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: Stone Pages Archaeo News
Jul 26, 2009
The Directorate-General of Antiquities, Lebanon, has said that it plans to resume excavation at the Freres archaeological site in the old city of Sidon in collaboration with a delegation of the British museum, in order to uncover more ancient ruins. Earlier excavation procedures at the site led to the discovery of several of the citys underground layers, which dated back to 1,000-4,000 BCE.
Source: BBC
Jul 26, 2009
The sacrifices of the World War I generation are to be commemorated in a special national service, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said.
It is likely to be held at Westminster Abbey and will be attended by the prime minister, Downing Street said. The Queen is also expected to attend.
The announcement comes after the death of Harry Patch, the last British survivor of the World War I trenches.
Source: Times (UK)
Jul 26, 2009
English Heritage is to rewrite guides to its properties to ensure they can be understood by visitors with the reading age of a 10-year-old.
The government’s custodian of historic sites is to launch an intellectual audit of the 400 sites it manages following criticism that it is too high-brow and has not done enough to attract visitors from lower socioeconomic groups.
English Heritage, whose properties include Stonehenge and the site of the battle of Hastings, is to laun
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Jul 26, 2009
Newly declassified images have been released showing the devastating impact of global warming in the Alaska.
The graphic photographs, released last week by the American military, show huge swathes of summer ice cover have disappeared from the Chukchi Sea.
The photos were kept strictly secret by the Washington administration under George W Bush and were declassified by the White House last week.
Source: Reuters
Jul 25, 2009
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's lawyer denied the premier hid archaeological ruins at his Sardinian villa and said tapes purporting to show him boasting to a call girl were fake, newspapers said on Saturday.
The recordings, allegedly of Berlusconi in conversation with Patrizia D'Addario, have riveted Italy by revealing details of their purported sexual liaison. On Friday L'Espresso weekly released a further transcript in which the billionaire politician appeared to boast
Source: http://www.dallasnews.com
Jul 25, 2009
The long and bitter lawsuit over ownership of land near the site of the future George W. Bush presidential library came to an abrupt end Friday when SMU settled the case with two former condominium owners.
The surprise settlements remove one of the potential obstacles to construction of the $300 million library. In recent years, Southern Methodist University tamped down resistance from a small contingent of faculty members and from some Methodist churchgoers who said SMU should not
Source: NYT
Jul 25, 2009
Every fight over health care reform is different, and every fight over health care reform is the same.
In 1929, Michael Shadid, a doctor in western Oklahoma, proposed an idea for making medical care affordable to farmers. Rather than pay piecemeal for treatments, farmers would each contribute $50 a year to a cooperative. Dr. Shadid and his colleagues would pay their own salaries and expenses with the aggregate sum, and no farmer’s annual bill for family medical care would exceed $50
Source: NYT
Jul 25, 2009
Even if [President Obama] goes the bipartisan route and succeeds, the end result could be comparatively modest: Perhaps fewer than 10 Senate Republicans, and perhaps not even that many in the House, party officials said. Social Security, by contrast, passed in 1935 with the support of 16 of the 25 Republican senators and 81 of the 102 Republican representatives.
Still, ending partisan infighting was a central pledge Mr. Obama offered the nation from the earliest days of his candidac
Source: BBC
Jul 25, 2009
Windows have been vandalised at the front of the Shakespeare's Birthplace tourist attraction in Warwickshire.
Brown paint was daubed on several windows and plaster work between Thursday evening and early on Friday, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust said.
The trust, which looks after the Tudor house on Henley Street, Stratford-upon-Avon, said it had done a "good job" of cleaning it up, but marks remained.
Shakespeare's father owned the house at th
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 25, 2009
The Bush administration considered sending federal troops to arrest a group of terror suspects in Buffalo, New York in 2002.
The proposal, which would have risked falling foul of the US constitution if enforced, called on the president to deploy troops to make arrests on American soil for the first time since the Civil War.
The move was backed by Dick Cheney, the former vice president, who wanted the military to apprehend the men, who were suspected of plotting with a
Source: Agence France-Presse
Jul 25, 2009
The severed head of Ghanaian King Badu Bonsu II, who was executed by colonialists in the 1880s, was flown back home to a solemn traditional ceremony.
