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: Jerusalem Post
May 16, 2007
In a new book that "totally contradicts everything that has been accepted to this day" about the Six Day War, two Israeli authors claim that the conflict was deliberately engineered by the Soviet Union to create the conditions in which Israel's nuclear program could be destroyed.
Having received information about Israel's progress towards nuclear arms, the Soviets aimed to draw Israel into a confrontation in which their counterstrike would include a joint Egyptian-Soviet b
Source: Guardian
May 16, 2007
MOSCOW -- They made up a secret French codeword for sex -- bingerle. They were careful never to use their real names but signed off affectionately: "With you always".
And during more than a decade of furtive correspondence, Russia's Tsar Alexander II and his young mistress Ekaterina Dolgaroukaya wrote frankly of their desire for one another - and of the pleasures of past and future love-making.
Yesterday some 22 unpublished erotic letters written by the Tsar t
Source: Independent
May 16, 2007
Monet's series of paintings depicting the dappled light playing across the water-lilies at his home in Giverny are considered some of the finest works by the French Impressionists.
But new research suggests the famously blurred effect achieved by the master's brush strokes may have been a literal representation of how he saw the world.
Monet's deteriorating sight, caused by the onset of cataracts, has long been the subject of speculation by art historians. A computer si
Source: Christian Science Monitor
May 16, 2007
WHEATON, Md. -- With quill in hand, Rabbi Menachem Youlus scrutinizes his latest treasure –- a centuries-old Torah, stabbed and burned by Nazis during World War II. Many of the onyx-colored Hebrew letters of the scroll are so damaged they now appear to float like rafts on a sea of tea-colored parchment.The Torah scribe will painstakingly retrace the letters –- 300,000 of them –- reapplying the ink six times on each letter to preserve the original penmanship.
It'
Source: BBC
May 16, 2007
About 250 passengers and crew were stranded on ferries after a bomb was discovered in the River Mersey.
The 500kg (1,102lb) World War II explosive was found by the Royal Navy at Twelve Quays dock, Birkenhead.
The Mersey Viking and Dublin Viking were finally allowed to berth on Tuesday afternoon after waiting since the early hours of the morning.
Navy divers are moving the 7ft (2.1m) German penetration bomb out to deeper waters in the Irish Sea to detonate it.
Source: National Geographic News
May 15, 2007
BEIJING -- Archaeologists last week announced the discovery of a new section of the Great Wall of China near the Mongolian border—the northernmost segment ever found.
But what's most noticeable about the wall today is not what's reappearing but what's vanishing.
After decades of government neglect and intentional destruction, the Great Wall is by turns crumbling, Disneyfied, and riddled with relatively new gaps you could literally drive a truck through.
Now
Source: Steven Aftergood, Secrecy News (Federation of American Scientists)
May 15, 2007
Although it"has stirred significant controversy in recent years," the Congressional Research Service policy of restricting direct dissemination of its products to members of Congress is well-founded,
argued CRS director Daniel P. Mulhollan in a lengthy internal memorandum last month."The reasons for limiting public distribution of our work can be summarized as follows," he wrote."First, there is a danger that placing CRS in an intermediate position [between Congress and
Source: AP
May 15, 2007
VICKSBURG, Miss. —- The Warren County Sheriff's Department will increase patrols along the borders of the Vicksburg National Military Park after vandals dug about 100 holes in an apparent search for Civil War artifacts...
"I would say that this is one of the larger damage sites that we have seen," said archaeologist Jill Halchin with the Tallahassee, Fla.-based Southeast Archaeological Center. "Typically, in Civil War parks, with the metal detection technology we have
Source: ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corp.)
May 15, 2007
An Indigenous burial site in the sand dunes of western Queensland's Simpson Desert is being hailed by an archaeologist as one of the most well preserved ever found.
Archaeologist Giles Hamm says the site is at least several hundred years old and its undisturbed condition makes it a very rare find.
"Across Australia it is probably one of the most significant burial sites that has yet been found," he said.
Of particular importance are 20 kopi caps p
Source: International Herald Tribune
May 15, 2007
SRE LEAV, Cambodia -- Researchers are investigating a long unknown killing field in Cambodia with the graves of thousands of Khmer Rouge victims from the 1970s.
