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: Reuters
Jul 8, 2008
Forensics experts began digging for secret graves on an army base in southwestern Mexico this week to find proof of government atrocities during the country's 1970s 'dirty war.'
Using high-tech scanners, picks and shovels, they searched for bodies of community leaders who were abducted by soldiers, taken to the isolated base at the Pacific town of Atoyac de Alvarez in Guerrero state and never heard from again.
Human rights advocates said it was the first time dirty war
Source: Chicago Tribune
Jul 8, 2008
Growing up in the now-demolished Stateway Gardens housing project in the shadow of U.S. Cellular Field, Ronzelle Fort had no idea his old neighborhood was once home to one of the most significant events in the history of African-American baseball.
Fort and a group of his peers received the opportunity to learn about that history and take part in a piece of it in the first Double Duty Classic on Monday, which commemorated the 75th anniversary of the first East-West All-Star Game, an
Source: NYT
Jul 8, 2008
Saying that his powers were too limited to rectify what he referred to as a “grave harm,” a federal judge on Monday dismissed a request from several families of 9/11 victims to sift through tons of debris at the Fresh Kills landfill to search for human remains from the attack on the World Trade Center.
The judge, Alvin K. Hellerstein of Federal District Court in Manhattan, had hinted strongly at an emotional hearing in February that he would deny the request, praising the city for u
Source: AP
Jul 8, 2008
If you've been swimming, you probably tried it at least once: Dive into
the water and see how far you can get without taking a stroke. Coast past
19 meters (62 feet) and you could have earned a gold medal at the 1904
Olympics.
The tug-of-war you played with friends at school? That could have been
worth a podium spot at six Games. A gym class favorite like the rope climb
and a game that looked like hopscotch — the standing hop, step, jump —
also were once medal events.
Long be
Source: Yahoo
Jul 8, 2008
Thailand's top court questioned on Tuesday the
legality of Bangkok's support for a Cambodian bid to list a disputed Hindu
temple as a World Heritage site, giving the opposition another weapon to
attack the government.
The Constitutional Court ruled 8-1 that a communique approved by the
cabinet in June backing Cambodia's bid to list the 900-year-old Preah
Vihear temple had required the approval of parliament.
UNESCO, the U.N. agency for culture and education, voted on Monday
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 8, 2008
More than 40 per cent of Britain's historic shipwrecks are in danger of being lost forever through neglect and vandalism, an extensive survey has found.
English Heritage has identified 45 wrecks on a new list of important cultural sites that are "at risk", and in urgent need of protection and regeneration.
Many have been damaged by unauthorised divers during clumsy explorations and fishermen as they dredge the seabeds, while others have been allowed to decay.
Source: News24 (South Africa)
Jul 8, 2008
The Italian government declared a state of emergency at the Pompeii archaeological site on Friday to try to rescue one of the world's most important cultural treasures from decades of neglect. A cabinet statement said it would appoint a special commissioner for Pompeii, the ancient Roman city buried by an eruption of the Vesuvius volcano in AD 79 and now a Unesco World Heritage site.
A report in daily Corriere della Sera this week said most of the 1 500 houses
Source: Telegraph
Jul 8, 2008
English Heritage has warned that eight of the nation's most important battlefield sites, including the site of a major English Civil war conflict, are in danger of falling prey to developers. The conservation organisation warned that battlefields, sites of special archaeological interest and scheduled monuments are at a much greater risk than listed buildings because local authorities often view them as a loss-making "burden". \
The Heritage at Risk (H
Source: United Jewish Communities
Jul 8, 2008
A pre-Christian Hebrew text shows that the idea of a messiah rising from the dead after three days was already in Jewish tradition before the birth of Jesus, a prominent biblical scholar will argue today. The controversial theory of Professor Israel Knohl, citing his new reading of a tablet inscribed in the 1st century BC discovered nearly 10 years ago, is expected to trigger a new Judaeo-Christian debate over the meaning and origin of the most central tenet of Christianity,
Source: Independent (UK)
Jul 8, 2008
A special coin minted to mark Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday was launched yesterday. South Africa's central bank said five million of the five rand (33p) coins, featuring a smiling portrait of the former president and anti-apartheid icon, would go into circulation on his birthday – 18 July.
