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)
Aug 22, 2007
A campaign to preserve a unique hybrid language spoken by the descendants of the Bounty mutineers on an isolated South Pacific island has been given a boost by the United Nations.
Norfolk Island's blend of 18th-century English and Tahitian, known as Norf'k or Norfuk, will be featured by Unesco in the next edition of its Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger of Disappearing.
The language, one of the world's rarest, is under threat because Norfolk Islanders are increas
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
Aug 22, 2007
In compliance with a requirement imposed by Congress, the Central
Intelligence Agency declassified and released the executive summary of
a CIA Inspector General report that was generally critical of CIA
performance prior to September 11, 2001.
>From a secrecy policy point of view, the most interesting thing about
the disclosure is that it was the result of a congressional initiative
undertaken against the wishes of the executive branch."While meeting the dictate
Source: http://www.ireland.com
Aug 21, 2007
Newly discovered 2000-year-old ruins at the Hill of Tara must be fully preserved because of their unique size and character, a US academic today said.
State archaeologists began excavation work on the prehistoric Lismullen structure earlier this month, claiming it was under threat from adverse weather.
Dr Ronald Hicks of Ball State University, Indiana, argues it is part of a larger ancient ritual complex and must be preserved in situ. He contends Lismullen is comparable
Source: Ascribe
Aug 21, 2007
The Middlebury College Julian W. Abernethy Collection of American Literature has acquired the Ernest Hemingway and Hemingway Family Collection. The archive includes family correspondence, journals, more than 1400 original letters and 151 scans of Hemingway's letters. The material dates from the mid-19th century to the author's death in 1961.
Items of special interest include several diaries dating from the 1850s; Civil War letters belonging to the author's grandfather, Anson
Source: Reuters
Aug 21, 2007
Germans are starting to rethink their negative views about Prussia, the state which ruled much of northern Germany for centuries and which has been viewed for decades through the prism of Nazism.
In particular, a book by Australian historian Christopher Clark has stirred a debate about Prussia which Germans have vilified since World War Two for representing the militarism, discipline and blind obedience that helped Hitler rise to power.
"The Rise and Downfall of Pr
Source: AP
Aug 21, 2007
The Justice Department said Tuesday that records about missing White House e-mails are not subject to public disclosure, the latest effort by the Bush administration to expand the boundaries of government secrecy.
Administration lawyers detailed the legal position in a lawsuit trying to force the White House Office of Administration to reveal what it knows about the disappearance of White House e-mails.
The Office of Administration provides administrative servic
Source: AP
Aug 21, 2007
The Berlin Wall? What Berlin Wall?
The class of students entering college this month is the first post-Cold War class, according to the Beloit College Mindset List, a compilation of the events, technology, people and social trends that shaped the incoming crop of freshmen.
To them, it’s always been normal for Russia to have multiple political parties and U.S. rock bands to stop in Moscow on their tours, according to the list released Tuesday by the private school in thi
Source: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net
Aug 21, 2007
Rusting away in a musty chamber of a courthouse is the gun believed to have triggered the upheaval that altered Philippine history.
If the military’s account of the Philippines’ crime of the century were true, it was the same weapon that fired the fatal bullet into the head of opposition leader Benigno Aquino Jr. 24 years ago on Tuesday at the Manila International Airport on his return from self-exile in the United States.
The charcoal-toned Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum
Source: BBC
Aug 21, 2007
Alex Kurzem came to Australia in 1949 carrying just a small brown briefcase, but weighed down by some harrowing psychological and emotional baggage.
Tucked away in his briefcase were the secrets of his past - fragments of his life that he kept hidden for decades.
In 1997, after raising a family in Melbourne with his Australian bride, he finally revealed himself. He told how, at the age of five, he had been adopted by the SS and became a Nazi mascot.
His per
Source: AP
Aug 21, 2007
There it sits on your night stand, that book you've meant to read for who knows how long but haven't yet cracked open. Tonight, as you feel its stare from beneath that teetering pile of magazines, know one thing -- you are not alone.One in four adults say they read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday. Of those who did read, women and seniors were most avid, and religious works and popular fiction were the top choices.The survey re
Source: CNN
Aug 21, 2007
Remember that goofy uncle of yours who always tried to impress you by "stealing your nose" or pulling the ol' separating-his-thumb-from-his-hand move? Well, those parlor tricks are nothing compared to the appendage stunts pulled by these 10 famous people.
