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: China View
Jan 13, 2009
The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences on Wednesday announced China's six top archaeological discoveries in 2009, including the discoveries of ruins of ancient paper-making workshops and the tomb of Chinese legendary general Cao Cao.
The ruins, spanning from Song Dynasty (960-1279) to Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), were located in the city of Gao'an in eastern Jiangxi Province
Other discoveries are the Lower Xiajiadian site of an ancient civilization between 2200 to 1100 B
Source: BBC
Jan 13, 2009
A collection of rare travel books, including one which belonged to Captain Cook, has fetched more than £300,000 at auction.
The Northern Lighthouse Heritage Trust sold them to raise money to safeguard other items in its library.
One rare book of maps from 1815 by explorer Nicolas Baudin fetched £32,000 at the sale in Edinburgh.
An early 19th Century atlas of Australia by voyager Matthew Flinders sold for £14,000. Other boo
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 13, 2009
Greece has shut more than 40 museums, archeological sites, and other popular tourist attractions because of staff cutbacks to save money.
The country, which is mired in recession, has a public spending deficit of 12.7 per cent of GDP and has embarked on a series of measures to rein in spending.
One was to cancel a recruitment drive for 2,584 full-time employees by the ministries of tourism and culture.
The Socialist government released a list of 22 archeol
Source: Press Release--UCLA website
Jan 13, 2009
Diversity is a double-edged sword, making individuals less likely to be altruistic than they might be in a more homogeneous setting but also inspiring them to scale new intellectual heights and to explore new horizons, argue two UCLA economists in a new book.
"People enjoy being around people they can relate to, and they are uncomfortable with diversity," said Matthew Kahn, a co-author of "Heroes and Cowards: The Social Face of War," which will be published Jan.
Source: BBC
Jan 13, 2009
At three metres in height, it was thought moa grazed on trees and bushes, but the faeces turned up evidence only of tiny herbs.
The study also showed that moa diets were significantly different to those of the species introduced later.
The research appears in the current issue of Quaternary Science Reviews.
Alan Cooper, director of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA and senior author on the study, has been collating DNA from a range of different speci
Source: Rasmussen Reports
Jan 13, 2009
President George W. Bush in a final press conference on Monday acknowledged he made some mistakes in the White House, but most Americans – at least for now – are a lot more critical than that.
Fifty-seven percent (57%) of Americans say Bush is one of the five worst presidents in U.S. history, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Just six percent (6%) say he was one of the five best, and 34% place him somewhere in between.
Republicans aren’t mu
Source: Salon
Jan 13, 2009
A flier headlined "Why I hate Black History Month" that was sent home with St. Louis-area schoolchildren has been tweaked after a handful of complaints.
Organizers say they were trying to emphasize the importance of learning about black history all year long, not just in February.
The revised flier is titled, "Why I LOVE Black History Month."
The fliers were sent home last week with students at Jackson Park Elementary School in Universit
Source: Foxnews
Jan 13, 2009
In a motion filed Tuesday afternoon, lawyers representing atheists who want religious prayers stripped from next week's official inaugural activities submitted the 1952 Supreme Court brief filed by the United States in Brown v. Board of Education.
They point to language in that brief as evidence that the scheduled prayers including references to God demonstrate an unconstitutional preference of religion over non-religion.
The atheists highlight a section of the histor
Source: History Today
Jan 13, 2009
News today of the launch of two important but contrasting archive projects at Oxford and Essex universities.
A University of Essex led census project is set to create a massive historical research resource which focuses society in Britain for the period 1851-1911. The £1.06m project, is a collaboration between the university’s History Department and the UK Data Archive (UKDA), which is based on campus. It aims to bring together more than 200 million individual records from the censu
Source: Foxnews
Jan 13, 2009
Pope Bendict XVI is launching new guidelines for those who claim the Virgin Mary has appeared to them, in an attempt to end bogus sightings around the globe, the U.K.'s Daily Mail newspaper reported Tuesday.
In his own "holy war," the pontiff will publish criteria to help bishops determine which “visions” are true and which are false. In some cases, the Mail reported, exorcists will be used to determine the validity of a statement.
