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: The Age
May 31, 2008
The unearthing of human remains in the German-dug mass grave in Fromelles may ease the heartbreak of some soldiers' families, but it has sparked a monumental political headache for the Australian and British armies.
With up to 400 Australian and British soldiers apparently buried together in the pits beside Pheasant's Wood, how will we navigate and reconcile the two nations' different responses to and expectations of the find?
While both are party to a postwar agreement
Source: Fox News
May 31, 2008
A giant Confederate battle flag may soon be flying near a Tampa highway intersection.
A Confederate heritage group called the Sons of Confederate Veterans plans to fly the 30-by-50 flag atop a 139-foot pole, the highest the FAA will allow.
The group, which bills its Confederate flag as the "world's largest," expects to have it in place by 2009, The St. Petersburg Times reported.
The group has building permits but still needs $30,000 to complete th
Source: NYT
May 30, 2008
A swatch of hair, so thick and tangled it could have belonged to man or bear, has provided answers about a mysterious culture and its origins half a world away.
The culture is that of the first people to have occupied Greenland some 4,500 years ago. Known to archaeologists as the first Paleo-Eskimo culture, it gave way to a second Paleo-Eskimo culture some 2,500 years ago and then 700 years ago to the Thule culture of the present-day Inuit peoples. Some archaeologists suggested that
Source: NYT
May 30, 2008
A local planning board has approved a proposal to build a $250 million visitor center and conference facilities on privately owned land in Valley Forge National Historical Park. Opponents say the decision increases the risk of commercial development in other scenic and historic national parks.
The Planning Commission of Lower Providence Township, about 15 miles northwest of Philadelphia, voted unanimously late Wednesday in favor of the project, the American Revolution Center.
Source: theday.com
May 30, 2008
THE U.S. NAVY PLANS TO USE ITS only research submarine to help a local foundation find the wreck of John Paul Jones' Revolutionary War ship the Bonhomme Richard.
It was Sept. 23, 1779, and cannonballs from the HMS Serapis had shredded the hull of the Bonhomme Richard.
Jones was in command of a burning, sinking ship. Half of his crew members were dead or wounded.
His adversary shouted to him, asking if he would surrender.
It was then that Jones
Source: AP
May 30, 2008
The allegations of deceit in Scott McClellan's book have been a surprise not only for Bush officials enraged with the former White House spokesman but also for publishers who turned down what is now the industry's hottest release.
"Books by spokespeople rarely contain anything newsworthy and have generally not proven particularly compelling to consumers," said Steve Ross, publisher of the Collins division of HarperCollins and head of the Crown Publishing Group at Random Ho
Source: US News blog
May 30, 2008
What do you call a recession where the economy keeps going up and up, even if a bit sluggishly? Well, my friends, you call that an expansion. And that is what we seem to have right now, despite all the economic doomsaying about a recession or even a Great Depression 2.0. Today, the Commerce Department revised its first-quarter estimate of gross domestic product upward to 0.9 percent from 0.6 percent. That follows 0.6 percent GDP growth in the final quarter of 2007. The revision also makes it mor
Source: Independent (UK)
May 30, 2008
One of Germany's best-known politicians was under mounting pressure to resign yesterday amid new allegations that he worked as an informer for East Berlin's infamous Stasi secret police.
Gregor Gysi, who worked as a lawyer in the former Communist East, has been an MP since the country's reunification in 1990 – first for the left-wing Party for Democratic Socialism and more recently as co-leader of the new Left party.
Yesterday, the 60-year-old faced demands for his resi
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 30, 2008
Members of one of the few remaining indigenous tribes still isolated from the modern world brandished weapons as a helicopter flew over their village in the Amazon.
Source: NYT
May 30, 2008
At a meeting in his Pentagon office in early 1981, Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman told Capt. John S. McCain III that he was about to attain his life ambition: becoming an admiral.
But Mr. McCain, the son and grandson of revered Navy admirals, was having second thoughts about following his family’s vocation. He had spent the previous four years as the Navy’s liaison to the Senate, sampling life in the world’s most exclusive club as he escorted its members on trips around the gl
Source: AP
May 30, 2008
When British military leaders set up a
special task force in 1969 to study how best to use
deception to achieve their battlefield aims, they
turned their attention to the tactics used by the
Israelis — not the Americans.
