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: Peter Popham in The Independent
Apr 5, 2007
GIZA, Egypt -- The modern world has not been kind to the pyramids of Giza. Just a generation ago they were out in the desert, which is how they still look in the postcards, shot from carefully selected angles. But rampant development has hemmed them in with the accoutrements of the tourist trade -- cafes, restaurants, souvenir workshops, stables for horses and camels, tacky little establishments of every sort, and slummy accommodation into which tourist hawkers are crammed.
Then com
Source: Novinite/Sofia News Agency
Apr 5, 2007
Bulgaria's government decided Thursday to open a museum in honour of country's late prophet Vanga, Darik News reported.
The museum will be founded in the town of Petrich as the government announced it donated a municipal property for the cause. The exposition will include many of Vanga's belongings and many photos...
Baba Vanga (Grandma Vanga), a blind peasant whose clairvoyant powers gave her saint-like status across Bulgaria, died at 84. Born in neighbouring Macedonia
Source: The Acorn (Agoura Hills, Calif.)
Apr 5, 2007
Home buyers and history and mystery buffs have the chance to own a bit of Agoura Hills' lore if they buy a house high in the hills above Agoura Road.
The four-bedroom, three-bath home sitting atop a 1.38-acre hilly lot offers some unique amenities- a 14-foot statue of an Indian sculpted by Count Jean de Strelecki, a Polish immigrant and artist; caves once used as an outpost for weary travelers; a stone mask either engraved or embedded in the side of the hill and possibly other artif
Source: National Geographic News
Apr 5, 2007
The earliest direct ancestors of modern humans may have looked more like apes than previously thought, a new study suggests.
But the findings, based on a reconstructed 1.9-million-year-old skull, are highly controversial among the anthropological community.
New computer-generated reconstructions suggest that the specimen had a smaller brain than scientists had believed as well as a distinctly protruding jaw."We see in this new reconstruction primitive features that are carryovers
Source: AP
Apr 5, 2007
RALEIGH, N.C. - The North Carolina Senate apologized Thursday for the Legislature's role in promoting slavery and Jim Crow laws that denied basic human rights to the state's black citizens.
Following the lead of lawmakers in neighboring Virginia, the Senate unanimously backed a resolution acknowledging its "profound contrition for the official acts that sanctioned and perpetuated the denial of basic human rights and dignity to fellow humans."
Source: UPI
Apr 5, 2007
CLEVELAND -- John Demjanjuk, the retired autoworker accused of being a Nazi concentration camp guard, appears likely to live out his days in the United States.
No other country is willing to accept the 87-year-old, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported...
Demjanjuk was sentenced to death in Israel for being a notorious guard at the Treblinka death camp known as Ivan the Terrible. But he eventually won an appeal and returned to the United States.
A federal jud
Source: Discovery News
Apr 5, 2007
The darkness and terror on the night the Titanic sank are described in a letter, released yesterday, written by survivor Laura Mabel Francatelli shortly after the disaster.
The letter, along with her official affidavit during a subsequent legal inquiry and her life preserver, will be sold at a Christie's auction on May 16. The life preserver was signed by men and women aboard the lifeboat...
[After finally boarding an emergency lifeboat] she wrote, "...we went down
Source: AP
Apr 5, 2007
The most infamous feud in American folklore, the long-running battle between the Hatfields and McCoys, may be partly explained by a rare, inherited disease that can lead to hair-trigger rage and violent outbursts.
Dozens of McCoy descendants apparently have the [Von Hippel-Lindau] disease, which causes high blood pressure, racing hearts, severe headaches and too much adrenaline and other "fight or flight" stress hormones...
"This condition can certainly m
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
Apr 5, 2007
The Central Intelligence Agency has released a newly
declassified version of its closely-held internal history of
the Berlin Tunnel Operation, which was an effort in the
mid-1950s to tap into Soviet communications through a tunnel
constructed in the Soviet sector of Berlin. The operation was
famously compromised by a Soviet mole in British intelligence
before it even began.
The official CIA history of the operation was prepared in 1968
Source: Telegraph
Apr 5, 2007
One of the earliest Victoria Crosses presented to a British serviceman is to be sold.
Commander John Bythesea's honour was presented for his bravery during the Crimean War when he led a raid to capture important dispatches sent by the Tsar of Russia.
In August 1854 Commander Bythesea, later a rear-admiral, was serving on the frigate Arrogant stationed in the Baltic when he volunteered to take on the mission.
