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: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
Jan 25, 2008
A rising tide of criticism of the use of the state secrets privilege to
derail litigation against the government has yielded new legislation
introduced in the Senate to define the privilege and to limit its use.
The state secrets privilege has been invoked with growing frequency to
deflect claims of unlawful domestic surveillance, detention, and torture
as well as other more mundane complaints, on grounds that adjudicating
them would cause unacceptable damage to national security.
Source: Independent (UK)
Jan 25, 2008
A chain-smoker, activist, and mother of nine children, Marie Smith-Jones was one of a kind. The last surviving full-blooded Alaskan Eyak, and sole native speaker of the Eyak language, she was renowned for her commitment to preserving her heritage. When she died in her sleep this week at her home in Anchorage, aged 89, she left behind a comprehensive record of the now-extinct language – a dictionary of Eyak.
Eyak is one of 20 languages spoken in Alaska, many of which are thought to b
Source: AP
Jan 25, 2008
It's another public relations debacle for the nation's museum industry, already tarred by reports that top institutions knowingly dealt in looted Italian artifacts.
Federal agents raided several Southern California museums on Thursday, mostly in search of artifacts allegedly taken from Thailand's Ban Chiang archeological site, one of the most important prehistoric settlements ever discovered in Southeast Asia. Authorities believe they were smuggled into the U.S. and donated at infla
Source: Guardian
Jan 25, 2008
Henry VIII's flagship Mary Rose will be reunited with thousands of objects spilled from her shattered hull in 1545 through a £21m grant for a new museum.
It is the last major heritage lottery grant before the fund is slashed to help pay for the 2012 Olympics - but the trustees also dug into reserves and found £10m for the Cutty Sark after the fire which gutted the 19th-century ship last year when restoration work had already started. The grant means work can start again soon.
Source: NYT
Jan 25, 2008
When Atilla Yayla, a maverick political science professor, offered a mild criticism of Turkey’s first years as a country, his remarks unleashed a torrent of abuse.
“Traitor!” a newspaper headline shouted. His college dismissed him. State prosecutors in this western city, where he spoke, opened a criminal case against him. His crime? Violating an obscure law against insulting the legacy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey’s founder.
“I need thoughts to counter my ideas,” Mr
Source: NYT
Jan 25, 2008
Nearly 25 years of social change, political realignment and demographic shifts separate the presidential candidacies of the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Senator Barack Obama. Even so, there are echoes of 1984 as the battle for the Democratic nomination once again roars across the South, focused squarely on African-Americans.
The differences can be summed up, in many ways, by two slogans.
“Our time has come” was Mr. Jackson’s rallying cry, a call to political empowerment for S
Source: AP
Jan 24, 2008
NICOSIA, Cyprus - Marine archaeologists will begin work in June to uncover the sand-buried hull of a 2,300-year-old ship thought to have been ferrying wine when it sank off the coast of Cyprus, researchers said Thursday.
The ship, dating from the fourth century B.C., is one of only a few to have been found so well-preserved, and it may shed light on the nautical and economic history of the period in the east Mediterranean, said Stella Demesticha, a University of Cyprus visiting mari
Source: Boston Globe
Jan 24, 2008
Bill Clinton was already working the crowd with a vociferous appeal to vote for his wife when the dozens of people jostling to get inside the auditorium provoked a campaign worker to cry out, "Adults should not be acting this way!"
Coincidentally, Clinton's sharp-elbowed advocacy leading up to Saturday's South Carolina primary is prompting some pundits and fellow Democrats to ask a similar question: Should a former president be acting this way?...
Clinton fans
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 24, 2008
One of the 20th century’s most abiding mysteries could soon be solved when British scientists carry out DNA tests on recently discovered bone fragments said to belong to the two missing children of Tsar Nicholas II.
Russian forensic experts have been examining the remains, discovered under a mound near Yekaterinburg by amateur archaeologists last August, and say that early findings gave credence to the royal claims.
On Vladimir Lenin's orders, a Bolshevik firing squad
Source: AP
Jan 24, 2008
Federal agents executed search warrants Thursday at several Southern California museums, looking for stolen antiquities, officials said.
Authorities were searching the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana and the Mingei International Museum in San Diego, said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
A search warrant was also issued for the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena.