Formerly classified documents released Friday by the
National Archives show that many officers felt the
Americans didn't have a knack for deceiving the enemy.
Americans were judged to be so open and friendly that
they lacked cunning.
The so-called Defense De
Source: AP
May 30, 2008
One of Brazil's last uncontacted Indian tribes has been spotted in the far western Amazon jungle near the Peruvian border, the National Indian Foundation said Thursday.
The Indians were sighted in an Ethno-Environmental Protected Area along the Envira River in flights over remote Acre state, said the Brazilian government foundation, known as Funai.
Funai said it photographed "strong and healthy" warriors, six huts and a large planted area. But it was not known
Source: http://www.examiner.com
May 30, 2008
Legislation to create an Abraham Lincoln National Heritage Area that would be spread out over the many Illinois counties where he spent his pre-White House years is awaiting President Bush's signature.
The House approved the measure this week after it passed the Senate as part of a bill involving public lands from coast to coast.
The provision was co-sponsored by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, and Rep. Ray LaHood, the Peoria Republican whose congressional district includ
Source: http://www.sciencenews.org
May 29, 2008
Footprints left in volcanic ash that fell in central Mexico's Valsequillo Basin about 40,000 years ago are evidence that humans have inhabited the Americas far longer than previously confirmed, a new study suggests.
Analyses of three-dimensional laser scans of the imprints (example at right) confirm their human origin, says Silvia Gonzalez, a geoarchaeologist at Liverpool John Moores University in England.
Previous finds of human remains elsewhere in the region couldn't
Source: AP
May 29, 2008
Naval experts will begin searching Friday for an airliner that crashed into the Baltic in June 1940 with nine people on board, including a U.S. diplomatic courier considered one of the first American casualties of World War II.
The mystery of the plane's fate has since remained unsolved, despite Estonia's efforts to locate the wreckage believed to be lying 300 feet underwater near the tiny island of Keri, some 20 miles northeast of Tallinn.
"If the aircraft is in t
Source: LiveScience
May 29, 2008
Egypt plans to conduct a DNA test on a 3,500-year-old mummy to determine whether it belongs to King Thutmose I, one of the most famous Pharaohs, the country's chief archaeologist said Thursday.
Zahi Hawass, Egypt's antiquities chief, said the test will be carried out on an unidentified mummy found in the ancient Thebes on the west bank of the Nile, what is today Luxor's Valley of the Kings.
Egyptian experts will also X-ray the mummy, Hawass was quoted as saying by the n
Source: Slate
May 29, 2008
In his new book, Now the Hell Will Start, Brendan I. Koerner tells the story of an epic World War II manhunt: the quest to find Herman Perry, a black soldier who shot and killed a white commanding officer, then disappeared into the jungles of Burma, where he joined a tribe of headhunters and eluded capture for months. The book is an amazing piece of reporting—part thriller, part history—that got its start as a Slate "Explainer." When Koerner wrote the column back in 2003, he came acros
Source: AFP
May 29, 2008
The United Nations on Thursday
feted 60 years of peacekeeping around the world, with
its overstretched"blue helmets" in high demand but
somewhat tarnished by sex abuse and corruption
scandals. "Today, we have more than 110,000 men and deployed in conflict zones around the world," UN chief Ban Ki-moon
said in a message to mark International Day of
Peacekeepers.
"They come from nearly 120 countries, an all-time
high, reflecting confidence in United Nations
peacekeeping," he said.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
May 29, 2008
It is hard to imagine a Microsoft venture falling under the weight of a competitor. But that's the post-mortem offered by many academic librarians as they ponder the software giant's recent and sudden announcement that it is shutting down its book-digitization project. The librarians' conclusion: Google did it.
Microsoft quietly revealed this month that it would end the program and the accompanying search software, Live Search Books and Live Search Academic. The project made complet
Source: AP
May 29, 2008
England's enigmatic Stonehenge served as a burial ground from its earliest beginnings and for several hundred years thereafter, new research indicates.
Dating of cremated remains shows burials took place as early as 3000 B.C., when the first ditches around the monument were being built, researchers said Thursday.
And those burials continued for at least 500 years, when the giant stones that mark the mysterious circle were being erected, they said.
"It'
