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: BBC
Aug 12, 2007
An ancient forest of cypress trees, estimated to be eight million years old, has been discovered in Hungary. Archaeologists found the 16 preserved trunks in an open cast coal mine in the north-eastern city of Bukkabrany.
The specimens were preserved intact while most of the forest turned to coal thanks to a casing of sand, which was perhaps the result of a sandstorm.
It is hoped the trees may offer experts a valuable insight into Earth's climate eight million years ago.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 12, 2007
A German farmer is refusing to allow British families to recover the remains of crew members of a Lancaster bomber shot down during the Second World War - unless they pay him 7,500 Euros.
The families of the crew are furious at the farmer's demands and are refusing to pay. They say that the farmer, Horst Bender, must not be allowed to make a profit from allowing them to give their dead relatives a proper burial with full military honours.
One relative described his dema
Source: Reuters
Aug 12, 2007
Texas will almost certainly hit the grim total of 400 executions this month, far ahead of any other state, testament to the influence of the state's conservative evangelical Christians and its cultural mix of Old South and Wild West.
"In Texas you have all the elements lined up. Public support, a governor that supports it and supportive courts," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.
"If any of those things are he
Source: BBC
Aug 12, 2007
Border guards in East Germany during the Cold War were given clear orders to shoot at attempted defectors, including children, a senior official says.
A newly discovered order is the firmest evidence yet that the communist regime gave explicit shoot-to-kill orders, says Germany's director of Stasi files.
The Stasi was the security ministry of the East German government, which always denied there was such a policy.
The order "is a licence to kill", said
Source: NYT
Aug 12, 2007
BETHEL, N.Y., Aug. 9 — Inside an old wood-beamed farmhouse with picture windows on a hillside here, the chirp of the telephone pierced the air roughly every five minutes Thursday morning with another inquiry about the sale of “Yasgur’s Farm,” a house and a piece of land that the 1969 Woodstock music festival made famous, at least among members of the scattered tribe of a certain time.
“That’s right, that’s right, we’re moving, permanently, to Phoenix,” said Roy Howard, 73, speaking
Source: NYT
Aug 12, 2007
IT is now widely believed that the aggressive mortgage lending during the recent real estate boom was unprecedented. In the final counting, that assessment may well be accurate.
But some housing experts whose careers date back to the 1960s say they hear the distinct echo of a government program from 35 years ago in the current mortgage crisis....
There are obvious differences between the government program, which was run by the Federal Housing Administration and known a
Source: AP
Aug 12, 2007
MECCA, Saudi Arabia -- These days it's easier to find a Cinnabon in Mecca than the house where the Prophet Muhammad was born.
The ancient sites in Islam's holiest city are under attack from both money and extreme religion. Developers are building giant glass and marble towers that loom over the revered Kaaba which millions of Muslims face in their daily prayers. At the same time, religious zealots continue to work, as they have for decades, to destroy landmarks that they say encoura
Source: NYT
Aug 12, 2007
[This is an excerpt from a new study guide for Russian teachers prepared by Aleksandr Filippov, a deputy director of a Kremlin-backed think tank.]
As a result of the “Big Purge” of late 1930s, practically all members and candidates to become Politburo members elected after the 17th Party Congress suffered from reprisals to a certain degree....Postwar reprisals were quite similarly addressed... The number of victims of the Leningrad case reached about two thousand people. Many of the
Source: NYT
Aug 12, 2007
THE Communist Party expends much effort trying to remove politics from daily life in China, and now it wants to remove politics from the Olympics, too. Beijing Olympic officials are taking the line that political protesters agitating about China are violating the spirit and charter of the Games....
Beijing knows politics cannot really be tabled. Even before China was selected in 2001, international opinion was sharply divided between those who thought the Games could help reform the
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 11, 2007
Banzai Nippon! Achtung Spitfeuer! Gott In Himmel! Teufel! Schweinehund!
If these were the first foreign phrases you ever encountered, the chances are that you're a bloke aged between 30 and 50, and that you grew up reading War Picture Library, Battle, Victor and Commando comics.
Well, those days are over - in publishing at least, where books about the Second World War, fiction and non-fiction, look set to be one of the hottest phenomena of the next decade.
