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: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 10, 2008
Some of the world's best preserved prehistoric landscapes survive in pristine condition at the bottom of the North Sea, archaeologists claimed yesterday.
Academic interest in what are being described as drowned Stone Age hunting grounds is likely to increase dramatically after the discovery of 28 Neanderthal flint axes on the sea bed off the East Anglian coast.
Dating from at least 50,000-60,000 years ago, they were found with other flint artefacts, a large number of ma
Source: http://thatsnews.blogspot.com
Mar 9, 2008
While divers were conducting a unique submarine project in MacDonald Lake at the Haliburton Forest and Wild Life Reserve, they encountered an ancient stone structure revealing proof of life from Central Ontario ancestors.
The history of Eastern Canada is generally viewed in two stages: 1st - recent history, measured in decades and centuries, involving the early, white settlers and 2nd - the early history, measured in many centuries and millennia, represented by petroglyphs, stone mo
Source: NYT
Mar 9, 2008
THE differences in experiences for a group of Scarsdale eighth graders and the famed Little Rock Nine — the African-American teenagers who risked their safety desegregating Little Rock’s Central High School 50 years ago — are so vast that drawing comparisons would be futile.
Not only do the 13-year-olds in Kathleen Connon’s English classes at Scarsdale Middle School live in a largely protected and affluent community, but there is also one glaring difference: There isn’t a single bla
Source: BBC
Mar 9, 2008
Almost 50 years ago, archaeologists searching for the ruined house of Augustus found a tiny clue buried deep in 2,000 years' worth of rubble overlooking the Forum in Rome.
The single fragment of painted plaster, discovered in masonry-filled rooms, led the experts to unearth a series of exquisite frescoes commissioned by the man who would later become Rome's first emperor.
On Sunday following decades of painstaking restoration, the frescoes in vivid shades of blue, red a
Source: AP
Mar 9, 2008
A 19-year-old medic from Texas will become the first woman in Afghanistan and only the second female soldier since World War II to receive the Silver Star, the nation's third-highest medal for valor.
Army Spc. Monica Lin Brown saved the lives of fellow soldiers after a roadside bomb tore through a convoy of Humvees in the eastern Paktia province in April 2007, the military said.
Source: Independent (UK)
Mar 9, 2008
The tomb was opened just after midnight, in the bitter cold. The Vatican did not want too many people around as it exhumed Padre Pio, a man whose millions of followers say he could foresee the future and be in two places at once. "As soon as we got inside we could clearly make out the beard," said Domenico D'Ambrosio, the archbishop who led the ceremony early on Monday morning. "The top part of the skull is partly skeletal, but the chin is perfect and the rest of the body is well
Source: Reuters
Mar 9, 2008
Australian archaeologists believe they have found the grave of the country's legendary outlaw, Ned Kelly, on the site of an abandoned prison.
Kelly, immortalized for using home-made armor in a final shoot-out with police, became a folk hero of Australia's colonial past with his gang's daring bank robberies and escapes.
The son of an Irish convict, Kelly was hanged for his crimes in 1880 and buried in a mass grave at a prison in the southern city of Melbourne in Victoria
Source: Seattle Times
Mar 9, 2008
"This first leg has gone on for almost 30 years," said Carver Gayton, director of the museum. "We will not end our journey until we can ensure we have an African American museum at this site in perpetuity."
It was a star-studded event, featuring Mayor Greg Nickels, King County Executive Ron Sims, Gov. Christine Gregoire, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell and U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott. They were the first to tour the museum when the doors opened.
Nickels said it
Source: AP
Mar 9, 2008
Workers have begun moving a staircase that served as an escape route for countless survivors of the attack on the World Trade Center.
The stairway survived Sept. 11 and remains the only aboveground remnant of the trade center complex. Its 37 stairs once connected the outdoor plaza outside the twin towers to the street below.
An American flag was placed on the staircase Sunday before it was hoisted onto a flatbed truck by a crane.
After years of debate over
Source: NYT
Mar 9, 2008
They came to New York as “displaced persons” in the early 1950s, Jewish refugees who had survived the Holocaust. Today, in film and story, such survivors are treated with a kind of awe, and their arrival in America is considered a happy ending. But a very different picture, with an oddly contemporary twist, emerges from the yellowing pages of social service records now being rescued from oblivion at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan.
