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: Yale Daily News
Sep 3, 2008
Yale and Peru inched closer to court this summer, as a nearly century-old
controversy over Inca artifacts grew even more complex in a few short
months.
Just under a year ago, on Sept. 14, 2007, the University and the
government of Peru claimed to have found consensus regarding the rightful
ownership of artifacts excavated from Machu Picchu in the early 20th
century by Yale explorer Hiram Bingham III. But whatever progress was made
last fall seemed squandered when Peru threatened lit
Source: http://www.china.org.cn
Sep 3, 2008
Yesterday the archaeology department of China's Chongqing Municipality
announced a remarkable discovery: a Qing Dynasty tomb of an almost unique
style, made out of more than 2,000 qing hua ci (blue and white porcelain)
bowls.
The Chongqing Economic Times quoted archaeologists as saying that this
kind of tomb is very rare and had probably been constructed by migrants to
the area.
The tomb was discovered on the morning of August 24, the final day of the
Beijing Olympics, by a
Source: Telegraph
Sep 3, 2008
Iraq has said it plans to rebuild the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, complete with a museum portraying the crimes of Saddam Hussein.
The jail, which is situated 15 miles west of Baghdad, has been closed since September 2006 after the US military handed it over to the Iraqi authorities in the wake of a prisoner abuse scandal.
The Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal erupted in early 2004 when photos appeared in the media of naked and hooded Iraqi prisoners being beaten and ma
Source: Telegraph
Sep 3, 2008
A wedding ring that belonged to a British sailor who drowned in World War I has been found on the seabed and reunited with the family of the man who lost it.
Peter Brady thought he had picked up a small piece of metal from HMS Opal during a dive in Orkney last year.
But he discovered when he surfaced that it was a wedding ring bearing the inscription: "To Stanley from Flo, March 1916."
Mr Brady, 51, from Liverpool, found the ring by chance while
Source: History Today
Sep 3, 2008
The most senior US politician to visit a Hiroshima memorial attended a ceremony there on the anniversary of Japan’s surrender in the Second World War. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, laid flowers at Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park during a Group of Eight (G8) meeting. The US dropped the atomic bomb on the city on August 6th, 1945; Japan signed a formal surrender on September 2nd. After the vice-president, Pelosi’s position is next in the Presidential line of success
Source: NYT
Sep 2, 2008
NABATIYE, Lebanon — The children crowd forward around the glass case, eager for a glimpse of the martyr’s bloodstained clothes. His belt is here, and the shoes he died in, scarred with shrapnel. The battered desk where he planned military operations still has his box of pencils on it, his in-box, his cellphone.
“May God kill the one who killed him,” an old woman says, wiping tears from her eyes as she stares through the glass.
The dead man being shown such veneration is
Source: Don Frederick at the LAT blog
Sep 2, 2008
Newt Gingrich, even as he joined the chorus of Republican conservative leaders lauding John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate, still must have been somewhat rattled by the pick. At least, that's the only way we can explain an uncharacteristic lapse in the history department. Gingrich is known for his command of history (anyone doubting that should just ask him).
Gingrich, a trained historian who taught the subject at the University of West Georgia before taking the
Source: Telegraph
Sep 2, 2008
Figurines shaped like phalluses have emerged from excavations in the north of Israel, surprising archaeologists because of their thrusting, macho nature.
While fertility symbols during this period are often associated with female imagery, at the site in Kfar HaHoresh only phallic figurines have been found to date, including one placed in the foundation.
The team from the Hebrew University has found the fertility symbols in a prehistoric walled enclosure, some 10 by 20 m
Source: lifesitenews.com (conservative pro-life website)
Sep 2, 2008
[HNN Editor: The headline above refers to stories like the one below published by lifesitenews.com which are circulating on the Internet.]
Marie Stopes, the notorious early 20th century contraception campaigner, eugenicist and anti-Semite, did for Britain what Margaret Sanger did for the US: preached the doctrines of eugenics and promoted contraception and sterilisation to achieve "racial hygiene." So successful was she at altering British society in favour of her eugenics do
Source: AP
Sep 2, 2008
Hundreds of former Canadian soldiers will receive
compensation for being assigned to participate in atomic bomb test
explosions by the U.S. and British militaries in the 1960s, the Defense
Ministry said Tuesday.
