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: MSNBC
May 6, 2009
Rome's most irreverent statues are going to be blocked off in special fencing in an attempt to sanitize the satirical voice of the Roman people.
In Renaissance Rome, when strict laws punished those who spoke against the powers that controlled the city, citizens began hanging caustic comments on the statues in the dark of the night. The tradition has continued to this day.
Begun to celebrate Rome's recent 2,762 birthday, the 70,000-euro ($93,600) restoration project is
Source: BBC
May 6, 2009
Israeli authorities say they have recovered a papyrus document which appears to be nearly 2,000 years old.
It appears to be a legal instruction, transferring a widow's property to her late husband's brother.
It was seized from two Palestinian men in a sting operation at a Jerusalem hotel, police said. The two could face several years in jail.
The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said on Wednesday that the scroll was an "exceptional archeological d
Source: BBC
May 6, 2009
An ancient Egyptian tomb near the mud-brick pyramid of Lahun shows the site was used 1,000 years earlier than archaeologists previously thought.
The burial site, 130km (80 miles) south of Cairo, was previously dated to Pharaoh Senuseret II - 4,000 years ago.
It became well-known last month when a cache of mummies was found there.
But a chance discovery of a shard of pottery has led to evidence that Lahun was an important site 5,000 years ago - long befor
Source: Independent (UK)
May 6, 2009
Libya has applied to the Scottish government for a former Libyan agent convicted and jailed for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing to be sent back to his homeland.
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi was sentenced to life in jail for blowing up a Pan Am airliner over the Scottish town of Lockerbie as it flew from London to New York on 18 December, 1988, killing all 259 people on board, including 189 Americans, and 11 people on the ground.
"An application has been received f
Source: Independent (UK)
May 6, 2009
MI5 secretly tried to hire British men held in Guantanamo Bay and other US prison camps by promising to protect them from their American captors and help secure their return home to the United Kingdom, The Independent has learnt.
One of the men, Richard Belmar, was told he would be paid "well" for his services if he was willing to work undercover for MI5. A second detainee, Bisher Al Rawi, was told that if he agreed to work for the security service he would be "freed
Source: Spiegel Online
May 6, 2009
Barack Obama's planned trip to Germany in June is not going to be an official state visit. German diplomatic sources told SPIEGEL ONLINE that the US president is planning a private trip in which he will go on a personal search to places of importance for his family history.
On Tuesday, the news became public that a White House advance team is currently in the eastern German city of Dresden, where they are looking for possible accommodations for the president. In addition to a short
Source: AP
May 6, 2009
Undercover Israeli officers foiled an attempt by two Palestinian men to sell an ancient, valuable papyrus document on the black market, police said Wednesday.
The men were arrested at a Jerusalem hotel Tuesday after a sting operation lasting several weeks, police said. The 1,900-year-old Hebrew document, previously unknown and valued at millions of dollars, was rescued, and police showed it to reporters.
It was unclear where the two men obtained it, police and archaeolo
Source: CNN
May 6, 2009
It was 40 years ago this summer that U.S. Marine Gunnery Sgt. Enrique Valdez was nearly killed by shrapnel in Vietnam and 15 years ago that he died from wounds suffered that August in 1969.
His name is the latest on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, added to "The Wall" on Tuesday, after the Defense Department concluded that his status matched the criteria to be included on the panels.
After being wounded in Vietnam at the age of 32, Valdez spent the
Source: AP
May 6, 2009
OSWIECIM, Poland – A note hidden in a bottle by Auschwitz prisoners 65 years ago in a desperate attempt to preserve a small piece of themselves was added Wednesday to the archives of the Polish state-run museum dedicated to the memory of the former Nazi death camp's victims.
Museum Director Piotr Cywinski hailed the document — a list of the names of seven camp inmates that was discovered last month — as a rare discovery and a cause for celebration, given that at least three of the p
Source: Nick Baumann and David Corn in Mother Jones
May 6, 2009
Who in the George W. Bush White House tried to shred a memo challenging the use of torture?
On April 21, Philip Zelikow, who was counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during the Bush administration, revealed on Foreign Policy's "Shadow Government" blog that he wrote a memo in 2005 disputing the conclusions of Bush Justice Department lawyers that torture was legal. The existence of such a memo was a surprise. But Zelikow also disclosed that the "White House
Source: VOICE OF AMERICA
May 6, 2009
In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge tribunal is providing fresh insights about Pol Pot's bloody regime.
