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: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 24, 2009
Now a roof tile from the Sairenji Temple, which was handed to a British tourist by the chief priest, is to go under the hammer along with other macabre items next month in Lincolnshire.
Other lots include a signed picture of a crippled man with an injured back caused by the huge explosion and a signed parchment from Sairenji Temple's Rev. S. T. Katsaki.
The lot also features a tourist map and eight postcards showing the devastated city and the Japanese surrender on the
Source: AP
Jun 24, 2009
Remains believed to be those of two American servicemen killed during the Vietnam War were placed on a plane in central Danang city on Wednesday and sent back to the United States to be identified.
U.S. honor guards carried the two American flag-draped aluminum cases holding the remains onto the U.S. military transport plane under blazing sun at Danang International Airport. The remains were headed to Hawaii for forensic testing.
Source: BBC
Jun 24, 2009
Former detainees have alleged they were beaten, deprived of sleep and threatened with dogs at the Bagram military base.
The BBC interviewed 27 former inmates of Bagram around the country over a period of two months.
The Pentagon has denied the charges and insisted that all inmates in the facility are treated humanely.
All the men were asked the same questions and they were all interviewed in isolation.
Source: AP
Jun 23, 2009
The International Mozarteum Foundation said Thursday it has discovered two more works composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
The previously unknown works are piano pieces composed by a young Mozart, the Salzburg-based foundation said in a brief e-mail statement.
There have been up to 10 Mozart discoveries of such importance over the past 50 years, Leisinger said at the time.
Source: National Geographic
Jun 23, 2009
Burying the dead facedown in ancient times didn't mean RIP, according to new research that says the practice was both deliberate and widespread.
Experts have assumed such burials were either unusual or accidental.
But the first global study on the facedown burials suggests that it was a custom used across societies to disrespect or humiliate the dead.
Lead study author Caroline Arcini of Sweden's National Heritage Board detected a common thread in the buria
Source: AP
Jun 23, 2009
The mummy may actually have been a daddy.
North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y., examined four ancient Egyptian mummies belonging to the Brooklyn Museum on Tuesday. It turns out one of the four thought for centuries to be a woman is actually a man.
A CT scan revealed that one of the mummies, named “Lady Hor,” was a male.
Source: AP
Jun 23, 2009
BETHLEHEM, West Bank – Workers renovating a house in the traditional town of Jesus' birth accidentally discovered an untouched ancient tomb containing clay pots, plates, beads and the bones of two humans, a Palestinian antiquities official said Tuesday.
The 4,000-year-old tomb provides a glimpse of the burial customs of the area's inhabitants during the Canaanite period, said Mohammed Ghayyada, director of the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.
Source: http://www.novinite.com
Jun 23, 2009
A team of Bulgarian archaeologists has uncovered a Thracian settlement close to the southeast town of Nova Zagora.
The team of Konstantin Gospodinov and Veselin Ignatov from the city of Burgas hope that their finding would be the first Thracian settlement to be uncovered in its entirety.
The settlement is located along the Blatnitsa River. It had a moat around it, and include large buildings rising above the ground, news.dir.bg reported.
Source: Irish Times
Jun 23, 2009
Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Governement John Gormley must resign due to his failure to protect Irish heritage sites, representatives of the Save Tara campaign have said.
Members of TaraWatch, the organisation which runs the campaign, held a protest outside Custom House in Dublin today to voice their dissatisfaction with the minister, who they say has reneged on promises to nominate Irish cultural areas such at the Hill of Tara, the Burren and Clonmacnoise to the
Source: AP
Jun 23, 2009
Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History signed an agreement with Google Mexico to promote archeological and historical sites in a bid to revive tourism following the swine flu epidemic.
The plan uses several elements of the Google platform, including placing maps of archeological sites and directions to them on Google Earth.
The institute has started a channel on the video-sharing site YouTube at http://www.youtube
Source: BBC
Jun 23, 2009
As Britain's most famous tennis tournament gets under way, the BBC's Stuart Nicolson examines how the game had deadly consequences for a Scottish king.
