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: Spiegel International
Aug 21, 2009
Some 2,500 years ago, a mysterious culture emerged in Nigeria. The Nok people left behind bizarre terracotta statues - and little else. Archaeologists are now looking for more clues to explain this obscure culture...
...Like their cemeteries, the temples and huts of the Nok have disappeared without a trace. No one knows what their farm animals, streets or religious ceremonies were like. But the shards of clay statues are everywhere - on rock slopes, in ancient refuse pits and in ope
Source: Costa Levante News
Aug 21, 2009
A large number of prehistoric archaeological sites in the Valencia Region (Spain) do not have adequate protection and are open to acts of vandalism and stealing, a report warned. The caves dating back to the Palaeolithic period and in some cases to the Iron Age located in La Safor district have no protection at all...
... All appear to have been forgotten by the authorities in favour of more modern causes such as baroque churches, 19th century buildings and monuments that are less t
Source: TimesOnline
Aug 21, 2009
Is he the evil perpetrator of the deadliest terrorist attack in British history, or a sick old man, a loving father and grandfather, who has suffered a terrible miscarriage of justice? Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi put on a virtuoso performance when The Times came calling yesterday...
... Al-Megrahi promised that before he died he would present new evidence through his Scottish lawyers that would exonerate him. “My message to the British and Scottish communities is that I will put out
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 21, 2009
One of Adolf Hitler's best paintings will be auctioned in Germany next month.
Three watercolours depicting cottages, mills and churches nestled in rural landscapes will be auctioned on Sept 5, Weidler's auction house in Nuremberg said on Thursday.
The three paintings are dated from 1910 and 1911 and originate from Vienna where Hitler spent several years as a struggling artist. He then joined the army and fought in World War One.
The auction house is expect
Source: AP
Aug 21, 2009
Seventy years ago Sunday, the Soviet Union signed a pact with Nazi Germany that gave dictator Josef Stalin a free hand to take over part of Poland and the Baltic states on the eve of World War II.
Most of the world now condemns the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, but Russia has mounted a new defense of the 1939 treaty as it seeks to restore some of its now-lost sphere of influence.
The Soviet government was convinced that a Nazi attack on Poland was imminent and "we neede
Source: Foxnews
Aug 21, 2009
A 2,500-year-old Egyptian mummy, under examination of a high-tech scanner at Stanford Medical Center, may shed new light on ancient medical care and death in Egypt, reports say.
Researchers at Stanford are analyzing a minor priest from ancient Egypt named Iret-net Hor-irw, or "The Eye of Horus is Upon You," the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Probably just 20 when he died in the Egyptian cult city of Akhmim, the mummy is being readied for a new exhibition, "Very Post
Aug 21, 2009
A month before Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi plans to visit the U.S. for the first time, his regime Thursday ignored President Obama’s direct appeal not to give the Libyan convicted for his role in the Lockerbie bombing a hero’s welcome on his return to Tripoli.
Former intelligence agent Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, freed by the Scottish authorities on compassionate grounds after serving just eight years of a life sentence, was flown home on Gaddafi’s jet, accompanied by Gaddafi’s s
Source: NYT (Digest)
Aug 21, 2009
The idea that primitive hunter-gatherers lived in harmony with the landscape has long been challenged by researchers, who say
Stone Age humans in fact wiped out many animal species in places as varied as the mountains of New Zealand and the plains of
North America. Now scientists are proposing a new arena of ancient depredation: the coast.
In an article in Friday’s issue of
the journal Science, anthropologists at the Smithsonian Institution and the University o
Source: Guardian (UK)
Aug 21, 2009
Russia has declassified top-secret surveillance documents in an attempt to justify its occupation of Eastern Europe under the Nazi-Soviet pact, signed 70 years ago on Sunday.
The hidden protocols of the pact, in which Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler agreed to carve up Poland and other sovereign states, were denounced by the Soviet parliament in 1989, shortly after they were revealed for the first time.
But the pact, which lasted until Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Unio
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 21, 2009
Sergeant Paul McAleese, the son of John McAleese, became the 205th soldier to be killed in the conflict after his patrol went to recover the body of another British soldier who died in a bombing attack hours earlier.
The 29-year-old, described as "one of the best of his generation", became a father just a week before he deployed to Afghanistan,following the birth of his son, Charley, The MoD said on Friday night.