A law enforcement source wh
Source: USA Today
Jan 24, 2008
Some visitors to Badlands National Park spot a fossil and take it home as a souvenir. Sometimes college students studying the 244,000-acre park's natural history assume it's OK to take a specimen for further scrutiny.
A bigger problem, though, is the looting of artifacts found in the South Dakota park's rich fossil beds by thieves who plan to sell them online or to galleries or collectors.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 24, 2008
Germany's state railway yesterday caved in to pressure to document its role in deporting Jews to Nazi concentration camps, opening an exhibition on the "death trains" in a central Berlin station.
The display follows a two-year campaign by Jewish groups, led by the Nazi-hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, to force Deutsche Bahn to examine its key part in the Holocaust, as Germany continues to wrestle with its wartime record.
Source: LiveScience
Jan 23, 2008
Ancient pottery found at an altar used by ancient Greeks to worship Zeus was actually in use at least a millennium earlier, new archeological data suggest.
The pottery shards were discovered during an excavation last summer near the top of Mt. Lykaion in southern Greece.
The finding, which dates back to 3000 B.C., indicates that the tradition of divinity worship on the site is very ancient and may even pre-date the introduction of Zeus into the Greek world, said David G
Source: AP
Jan 23, 2008
The monumental chestnut tree that comforted Anne Frank while she was in hiding from the Nazis will be preserved for at least five more years under a plan agreed Wednesday, the museum at the site said.
The tree, which is afflicted with a lethal fungus, was to have been cut down last year, but a judge ordered a reprieve while supporters worked on a plan to preserve it.
Anne Frank House spokeswoman Maatje Mostart said the tree's crown would be trimmed and supported this
Source: AP
Jan 23, 2008
CUMBERLAND, Maryland — History could have come to life in very much the wrong way at a veterans' museum where a rocket on display for two years was discovered to be live.
After Allegany County authorities were notified Wednesday that the Mark 1 rocket on display in Cumberland might be live, the state fire marshal's office and the FBI confirmed it was. Bomb experts removed the ordnance and rendered it safe.
The 48-inch-by-2.75-inch rocket was similar to those used on h
Source: Reuters
Jan 23, 2008
An almost complete human skull fossil that could date back 100,000 years has been unearthed in China, state media said on Wednesday, hailing it as the greatest discovery since Peking Man.
Last month's find in Xuchang, in the central province of Henan, was made after two years of excavation just as two archaeologists were leaving for the Lunar New Year break, the China Daily said."We expect more discoveries of importance," Li Zhanyang, archaeologist with the Henan Cultural Relics and Archa
Source: Outer Banks Sentinel
Jan 23, 2008
When doctors want to see a body's organs they use an magnetic resonance imaging machine (MRI) to view beautifully clear images of what's inside.
When archaeologists want to see what's below the surface of the earth they are now beginning to use a similar technology called computer-assisted radar tomography (CART).
An archaeologist with the First Colony Foundation was on site at Fort Raleigh Saturday with CART engineers testing the advanced ground penetrating system. The
Source: NYT
Jan 23, 2008
TEL AVIV — They are in their 80s now, the last living links to Janusz Korczak, the visionary champion of children’s rights who refused to part with his young charges even as they were herded to the gas chambers.
When they speak of him, the old men are young again: transported to their days in his orphanage, a place they remember as a magical republic for children as the Nazi threat grew closer.
“It was a utopia,” said Shlomo Nadel, 85, one of the surviving orphans who m
Source: AP
Jan 23, 2008
Archaeologists in northeast Syria have unearthed a 3rd century cemetery in the shape of a cross, the country's official news agency reported Wednesday.
Ten skeletons, along with pottery and coins, were found at the site in Hassaka, 441 miles northeast of the capital Damascus, SANA reported.
Some of the artifacts contained inscriptions in the ancient Aramaic language, it said.
Wednesday's find came a day after SANA reported that archaeologists had found a Ro
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Jan 23, 2008
Mr. [Gooteleak] Judea was the first Inuk to testify at a historic $2-million truth commission that began travelling around Nunavut's Baffin region this week investigating long-standing allegations the RCMP deliberately slaughtered thousands of sled dogs from the 1950s to the 1970s.
The RCMP have denied the claims. In 2006, they released a report that found that while Mounties sometimes shot dogs for public-health or safety reasons, there was no evidence to support stories that anima
