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: http://www.manilatimes.net
Dec 8, 2007
An archeological site full of metallurgy tools and pottery dating back nearly 3,000 years ago has been discovered in Vietnam’s central Khanh Hoa province, local newspaper Pioneer reported Friday.
The Vietnam Archeology Institute found a number of bronze molds and bronze-refining tools, eight tombs and over 126,000 pieces of pottery in the Vinh Yen 50-square meter site in Van Ninh district.
Source: WaPo
Dec 8, 2007
They came. They saw. They gifted.
That's about all we know of the foreign visitors who traveled to Bethlehem to see the infant Jesus.
The scene ingrained in the public imagination -- a stately procession of three kings in turbans, crowns, elaborate capes and fancy slippers, with an entourage of servants and camels trailing behind -- is a common image in books and films, but it isn't from Scripture.
In fact, there's no evidence in the Gospels that the Magi w
Source: Times (London)
Dec 7, 2007
Stonehenge may be placed on the list of endangered World Heritage sites after the Government abandoned all the options it was considering for relieving congestion on the road that runs past it.
It means the site will be blighted indefinitely by heavy traffic on the A303, which passes close to the stones.
Despite spending more than £23 million over ten years on developing proposals, the Government decided that the various alternatives, including turning the road into a d
Source: AP
Dec 7, 2007
A rare daguerreotype of abolitionist John Brown was bought Friday by an unidentified bidder for $97,750, an auctioneer said.
The buyer, who bid by telephone, declined to be identified or to talk about the purchase, auctioneer Wes Cowan said.
Cowan, an occasional appraiser on the PBS show "Antiques Roadshow" and host of the public television series "History Detectives," had estimated a sale price of $60,000 to $80,000.
Source: Times (London)
Dec 7, 2007
Stonehenge may be placed on the list of endangered World Heritage sites after the Government abandoned all the options it was considering for relieving congestion on the road that runs past it.
It means the site will be blighted indefinitely by heavy traffic on the A303, which passes close to the stones.
Despite spending more than £23 million over ten years on developing proposals, the Government decided that the various alternatives, including turning the road into a d
Source: Independent Catholic News
Dec 7, 2007
German archaeologists claim to have found traces of a glue they say was made by the Romans more than 2,000 years ago and used to mount silver laurel leaves on legionnaires' battle helmets.
Researchers at the Rhineland historical museum in Bonn said they had found remnants of the glue on a legionnaire's iron helmet unearthed near the town of Xanten. It had lain on what was once the bed of the Rhine for at least 1,500 years.
Frank Willer, the museum's chief restorer, said
Source: Science Daily
Dec 7, 2007
Although most scientists believe tuberculosis emerged only several thousand years ago, new research from The University of Texas at Austin reveals the most ancient evidence of the disease has been found in a 500,000-year-old human fossil from Turkey.
The discovery of the new specimen of the human species, Homo erectus, suggests support for the theory that dark-skinned people who migrate northward from low, tropical latitudes produce less vitamin D, which can adversely affect the imm
Source: NYT
Dec 7, 2007
The 427 suitcases, trunks, crates and bundles recovered after Willard closed in 1995 turned out to belong to patients who had spent decades in this vast state mental institution. In them were the remnants of lives left behind when their owners entered the locked gates.
Now a handful of artifacts once packed away, and the stories behind them, are on display at the New York Public Library’s Science, Industry and Business Library in Midtown through Jan. 31.
“The history of
Source: NYT
Dec 7, 2007
Mitt Romney asked the nation on Thursday not to reject his presidential candidacy because of his religion, assuring evangelical Christians and other religious voters that his values matched theirs in a speech that used the word “Mormon” only once....
Afterward, Mr. Romney’s advisers said privately that they hoped the speech would help him with his other, arguably larger, obstacle: lingering questions about the firmness of his convictions given his shifting positions and tone on issu
Source: NYT Video
Dec 7, 2007
Mitt Romney's speech drew inevitable comparisons to another speech from a half-century earlier by John F. Kennedy.