But local villagers found it first. By the time the researchers arrived last week, some 200 graves had been dug open and the bones scattered through the woods by hundreds of people hunting for jewelry...
It was the first such raid the researchers had recorded in the thousands of burial grounds they have document
Source: University of Haifa via Newswise
May 15, 2007
The world's oldest wooden anchor was discovered during excavations in the Turkish port city of Urla, the ancient site of Liman Tepe...by researchers from...the University of Haifa. The anchor, from the end of the 7th century BC, was found near a submerged construction, imbedded approximately 1.5 meters underground...
Urla [is] a port city located near Izmir, with more than 5,000 years of maritime history. Remnants of an ancient port were uncovered during the excavations.
Source: AP
May 15, 2007
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Harvard University on Tuesday approved a new general education curriculum for the first time in three decades that it says will help students "understand themselves as products of -- and participants in -- traditions of art, ideas, and values."The new curriculum requires students take semester-long courses in each of seven areas including ethical reasoning, critical skills, mathematical reasoning, sciences of living systems, sciences of the phys
Source: AHA Blog
May 15, 2007
A new textbook on the history of the Khmer Rouge—the Cambodian Communist faction which murdered an estimated 1.7 million people during its four-year reign of terror in the late 1970s—cannot be used as a stand-alone reader for high-school students, says the government in Phnom Penh.
Instead, the book will be assigned as a supplementary source and used by the Cambodian Ministry of Education to produce a less controversial work on the same topic.A History of Democr
Source: AP
May 15, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Governors could order federal facilities to lower their flags to honor fallen military troops under legislation passed by the House Tuesday.
Source: AP
May 15, 2007
TOKYO -- The granddaughter of wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, who was executed for crimes against humanity, said Tuesday she will run for a parliamentary seat in July to ''restore the honor'' of those who gave their lives for Japan.
Yuko Tojo, 67, told The Associated Press she will run as an independent from the Tokyo constituency for the legislature's upper house...In a separate statement, Tojo called for a national debate on punitive postwar treaties impos
Source: USA Today
May 15, 2007
Unquestioning partisanship is giving way to a balanced view of Richard Nixon at his presidential library as the federal government prepares to take it over from a private foundation.
Opened in 1990, four years before the 37th president died, the Nixon Presidential Library and Birthplace has been an orphan. It's the only one among 12 presidential libraries that gets no taxpayer funds.The library doesn't hold Nixon's presidential papers because Congress wanted to
Source: AP
May 15, 2007
AMSTERDAM -- Diplomats from 11 countries agreed Tuesday to bypass legal obstacles and begin distributing electronic copies of documents from a secretive Nazi archive, making them available to Holocaust researchers for the first time in more than a half century.
The decision was meant to avoid further delays in allowing Holocaust survivors to find their own stories and family histories, and for historians to seek new insights into Europe's darkest period.
The countries g
Source: AP
May 15, 2007
LAUREL, Md. -- Many of Laurel's older residents can point to the precise spot in the shopping center where Arthur Bremer's gunshots paralyzed Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace and cut short his campaign for the White House in 1972.
They recall just what they were doing that May 15 afternoon when they heard that the loner from Milwaukee had shot Wallace five times as he shook hands in the parking lot of what was then the city's main retail plaza.
But 35 years later, as Laur
Source: AP
May 15, 2007
NEW DELHI -- The Taj Mahal is getting dirty, and some want to get it even dirtier.
The 17th-century mausoleum is renowned for the paleness of its marble, but these days it looks more yellow than white.
A report Monday by a parliamentary panel blamed air pollution, saying the Taj Mahal is encrusted with ''suspended particulate matter,'' or granules of dirt and soot found in high levels in the air around the site in the city of Agra...
To restore the monument
Source: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (UK) at Science Daily
May 15, 2007
...Our understanding of what life was like in bygone eras could be boosted, thanks to a new initiative aiming to depict more accurately and realistically how heritage sites may have looked in their heyday.
Computer scientists and cultural heritage researchers are assessing whether today's increasingly sophisticated 3D computer technology can be combined with the most recent historical evidence to produce significantly improved visual reconstructions of churches, palaces and other an
