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: NYT
Sep 26, 2006
When Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite and more powerful explosives, died in 1896, he bequeathed the bulk of his fortune to create five annual prizes honoring ingenuity. The chemistry, medicine and physics prizes have come to be widely regarded as the most esteemed in their fields. The two others, literature and peace, are more controversial.
Yet in a little known story, the Nobel Prizes, the first of which will be announced on Monday, almost never came to be, largely b
Source: Regnum News Agency (Russia)
Sep 26, 2006
Famous actor-director Mel Gibson has staged a surprise presentation of his new movie at the Fantastic Fest in Austin (USA).
Gibson presents his new Apocalypto picture about Mayan civilization, on which he is working right now and screened some footage from the film. At the promotion screening, Gibson drew parallels between the Mayan civilization and the current situation in the United States, concerning the Iraqi operation.
As Kinoafisha reports, the film depicts coll
Source: Independent (UK)
Sep 26, 2006
Standing seven feet tall, Admiral Zheng He towered over his crew at the prow of his legendary treasure ship. Setting out six centuries ago on the first of seven landmark voyages, he reached south-east Asia, India, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and as far as the east coast of Africa. Some say he may even have made it to America.
The exploits of the intrepid Ming Dynasty explorer known as the Three-Jewelled Eunuch, a devout Muslim of Mongolian descent from Yunnan province, still res
Source: The Irish Times
Sep 26, 2006
An expert advisory group has recommended the release of the Department of Justice's historic material covering a 30-year period from the foundation of the State. This means that records relating to national security and Northern Ireland up to the 1950s are to be made available for historians, researchers and the general public.
In its interim report released yesterday, the Justice Archives Advisory Group concluded that the documents should be transferred over the next 12 months to t
Source: The Times (London)
Sep 26, 2006
A COLLECTION of sacred artefacts looted by the Romans from the Temple of Jerusalem and long suspected of being hidden in the vaults of the Vatican is actually in the Holy Land, according to a British archeologist. Sean Kingsley, a specialist in the Holy Land, claims to have discovered what became of the collection, which includes silver trumpets that would have heralded the coming of the Messiah and is widely regarded as the greatest of biblical treasures.
The trumpets, gold candela
Source: Times Online (UK)
Sep 25, 2006
A COLLECTION of sacred artefacts looted by the Romans from the Temple of
Jerusalem and long suspected of being hidden in the vaults of the Vatican
are actually in the Holy Land, according to a British archaeologist.
Sean Kingsley, a specialist in the Holy Land, claims to have discovered
what became of the collection, which is widely regarded as the greatest of
biblical treasures and includes silver trumpets that would have heralded
the Coming of the Messiah.
The trumpets, gold cand
Source: CNN
Sep 25, 2006
Watercolors attributed to Adolf Hitler, painted when he was serving in the German army during World War One and then hidden away for more than 60 years, will be auctioned in southwest England on Tuesday.The 21 paintings and sketches, the largest sale of Hitler's artwork for many years, has attracted huge interest and collectors from Russia, the United States and South Africa are expected to bid in the quiet Cornish town of Lostwithiel.
"People have been rin
Source: Stone Pages
Sep 24, 2006
Luck is only sometimes on the side of Bulgaria's archaeologists, as they race gangsters to unearth the treasure of the ancient Thracians. It was with Daniela Agre last month when she came across a Black Sea hotel owner flattening a 2,000-year-old burial mound and found a horde of gold and silver jewellery that she thinks belonged to a Thracian priestess. Another archaeologist was served in a remote rural shop by a woman wearing a string of 5,000-year-old gold beads, found by her husband in sunfl
Source: Reuters
Sep 24, 2006
NAZCA, Peru — High priests at an ancient religious compound in southern Peru may have designed the mysterious Nazca lines, a set of huge geometric patterns, animal figures and long lines etched in the desert, the area's top archaeologist said.
Researchers say the Cahua-chi compound, built in 400 B.C., is just across the Nazca Valley from the lines, one of Peru's most popular tourist attractions and a U.N. World Heritage site.
"It is logical to think that the Nazca people's rel
Source: icwales.icnetwork.co.uk
Sep 24, 2006
YOU think your man is a neanderthal, research by a leading DNA expert may mean you're closer to the truth than you ever realised.
Prehistoric man died out in the UK 30,000 years ago.
But Bryan Sykes, a professor of human genetics at Oxford University, says the last of the real neanderthal bloodline could have been carried by a pair of Mid Wales twins who died in the 1980s.