The trial of Kang Guek Eav, also known as Duch, has gone into recess after testimony that ultimate responsibility for death camps like S-21 lay with Nuon Chea. Known as Brother Number Two, he awaits trial.
Duch, who ran the S-21 prison in Phnom Penh, told the court there were 196 such camps, now known as the Killing Fields, between 1975 and 1979. During those years, as many
Source: http://civilwarinteractive.com
May 5, 2009
At a news conference this morning, advocates for historic preservation gathered to decry the construction of Walmart supercenter proposed for the entrance to Virginia’s Wilderness Battlefield. If built, the megastore would stand across the road from the national park commemorating the bloody struggle, and within the battlefield’s historic footprint.
Robert Duvall, Academy Award-winning actor and descendent of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, led the charge. “The Walmart Corporat
Source: Deutsche Welle
May 5, 2009
A lower United Nations Yugoslav tribunal convicted Veselin Sljivancanin in 2007 of enabling the beatings and torture of Croatian prisoners of war. But Sljivancanin was acquitted of aiding and abetting murder and given a five-year sentence.
Sljivancanin, who had already served most of the initial sentence imposed on him, did not visibly react as appeals judges added a charge of aiding and abetting murder to his conviction, and sent him back to jail.
The judges increased
Source: Foxnews
May 5, 2009
"Mein Kampf," Adolf Hitler's autobiography, is flying off the shelves at Indian book stores as business students look to Germany's former dictator for inspiration, the Telegraph reported.
Indian students see the book as a self-improvement and management strategy guide, sources told the British newspaper.
Some experts say the book's popularity stems from political reasons, and has little to do with management.
Source: Fox News
May 5, 2009
In his first public speech since announcing his retirement from the Supreme Court, Justice David Souter argued Tuesday that while most justices and cases are quickly forgotten, they play an “imperative” role in maintaining a safe, stable democracy.
“For most of us, the very best work that we do sinks into the stream pretty quickly," Souter told more than 300 judges at the annual Third Circuit Judicial Conference in Philadelphia....
Quoting a legal scholar who once
Source: Stone Pages Archaeo News
May 5, 2009
Giving birth is more difficult - and dangerous - for modern humans than for any other primate. Not only do human mothers have to push out babies with unusually big heads, but infants also have to rotate to fit their heads through the narrow birth canal. Now, a new virtual reconstruction of the pelvis of a Neanderthal woman suggests that Neanderthal mothers also had a tough time giving birth to their big-headed infants - but the babies, at least, didn't have to rotate to get out.
Source: Stone Pages Archaeo News
May 5, 2009
The Iranian Center for Archaeological Research (ICAR) is currently planning a rescue excavation project at the Seimareh Dam reservoir area in western Iran's Ilam Province. Forty areas in the region will be excavated by 40 archaeological teams during the project, considered to be Iran's largest rescue excavation operation, which will be carried out during the second half of the Iranian calendar year beginning on September 23.
During a series of rescue excavations in 2007, a team
Source: Stone Pages
May 5, 2009
New archaeological discoveries in Sharjah's Jebel Fayah (United Arab Emirates) showed that human settlements existed in the area over 85,000 years ago. Excavation work was carried out as part of a joint programme between the Directorate of Antiquities at the Culture and Information Department in Sharjah and the Institute of Prehistoric Studies and Research at the German University of Tubengin.
Source: Stone Pages Archaeo News
May 5, 2009
Some time around the middle of April, in an area of the Libyan Sahara on the Algerian frontier known as Tadrart Acacus, seven cave paintings from the Neolithic era, dating back to a period between 3,000 and 10,000 years ago, were vandalised with tins of spray paint. The caves were declared UNESCO world heritage sites. The crime was committed by a former tourist guide, a Tunisian citizen whose identity has not been revealed since he was arrested by local police on April 24. The only news to have
Source: Deutsche Welle
May 5, 2009
Berlin's notorious Stasi detention center is now a memorial site meant to educate visitors about the injustices committed under communism. But many are worried that former East Germans simply aren't interested.
Only 20 percent of visitors to the Hohenschoenhausen Memorial come from the eastern German states that made up the GDR.
Hohenschoenhausen is a unique "living memorial" which includes many of the original prison furnishings, providing a sort of time caps