Source: LAT
Dec 7, 2007
Families with ties to the military, long a reliable source of support for wartime presidents, disapprove of President Bush and his handling of the war in Iraq, with a majority concluding the invasion was not worth it, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found.
The views of the military community, which includes active-duty service members, veterans and their family members, mirror those of the overall adult population, a sign that the strong military endorsement that the administ
Source: AP
Dec 7, 2007
A few dozen graying Pearl Harbor survivors observed a moment of silence on Friday in honor of their comrades who perished in the Japanese bombing of Oahu 66 years ago.
Wearing aloha shirts and orchid flower lei, the veterans stood on a pier overlooking the sunken hull of the USS Arizona and saluted the flag as a sailor sang "The Star Spangled Banner."
Survivors of each of the nine battleships bombed in the attack took turns setting wreaths before life preserve
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 7, 2007
A century-old mystery surrounding the fate of the “Mad King” who built Bavaria’s celebrated fairytale castles has taken a new twist after an historian claimed that he was murdered.
The allegation comes from an art expert turned sleuth who claims that contemporary portraits of Ludwig II prove that far from killing himself in a fit of melancholy, he was assassinated to put an end his extravagant spending.
Ludwig’s body was found on June 13, 1886, in the knee-deep waters o
Source: AP
Dec 7, 2007
A onetime other woman in Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s life has said she is considering voting for the former first lady.
“I can’t help but want to support my own gender, and she’s as experienced as any of the others — except maybe Joe Biden,” the woman, Gennifer Flowers, said in a recent telephone interview from her home here.
Ms. Flowers said that she was undecided, but that she backed abortion rights and had long wanted to see a female president. “I would love to
Source: AP
Dec 7, 2007
In the year 1215, a group of English barons handed King John a document written on parchment. Put your royal seal on this, they said. John did, and forever changed the relationship between the monarchy and those it governed.
The document was the Magna Carta, a declaration of human rights that would set some of the guiding principles for democracy as it is known today.
While that original edict was initially ignored and John died the next year, its key ideas were includ
Source: http://www.radioaustralia.net.au
Dec 6, 2007
Wheat grains nearly 5,000 years old found at a Chinese archaeological site two years ago, have revealed that western man travelled to China much earlier than previously thought.
The research, published by Professor John Dodson and Professor Xiaoqiang Li, shows there are no modern wild varieties of the wheat and barley, which were found in the region in a domesticated form, and carbon dated to 2,650BC.
It is now thought they originated in the Middle East, which showed ex
Source: Israel News
Dec 6, 2007
"His golden year was 1940, when his armies invaded Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Holland, and Belgium and defeated France ... By mid 1942, his country controlled the largest land area in Europe… He refused to surrender and continued to fight for two more years, but, his bitter end came in the spring of 1945 when he took his own life…. Who is he?"
According to Palestinian Media Watch, a Palestinian media and education watchdog, this was the question put to listeners of the &
Source: AP
Dec 6, 2007
Israeli archaeologists uncovered a 2,000-year-old mansion believed to have been home to Queen Helene of Adiabene, whose clan ruled a region now in Iraq.
The remains of the building were unearthed just outside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City, underneath layers of a more recent settlement that was hidden until recently under the asphalt of a small parking lot in east Jerusalem.
Israel captured east Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast War. Palestinians see the east
Source: WaPo
Dec 6, 2007
One of the many quirks of Ron Paul's unexpectedly vigorous campaign for the Republican presidential nomination has been that he has been able to generate such a fervent following despite a campaign manner that verges on the grandfatherly. But in a brief interview in New Hampshire a few days ago, Paul showed that he is capable of delivering a barbed line or two, albeit wrapped in a kindly septuagenarian smile.
Asked what he made of John McCain's comments at last week's GOP debate com
Source: NYT
Dec 6, 2007
For some four decades, William D. Walsh browsed auction catalogs in search of the ancient artifacts that would gratify his passion for classical antiquity.
From Greek terra cotta vases to Roman marble heads to Etruscan urns, he gradually assembled a private gallery of more than 200 pieces of varying shapes, sizes and materials at his home in Menlo Park, Calif.
Today nearly all of those antiquities are to go on view at Fordham University in the Bronx as a permanent gift
