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: AP
May 10, 2007
CAIRO -- Egypt's antiquities chief says if persuasion doesn't work, he will fight for an ancient bust of Nefertiti that a Berlin museum maintains is too fragile to ever travel.
Zahi Hawass rattled world museums last week with requests to hand over ancient Egyptian masterpieces, including the Rosetta Stone -- some as loans, others permanently...But the bombastic archaeologist -- known for wearing an Indiana Jones-style hat -- has met resistance from museums reluc
Source: AP
May 10, 2007
MARION, Ala. -- A former state trooper surrendered Thursday on a murder charge in the 1965 shooting death of a black man during a civil rights protest, a killing that led to the ''Bloody Sunday'' march and the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
Former trooper James Bonard Fowler, who contends he fired in self-defense in a struggle over a gun, was charged with first-degree and second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of 26-year-old Jimmie Lee Jackson.
Source: BBC News
May 10, 2007
BARRACKPORE, Kolkata, India -- As India celebrates the 150th anniversary of the first uprising against the British, the town where the first shot was fired by sepoy (soldier) Mangal Pandey is witnessing the gradual obliteration of its historical heritage.
Mangal Pandey fired the famous shot at a British officer on 29 March 1857 at the Barrackpore parade ground -- now on the outskirts of Calcutta [Kolkata].
It was an action that stirred up a wave of rebellion in north In
Source: Honolulu Advertiser
May 10, 2007
HILO, Hawaii —- A portion of a North Kona archaeological site apparently has been bulldozed, possibly destroying a suspected heiau, agricultural terraces and other features on a site where ancient Hawaiians were living about 1,000 years ago, according to two archaeologists familiar with the incident.Thomas Dye, president of the Society for Hawaiian Archaeology, said the damage to the five-acre Pua'a 2 Agricultural Fields Archaeological District site is a particular concern s
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
May 10, 2007
On May 9, First Lady Laura Bush presented the 2007 Preserve America Presidential Awards in a ceremony at the White House. The awards are the highest national honor recognizing historic preservation projects.
Among the winners for the Private Preservation category was National Coalition for History member The History Channel for its “Save Our History” grant program. The History Channel was recognized for its efforts both nationwide and for a special initiative with New York City.
Source: AP
May 10, 2007
Japan's Supreme Court rejected compensation claims by Chinese victims of atrocities committed by Japan in the 1930s and 40s, which included the use of biological weapons and a massacre in the city of Nanjing, defense lawyers said Thursday.In two separate decisions made Wednesday, the top court upheld rulings by lower courts since 1999 that the current Japanese government was not liable for compensation demands from foreign citizens for wartime actions, according to defense l
Source: BBC News
May 10, 2007
Two men have been convicted of breaking the Official Secrets Act by leaking a confidential memo between President Bush and Tony Blair. The content of the memo has never officially been made public...[Ed. note: The BBC is prevented from repeating what was leaked, but the New York Times is not restricted, and says today,"In November 2005, The Daily Mirror...reported that the memorandum quoted a threat in April 2004 by President Bush —- denied in Washington and London —- to bomb the offices
Source: Times (of London)
May 10, 2007
TOKYO -- For half a millennium, the tea ceremony has been a symbol of Japan, a combination of ritual, meditation and aesthetics expressing the refinement of one of the world’s most ancient cultures. But now the ''Way of Tea'' is undergoing a revolution intended to ease one of its less appealing side-effects -– excruciating leg pain.The country’s most famous tea master has risked controversy by unveiling a new style of tea ceremony. It is aimed at young Japanese, old people a
Source: New York Times
May 10, 2007
NEW ORLEANS -— A grand jury in Alabama handed up an indictment on Wednesday in an obscure killing that helped inspire the historic Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965. The case is the latest in a series of belated prosecutions of crimes from the civil rights era.In February 1965, a black farmer, Jimmie Lee Jackson, 26, was shot by Alabama state troopers who were suppressing a voting rights demonstration in Marion in the Black Belt. Historians have said the killing indirectly h
Source: Times (of London)
May 10, 2007
The poet Siegfried Sassoon was on convalescent leave from the Western Front when, out walking one day, he was overwhelmed by a ''paroxysm of frustration'' and hurled his Military Cross into the Mersey. It was a passionate gesture that expressed all the rage and pain welling up inside one of the nation’s greatest war poets after his experiences in the trenches.
