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: Foxnews
Aug 2, 2009
A well-preserved 4,500-year-old skeleton of a man was found on a beach south of Rome, Italian police told Reuters.
The man is believed to be a warrior killed by an arrow in the chest, Reuters reported.
Six small vases were also found buried near the man.
The skeleton was discovered during a routine air patrol of areas of archaeological interest.
Source: AP
Aug 2, 2009
Navy pilot Capt. Michael "Scott" Speicher was shot down over the Iraq desert on the first night of the Gulf War in 1991 and it was there he apparently was buried by Bedouins, hidden in the sand from the world's mightiest military all these years.
In a sorrowful resolution to the nearly two-decade old question about his fate, the Pentagon disclosed Sunday it had received new information last month from an Iraqi citizen that led Marines to recover bones and skeletal fragmen
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 2, 2009
At the height of the Blitz in 1940, thousands were huddled in the dimly lit tunnels of the London Underground, sheltering from the German bombs raining on the capital.
Exhausted, afraid and not knowing whether their houses would still be standing when they emerged from their refuge, the civilians' spirits were in need of a lift.
It came in the form of Sgt Walter Huntley, a soldier and ventriloquist, and his life-size dummy, Gunner Jimmy Turner, who ventured into the t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 2, 2009
The Cuban president Raul Castro has warned the US and Europe he will not 'restore capitalism' and will never renounce the revolution.
Mr Castro said the Caribbean country's socialist political system was non-negotiable.
In a speech marking the end of the annual parliamentary session, which has been dominated by Cuba's grave economic crisis, he said he would be willing to "discuss everything" with foreign leaders except the island's political and social syste
Source: CNN
Aug 2, 2009
The remains of the first American shot down in the 1991 Persian Gulf War have been uncovered, the U.S. Department of Defense announced Sunday.
U.S. Navy Capt. Michael "Scott" Speicher was shot down in an F/A-18 Hornet on January 17, 1991, the first night of the war.
An Iraqi civilian told U.S. forces in Iraq in early July about the location of the crash that killed Speicher, according to the statement. U.S. Marines in Anbar province went to the site and spoke
Source: BBC
Aug 2, 2009
Two newly discovered pieces of piano music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart are to be performed in the Austrian city of his birth, Salzburg.
The pieces had long been in the archive of the International Mozarteum Foundation but only recently were they identified as compositions by Mozart.
The foundation has released very few details about the music.
It is to be played at a house where the composer lived from 1773-1780, which is now the Mozart's Residence museum.
Source: LA Times
Aug 1, 2009
The 10 lines of Aramaic or Hebrew script on the artifact is 'unprecedented,' an archaeologist says. Researchers are not yet able to decipher it.
U.S. archaeologists have found an extremely rare 2,000-year-old limestone cup inscribed with 10 lines of Aramaic or Hebrew script near the Zion Gate of the Old City of Jerusalem.
Although the script itself is not eroded or otherwise degraded, he said, researchers are not yet able to decipher it because the text is in an informa
Source: NYT
Aug 1, 2009
With bipartisan health care negotiations teetering, Democrats are talking reluctantly — and very, very quietly — about exploiting a procedural loophole they planted in this year’s budget to skirt Republican filibusters against a health care overhaul.
They are talking reluctantly because using the tactic, officially known as reconciliation, would present a variety of serious procedural and substantive obstacles that could result in a piecemeal health bill. And they are whispering bec
Source: NYT
Aug 1, 2009
Seventy years have passed since members of the Thorsch family fled
German-occupied Czech lands in 1939. They left behind a lucrative oil
refinery business that was seized by the Nazis, nationalized after
World War II and then taken over by the Communist government.
Marie and Alfons Thorsch in the mid-1930s before fleeing to Canada.
Their granddaughter says Czech laws have stymied her attempts to get
compensation for an oil refinery the Nazis seized.
Marie Warburg — granddaught
Source: Foxnews
Aug 1, 2009
F.D.R. threw keggers and J.F.K. was a Heineken man, while Theodore Roosevelt didn't touch the stuff.
The most pressing question of the week was what brands of brew would be quaffed at the White House "beer summit," the presidential peer-mediation between the Harvard prof and the Cambridge cop. Some foodie followers were dismayed to hear that President Obama chose to drink Bud Light, which some dismiss as the very symbol of corporate, mass-produced, flavorless beer-like pro
Source: BBC
Aug 1, 2009
Rare Buddhist treasures, not seen for more than 70 years, have been unearthed in the Gobi Desert.
