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: Times (UK)
Mar 24, 2008
One of the enduring mysteries of world history is whether the Americas had any contact with the Old World before Columbus, apart from the brief Viking settlement in Newfoundland. Many aspects of higher civilisation in the New World, from the invention of pottery to the building of pyramids, have been ascribed to European, Asian or African voyagers, but none has stood up to scrutiny.
The one convincing piece of evidence for pre-Hispanic contact has been the humble sweet potato, which
Source: BBC
Mar 24, 2008
An appeal has been launched to raise £30,000 to restore the memorial and tomb of the Ladies of Llangollen, in a churchyard in the Denbighshire town.
The tomb of the two aristocrats who eloped from Ireland in 1778 and lived together in north Wales for 50 years, has fallen into disrepair.
The Llangollen Historical Society is hoping to raise the money needed through grants and donations.
Source: International Herald Tribune
Mar 24, 2008
Two dangling strands of barbed wire have haunted Olaf Hetze for more than a quarter-century, since his failed attempt to escape from the Communist bloc, not by going over the Berlin Wall but around it, by a little-known route through Bulgaria.
Thanks to the work of a German researcher, the full extent of the escape attempts through Bulgaria - and the dangers - is just now coming to light.
At least 4,500 people from various Communist countries tried to flee to the West o
Source: NYT
Mar 24, 2008
Senator John McCain never fails to call himself a conservative Republican as he campaigns as his party’s presumptive presidential nominee. He often adds that he was a “foot soldier” in the Reagan revolution and that he believes in the bedrock conservative principles of small government, low taxes and the rights of the unborn.
What Mr. McCain almost never mentions are two extraordinary moments in his political past that are at odds with the candidate of the present: His discussions i
Source: LAT
Mar 24, 2008
Barack Obama's friend was angry. The high school coaches were benching good black players. Black kids weren't getting dates.
"These girls are A-1, USDA-certified racists. All of 'em," the friend said while the two teenagers wolfed down French fries, as the story goes in Obama's memoir.
As far back as that sort of exchange in high school, a recurring character type has played a role in the life of Obama: a friend or associate who is quick to blame white America
Source: TheCuttingEdge
Mar 24, 2008
Congressman Chris Smith (R-N.J.) likened Google, Yahoo and other Internet companies to the IBM's cooperation with Hitler's Nazi government to help carry out the Holocaust, according to a report in Information Week.
"Did you ever wonder why the Gestapo always had all those very well-laid-out prints of where the Jews lived?" reporter Paul McDougall quoted Smith as saying. "Because IBM made it happen."
Smith's comments about IBM helping to enable the Holocaus
Source: WSJ editorial
Mar 24, 2008
Five years on, few Iraq myths are as persistent as the notion that the Bush Administration invented a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Yet a new Pentagon report suggests that Iraq's links to world-wide terror networks, including al Qaeda, were far more extensive than previously understood.
Naturally, it's getting little or no attention. Press accounts have been misleading or outright distortions, while the Bush Administration seems indifferent. Even John McCain has le
Source: Daily Mail
Mar 23, 2008
In all the tales of wartime courage peppering John McCain's presidential campaign trail, perhaps the most outstanding example of selfless heroism involves not the candidate but a humble Vietnamese peasant.
On October 26, 1967, Mai Van On ran from the safety of a bomb shelter at the height of an air raid and swam out into the lake where Lieutenant Commander McCain was drowning, tangled in his parachute cord after ejecting when his Skyhawk bomber was hit by a missile.
In
Source: AP
Mar 23, 2008
BARRE, Vt. - In a noisy stone shed, far from the perfect rows of gravestones at Arlington National Cemetery, a dozen people carve the monuments to a nation's war dead.
Here, huge blocks of marble — some extracted from a Danby mine, some brought from the state of Georgia — are sliced into rectangular blocks by giant circular saws, the tops curved and then etched with the names of the fallen.
Most of the 2,000 to 3,000 stones carved each month at Granite Industries of Ver
Source: WaPo
Mar 23, 2008
CUMBERLAND, Md. — This city nestled in the gray hills of Western Maryland was once a key railroad hub for the Union army, beset by Confederate raiders. Today, the rebel flag is again stirring trouble.
A high school principal's recent decision to ban the wearing or displaying of the Confederate flag, adopted by some white residents as a symbol of their history, has inflamed an already tense debate over racial sensitivity and freedom of speech.