He convinced the ship's captain, Hastings Yelvert
Source: Telegraph
Apr 5, 2007
ROME -- A drama professor has published a two-act play after a 30-year labour of love studying a text scribbled by the baroque sculptor and architect Bernini on the back of sketches for his work on the Trevi Fountain in Rome.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini was also a playwright to the popes and led a troupe of actors in Renaissance Italy. The play, Truth Uncovered by Time, is a farce in which a genius sculptor called Graziano Magnifico struggles against a rival for the patronage of Pop
Source: Times (of London)
Apr 5, 2007
JOHANNESBURG -- A folk song that invokes the return of a fabled Boer general to lead his downtrodden people has become a massive hit in South Africa and raised fears of a revival of Afrikaner nationalism.
More than 180,000 copies have been sold of De La Rey, a tribute to Koos de la Rey, regarded as the most powerful and unyielding of the Boer generals who fought against the British.
Wherever young Afrikaners now gather —- at rugby matches, cultural festivals or barbeque
Source: Times (of London)
Apr 5, 2007
The band played on, engineers fought to maintain power and the captain remained at his post as the Titanic went down on the night of April 14, 1912.
To these stubborn acts of courage can be be added those of the ship’s five postmen.
This month the keys and chain of the postmaster of the Titanic mail room, prised from his frozen body, emerged for auction, and with them a bewildering story of postal heroism...
[Postmaster Oscar Woody] had no intention of lett
Source: Telegraph
Apr 5, 2007
Tajikistan's increasingly eccentric president yesterday demanded the surrender of the Oxus treasure, one of the British Museum's most celebrated collections, as he stepped up a controversial campaign to restore national pride.
Emomali Rakhmonov made the call after visiting the location where he believes the priceless Persian artifacts from the 5th to 4th century BC were found...
A museum spokesman said that trustees had received no formal request from the Tajik governme
Source: AP
Apr 5, 2007
PHILADELPHIA -- The typed letter in which Teddy Roosevelt first used the phrase "speak softly and carry a big stick" is for sale at $200,000.
It was written in 1900, and Roosevelt, then governor of New York, is pleased he convinced Republicans to reject a reappointment: "I have always been fond of the West African proverb: 'Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.' If I had not carried the big stick ... I would not have had 10 votes. But I was entirely go
Source: AP
Apr 5, 2007
NEW YORK -- A Russian researcher, delving anew into once-secret Soviet files from the Cold War, says she has found no evidence that Alger Hiss spied or that Soviet intelligence had any particular interest in him.
In a speech to be delivered at a New York University symposium Thursday, Svetlana A. Chervonnaya says neither Hiss' name nor his alleged spy moniker, Ales, appears in any of dozens of documents from Soviet archives that she has reviewed since the early 1990s...
Source: People's Daily Online (Beijing)
Apr 4, 2007
Landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) are still in 6 million hectares of land in Vietnam or over 21. 1 percent of the country's land surface area, according to a UN agency in Vietnam on Wednesday.
"According to Vietnam's Ministry of Defense's Technology Center on Unexploded Ordnance and Landmine Disposal, around 600,000 tons of war-era ordnance remain in the ground throughout Vietnam... It is estimated that from the end of the Vietnam-American war in 1975 to the year 2000, 42
Source: Mainichi Daily News (Tokyo)
Apr 4, 2007
The Civil War brought hard times to the southern state of Georgia, with Union troops from the North torching Atlanta and cutting a swath of destruction through the state before delivering Savannah to President Abraham Lincoln as an early Christmas gift on Dec. 22, 1864.
Nearly a century and a half later, state leaders are hoping Georgia's role in the epic conflict will have a much different impact _ drawing in millions of tourism dollars by promoting its Civil War-era sites.
Source: BBC
Apr 4, 2007
Democratic Unionist leader Ian Paisley and the Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern are to visit the historic site of the 1690 Battle of the Boyne.
Mr Paisley said it would show "how far we have come when we can celebrate and learn from the past".
He was speaking after talks with the taoiseach in Dublin when the pair shook hands publicly for the first time.
Mr Paisley said he hoped "old suspicions and discord can be buried forever" through mutual
Source: BBC News
Apr 4, 2007
ATHENS -- Controversy is raging in Greece over a new school history book, which critics say is designed to improve relations with Greece's ancient rival, Turkey.
Leading opposition is the Orthodox church, which says the book waters down the severity of Turkish brutality towards Greece over the centuries...
"There won't be any clear identity of what the Greek fights were all about and why did we want to rebel against the Turks," Jeni Tutsis, a teacher, told the