Sgt McAleese, who was serving with the 2nd Ba
Source: Lee P. Ruddin
Aug 21, 2009
Civil Rights activist Diane Nash launched Liverpool’s Slavery Remembrance Day Festival (21-23 August) with a free memorial lecture on Friday evening at the Town Hall.
Nash’s hour-long talk, Reflections on the American Civil Rights Movement, focused on her “agaphic energy” during the struggle and was greatly received by a packed council chamber.
This was Nash’s first visit to the UK, and the 71-year-old is set to depart immediately on what is a whistle-blowing tour.
Source: Time
Aug 20, 2009
On a hot August afternoon in 2008, Ted Kennedy took John Kerry sailing on his 50-ft. schooner, the Mya.It was a perfect day on the water, sunny with the occasional cotton-ball cloud riding the strong winds over the family compound in Hyannis Port, Mass. With the Mya's blue hull moving at a good clip, Kennedy turned to his old friend with reminiscences of failed campaigns past: Kennedy's bid for the presidency in 1980 and Kerry's in 2004. What concerned Kennedy, who three months earlier had learn
Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer
Aug 20, 2009
As construction of the President's House memorial is poised to begin, sharp criticisms have been leveled at the architectural design, catching officials by surprise and focusing attention on purportedly historically inaccurate elements of the project.
The house's dimensions are incorrect, the arc of a bow window is distorted, and the building's now-infamous slave quarters are incorrectly located, the critics assert.
Some historians and members of a committee charged wit
Source: Spiegel Online
Aug 20, 2009
The economic crisis is like a fairytale come true for Germany's romantic castles, baroque palaces and historic town squares because the government is spending millions of euros on sprucing them up, not just to protect the country's heritage but also to boost the construction sector.
Visitor numbers have also been increasing at many sites because Germans have been shunning foreign holidays in the recession.
Three separate programs totalling more than €320 million ($452
Source: Chron (Houston Chronicle)
Aug 20, 2009
Texas high school students would learn about such significant individuals and milestones of conservative politics as Newt Gingrich and the rise of the Moral Majority — but nothing about liberals — under the first draft of new standards for public school history textbooks.
And the side that got left out is very unhappy.
As it stands, students would get “one-sided, right wing ideology,” said Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, chairman of the House Mexican America
Source: USA Today
Aug 20, 2009
China's founding dynasty may just be a myth, say archaeologists. In a news report published in Science magazine, writer Andrew Lawler surveys a decade's worth of discoveries suggesting ancient China sprang from distinct regions, rather than possessing a single national culture some 4,300 years ago. "How China became China is no mere academic topic; it goes to the very heart of how the world's most populous and economically vibrant nation sees itself and its role in the world," Lawler w
Source: Culture24
Aug 20, 2009
A 5,000-year-old carving discovered in the Orkney Islands is being hailed as the oldest face in Scotland by archaeologists. At first
glance, it appears little more than a tiny fragment of sandstone with a few crude scratches on the surface. Yet this precious object is the earliest carving of the human form to be found in Scotland - there are
only two others in the whole of the British mainland.
The face and its lozenge-shaped body - measuring just 3.5cm by 3cm - were carved o
Source: NYT
Aug 20, 2009
IT’S Madison Avenue’s version of “It’s a Small World”: A brewer founded in South Africa and based in London is about to sell a beer in Vietnam with a campaign from a Baltimore agency that celebrates the American way of life.
The brewer is SABMiller, which is introducing to the Vietnamese the Miller High Life brand sold by its Miller Brewing Company unit. A campaign scheduled to begin on Friday carries the theme “It’s American time, it’s Miller time.”
Source: NYT
Aug 20, 2009
The rich have been getting richer for so long that the trend has come to seem almost permanent.
They began to pull away from everyone else in the 1970s. By 2006, income was more concentrated at the top than it had been since the late 1920s. The recent news about resurgent Wall Street pay has seemed to suggest that not even the Great Recession could reverse the rise in income inequality.
But economists say — and data is beginning to show — that a significant change may in fact
Source: NYT
Aug 20, 2009
Its name means the Mountain of Horror, which seems an apt description for this sacred Buddhist site inside the crater of a dormant volcano. The weather-beaten temple here is surrounded by a lifeless lake and a wasteland of naked rock reeking of sulfur that conjures images of Buddhist hell.
But during the mountain’s twice annual religious festivals, visitors come by the busload to line up before a row of small tents in a corner of the temple. Within are the “itako” — elderly, often b
