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: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
Jan 26, 2009
There is a great deal of over-classification,” admitted Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the nominee to be the next Director of National Intelligence, at his confirmation hearing last week.“Some of it, I think, is done for the wrong reasons, to try to hide things from the light of day. Some of it is because in our system, there is no incentive not to do that, and there are penalties to do the reverse, in case you get something wrong and don’t classify it.”“So I t
Source: McClatchy
Jan 26, 2009
Two centuries after Charles Darwin's birth on Feb. 12, 1809 , people still argue passionately about his theory of evolution.
Was Darwin right? Should schoolchildren be exposed to contrary views in science class? These two controversies continue to rage, partly because both sides are evenly matched.
Most scientists and courts that have ruled on the matter say that overwhelming evidence backs Darwin's explanation of the origin and evolution of species, including humans, b
Source: Popular Science
Jan 26, 2009
Economists find loyalty and sacrifice prevailed among Union soldiers with similar backgrounds.
No experiment can ethically test how humans behave in life-or-death situations. But two UCLA economists dug up the records of 41,000 Union soldiers from the American Civil War to see how men of shared or different backgrounds fared in the worst conditions.
They found that sharing common characteristics with fellow soldiers made all the difference in lowering desertion rates, n
Source: Thaindian News
Jan 26, 2009
Recently discovered bone inscriptions in a province in China have been analyzed to be approximately 1000 years older than those found in another area in the country, which indicates the new finding to be the oldest record of Chinese language.
The Changle inscriptions were found in Weifang city of Shandong Province in China.
According to Professor Liu Fengjun, doctoral supervisor in art and archaeology at Shandong University, the markings on Changle bones represent some
Source: Foxnews
Jan 26, 2009
The German government is suing a British publishing company after they republished 280 copies of Nazi-era newspapers, the Daily Mail reported.
Printing and disseminating Nazi symbols, such as the swastika, is a criminal offense in Germany.
The publishing company's CEO said the reprints were for education purposes and were not to promote Nazism, the Mail reported. He also denied copyright rules were violated
Source: BBC
Jan 26, 2009
On the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day, two experts on Auschwitz argue for and against the idea that the former Nazi death camp should be allowed to crumble away.
Historian Robert Jan Van Pelt says that once the last survivor has died it should be left for nature to reclaim, and eventually forgotten.
But former Polish Foreign Minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, once an inmate, says Auschwitz must be preserved to bear witness to the fate of its victims.
Source: CNN
Jan 26, 2009
Archaeologists in Israel have discovered what they believe is
the bust of a Roman boxer from the second or third century.
The figurine, made of marble, comes from a time when “the art of Roman
sculpture reached its zenith,” Doron Ben-Ami and Yana Tchekhanovets said.
The archaeologists believe a merchant family from the eastern part of the
Roman empire most likely passed down the “precious object” through the
generations until the fourth or fi
Source: Tehran Times
Jan 26, 2009
The discoveries were made at the cemetery of the city during the 12th season of excavation that began in late December 2008.
The team led by Iranian archaeologist Mansur Sajjadi completed this season’s studies last week.
Twelve of the skeletons belong to children and a skeleton of a newborn is among the discoveries, anthropologist of the team Farzad Foruzanfar told the Persian service of CHN on Sunday.
Source: Stone Pages
Jan 25, 2009
In a an analysis of the size, shape and asymmetry of the cranium of Homo floresiensis, Karen Baab, a researcher in the Department of Anatomical Scienes at Stony Brook University, and colleagues conclude that the fossil, found in Indonesia in 2003 and known as the 'Hobbit,' is not human. They used 3-D shape analysis to study the LB1 skull of the hobbit and found the shape of the skull to be consistent with a scaled down human ancestor but not modern humans. Their findings, reported in the current
Source: http://www.stripes.com
Jan 25, 2009
Shepherd boys scale the ancient tower at Aqar Quf with ease.
The ziggurat’s clay-brick walls have eroded into steep cliffs over the past 3,500 years, and the
shepherds go hand over hand on a well-known path to the peak. There are no guards blocking the
climb, no visitors to watch the spectacle.
On the desert below, the shepherds’ flock grazes among the gutted remains of a museum and restaurant.