A love of tennis proved fatal for Scotland's first king of the court almost 600 years ago....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 23, 2009
A priceless document which led to Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine
of Aragon and the schism with Rome has been reproduced in exquisite
detail by the Vatican and copies put on sale after spending 500 years
shut away in its Secret Archives.
The Vatican announced that 200 copies of the elaborately decorated
parchment from 1530, which bore an appeal by English peers to Pope
Clement VII asking for the annulment of Henry's marriage, would go on
sale for 50,000 euros (£43,000) each.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 23, 2009
A stamp licked by a British soldier now lying in a mass grave in
northern France could be enough to identify his remains 90 years after
he fell in battle.
Armed with the latest forensic techniques used in modern murder
investigations, DNA experts are to try to match around 400 soldiers'
remains to their genetic signatures.
A team of British-based experts has just been chosen to attempt to
unravel one of the largest-scale genetic conundrums ever They hope to
obtain DNA profile
Source: LAT
Jun 23, 2009
White House tapes released Tuesday capture Richard Nixon as a pugnacious second-term president who talks of hammering out an end to the Vietnam War even if he has to" cut off the head" of the South Vietnamese leader, remarks that an abortion might be necessary if a pregnancy involved an interracial couple and appears preoccupied with savaging his political foes.
As Nixon was negotiating an end to U.S. military involvement in Vietnam in January 1973, he faced a South Vietnamese president w
Source: Foxnews
Jun 23, 2009
Materials from the Nixon Presidential Library offer a glimpse into fateful days of the Watergate scandal as well as the waning days of the U.S. war in Vietnam.
When the Watergate scandal grew into a full-bore crisis unraveling Richard Nixon's presidency, aides hatched a "game plan" to save him. The idea: Convince lawmakers that the Watergate prosecutor was a zealot holding a "pistol to the head" of the president.
Some 30,000 pages of documents were
Source: CNN
Jun 23, 2009
The Richard Nixon Presidential Library will allow access Tuesday to about 154 hours of Nixon White House tape recordings and 30,000 pages of documents that were formerly classified.
Among the tapes and documents are conversations about the Vietnam War, Nixon's second inauguration, the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 and the first Watergate trial, according to a library statement.
The new Nixon tapes and documents will be available on the Internet and i
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 23, 2009
Town authorities now want it cut down and burned to make way for a new roundabout. But some residents have become attached to the 40-foot oak and are lobbying to save it.
"The tree has not hurt anyone and is not guilty of anything," Kazimierz Polak said, adding that his group was appealing to local and regional authorities to preserve the tree.
"It is growing healthy and tall. Let it grow."
But the town's mayor, Maria Kurowska, said it
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 23, 2009
Armed with the latest forensic techniques used in modern murder investigations, DNA experts are to try to match around 400 soldiers' remains to their genetic signatures.
A team of British-based experts has just been chosen to attempt to unravel one of the largest-scale genetic conundrums ever They hope to obtain DNA profiles from bodies that have lain underground for nearly a century on a scale never previously attempted.
The soldiers were buried in woodland shortly a
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 23, 2009
Gen Dannatt, Chief of the General Staff, said the failure of coalition forces to take advantage of the "window of consent" in the immediate aftermath of the invasion had opened the door to the Shia militias.
He said they had not kept enough troops on the ground - particularly as the focus of operations switched to Afghanistan.
His comments, in a keynote address to the Royal United Services Institute think-tank in London, came as Whitehall is gearing up for t
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Jun 23, 2009
The UK would have been divided into 12 regions governed by ministers wielding draconian powers in the wake of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, according to a secret War Book released for the first time today.
During the Cold War, civil servants used the book to rehearse what would happen if there was a devastating nuclear exchange.
Drawn up more than 40 years ago - and updated as recently as the early Nineties - it sets out in immense detail how Britain would have b
