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: AP
Aug 6, 2008
A vintage World War II landing craft was hauled across a coastal North Carolina town Wednesday and is set to be restored and preserved - one of only about a dozen of its kind believed to be left.
The North Carolina Maritime Museum moved the rare Higgins boat to its Watercraft Center in Beaufort, where restoration work is to begin Thursday.
"There are only four left in the United States, including this one, so it's a very unique boat," museum spokeswoman Michel
Source: Sunday Herald
Aug 6, 2008
A BURGEONING international market for second world war memorabilia is putting strain on the numerous small museums that commemorate the 1944 D-Day landings, which are increasingly under the eye of unscrupulous collectors, French police say.
Two recent thefts have highlighted poor security at the more than 25 collections - mainly in private hands - which draw thousands of summer visitors along the Normandy coast. In one incident, the booty included a rare German "Enigma" en
Source: AP
Aug 6, 2008
Police divers checking a report of human remains off a Puerto Rican beach may have made an archaeological discovery: bones and possible artifacts from a colonial-era ship, officials in the U.S. island territory said Wednesday.
The divers found a cannon, pieces of a ship, human bones, a sword and a medal engraved with the name Isabel II, said Sgt. Angel Rivera Rodriguez, a spokesman for Puerto Rico's police department.
Divers were dispatched to Playa Monserrate, near the tow
Source: Washington Post
Aug 6, 2008
The Bush administration joined former top CIA officials in denouncing a new book's assertion that White House officials ordered the forgery of Iraqi documents to suggest a link between Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the lead hijacker in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The claim was made by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Suskind, whose book "The Way of the World" also contends that the White House obtained compelling evidence in early 2003 that Iraq possessed
Source: AP
Aug 6, 2008
Egyptian scientists are carrying out DNA tests on two mummified fetuses found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun to determine whether they are the young pharaoh's offspring, the antiquities authority said Wednesday.
The two tiny female fetuses, between five to seven months in gestational age, were found in King Tut's tomb in Luxor when it was dissevered in 1922.
DNA samples from the fetuses "will be compared to each other, along with those of the mummy of King Tutankhamun,
Source: AP
Aug 6, 2008
Alberto Achacaz Walakial, one of the last surviving members of the nomadic Kaweskar tribe that once plied the waters off Chile's Patagonian coast, has died of blood poisoning, local media reported on Tuesday.
Government documents listed Achacaz's age at 79, but some believe he was close to 90.
Experts estimate that only about a dozen full-blooded Kaweskars — or Alacalufes — survive and the group appears destined to disappear in the near future as there are no women of
Source: AP
Aug 6, 2008
Hiroshima's mayor on Wednesday urged the next U.S. president to support a proposed ban on nuclear weapons, as Japan marked the 63rd anniversary of the atomic blast that obliterated this city and killed 140,000 people.
In a ceremony, Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba also announced the launch of a two-year study to gauge the psychological toll of the Aug. 6, 1945, attack in the closing days of World War II.
Japan submitted a resolution in the U.N. last year calling for the abol
Source: International Herald Tribune
Aug 6, 2008
A panel of six military officers Wednesday convicted a former driver for Osama bin Laden of providing material support for terrorism, but acquitted him of a conspiracy charge, arguably the more serious of the two charges he faced in the first military commission trial here.
The former driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who has said he is about 40, faces a possible life term, a sentence that will be determined in a proceeding that was scheduled to begin Wednesday afternoon.
As
Source: Telegraph
Aug 6, 2008
Squadron Leader Eric Dowling was one of the last surviving members of the Stalag Luft III prison break whose actions were made into the book on which the movie was based.
But even though his real life role bears a striking resemblance to that of Charles Bronson's character in the classic motion picture, the airman was less than impressed with Hollywood's version of events.
Sq Ldr Dowling, who knew seven of the 50 soldiers murdered during the escape, was particularly sca
Source: History Today
Aug 6, 2008
A pair of Queen Victoria’s hand-made knickers from the 1890s has sold at auction for £4,500. The July 30th sale at auctioneers Hansons auctioneers in Derbyshire also included the Queen’s chemise and nightgown. The 50in cotton bloomers include a VR monogram and were sold by relatives of the monarch’s lady-in-waiting; auctioneer Charles Hanson said: ‘These pants, considering their provenance and pedigree, are very exciting.’
