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)
Feb 9, 2009
Egyptian archaeologists have found about 30 mummies and at least one unopened sarcophagus in a burial chamber about 4,300 years old, the government said in a statement on Monday.
They found the chamber in the desert on the western side of the Step Pyramid of Saqqara, one of the earliest large stone structures in the world, dating from about 2,650BC.
The mummies appear to vary in age. One dates from about 640BC while the unopened sarcophagus, which is made of limestone
Source: Telegraph(UK)
Feb 9, 2009
The British bishop who caused outrage and sparked a public relations disaster for the Vatican by denying the extent of the Holocaust has been sacked as head of an Argentinian church.
Richard Williamson, who at the weekend defied the Pope's demand that he recant his views, was forced out as director of the seminary in Argentina by the breakaway Catholic faction of which he is a member, the Society of St. Pius X.
The Cambridge-educated cleric attracted global condemnatio
Source: Press Release--Montpelier
Feb 9, 2009
HNN EditorThe story told below about Dolley Madison's rescue of George Washington's portrait relies on an account she provided in a letter to her sister at the time of the evacuation of the White House in advance of the British attack. The Madisons' slave, Paul Jennings, provided a different account in his 1865 memoir. He wrote:
It has often been stated in print, that when Mrs. Madison escaped from the White House, she cut out from the frame the large portrait of
Source: Guardian (UK)
Feb 9, 2009
New hospital scanning techniques have revealed details about the mummified corpse of a 3,000-year Egyptian female singer, without opening her casket.
The images, which go on display for the first time today at Chicago's Oriental Institute Museum, show the remains of Meresamun - a singer priestess at a temple in Thebes in 800BC. The scans may help settle a debate among Egyptologists about the sex lives of such singers.
Meresamun was buried in an elaborately decorated cas
Source: AP
Feb 8, 2009
WASHINGTON — The small, red Bible used to swear in Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama will go on rare public display to mark the 200th anniversary of the 16th president's birth.
Beginning Thursday, the national Lincoln Bicentennial exhibit at the Library of Congress, "With Malice Toward None," will showcase the Bible, along with the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, what may be the original Gettysburg Address and even the grammar book Lincoln used to m
Source: Politico.com
Feb 8, 2009
Thomas E. Ricks, the nation’s best-known defense correspondent, writes in a book out this week that many Iraq veterans believe the U.S. is likely to have “soldiers in combat in Iraq until at least 2015 – which would put us now at about the midpoint of the conflict.”
That would mean American forces would remain in danger past President Obama’s terms, into his second term if he wins reelection or the 45th presidency if he doesn’t.
Ricks, author of the bestselling “Fiasco,
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 8, 2009
Archaeology in Britain is in "serious crisis" because of the recession-hit building industry, according to those in the profession.
By the end of the year around one in five of the country's 7,000 archaeologists are expected to have lost their jobs, experts believe.
The profession has expanded rapidly in recent years thanks to legislation that forced developers to pay for digs.
But now jobs are going because so many construction projects are bein
Source: The Sunday times (Sri Lanka)
Feb 8, 2009
Carbonated drinks recovered from a vessel sunk off the coast of Sri Lanka have been confirmed to be 168 years old, say Ocean Archaeology officers conducting research on items found in the wreck of what has been dubbed the “Bottle Ship”.
The vessel - 23 metres long and six metres wide - was discovered two months ago. It is located 26 km off Kirinda, and lies at a depth of six metres. Iron, brass and brick props have been used to support the vessel, whose woodwork has deteriorated ov
Source: Stone Pages Archaeo News
Feb 8, 2009
The entire genome of a 38,000-year-old Neanderthal has been sequenced by a team of scientists in Germany. The group is already extracting DNA from other ancient Neanderthal bones and hopes that the genomes will allow an unprecedented comparison between modern humans and their closest evolutionary relative.
The three-year project, which cost about 5 million euros (US$6.4 million), was carried out at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. "We are
Source: CBS News
Feb 8, 2009
If you want to know Abraham Lincoln - the man he was, the symbol he is - go to the Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg.
Cast in bronze, he stares pensively out over what would have been the terrible aftermath of three monstrous days of fighting and killing - seven thousand soldiers died here between July 1 and 3, 1863.
