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: Daily Tar Heel
Jul 23, 2009
The Preservation Society of Chapel Hill and other town groups are starting a project to identify grave sites in the black section of the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery.
The research will include two different studies that can show where grave sites are in the black section of the cemetery, in hopes of later discovering the exact identities of people who are buried there.
Once the tests have been completed, it is possible that up to 100 black people who worked at the Universit
Source: http://www.icelandreview.com
Jul 23, 2009
Archeological research undertaken earlier this summer in Keldudalur in Skagafjördur has brought to light an unusually well-preserved cowshed from the 10th century; the first one to be unearthed in Northern Iceland, archeologist Ragnheidur Traustadóttir told mbl.is.
Remains from man-made structures from the 11th and the 12th century were also discovered.
Source: HNN Staff
Jul 23, 2009
Related Links
Draft Content Standards Elicit Mixed Reviews
Core standards proposed for American schools are under attack by critics for once again divorcing content from form.
“At first glance, these language standards are, despite the brave descriptors, very similar to the dysfunctional state standards already in place,”
Source: Independent (UK)
Jul 23, 2009
Moscow's skyline and architectural heritage are on the verge of being destroyed forever because of low-quality renovations and thoughtless demolition, according to a report released yesterday by a group of Russian and international activists.
"There is no other capital city in peacetime Europe that is being subjected to such devastation for the sake of earning a fast megabuck," the Moscow Architecture Preservation Society stated in its report. The authors said that hundr
Source: Independent (UK)
Jul 23, 2009
Avery sad, isolated old man set down to write an account of his life, 25 years ago, hoping that he might explain the terrible mistake that had hung over the whole of his adult life.
Yesterday the public got its first view of the last testimony of Anthony Blunt, art historian and Soviet spy, which had been kept under a lock and key in the British Library since he died, subject to a 25-year rule banning anyone from reading them. The quarter century is now up and anyone curious enough
Source: Independent (UK)
Jul 23, 2009
The man who planted the Brighton hotel bomb has been invited back to the seaside town to attend a commemoration marking the upcoming 25th anniversary of the IRA's most deadly attack on mainland Britain, The Independent has learnt.
Patrick Magee's 30lb bomb killed five people during the Conservative Party conference in October 1984 and nearly succeeded in assassinating the then prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
An official commemoration marking the bombing is being plan
Source: Time
Jul 23, 2009
Hours before they were to leave office after eight troubled years, George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney had one final and painful piece of business to conclude. For over a month Cheney had been pleading, cajoling, even pestering Bush to pardon the Vice President's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby. Libby had been convicted nearly two years earlier of obstructing an investigation into the leak of a covert CIA officer's identity by senior White House officials. The Libby pardon, aide
Source: Reuters
Jul 23, 2009
team of archaeologists using sonar technology to scan the seabed have discovered a "graveyard" of five pristine ancient Roman shipwrecks off the small Italian island of Ventotene.
The trading vessels, dating from the first century BC to the fifth century AD, lie more than 100 meters underwater and are amongst the deepest wrecks discovered in the Mediterranean in recent years, the researchers said on Thursday.
Part of an archipelago situated halfway between Ro
Source: BBC
Jul 23, 2009
Dutch officials have handed back to Ghana the head of a king who was executed by colonists in the 1830s.
Tribal elders led a ceremony in The Hague to hand over the head of Badu Bonsu II, stored in formaldehyde in a Dutch museum for 170 years.
The king, who was leader of the Ahanta group, is believed to have been decapitated in retaliation for the killing of two Dutch emissaries. Some believe the king would not be at rest unless his head was r
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 23, 2009
The secret grave of General Emil August Fieldorf, one of Poland's national heroes, may have been found more than 50 years after he was executed by his own country's Stalinist regime.
Scientists and historians intend to examine a plot of land in a Warsaw cemetery to see if it contains a mass grave that might include the body of Gen Emil August Fieldorf, a Polish wartime commander hanged by the communist state in 1953.