The Aqar Quf ziggurat is among the 10 oldest str
Source: NYT
Jan 25, 2009
What F. Scott Fitzgerald called the “fresh, green breast of the New World” that greeted Henry Hudson 400 years ago has been reimagined by a senior ecologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Drawing on 18th-century British military maps, the ecologist, Eric W. Sanderson, has painstakingly recreated Manhattan’s rolling landscape — Mannahatta in an American Indian dialect meant “island of many hills,” many of which were all but leveled when the street grid was imposed in the 19th
Source: IHT
Jan 25, 2009
Gunfire crackled and tank shells boomed in a snowy field outside St. Petersburg on Sunday as hundreds of people re-enacted the World War II battle that broke the Siege of Leningrad, marking the battle's 65th anniversary.
About 4,000 spectators, including survivors of the 900-day Nazi blockade, gathered near the village of Nikolskoye to watch the re-enactment.
The siege began Sept. 9, 1941. German troops surrounded the city, then known as Leningrad, choking off supply ro
Source: Knox News
Jan 25, 2009
Dismissed for 175 years as a fake, a letter threatening the assassination of President Andrew Jackson has been found to be authentic. And, says the director of the Andrew Jackson Papers Project at the University of Tennessee, the writer was none other than Junius Brutus Booth, father of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth.
Dan Feller and his staff solved the mystery of the July 4, 1835, letter to Jackson. The story of their investigation will be featured this summer on PBS' "His
Source: Telegraph(UK)
Jan 25, 2009
A huge stained glass window celebrating the 90-year history of the RAF is to be unveiled.
The window, which cost £50,000, depicts a Battle of Britain pilot scrambling to get airborne and looking up to a sky filled with aircraft and events from every decade of the RAF's existence.
The window was funded with a donation from ex-City businessman and Lloyds "name" Ivan Heath, 93, who served with the RAF during WW2 and has been a club member of more than 50 years.
Source: Observer (UK)
Jan 25, 2009
Under new laws, key parts of inquests into the deaths of people killed by British security forces in Northern Ireland during the Troubles will be held in secret, without the scrutiny of juries.
The revelation has prompted outrage among human rights groups, who have accused the British government of seeking to suppress evidence of collusion between paramilitary organisations and the security forces.
The proposal that some parts of inquests held in England and Wales shoul
Source: Observer (UK)
Jan 25, 2009
Historians face a "black hole" of lost material unless urgent action is taken to preserve websites and other digital records, the head of the British Library has warned.
Just as families store digital photos on computers which might never be passed on to their descendants, so Britain's cultural heritage is at risk as the internet evolves and technologies become obsolete, says Lynne Brindley, the library's chief executive.
Writing in today's Observer, Brindley
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 25, 2009
Bomber crews based at the Oxfordshire airfield won the RAF's first two Victoria Crosses of the war, and the Halifax heavy bomber made its maiden flight from the base, which was also home to Mosquitos and Bristol Blenheims.
More than 60 years on, RAF Bicester - the most complete surviving wartime bomber base - is at the centre of a fresh battle, as a group of enthusiasts tries to save the historic site for the nation instead of it being sold off to developers.
Bomber Com
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 25, 2009
Salvagers claim to have found the world's richest wreck – a British ship sunk by a Nazi submarine while laden with a £2.6 billion cargo that included gold, platinum and diamonds.
In a project shrouded in secrecy, work is due to start on recovering the cargo, which was being transported to the United States to help pay for the Allied effort in the Second World War.
The scale of the treasure trove is likely to unleash a series of competing claims from interested parties. Salva
Source: Deutsche Welle
Jan 25, 2009
The remains of an estimated 1,800 World War II war victims have been unearthed after construction workers laying the foundations for a hotel discovered a mass grave in Malbork near the northern coast of Poland last October.
Malbork, known previously as Marienburg, had been part of the German Reich's former eastern territories, which became part of Poland after the war. Today the town's main tourist attraction is a castle built by the Teutonic Knights in the 13th century.
Source: http://www.charleston.net
Jan 24, 2009
It is one of the largest and most important battlefields in the country, a place where the scattered relics of war have lain hidden for more than a century.
But soon, some of the secrets of Charleston Harbor might finally be revealed.
The South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of South Carolina has been awarded a grant from the National Park Service to map the wrecks hidden beneath the water, the sand and the silt.