About a mile away, Lincoln presides over the place where the Union dead were reburied later that year.
"There were coffins stacked o
Source: Chicago Tribune
Feb 8, 2009
Forty feet below the surface of Lake Michigan in Grand Traverse Bay, a mysterious pattern of stones can be seen rising from an otherwise sandy half-mile of lake floor.
Likely the stones are a natural feature. But the possibility they are not has piqued the interest of archeologists, native tribes and state officials since underwater archeologist Mark Holley found the site in 2007 during a survey of the lake bottom.
The site recently has become something of an Internet s
Source: IHT
Feb 8, 2009
A bishop who faces a Vatican demand to recant his denial of the Holocaust said he would correct himself if he was satisfied by the evidence, but insisted that examining it "will take time," a German magazine reported.
Richard Williamson is one of four bishops from the ultraconservative Society of St. Pius X whose excommunication was lifted by the Vatican last month. The decision sparked outrage because Williamson had said in a television interview last month that he did no
Source: IHT
Feb 8, 2009
It's well known that Charles Darwin's groundbreaking theory of evolution made many people furious because it contradicted the Biblical view of creation. But few know that it also created problems for Darwin at home with his deeply religious wife, Emma.
Darwin held back the book to avoid offending his wife, said Ruth Padel, the naturalist's great-great-granddaughter. "She said he seemed to be putting God further and further off," Padel said in her north London home. "B
Source: BBC
Feb 8, 2009
A musical experience with a difference is being previewed at the National Museum Wales in Cardiff - an attempt to recreate the sound of the Neanderthals.
Jazz composer Simon Thorne was given the task of creating the "soundscape" to provide a musical backdrop to some of the ancient exhibits on display.
The musician says the work is "probably the most unusual" he has undertaken.
Despite having a reputation for lacking intelligence, rece
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 8, 2009
Prominent scientists and leading religious figures have joined forces to call for an end to the fighting over Charles Darwin's legacy.
Ahead of the 200th anniversary of the pioneering naturalist's birth on Thursday, they warn that militant atheists are turning people away from evolution by using it as a weapon with which to attack religion.
However, in a letter published in The Daily Telegraph, they also urge believers in creationism to acknowledge the overwhelming bo
Source: CNN
Feb 8, 2009
German Chancellor Angela Merkel phoned Pope Benedict XVI Sunday over a Holocaust denier whom the pope welcomed back into the Roman Catholic Church last month.
Neither side seems to have shifted its position over Bishop Richard Williamson, who, shortly before the pope lifted his excommunication, denied the Nazis had systematically murdered six million Jews during World War II.
"It was a very constructive conversation," the German government and Vatican said in
Source: Independent (UK)
Feb 8, 2009
They are dismissed as primitive savages who charged into battle screaming and waving their claymores, only to be cut down by musket fire from well-drilled British army redcoats.
The defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie's forces at Culloden, near Inverness, in 1746 is widely considered a triumph of modernity over the romance of a bygone age.
But new research has established this is yet another of the many myths about the rebellion based largely on government propaganda of th
Source: Times (UK)
Feb 8, 2009
THE morning sickness drug thalidomide, which caused pregnant women to give birth to babies without arms and legs, was first developed by the Nazis, probably as part of their chemical weapons programme, according to new research. Two separate academics have revealed the discovery of documents indicating that the drug did not originate with Chemie Grünenthal, the postwar German chemical firm, as has always been claimed.
If, as their research suggests, thalidomide was first developed
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Feb 8, 2009
A little-known English nun who helped to hide Italian Jews from the Nazis in wartime Rome is being considered as a possible saint.
Mother Ricarda Beauchamp Hambrough is credited with playing a vital role in saving the lives of more than 60 Jews by smuggling them into her convent.
The Bridgettines, the order to which she belonged, have now applied to the Vatican for permission to open her cause for sainthood.
If granted she will become one of four British wo
Source: Tehran Times
Feb 8, 2009
The Islamic Revolution “turned the Iranian nation into a determined, powerful, dignified and influential nation” in the world with voting rights, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told a large group of Air Force commanders and staff ahead of February 10 celebrations which marks the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.
The meeting with the Supreme Leader is held every year to appreciate the key role of the Air Force in the victory of revolution in 1979.
The Leader pointed to th