The historic artefacts were buried in the 1930s during Mongolia's Communist purge, when hundreds of monasteries were looted and destroyed.
The relics include statues, art work, manuscripts and personal belongings of a famous 19th Century Buddhist master.
A total of 64 crates of treasures were buried in the desert by a monk named Tudev, in an attempt to save t
Source: Foxnews
Aug 1, 2009
Days after publication, "Bobby and Jackie, A Love Story," climbed to number eight on the New York Times bestseller list. To research and write about the love affair between Bobby Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy, author C. David Heymann, three-times-nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, spent more than twenty years in heavy-duty interviewing with friends, acquaintances and observers of the Kennedys.
Heymann believes it was the grief that Bobby and Jackie shared after the assassinati
Source: Boston Herald story summarized by The Daily Beast
Aug 1, 2009
The explosion of peace, love, and understanding brought on by President Obama's beer summit continues unabated. This time it's Henry Louis Gates Jr. moving things forward, sending a bouquet of flowers to Lucia Whalen, the woman who made the 911 call that eventually landed Gates in jail. "It was an expression of gratitude," her lawyer and Daily Beast contributor, Wendy Murphy, told the Boston Herald. She wouldn't disclose the contents of the note, but the recent release of tapes of the
Source: AP
Aug 1, 2009
Harold Lucas was raised with the stories about his grandparents, who rode segregated railroad cars from Missouri to Chicago in the 1930s and worked tirelessly to raise their family into the middle class.
Jeff and Ida Lucas were buried in Burr Oak Cemetery, alongside thousands of black Americans who made up the Great Migration — a movement north during the first half of the 20th century.
Burr Oak, once one of the only burial places for blacks, holds a sacred spot in Afri
Source: Stone Pages Archaeo News
Aug 1, 2009
Genetic evidence is revealing that human populations began to expand in size in Africa during the Late Stone Age approximately 40,000 years ago. A research team led by Michael F. Hammer (Arizona Research Laboratory's Division of Biotechnology at the University of Arizona) found that sub-Saharan populations increased in size well before the development of agriculture. This research supports the hypothesis that population growth played a significant role in the evolution of human cultures in the L
Source: Stone Pages Archaeo News
Aug 1, 2009
Every object unearthed by an archaeological dig must have its exact position recorded. This is normally a painstaking process involving measuring rods and string, but a device that uses technology originally developed to guide robots could speed up the process. Gran Dolina in central Spain is a Palaeolithic site that contains important hominin remains which date from between 780,000 and 300,000 years ago. Thousands of fossils are discovered there every year, but registering them all by hand make
Source: Stone Pages Archaeo News
Aug 1, 2009
Andrew Hemmings walked on a Florida (USA) beach that man hasn't set foot on in more than 13,000 years. Not because it isn't a popular stretch of real estate - it's just that few people are able to don full scuba gear and dive 40 feet under water in the Gulf of Mexico for a stroll in the sand. The University of Texas archaeologist is part of an elite team of scientists led by James Adovasio of Mercyhurst College in Erie. Adovasio is looking for evidence of the earliest North American settlements
Source: Spiegel Online International
Jul 31, 2009
The lost Roman city of Altinum has been found in Italy. Sophisticated aerial images released this week reveal fascinating new details about Venice's predecessor, which was abandoned by its citizens and then sank into the lagoon.
After a long search, the ancient city of Altinum -- considered to be the predecessor of Venice -- has been discovered. In a report published this week in Science, archaeologists at the University of Padua also report that the most popular of Venetian tourist
Source: NYT
Jul 31, 2009
The government went back and checked its numbers — back, in some cases, 60 years — and on Friday it released the results, with changes big and small as the statisticians tried to calculate how well the economy had done and where Americans were spending their money.
The results? The American economy was a little stronger than we thought when times were good, but worse when times were bad.
The government decided that it should measure the impact of big disasters in a diff
Source: Boston Globe
Jul 31, 2009
Until this week, Officer Justin L. Barrett was a young Boston patrolman with no record of misconduct, who had served his country in Iraq and once tackled an armed man inside the Mattapan police station where he worked.
Now, Mayor Thomas M. Menino has called him a cancer and said the 36-year-old should be fired for writing an e-mail comparing a black professor to a “jungle monkey.’’
To many of the city’s black leaders, he is a painful reminder of racial tensions that sti