Deana Bryant allowed her 16
Source: Jerusalem Post
Mar 23, 2008
In an effort to connect high school students with Israeli history, the Defense Ministry plans to inaugurate a new project on Monday aimed at renovating all of the IDF memorials and monuments erected over the years for soldiers who fell during the 1948 War of Independence.
According to Defense Ministry records, 140 monuments throughout the country commemorate soldiers and units who fought in the 1948 war. At least 60 are in dire need of renovations. The project, which is being overse
Source: BBC
Mar 23, 2008
Nationalists and republicans have been staging Easter Rising commemorations. Thousands of people lined Dublin's O'Connell Street for a military parade, including an Irish Air Corps fly-past.
The ceremony was attended by Irish President Mary McAleese and taoiseach Bertie Ahern, along with Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness.
The events mark the attempt in 1916 to seize Dublin from British imperial forces. The rebellion was put down with many ringleaders captured and
Source: AP
Mar 23, 2008
Merle Brandell and his black lab Slapsey were beachcombing along the Bering Sea when he spied a plastic bottle among the Japanese glass floats he often finds along the shore of his tiny Alaskan fishing village.
He walked over and saw an envelope tucked inside. After slicing the bottle open, Brandell found a message from an elementary school student in a suburb of Seattle. The fact that the letter traveled 1,735 miles without any help from the U.S. postal service is unusual, but that
Source: WaPo
Mar 23, 2008
In the months leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration threatened trade reprisals against friendly countries who withheld their support, spied on its allies, and pressed for the recall of U.N. envoys that resisted U.S. pressure to endorse the war, according to an upcoming book by a top Chilean diplomat.
The rough-and-tumble diplomatic strategy has generated lasting"bitterness" and"deep mistrust" in Washington's relations with allies in Europe, Latin Amer
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 23, 2008
Vladimir Putin is to fulfil an unrealised dream of Joseph Stalin's by creating a grandiose state cemetery.
In a corner of northern Moscow bulldozers began churning the earth his week in a section of wasteland where Mr Putin and Stalin, the dictator he is said to revere, could one day be laid side by side.
The Federal Military Memorial Cemetery, its designers boast, will be Russia's answer to America's Arlington. Arguably the most ambitious architectural project undertak
Source: NYT
Mar 23, 2008
Americans and their political leaders have been tongue-tied on the subject of race. We were reminded of that last week when Senator Barack Obama, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, took the almost unimaginable step of going before a national audience at a precarious juncture in a close campaign and speaking explicitly about what race means to blacks and whites. He spoke of black anger and white resentment and the significance of race in American history; his purpose was
Source: NYT op ed
Mar 23, 2008
As Mrs. Clinton runs for president, a central theme of her candidacy has been that her years in the White House gave her firsthand experience in dealing with foreign crises. In her now-famous TV advertisements that ran before the Ohio and Texas primaries, she portrayed herself as the candidate best prepared to answer a 3 a.m. phone call to address a sudden crisis.
While there is no doubt that she had an intimate view of foreign policy during her husband’s presidency, her claims that she wa
Source: ANI
Mar 22, 2008
A new study by anthropologists at the Texas A and M University, suggests that first Americans to come to the country 1,000 to 2,000 years earlier than the 13,500 years ago previously thought.
The team, led by Ted Goebel, an anthropology professor at Texas A and M and associate director of Texas A and M's Center for the Study of the First Americans, said that their theory indicates that the Americas wasn't settled until as late as 15,000 years ago.
He said that their hyp
Source: Independent (UK)
Mar 22, 2008
On the ancient Syrian island of Arwad, which was settled by the Phoenicians in about 2000BC, men are hard at work hammering wooden pegs into the hull of a ship.
But this vessel will not be taking fishermen on their daily trip up and down the coast. It is destined for a greater adventure – one that could solve a mystery which has baffled archaeologists for centuries.
The adventure begins not in Arwad but in Dorset, where an Englishman has taken it upon himself to try to
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Mar 22, 2008
Oblivious to the mud-covered construction machinery rumbling in the background, dirt-smeared archeologists and Songhees Nation members have been chipping away at a 2,850-year-old aboriginal site, one of the oldest to be found on Vancouver Island, experts say.
"This find is quite rare," said Shane Bond, a senior archeologist with Victoria-based I. R. Wilson Consultants, the company leading the archeological work. "I was terribly excited; my adrenalin was jumping."