Or so it was widely thought, until the long-lost gallantry award turned up in a chest in his son’s attic in the Isle of Mull
Source: BBC News
May 10, 2007
Campaigners have hailed a decision to allow traders to continue using pounds and ounces as a "monumental victory".
The move to shelve EU plans to enforce metrication by 2009 comes after a long campaign by pro-imperial groups, including the Metric Martyrs.The European industry commissioner has ruled that imperial weights and measures can be displayed indefinitely alongside metric measurements.
Pro-metric campaigners said keeping the dual la
Source: Telegraph
May 10, 2007
Campaigners last night condemned the Government's approval of a £77 million road through a protected part of Hardy Country in Dorset.
Ruth Kelly, the Communities Secretary, told Dorset county council she did not regard its road proposal as being in conflict with the rules on the protection of nationally significant landscapes or wildlife.
The 3.5-mile relief road between Dorchester and Weymouth will speed up traffic to the marina in Portland that will be used for the 20
Source: Independent
May 10, 2007
BERLIN -- The great-great grandson of Otto von Bismarck, Germany's legendary "Iron Chancellor", is facing calls for his resignation as a conservative MP amid claims that he has become the country's "laziest politician".
Count Carl-Eduard von Bismarck, a 46-year-old MP in Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling conservative party and former New York banker turned manager of the Bismarck family's country estate outside Hamburg, was elected to the German parliament in 200
Source: University of Manchester press release
May 9, 2007
Scientists examining documents dating back 3,500 years say they have found proof that the origins of modern medicine lie in ancient Egypt and not with Hippocrates and the Greeks.
The research team from the KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology at The University of Manchester discovered the evidence in medical papyri written in 1,500BC -- 1,000 years before Hippocrates was born. "Classical scholars have always considered the ancient Greeks, particularly Hippocrates, as being the
Source: Houston Chronicle
May 9, 2007
HAMILTON, Tex. -- At least two men, including one buried in this Central Texas town, claimed during their lives to be the real William H. Bonney, aka Billy the Kid.
Instead of being shot to death by Sheriff Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner, N.M., on July 14, 1881, as mainstream historians say, these would-be Kids claimed to have escaped to live to old age in Texas, Arizona, or other parts of the Wild West.
A former New Mexico lawman investigating this colorful piece of histor
Source: AP
May 9, 2007
State and federal officials are working to document...the submerged remains of the Gold Rush era steamship Clara Nevada. The vessel was destroyed in an explosion 20 miles south of Haines [in the sea inlet in the Alaska Panhandle] in 1898.Before being purchased by speculators and renamed, the steamer had spent more than 20 years charting southeast coastal waters as the U.S. Coast Survey vessel Hassler. The cause of the explosion that sank the vessel is a mystery...
Source: AFP
May 9, 2007
Chinese archaeologists have discovered a section of the Great Wall straddling the Mongolian border that is the northernmost remnant of the landmark yet found, state media reported Wednesday.
The remnants of the wall, found in the Bayannur district of China's Inner Mongolia region, measures 2.3 metres (7.5 feet) wide and about 1.15 metres high, the Beijing News reported.
Source: BBC
May 9, 2007
A thief has been sneaking into country churches and stealing ancient bibles from under the noses of worshippers, police said.
Eight antique bibles have been stolen from churches in Hampshire, including a rare example from the 18th Century.
The bible went missing from St Mary The Virgin Church in Church Lane, Twyford, near Winchester, at the end of April.
The original had been displayed in a glass case, but the thief replaced it with a fake.
Source: Press Release -- UCLA
May 9, 2007
A bold new experiment in community-based computing is currently underway in downtown Los Angeles. The project, known
as Remapping LA, is being spearheaded by a group of digital innovators from UCLA's Center for Research in Engineering, Media and Performance (REMAP), a collaboration between the UCLA
School of Theater, Film and Television and the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science.
"The purpose of Remapping LA is to understand what
Source: AP
May 9, 2007
Marc Edgerly and his father, Carl, both joined the Army as young men, served during wartime and eventually decided that college, not a full-time military career, was what they wanted. But the cost they shouldered for that education is dramatically different.
The GI Bill covered all of Carl Edgerly's college expenses in the mid-1970s. His son, however, expects that even with the maximum $1,075 in monthly GI Bill benefits, he will be saddled with $50,000 in student loans when he graduates from
