, the Ben Maimon synagogue, n
Source: Rasmussen Reports
Mar 9, 2010
Sixty percent (60%) of Americans with children in elementary or secondary school say most school textbooks are more concerned with presenting information in a politically correct manner than in accuracy.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 28% of adults with children in the schools disagree and think most textbooks are more concerned with accurately providing information.
Among all Americans, regardless of whether they have children in the schoo
Source: NYT
Mar 9, 2010
By at least one amusing new metric, Michelangelo’s unofficial 500-year run at the top of the Italian art charts has ended. Caravaggio, who somehow found time to paint when he wasn’t brawling, scandalizing pooh-bahs, chasing women (and men), murdering a tennis opponent with a dagger to the groin, fleeing police assassins or getting his face mutilated by one of his many enemies, has bumped him from his perch.
That’s according to an art historian at the University of Toronto, Philip So
Source: USA Today
Mar 9, 2010
Many presidents like to read about their predecessors, and President Obama said yesterday he is studying up on Theodore Roosevelt.
Press Secretary Robert Gibbs tells us the president is reading The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, by Edmund Morris -- a true classic of the presidential genre.
First published in 1979, the beautifully written narrative tells the story of how a privileged yet sickly New York City boy grew up to become the outdoorsman, writer, military man, polit
Source: BBC
Mar 9, 2010
An auction of the papers of Giorgio Vasari, the man credited with founding European art history, has been called off at the last moment.
The papers, which include letters to and from Michelangelo, were due to be auctioned to pay off tax debts.
But lawyers for their owners, an aristocratic Italian family, stepped in at the last minute, claiming they were being sold too cheaply.
Giorgio Vasari, himself an acclaimed artist, lived in the 16th Century.
Source: BBC
Mar 9, 2010
The son of Rwanda's first President, Dominique Mbonyumutwa, has told the BBC he is protesting against an order to exhume his father's remains.
The mayor of Muhanga district has given the family 60 days to decide where they want the former president re-buried.
He was buried in Gitarama town's sports stadium, which is being redeveloped.
The stadium, called Democracy Stadium, is where Rwanda's Hutu leaders declared that the Tutsi monarchy would be abolished.