The files, from a major Jewish resettlem
Source: NYT
Mar 9, 2008
Long after the death of the chief players, a new book challenges some assumptions and offers new theories about Watergate, asserting for instance that President Richard M. Nixon and his aides learned about a spy in their midst from a highly unlikely source.
The book is by L. Patrick Gray III, who was acting director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from J. Edgar Hoover’s death in May 1972 until April 1973, when he quit after it became clear that he had been manipulated by the
Source: WaPo
Mar 9, 2008
In the first insider account of Pentagon decision-making on Iraq, one of the key architects of the war blasts former secretary of state Colin Powell, the CIA, retired Gen. Tommy R. Franks and former Iraq occupation chief L. Paul Bremer for mishandling the run-up to the invasion and the subsequent occupation of the country.
Douglas J. Feith, in a massive score-settling work, portrays an intelligence community and a State Department that repeatedly undermined plans he developed as und
Source: AP
Mar 8, 2008
Heinrich Boere's first victim was a pharmacist. Two more victims would follow on a single day, one gunned down at point-blank range in his doorway, the other on the road.
And although the killing spree happened in 1944, a footnote to the far greater carnage raging across World War II Europe, it still haunts Germany and Holland, leaving a sense of justice denied by dueling court systems despite the continent's long march to unity and harmonized institutions.
Boere was pa
Source: Minneapolis Star Tribune
Mar 8, 2008
Six decades later, the legacy of World War II and the Holocaust continue to shape life among Jews living in Germany.
By the time the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the Jewish population stood at scarcely 23,000, generally survivors of the war era and their offspring.
But in a turnaround few would have thought possible, Germany today boasts the fastest-growing Jewish population in Europe....
Between 1991 and 2005 an estimated 220,000 Jews from the former Sov
Source: AP
Mar 8, 2008
A sixth-century copper factory, medieval kitchens still stocked with pots and pans, and remains of Renaissance palaces are among the finds unveiled Friday by archaeologists digging up Rome in preparation for a new subway line. Archaeologists have been probing the depths of the Eternal City at 38 digs, many of which are near famous monuments or on key thoroughfares.
Source: AP
Mar 8, 2008
Britain's Royal Navy floated a wreath Saturday over the recently discovered wreck of a World War II destroyer that went down with 110 men on board in a battle with Nazi forces.
The HMS Hunter was discovered this month by a Norwegian minehunter participating in exercises with British, Dutch and other NATO warships off the Norwegian coast, Britain's Defense Ministry said.
The 2,100-ton destroyer went down on April 10, 1940, as the Royal Navy tried to keep German forces fr
Source: AP
Mar 8, 2008
Sculptor Stephen Spears is turning history into bronze with the first monument to the Navy's D-Day heroes at Normandy and a statue of a World War I doughboy at the site of a landmark American victory in Cantigny, France.
His three bronze figures of a Navy captain and two sailors will be installed on a bluff overlooking Utah Beach to remember the naval service's role in World War II's pivotal amphibious invasion, adding a new visual element to the landscape at the historic site.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 8, 2008
Britain's ancient laws of treason are out of date and should be overhauled, a senior government adviser will tell the Prime Minister this week.
Lord Goldsmith, the former attorney general, will use the findings of his review of citizenship and constitutional reform to call for a modernisation of laws dating back to 1351, The Sunday Telegraph has learned.
When he reports to Gordon Brown on Tuesday he will argue that treason laws, which include the offence of sleeping wit
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 8, 2008
An ancient Roman Catholic order tried yesterday to dispel the conspiracy theories surrounding it as it buried its Grand Master.
Princess Michael of Kent, a member of The Sovereign Order of the Knights of Malta, was present in Rome for the state funeral of Fra Andrew Bertie, 78, the Briton who headed the knights until his death earlier this month. Giorgio Napolitano, the Italian president, also attended the ceremony at the organisation's headquarters on the Aventine Hill.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 8, 2008
A Holocaust survivor thought to have been the only Englishman imprisoned in the Auschwitz death camp has died. He was 97.
Leon Greenman, who was born in London, was living in Rotterdam in Holland with his Dutch wife and young son when the family were rounded up by the Nazis in 1943.
Greenman was one of 700 Dutch Jews moved to the notorious concentration camp in 1943 but of the group just he and one other man survived.
After learning his wife and son had be
