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: Independent (UK)
Apr 7, 2009
The city struggling to come to terms with the massive destruction of its ancient fabric was founded in 1254 by order of Corrado IV, the son of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. The importance to the city of the emperor's patronage is clear: L'Aquila means "The Eagle", a reference to the emperor's coat of arms.
The emperor had accepted the petitions of local people who wanted a city to protect them from the depredation of local barons, and was formed by bringing together
Source: Times (UK)
Apr 7, 2009
Confessions extracted under torture in the Khmer Rouge's brutal prisons were rarely true, the regime's prisons chief admitted today.
Kaing Guek Eav, or 'Duch' the director of the Khmer Rouge's most infamous prison S-21, told a Cambodia war crimes tribunal he took part in torture sessions and ordered his subordinates to beat prisoners who were to be 'smashed' to death with an iron bar.
Duch was renowned for reading every confession brought to him from the interrogation
Source: National Geographic News
Apr 6, 2009
A medieval Hungarian town full of ritually sacrificed dogs could shed light on mysterious pagan customs not found in written records from the era, a new study suggests.
Roughly 1,300 bones from about 25 dogs were recently discovered in the 10th- to 13th-century town of Kana, which had been accidentally unearthed in 2003 during the construction of residential buildings on the outskirts of Budapest.
Researchers found ten dogs buried in pits and four puppy skeletons in pot
Source: NYT
Apr 6, 2009
There were the Dukes and the Scorpions, the Hellbenders, Baby Beacons, Baldies and Green Lanterns. Among the most notorious were the Egyptian Kings. In El Barrio, in northern Manhattan, the Dragons and the Viceroys reigned.
Teenage members of the "Dragon" gang were brought to New York police headquarters in 1957 for questioning.
It was post-World War II New York and the children of Latino immigrants were flooding into neighborhoods that whites and African-Amer
Source: AP
Apr 6, 2009
CAIRO – Travelers to Egypt will soon be able to explore the inner chambers of the 4,500-year-old "bent" pyramid, known for its oddly shaped profile, and other nearby ancient tombs.
The increased access to the pyramids south of Cairo is part of a new sustainable development campaign that Egypt hopes will attract more visitors but also to avoid some of the problems of the urban sprawl that have plagued the famed pyramids of Giza...
Dahshur's bent pyramid is famo
Source: The Boston Herald
Apr 6, 2009
The Old North Church in Boston, where two lanterns signaled the departure of British regulars to Lexington, has been immortalized for what happened atop its 277-year-old Medford bricks. But far below, in a dark and dusty crypt where the public rarely visits, the stories of hundreds of early Bostonians have long lay dormant and forgotten.
But now, thanks to the Old North Foundation and the groundbreaking work of a funerary archeologist, those stories are beginning to be resurrected
Source: Click Liverpool
Apr 6, 2009
Roadworks have stirred interest among office workers and amateur archaeologists after examples of hewn stone were found in the area where Liverpool Castle once stood.
The sandstone slabs - which appear to have visible chisel marks - were unearthed by contractors laying cables on James Street opposite the Victoria Monument.
Liverpool Castle was demolished in the early 18th Century and its site was last subjected to major historical excavation in the 1920s.
N
Source: Science Daily
Apr 6, 2009
"Foot-shaped" structures have been revealed in the Jordan valley and are among the earliest sites that archeologists believe were built by the ancient people of Israel. The structures are thought to be symbolic of the biblical concept of ownership.
"The 'foot' structures that we found in the Jordan valley are the first sites that the People of Israel built upon entering Canaan and they testify to the biblical concept of ownership of the land with the foot," said
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 6, 2009
The third-century Baths of Caracalla in Rome were damaged by the earthquake that struck near L'Aquila, central Italy, on Monday, a city archaeological authority told reporters.
The baths "suffered some damage," Angelo Bottini said, adding that the results of an initial inspection had "not yet been precisely evaluated".
The red-brick ruins, which cover some 11 hectares (27 acres) at the foot of Rome's Aventine Hill, are the frequent site of opera pr
Source: Times (UK)
Apr 6, 2009
Scientists blame Italy's tragic history of earth tremors on the fact that the country lies directly over the Eurasian and African faultlines, where the borders of two tectonic plates move together and apart.
This also accounts for Italy's relatively high number of active volcanoes - Etna, the largest active volcano in Europe, Vulcano, Stromboli, and Vesuvius, the only active volcano on the mainland of Europe.