If the grave is identified the authorities may carr
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 23, 2009
German prosecutors have decided that displaying a golden garden gnome in a Nuremberg art gallery with its right hand raised in a Hitler salute was not illegal.
After a preliminary inquiry over the past week, prosecutors in the Bavarian city ruled that the 40-centimetre (15-inch) gnome is ridiculing the Nazis rather than promoting a return of the Third Reich.
Hitler salutes and Nazi symbols have been illegal in Germany since the end of World War II, but prosecutors said
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 23, 2009
Drawings of the Moon made 400 years ago can be seen at London's Science Museum as part of a new exhibition on the history of astronomy.
The exhibition spans many cultures from the 10th to 21st centuries and looks at the various ways humankind has studied the heavens.
Early telescopes developed by Galileo and Newton are featured, along with modern space telescopes.
Also on display for the first time is a section of the radio telescope which radio astronomer
Source: The Daily Beast
Jul 23, 2009
Here's news that likely won't inspire a Moment of Zen for the networks: In a poll conducted by Time magazine, Daily Show host Jon Stewart has been voted America's Most Trusted Newscaster, post-Cronkite. Matched up against Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson, and Katie Couric, Stewart won with 44 percent of the vote. Williams came in second, followed by Gibson; Couric finished last. Time has broken down the results state-by-state, for the especially curious. As The Huffington Post points out, "St
Source: Guardian blog
Jul 23, 2009
HNN Hot Topics: The Arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Barack Obama last night showed a deft touch, but also reached a trenchant conclusion when he was asked about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, a black Harvard professor, at his own home over the weekend.
First Obama joked about what would happen if he was found breaking into the White House.
"Here, I'd get shot," Obama quipped before calling
Source: Bloomberg News
Jul 22, 2009
Archaeologists in Cyprus found evidence that inhabitants of the Mediterranean island may have abandoned a nomadic lifestyle for agriculture-based settlements earlier than previously believed.
The excavations at the Politiko-Troullia site, near the capital Nicosia, unearthed a series of households around a communal courtyard, and proof of intensive animal husbandry and crop-processing, according to a statement today on the Web site of the Cypriot Interior Ministry’s Public Informati
Source: Reuters
Jul 22, 2009
A pre-Incan mummy and eight other skeletons have been dug up from under what used to be a shanty town in the middle of Peru's capital, archeologists said on Wednesday.
Urban squatters had lived on the Huaca Huantille ruins for years, unaware they contained an ancient burial site.
Archeologist Roberto Quispe working on the excavation said the bones were from the Ychsma civilization dating from between 1000 and 1400 AD.
Source: Reuters
Jul 22, 2009
US treasure hunting firm Odyssey filed a challenge Wednesday to a court ruling ordering that it surrender to Spain treasure recovered from a 19th century Spanish shipwreck.
The discovery of the sunken treasure, from a ship code-named "Black Swan," was announced in 2007.
Source: Deutsche Welle
Jul 22, 2009
The fresh preliminary hearings were ordered after Russia's supreme court annulled a Moscow district military court acquittal handed to three men who had been put on trial over Politkovskaya's murder.
Rights groups and the slain journalist's family have condemned the retrial, instead calling for an entirely new investigation into the journalist's murder.
The Politkovskaya family lawyer, Anna Stavitskaya, has said she would demand in the upcoming preliminary hearings that
Source: Nevada Appeal
Jul 22, 2009
A team of archaeologists is currently continuing excavations that they hope will shed light on life in Virginia City during the time when Mark Twain called the place home.
A summer field school operated by the Anthropology Department of the University of Nevada, Reno has begun excavating the original site of Thomas Maguire's Opera House on D Street. A second excavation is also under way in an area known as the Barbary Coast, a place of vice and crime during the 1860s and 1870s.
Source: BBC
Jul 22, 2009
Israeli embassies are being instructed to use for public relations purposes an infamous photograph of Adolf Hitler meeting a top Palestinian cleric.
Far-right Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has personally requested that the photo be sent to missions around the world, a senior official said.
The 1941 shot shows the Nazi leader meeting the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.