John Wilkes Booth's neck bones
Einstein's brain
"Stonewall" Jackson's arm
Saint Francis Xavier's hand
Napoleon's bits and pieces
Oliver Cromwell's
Source: NYT
Aug 21, 2007
The Etruscan tomb was hidden in such a remote corner of Tuscany that Andrea Marcocci, the archaeology student who found and identified it about a decade ago, was not very worried that anyone else would stumble upon it.
Then, this year, woodsmen began to clear brush in the area, and Mr. Marcocci — who had believed the tomb would be safe as long as it was concealed in a forest — realized he had to act.
“I became worried that what’s supposed to be the patrimony of mankind
Source: AP
Aug 20, 2007
LIVERPOOL, England: A museum charting the history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade opens to the public this week, focussing on the way this city enriched itself on human trafficking, but also on the resistance of enslaved Africans showed.
In some ways it will be the latest chapter in Liverpool's efforts to come to terms with its past.
In 1999, its city council formally apologized, expressing "shame and remorse for the city's role in this trade in human misery.&quo
Source: KTVU
Aug 20, 2007
FRESNO -- Mountain backpackers have discovered remains believed to be those of a missing World War II airman resting atop a glacier near where an aviation cadet's body was found two years ago, authorities said Monday.
The second set of human remains was found in an alpine region of Kings Canyon National Park in the Sierra Nevada range on Wednesday, as little as 50 feet from where climbers spotted the ice-entombed body of Leo Mustonen in October 2005, park officials said.
Source: Guardian
Aug 20, 2007
Sixty years ago the Nazi U-boat fleet that menaced wartime Atlantic convoys and threatened Britain with starvation was scuttled off the north-west coast of Ireland. The sunken hulls and rusting torpedo tubes are encrusted with coral.
Salvage plans are now being explored to see whether one of the German submarines could be raised from the deep and brought ashore. The vessel and its wartime technology could be put on display as the central attraction for a new maritime museum in Derry
Source: NYT
Aug 20, 2007
Born out of affliction and neglect, [Martin Luther] King-Harbor in the end became a symbol of both.
“The most mystifying element here,” said Joe Hicks, who grew up in Watts and who is the vice president of Community Advocates Inc., a group in downtown Los Angeles that focuses on race relations, “is that instead of demanding to keep an incompetent hospital open, why didn’t community activists take the opposite position that black people and poor folks deserve the same kind of care as
Source: BBC
Aug 20, 2007
A collection of Nazi era board games - including one where players are given points for bombing British cities - are being auctioned in the UK this week.
The rare trove of wartime board games also includes a version of Snakes and Ladders based on the exploits of U-boat captain Gunther Prien.
The games are thought to have come from a German collector. They will be sold at Mullock's Shropshire on Thursday.
Source: AP
Aug 20, 2007
DAVENPORT, Iowa - The Putnam Museum is sending two of
its mummies on a field trip in hopes of learning more
about their history.
The mummies, described as among the Davenport museum's
most prized and popular possessions, will be carefully
removed from their cases on Tuesday and taken by
ambulance to Genesis Medical Center's West Central
Park Avenue Campus, where they will undergo CT scans.
The scans, being donated by the hospital, are expected
to reveal new information about
Source: Reuters
Aug 20, 2007
A volcanic eruption that buried
a Mayan village 1,400 years ago preserved a manioc
field -- the first evidence that the nutritious crop
was cultivated by the ancient people, researchers said
on Monday.
The discovery may help explain how the civilization
prospered, the team at the University of Colorado at
Boulder said. It is the first evidence for cultivation
of the calorie-rich tuber in the New World.
"We have long
Source: NYT
Aug 20, 2007
Since Aug. 6, Jennings Lilly finds himself turning again and again to the television news reports, his thoughts flashing back nearly four decades to a time when he and five fellow miners were trapped for 10 days in a cold, flooded mine only three feet high in these Appalachian hills.
It was pitch black most of the time, and the men had no contact with rescue crews, who had all but given up hope of finding them alive; that they were found has been known ever since as the Miracle of