1857 Several towns destroyed and 12,000 people killed in the
Source: Salon
Apr 6, 2009
Dave Cullen's "Columbine" is a chilling page-turner, a striking accomplishment given that Cullen's likely readers almost certainly know how the tragic story ends. Twelve students and one beloved teacher died at the suburban Denver high school on April 20, 1999, the worst school shooting rampage until two years ago, when Cho Seung-Hui slaughtered 32 classmates at Virginia Tech....
In "Columbine," Cullen is surprisingly but appropriately modest (appropriately, beca
Source: Foxnews
Apr 6, 2009
President Obama on Monday declined to repeat his claim that the deaths of up to 1.5 million Armenians during World War I was a "genocide," stepping back from his campaign pledge to Armenian Americans that the "widely documented fact" would be fully commemorated during his presidency.
During a joint news conference alongside Turkish President Abdullah Gul, Obama said he did not want to "focus on my views" or in any way interfere with delicate negotiation
Source: AP
Apr 6, 2009
The former chief of the Khmer Rouge's most notorious prison said his group would not have risen to power in the 1970s if it weren't for the policies of former U.S. President Richard Nixon and his top diplomat, Henry Kissinger.
Kaing Guek Eav (pronounced Gang Geck EE-UU), better known as Duch, made the comments Monday before Cambodia's genocide tribunal during testimony charting his personal journey to revolution.
He also said that he realized early on that the Khmer Rou
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 6, 2009
Rwanda has chosen a symbolic location to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the genocide against the Tutsi minority and highlight "the bankruptcy of humanity" during the 1994 massacres.
Tuesday's national ceremony will take place in Nyanza, a hill in Kigali where thousands of people were slaughtered on April 11 after the Belgian UN contingent that had been protecting them pulled out.
Belgium had decided to pull its troops out after 10 commandos from the UN fo
Source: The Root (edited by Henry Louis Gates)
Apr 6, 2009
One hundred years ago today, a black man was the first to reach the
North Pole, but it took a while for Matthew Henson to get the credit
for that feat.
“I was in the lead that had overshot the mark a couple of miles,”
Matthew Henson told a reporter in March 1955, relating the moment
when, 46 years earlier, he knew he had conquered the world. “We went
back then, and I could see that my footprints were the first at the
spot.”
“The spot” was the geographic North Pole, the litera
Source: Marc A. Thiessen at the WaPo. The writer, a spokesman for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1995 to 2001, is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. He served in senior positions in the Pentagon and the White House from 2001 to 2009.
Apr 6, 2009
The White House announced this weekend that President Obama would soon lift restrictions on family travel and remittances to Cuba. A bipartisan group of 20 senators has gone further, introducing legislation to repeal the nearly half-century-old ban on travel to Cuba -- a first step toward lifting the U.S. embargo on the communist island. Before proceeding, lawmakers ought to consider the words of Ricardo Alarcón -- a top official in the Castro regime and longtime leader of Cuba's National Assemb
Source: At the website of thecuttingedgenews.com: Michael Zamczyk, who joined IBM in 1974 in the publishing group in California. Prior to retirement in 2003, he managed Business Controls, a multi billion dollar software division of IBM.
Apr 6, 2009
This continuing coverage and reaction arising from the just-released book, Nazi Nexus: America's Corporate Connection's to Hitler's Holocaust (Dialog Press).
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Since the publication of the book IBM and the Holocaust, I as a long-time IBM employee and now an IBM retiree, have been trying to get IBM to face its past and apologize for its complicity in helping Germany commit genocide. The best offer I have received thus far was the willingness for Samuel J. Palmisano, t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 6, 2009
A trust has been launched to bring back the remains of India's last Mughal emperor and to trace his descendants, many of whom are believed to be living in poverty.
Calls for Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar's body to be returned to India and to be buried along with those of his royal ancestors have steadily grown since 2007's 150th anniversary of the Indian mutiny – when "sepoys" in British army regiments massacred their officers.
The rebellion was eventually put d
Source: Foxnews
Apr 6, 2009
By sidestepping the genocide issue -- a key tension point between Turks and Armenians and a rallying cry among Armenian-Americans -- President Obama says he is trying to be as "encouraging as possible."
President Obama on Monday declined to repeat his claim that the deaths of up to 1.5 million Armenians during World War I was a "genocide," stepping back from his campaign pledge to Armenian Americans that the "widely documented fact" would be fully comme
Source: AP
Apr 6, 2009
A Vietnamese military official says a mass grave containing the remains of 35 communist commandos killed during the Tet Offensive was found.
The colonel says officials discovered the grave after being tipped off by a former driver for the U.S.-backed South Vietnam government. He says it took three days of digging to find the bodies.
The Vietnamese soldiers were rounded up and killed by South Vietnamese forces after attacking a U.S. air base in 1968 during the offensive,