Source: History Today
Aug 6, 2008
Royal Navy logbooks from the 17th century are being used to plot climate change. 6,000 logbooks, including those of Nelson and Captain Cook, have already been studied by academics and Met Office scientists to highlight patterns of long-term global warming. Geographer Dr Dennis Wheeler, who has published a paper in The Holocene journal on increased British summer storms in the 1680s-90s, said: ‘Global warming is a reality, but what our data shows is that climate science is complex and that it is
Source: Tehran Times
Aug 6, 2008
Iran launched its first world manuscripts data bank during a ceremony held on Monday at the venue of Iran National Library and Archives (INLA).
Yerik Utembayev, Ambassador of the Republic of Kazakhstan to Iran, INLA director Ali-Akbar Ash’ari, director of Miras-e Maktub Research Center Akbar Irani and several numbers of Iranian experts on manuscripts attended the ceremony.
Ambassador Utembayev, who had attended the ceremony as one of the representatives of ECO member
Source: Tehran Times
Aug 6, 2008
The Parseh and Pasargadae Research Foundation director has called for constant vigilance against soil moisture, which is threatening the tomb of Cyrus the Great in Pasargadae.
The foundation has prepared a plan to constantly monitor the soil moisture at the site in the southern province of Fars, Mohammad-Hassan Talebian told the Persian service of CHN on Tuesday.
The plan would be approved and then financed by the Research Center of the Cultural Heritage, Tourism and
Source: Mother Jones
Aug 5, 2008
In the summer of 2002, the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment (ONA) published an 85-page monograph called "Military Advantage in History". Unusual for an office that is headed by Andrew Marshall, the Pentagon's "futurist in chief," the study looks back to the past—way back. It examines four empires, or "pivotal hegemonic powers in history," to draw lessons about how the United States "should think about maintaining military advantage in the 21st century."
Source: Washington Post
Aug 5, 2008
The Bush administration informed all foreign intelligence and law enforcement teams visiting their citizens held at Guantanamo Bay that video and sound from their interrogation sessions would be recorded, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. The policy suggests that the United States could possess hundreds or thousands of hours of secret taped conversations between detainees and representatives from nearly three dozen countries.
Numerous State Department cables t
Source: LiveScience
Aug 5, 2008
A mummy of a middle-aged woman dating to Ancient Greek times has been discovered in a lead coffin inside a marble sarcophagus, the first clear indication of embalming in Greece from the era when the Romans ruled there.
A research team co-led by Frank Rühli of the University of Zurich was able to show that various resins, oils and spices were used to embalm the body, dating to A.D. 300. Along with the skeleton, the methods partially preserved some soft tissues from the body, most of
Source: NPR
Aug 5, 2008
It was three years ago this month that Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, and people are still trying to piece together their lives and homes.
One of those homes is the post-Civil War residence of Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Biloxi, Miss.
Two artists are working to restore the Beauvoir mansion, which Davis bought in 1878 and where he lived until his death in 1889. Katrina wreaked major damage to the historic structure, ripping apart its stately w
Source: Mirror
Aug 5, 2008
Hundreds of World War One photos which lay undiscovered for 80 YEARS are being put on display in a remarkable attempt to solve the mystery behind them. The 500 pictures - of soldiers, nurses and their families - were found by builders working at a former photographic studio in Kent
Historians struggled to identify the soldiers but assumed they were local troops heading off to the frontlines. Further research then showed they featured soldiers from 58 regiments across Britain and All
Source: AFP
Aug 5, 2008
Few visitors to Hiroshima's memorial museum linger long to look at the photos of scorched victims, a child's burnt lunchbox or the shadow of someone who was incinerated.
Perhaps the images are too harrowing, or maybe they are just short of time.
More than 50 years after it opened, curators of the museum are reviewing the exhibition to try to convey a stronger message and stop memories of the devastation of the August 6, 1945 atomic attack fading from the public's mind.
Source: Telegraph
Aug 5, 2008
Scientists are baffled after carbon dating showed the skull, a woman's which was found near the country's capital, Wellington, dates back from 1742 – decades before Cook's Pacific expedition arrived in 1769.
The discovery was made by a boy walking his dog on the bank of a river in the Wairarapa region of the North Island, an area settled by Europeans only after the establishment of a colony by the New Zealand Company in 1840.
Dr Robin Watt, a forensic anthropologist c