"We want people to touch a bit of Madiba [Mandela], to share the love and leadership as the coin goes around," Finance Minister Trevor Manuel said at a ceremonial minting of one of the
Source: Dallas Morning News
Jul 8, 2008
State Fire Marshal Paul Maldonado said Sunday that investigators have evidence that an arsonist targeted the 152-year-old building. They have made no arrests, and don't have a suspect.
An official close to the investigation said agents determined the fire was a criminal act after reviewing footage from security cameras. A national response team from the U.S. Department of Justice arrives Monday to help dig through the wreckage for clues.
No one was injured in the four-a
Source: New Zealand Herald
Jul 7, 2008
The United States planned to gas Australian troops in experiments with two of the most lethal nerve gases ever devised, newly declassified files have revealed.
Previously top secret documents have shown that even as the world was outlawing chemical weapons at the height of the Cold War, Washington sought Canberra's permission to test sarin and VX gas on diggers in remote Queensland.
The documents, shown on Channel Nine's Sunday programme yesterday, indicate that US mili
Source: AP
Jul 7, 2008
In a stuffy basement off an Old City alleyway in Jerusalem,
tailors using ancient texts as a blueprint have begun making a curious
line of clothing that they hope will be worn by priests in a reconstructed
Jewish Temple — the spiritual center of Judaism destroyed by Roman legions
two millennia ago.
The project, run by a Jerusalem group called the Temple Institute, is part
of an ideology that advocates making practical preparations for the
rebuilding of the ancient Temple on a disput
Source: http://www.financialsense.com
Jul 7, 2008
Kevin Phillips, author of Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism, has expertly detailed the history of false economic achievement in a recent Harper’s Magazine article. The culmination of 40+ years of gradual but consistent distortion of economic statistics have come home to roost and explain much of our current morass. Inflation statistics help determine interest rates, cost-of-living increases for wages and Social Security benefits as well as
Source: NYT
Jul 7, 2008
Not since at least 1980, when the United States was reeling from the oil shocks, inflation and slow growth of the previous decade, has the economy been in worse shape heading into the heart of a presidential campaign. The crush of bad economic news — six consecutive months of job losses, rising rates of home foreclosures, gasoline prices seemingly headed toward $5 a gallon — is increasingly setting the contours of the race between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain.
Source: NYT
Jul 7, 2008
The year was 1985 and Gerald Kellman, a community organizer, was interviewing an applicant named Barack Obama to work in the demoralized landscape of poor neighborhoods on this city’s South Side. He liked the young man’s intelligence, motivation and acutely personal understanding of how it felt to be an outsider. He also remembers that Mr. Obama drove a hard bargain.
“He challenged me on whether we could teach him anything,” Mr. Kellman recalled. “He wanted to know things like ‘How
Source: http://www.wnky.net
Jul 7, 2008
Today, the National Park Service announced the award of 32 grants totaling $1,367,144 to assist in the preservation and protection of America’s significant battlefield lands. With an increase in funding this year, the grant program was able to support a dozen more projects than in 2007—projects that will help preserve more than 100 battlefields nationwide.
“These grants help safeguard and preserve American battlefield lands,” said Mary A. Bomar, Director of the National Park Service
Source: Norwich Evening News 24
Jul 7, 2008
A young boy who wants to emulate his hero Indiana Jones has made his first archaeological discovery - at the tender age of just four-years-old.
Max Farrow wants to be an archaeologist when he grows up and was, in his mother Joanna's words's “digging for tombs” in his back garden when he made his debut discovery.
He found a broken clay tobacco pipe which he was so pleased with he popped it into his toy box - where it remained for a year until he showed it to experts who
Source: NYT
Jul 7, 2008
As a Los Angeles county prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi batted a thousand in murder cases: 21 trials, 21 convictions, including the Charles Manson case in 1971.
As an author, Mr. Bugliosi has written three No. 1 best sellers and won three Edgar Allan Poe awards, the top honor for crime writers. More than 30 years ago he co-wrote the best seller “Helter Skelter,” about the Manson case.
So Mr. Bugliosi could be forgiven for perhaps thinking that a new book would genera
Source: LiveScience
Jul 7, 2008
Ancient hunters painted the sections of their cave dwellings where singing, humming and music sounded best, a new study suggests.
Analyzing the famous, ochre-splashed cave walls of southwestern France, the most densely painted areas were also those with the best acoustics, the scientists found.
Humming into some bends in the wall even produced sounds mimicking the animals painted there.
The Upper Paleolithic people responsible for the paintings had likely f