Defense Minister Peter MacKay said the soldiers were involved in
operations in the United States, Australia and the South Pacific from the
end of World War II until the international treaty banning atmospheric
test explosions was signed in 1963.
Canada's government wi
Source: TPM (Liberal blog)
Sep 2, 2008
The founder of the Alaska Independence Party -- a group that has been courted over the years by Sarah Palin, and one her husband was a member of for roughly seven years -- once professed his"hatred for the American government" and cursed the American flag as a"damn flag." The AIP founder, Joe Vogler, made the comments in 1991, in an interview that's now housed at the Oral History Program in the Rasmuson Library at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. "The fires of hell are froze
Source: Time
Sep 2, 2008
John McCain was clear about why he picked half-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate. "I found someone with an outstanding reputation for standing up to special interests and entrenched bureaucracies," he said in introducing her in Dayton, Ohio, on Friday. Palin was someone, he noted, "who reached across the aisle and asked Republicans, Democrats and independents to serve in government."
It is a powerful reinforcement of McCain's own political b
Source: McClatchy
Sep 2, 2008
A fire in southeast Boise, Idaho, last week revealed a remnant of the Oregon Trail that had been overgrown with sagebrush and cheat grass.
Members of an Oregon Trail preservation group learned Monday that they will be able to mark these sections that are now visible on Idaho Power Co. property. The white posts with the words "Oregon Trail" will alert hikers to the historic significance and help wildland firefighters avoid vestiges of the trail.
Source: AP
Sep 2, 2008
A black South Carolina pastor and his church claim they own the building that houses a so-called Klan museum and store where KKK robes and T-shirts emblazoned with racial slurs are sold, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.
The Rev. David Kennedy said the property was transferred in 1997 to his Laurens County church by a Klansman who was fighting with others inside the hate group. A clause in the deed entitles John Howard, a man who runs the store, to operate his business in the bu
Source: Telegraph
Sep 2, 2008
A senior judge has begun the lengthy process of compiling a list of all the victims of the Spanish Civil War and the ensuing dictatorship of General Francisco Franco in a move that could lead to compensation for their families.
High Court Judge Balthasar Garzon has ordered governmental and religious authorities across Spain to unearth information about those killed at the hands of Franco's fascist forces following his military uprising in July 1936.
He hopes to draw up
Source: BBC
Sep 2, 2008
Amateur film footage featuring Marilyn Monroe on the set of the 1959 movie Some Like It Hot is being put up for auction in Australia.
The two-and-a-half minute 8mm colour film was taken by a US naval officer who was invited to the movie set after Monroe visited his base in San Diego.
Still in its original Kodak box, the film was passed on to his daughter who lives in Melbourne, Australia.
The footage features Monroe, co-star Tony Curtis and director Bill
Source: History Today
Sep 2, 2008
The oldest surviving English roll of arms, dating from the reign of King Edward I, has been acquired by the British Library. The Dering Roll dates from c.1270-1280 and contains 324 coats of arms, a quarter of the English baronage of the period. Sold at a Sotheby’s auction in December 2007 for £192,500, the Culture Minister Margaret Hodge then placed a temporary export bar on the medieval manuscript. The British Library, with funding from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, The Art Fund, Friends
Source: NYT
Sep 1, 2008
A new test for German citizenship went into effect on Monday. The Interior Ministry has published a catalog of 300 multiple-choice questions on topics like life in a democracy, history and responsibility, and human beings and society. An additional 10 questions are related to the applicant’s German state. Applicants will be tested on 33 of the 300 questions and, to qualify for citizenship, must answer 17 correctly within an hour.
Source: NYT
Sep 1, 2008
Forty years ago this summer, construction workers began erecting the steel framework of the World Trade Center. On Tuesday, a new generation of them will begin erecting the steel to frame its memorial.
Columns and beams from Owen Steel Company’s job No. 7-06 — the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center — started arriving at ground zero last Thursday on flatbed trailers. They are the first of more than 8,000 tons of steel that will be shipped to Lower Man
Source: Telegraph
Sep 1, 2008
A former Israeli spy has described how an operation to capture the 'Angel of Death' Josef Mengele in Argentina had to be called off to prevent the escape of Adolf Eichmann.
Israeli agents were taken off Mengele's trail in 1960 so that agents of the foreign intelligence service Mossad could focus their efforts on detaining Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the Holocaust.
With the Eichmann operation going smoothly allowing agents to smuggle the senior Nazi back to