Between 1905 and 1995, there
Source: BBC
Jan 13, 2009
Former Liberian warlord Prince Johnson has warned against a witch hunt by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Prince Johnson, now an elected senator, said he had seen a confidential report recommending several war crime indictments, including one for him.
The man whose forces killed and mutilated the body of former President Samuel Doe vowed to resist any effort to arrest him.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia was set up following t
Source: AP
Jan 13, 2009
ATLANTA -- Thousands of documents in the Martin Luther King Jr. Collection at Morehouse College will now be available online for public research, school officials announced on Tuesday.
The collection was acquired in 2006 in an 11th-hour coup led by Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin to buy the papers in a $32 million private sale that thwarted a public auction to be held at Sotheby’s in New York. Morehouse College, where King graduated in 1948, is custodian of the collection of more tha
Source: National Security Archive
Jan 13, 2009
During the 1970s the Shah of Iran argued, like current Iranian leaders today, for a nuclear energy capability on the basis of national "rights," while the Ford and Carter administrations worried about nuclear weapons possibilities, according to newly declassified documents published today by the National Security Archive for the first time. Uranium enrichment capability is now the major point of controversy between Tehran and the world community, while during the 1970s Washington's gre
Source: Independent (UK)
Jan 13, 2009
The Army says it has come a long way since minority recruits were weeded out, but has Prince Harry's 'Paki' remark uncovered a less palatable truth?
They were known as "D Factor personnel". For 20 years, the British Army restricted the number of ethnic minority recruits to its ranks by instructing its medical officers to use the secret designation to single out would-be soldiers with "Asiatic or negroid features".
It was a policy which might have bel
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 13, 2009
The saying goes that the past is a foreign country - and newly-released details from the 1911 census of British life shows how true that expression is.
Personal information from the census, which has been put online for the first time, paints a picture of a society that is in many ways, unrecognisable from modern Britain.
People did different jobs, lived considerably shorter lives and existed in a society that was vastly less equitable, according to 1911 Census - the ol
Source: http://www.tehrantimes.com
Jan 13, 2009
A team of archaeologists are currently excavating water wells of the ancient city of Parsa near the Persepolis.
The first water well was discovered in November 2008 during the initial studies for construction of public toilets at the threshold of Paras at a distance of 500 meters west of Persepolis.
Ten intact pottery works, probably used by the people of Parsa, were discovered in the well during grading for the construction project, which was stopped due to the signi
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 13, 2009
Second World War trainee secret agents were tested for their resilience to the 'honey trap' at a Surrey manor house, according to a new analysis of the role Britain's country properties played during the war.
But few succeeded in keeping their secrets to themselves when plied with alcohol and seduced by pretty women at Wanborough Manor near Guildford, according to the architectural historian Marcus Binney.
Writing in the latest edition of Country Life magazine, Binney
Source: Times (UK)
Jan 13, 2009
A mass protest by women campaigning to be allowed to vote has finally come to public attention, almost a century too late to make a difference. Hundreds of suffragettes risked prosecution in 1911 by spoiling their census forms in a coordinated revolt.
But the full impact of their boycott has not emerged until today because of secrecy rules. Census information is usually kept secret for 100 years, but the 1911 documents have been released three years early because the rule was not e
Source: Guardian (UK)
Jan 13, 2009
Fresh questions over the legality of the Iraq war were raised today after the government admitted it could not substantiate its claim that Lord Goldsmith had changed his mind over the legal basis for the invasion before a highly controversial meeting with two of Tony Blair's closest allies.
The admission has revived allegations that the former attorney general was pressured to revise his opinion that an invasion could be illegal without an explicit UN resolution.
Opposi
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 13, 2009
Reproductions of Nazi-era newspapers, which are being produced by a British publisher, are being sold on the streets of Berlin.
The currently available edition of Der Angriff (The Attack), originally published in 1933, has the front page headline "Hitler Chancellor of the Reich" and features a commentary from Joseph Goebells.
The editor of the project, Sandra Paweronschitz, a historian, told The Times: "From today you will have a unique opportunity to r