Source: Reuters
Aug 11, 2007
Central Utah, where six miners were still trapped deep underground on Saturday, has long been rich not just in coal deposits, but also the fortune and despair that come with pulling it from the ground....
The list of accidents stretches back at least to May 1, 1900, when 200 men were killed by an explosion in the Winter Quarters Mine, one of the worst mining accidents in U.S. history.
In 1924, 172 men died in a series of explosions or of carbon monoxide poisoning at a m
Source: AP
Aug 11, 2007
Would you like your Civil War history seasoned with baseball trivia? Spritzed up with a winery tour? Do you long to dissect the Battle of Antietam with a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian?
Hire a guide.
As the 150th anniversary of the war between the states approaches, starting with John Brown's 1859 prewar raid at Harpers Ferry, W.Va., customized tours for people fascinated by the conflict are multiplying.
As little as $50 buys a two-hour, private guided to
Source: http://abc.net.au
Aug 11, 2007
There is concern international privateers and relic hunters will seek to profit from what is believed to be the wreck of the warship HMAS Sydney.
A group of amateur researchers claim to have found the wreck off the coast of Western Australia, near Carnarvon.
The Sydney was sunk off the WA coast during World War II, killing the entire crew of 645.
Source: BBC
Aug 11, 2007
Bronze Age Irishmen were as fond of their beer as their 21st century counterparts, it has been claimed.
Two archaeologists have put forward a theory that one of the most common ancient monuments seen around Ireland may have been used for brewing ale.
Fulacht fiadh - horseshoe shaped grass covered mounds - are conventionally thought of as ancient cooking spots.
But the archaeologists from Galway believe they could have been the country's earliest breweries.
Source: NYT
Aug 11, 2007
A homeless man in London pleaded guilty yesterday to attacking a portrait of the 18th-century literary giant Samuel Johnson with a hammer, The Associated Press reported. Mark Paton, 44, was arrested on Wednesday after repeatedly hitting the $3.4 million portrait, by Joshua Reynolds, at the National Portrait Gallery. He admitted intent to cause criminal damage, though gave no explanation for the attack. “He has nothing against Sir Joshua Reynolds or Samuel Johnson,” said his defense lawyer, Euan
Source: http://inventorspot.com
Aug 11, 2007
The words "Mitsubishi fighter" still have the power to send a chill down the spines of American war history buffs. It was, after all, just 65 years ago that the Mitsubishi A6M "Zero" ruled the skies over the Pacific by outclassing the vast majority of Allied aircraft sent to oppose it.
Now it seems that a descendant of the legendary Zero may soon be stretching its wings across the skies of Japan - and perhaps further afield. ...
So it was that on Au
Source: NYT
Aug 11, 2007
IT has not been the best few weeks ever for stock market investors, but it has been the best 25 years.
As stock markets gyrated this week, the United States stock market was approaching the 25th anniversary of the beginning of the great bull market. The Dow Jones industrial average hit bottom on Aug. 12, 1982, at 776.92, during a recession and with interest rates very high.
Source: Yale Daily News
Aug 10, 2007
In what might be its most significant concession to Peru since 1912, Yale will allow the country to see a full inventory of the artifacts it has kept in New Haven since Hiram Bingham III brought them back from Machu Picchu nearly a century ago.
The breakthrough in negotiations, confirmed Friday by Yale officials and announced Thursday during an unrelated press conference in Lima, is not only important in that it could lead to the return of certain artifacts Peru officials have been
Source: AP
Aug 10, 2007
Archaeologists believe they've found artifacts from the last ice age in Alexandria.
The discovery came at a site that's being excavated for a memorial to freed slaves. While searching for the graves of about 1,800 former slaves buried there in the late 1860s, archaeologists found what they believe is a stone tool that's about 13,000 years old.
Source: BBC
Aug 10, 2007
Memoirs of a British civil servant never published until now show how much the partition of India was decided by just two men, the BBC's Alastair Lawson reports.
In a quiet village in the northern English county of Yorkshire, Robert Beaumont rifles through his father's archives.
The various and somewhat tatty pieces of paper he unearths are no ordinary collection of paternal memoirs.
They are the thoughts and reflections of his father, Christopher Beaumont,