A group of tribal leaders who received the bottled head from Dutch authorities a day earlier, were met at Kotoka international airport by government officials and members of the beheaded king's clan on Friday.
Traditional prayers were said and libation ceremonies staged by tribal leaders to welcome home and invoke the spi
Source: The Daily Beast
Jul 25, 2009
Was CNN president Jon Klein hoping for an off-screen Face Off with host Lou Dobbs? Klein sent "Lou Dobbs Tonight" staffers an email on Thursday saying that the controversy surrounding the legitimacy of President Obama's birth certificate—one of Dobbs' pet topics of late—is a "dead" story. In the email, Klein elaborated that CNN researchers had determined that Hawaiian officials tossed out paper documents in 2001—thus, Obama's long-form birth certificate no longer exists and a
Source: AP
Jul 25, 2009
Despite the content of a letter bearing his signature, Gov. Charlie Crist does not want to share an anti-Semitic movie with all Floridians.
Crist's office sent a letter thanking John Ubele for providing the governor with a copy of the film "Jud Suss." The film is recognized as one of history's most incendiary.
The brief thank-you note was dated June 30 and bore the governor's automated signature. It praised Ubele's thoughtfulness and generosity and said Crist
Source: AP
Jul 25, 2009
The Bush administration in 2002 considered sending U.S. troops into a Buffalo, N.Y., suburb to arrest a group of terror suspects in what would have been a nearly unprecedented use of military power, The New York Times reported.
Vice President Dick Cheney and several other Bush advisers at the time strongly urged that the military be used to apprehend men who were suspected of plotting with al Qaida, who later became known as the Lackawanna Six, the Times reported on its Web site Fri
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 25, 2009
The move marks the latest step in China's attempts to communicate its values and culture to the outside world.
The Communist Party has budgeted 45 billion yuan (£4 billion) to expand its overseas media, including a United States edition of the China Daily newspaper and several English newspapers and magazines.
The decision to launch an English platform for serious Communist Party thought was reportedly made by Li Changchun, one of the nine members of the Standing Commit
Source: BBC
Jul 25, 2009
Mr Patch was conscripted into the Army aged 18 and fought in the Battle of Passchendaele at Ypres in 1917 in which more than 70,000 British soldiers died.
He was raised in Coombe Down, near Bath, and had been living at a care home in Wells, Somerset.
The oldest British World War I veteran is now Claude Choules who is aged 108 and lives in Australia.
Henry Allingham, who served in the Royal Navy and the RAF in WWI, died at the age of 113 a week ago.
Source: http://www.gettysburgtimes.com
Jul 24, 2009
Gettysburg area philanthropist David LeVan is donating 61 acres of his family’s land to the National Park Service and Gettysburg Foundation.
The foundation — the park’s management and fundraising partner — officially accepted the conservation easement during a ceremony Thursday morning.
“I make this gift in honor of my father’s vision and commitment to the preservation and conservation of this property,” said LeVan.
“I’m happy that I am now the one who is a
Source: http://www.abc.net.au
Jul 24, 2009
DNA evidence linking Indian tribes to Australian Aboriginal people supports the theory humans arrived in Australia from Africa via a southern coastal route through India, say researchers.
The research, lead by Dr Raghavendra Rao from the Anthropological Survey of India, is published in the current edition of BMC Evolutionary Biology.
One theory is that modern humans arrived in Australia via an inland route through central Asia but Rao says most scientists believe modern
Source: BBC
Jul 24, 2009
Imagine finding a 2,000 year old Roman coin near the ancient path of the Ridgeway that had slipped from the fingers of a Celtic warrior in 207BC. Thatcham metal detectorist Malcolm Langford has discovered the UK's oldest Roman coin.
He has found everything from stone age artefacts to Roman coins, and enjoys taking his finds to schools to pass on his passion for the past.
Malcolm said he discovered the age of the coin when he took it, along with another Iron Age silver c
Source: ANSA
Jul 24, 2009
An amateur scuba diver has discovered what may be the ruins of an ancient city off the coast of Calabria, a local town council said Friday.
Alessandro Ciliberto, an architect with a passion for scuba diving, discovered a group of stone blocks around 3-4 metres under water while he was diving 15 metres from the shore near the town of Squillace on Calabria's east coast.
Squillace town council said it was possible that the ruins belonged to the ancient seaside city of Scyl