It could make the brothers the missing link between ancient and modern man.
Source: The State (NC)
Sep 24, 2006
Government assistance to the poor has evolved as social attitudes toward poverty have changed, social historians say.
The decade-old reform of the U.S. system — and recent reauthorization of the changes — are examples.
In recent years, Americans have embraced more of a take-care-of-yourself attitude. That fueled the work requirements and time limits on payments that are the heart of today’s welfare system.
“There was a period of time when we sort of said, ‘
Source: CBS News
Sep 24, 2006
Veterans Day Came a little early this year for a group of World War II vets from North Carolina, aged 79 to 102. As CBS Sunday Morning contributor Bill Geist reports, they journeyed to see the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.
They were there because Jeff Miller, a local businessman in Hendersonville, N.C., started a campaign in March to send every World War II veteran in the country who wanted to see it.
"Sixteen million served in World War II. Now there
Source: NYT
Sep 24, 2006
Disarming Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese Shiite group that fought Israel last month, is a major goal in Washington, Jerusalem and even among the political elite in Beirut. But the main stumbling block, at least according to Hezbollah’s current position, is a 10-mile-square area of hilly land known as Shabaa Farms.
Israel and the United Nations say the land belongs to Syria and is part of the Golan Heights that has been occupied by Israel since the 1967 war. But the Lebanese insist
Source: NYT
Sep 24, 2006
SHORTLY after terrorists attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush’s speechwriters began grappling with a linguistic puzzle: What to call the enemy? In the five years since, Mr. Bush has road-tested an array of terms: evildoers, jihadists, Islamic extremists, even “Al Qaeda suiciders.”
But no phrase has crashed and burned as fast as the president’s most recent entry into the foreign policy lexicon: Islamic fascists, or, Islamo-fascism.
This latest ite
Source: NYT
Sep 24, 2006
WHEN President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela used his General Assembly appearance to call President Bush a devil who had left a telltale scent of sulfur on the speaker’s podium, he was acting in an old, if not grand, tradition.The General Assembly hall with its green marble rostrum and giant golden screen bearing the United Nations seal was meant to sound with high-minded calls for international understanding. But on more than a few occasions, the cathedral-like space has rung instead with barbs and
Source: NYT
Sep 24, 2006
Two years ago, Saudia Muwwakkil, the director of communications for the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, invited community leaders to discuss how to mark the 100th anniversary of a 1906 race riot in which mobs of whites descended on the city’s black residents.
The racial strife shut down Atlanta for four days and ended with the bodies of black men hanging from trees and streetlights. But of those Ms. Muwwakkil called, almost none had heard of it.
The riot,
Source: NYT
Sep 24, 2006
Eighty-eight years after Pvt. Francis Lupo fell in battle near the Marne River east of Paris, his remains have been recovered and identified by the Pentagon.
Private Lupo, of Cincinnati, was killed on July 21, 1918, while attacking German forces near Soissons, France. His remains were found by a French archaeologist in 2003 and identified by the Pentagon’s Joint P.O.W.-M.I.A. Accounting Command and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory.
He is the first World Wa
Source: Canberra Times
Sep 23, 2006
The remains of five men, believed to be Australian soldiers killed during World War I, are among the best preserved ever found on the Western Front, two experts familiar with the exhumation have claimed.
A geologist and co-secretary of the All Party War Graves and Battlefield Heritage Group for the British Parliament, Professor Peter Doyle, said the men were wrapped in groundsheets and bound in wire before being buried, probably by their colleagues, who may have hoped to re-inter them at
Source: Newport News Daily Press
Sep 23, 2006
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. - Four years after Navy divers pulled the USS Monitor gun turret from the ocean's grasp, the historic Civil War artifact has compiled a long record of surprising people with its secrets.
But few revelations have been more unexpected than the artifacts that turned up during seemingly routine excavations inside the new conservation facility at the Mariners' Museum this summer.
Probing through some of the last deposits that remain after the removal of ton
Source: Scotsman.com
Sep 23, 2006
A DOCUMENT containing the earliest known map of Charles Towne, the first permanent European settlement in the Carolinas, has been discovered in the archives at Aberdeen University.
The document was uncovered while staff were carrying out an assessment of historic material ahead of the creation of the university's new library and special collections centre.It was among papers belonging to James Fraser, who was born in Inverness-shire in 1645 and educated at King'
