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: Independent (UK)
Aug 11, 2006
Fragments of ostrich eggs, perforated beads and finely shaped arrowheads have provided the first firm archaeological evidence for the "out of Africa" origins of the world's human population.
Scientists have found stark similarities in the ancient cultural artefacts made and used by Stone Age people who migrated out of Africa and into Asia more than 50,000 years ago.
It is the first time that archaeologists have been able to link African and Indian artefacts so
Source: NYT
Aug 11, 2006
JAKARTA, Indonesia, Aug. 10 — The plot to blow up several airliners over the Atlantic, uncovered by British authorities, bears a striking, if not eerie, resemblance to a plot hatched 12 years ago to simultaneously blow up a dozen airliners over the Pacific.That scheme was developed in Manila by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was starting his climb to become a top lieutenant to Osama bin Laden, and Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, who was a mastermind of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade C
Source: Wa Po
Aug 11, 2006
Breathing a little easier as their convoy of armored sport-utility vehicles pulled through the gate of Tallil air base at 3:15 p.m., the engineers headed not for the comfort of their air-conditioned bunks but for an enormous mound of mud and brick tucked inside the base.
A few minutes later, they stood at the foot of the 4,100-year-old ziggurat, or temple tower, of Ur. They were no longer two dozen or so tired, sweaty soldiers toiling to rebuild a war-torn country. They were constru
Source: News Release -- David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
Aug 11, 2006
Fifty-three leading Holocaust scholars from around the world have sent a letter to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, denouncing his statements comparing Israel to the Nazis.
The signatories include two former senior officials of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Dr. Michael Berenbaum and Dr. Walter Reich; Journal of Genocide Research editor Henry Huttenbach; Genocide Watch president Gregory Stanton; Prof. David S. Wyman, author of the The Abandonment of the Jews; and numerous ot
Source: Yahoo
Aug 10, 2006
YAKIMA, Wash. - A federal law governing protection of American Indian graves would be amended to allow scientific study of ancient remains discovered on federal lands if the remains have not been tied to a current tribe, under a bill proposed by U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings.
The bill marks the latest step in a dispute sparked by the discovery of Kennewick Man, one of the oldest and most complete skeletons ever found in North America. Indian tribes and researchers battled over rights to th
Source: Times Online (UK)
Aug 10, 2006
CHINA’S claim to have invented paper was strengthened yesterday when archaeologists announced a discovery that suggests it was in use at least 100 years earlier than thought.
A scrap of paper made from linen fibre was found by archaeologists picking through an ancient rubbish tip at the Yumen Pass, the gate between China and Central Asia.
Measuring only 1.6sq in, it is believed to have been made in 8BC, or 113 years earlier than the first known paper. Fu Licheng, the curator
Source: NYT
Aug 10, 2006
From a promontory high above the Pentagon, three arching spires reach skyward, their elongated tips pointing to the infinity of space.
They appear as abstract art forms but only until their symbolism is made clear by their setting: They are the starring elements of a memorial to the United States Air Force, the only branch of the American military that has not had a prominent monument in the Washington area.
More than 14 years in planning, the memorial is in the final s
Source: NYT
Aug 10, 2006
When the Blackfoot Nation approached the Denver Art Museum about borrowing a horse shawl for a ceremony a few years ago, the museum faced a quandary. Curators were eager to oblige, but they worried that the ritual would expose the early-20th-century relic to the damaging effects of horse sweat. After a delicate negotiation, a compromise was reached: The tribe would use the object in the ceremony without actually putting it on the horse.
The story is not unusual. As American Indian a
Source: BBC
Aug 10, 2006
It's 200 years since Britain's invading army was routed from Buenos Aires - a mere footnote in British history, but, says military historian Peter Caddick-Adams, a historic event in the forging of friendship between the two countries that eclipses the Falklands fall-out.
Source: Education Gadfly, published by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
Aug 10, 2006
[An issue brief issued by The U.S. Department of Education: National Center for Education Statistics]' examines the qualifications of those who taught secondary school history during 1999-2000.
While earlier studies looked at the percentages of teachers ''in-field'' (those with a postsecondary major and state certification in the subject they were teaching) and ''out-of-field'' (those without), the extent to which out-of-field teachers have other training or skills related to their
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Aug 10, 2006
M. Avrum Ehrlich, a 37-year-old professor from Australia, is one of the first foreign academics to teach Hebrew Bible, Talmudic thought, and the Kabbalah in China. His ambitious plan is to put this sleepy provincial university on the map as an international center of Judaic studies.
Part of Mr. Ehrlich's pedagogy is to immerse his students in rituals central to Judaism. Thus he holds this weekly gathering at his apartment — complete with chopsticks.
"It's sort of
Source: Saugus Advertiser
Aug 10, 2006
A rock that has been propping open doors in the Zapolski household for decades is actually a 4,000-year-old Native American axe.
"My mother used it as a doorstop," said Kathy (Johnston) Zapolski this week.
Zapolski’s 90-year-old aunt, Adele Colby, recalls that some time in the early 1900s her father (Zapolski’s grandfather) was attempting to plant a garden in his backyard on Willis Street when he came across a slightly-rounded, carved rock that resem
Source: Yahoo
Aug 9, 2006
Some 30 percent of Americans cannot say in what year the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington took place, according to a poll published in the Washington Post newspaper.
While the country is preparing to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the attacks that claimed nearly 3,000 lives and shocked the world, 95 percent of Americans questioned in the poll were able to remember the month and the day of the attacks, acc
Source: AP
Aug 9, 2006
ROCK HILL, S.C. (AP) ˜ Robert McCullough, who led a group of black students
in a landmark 1961 civil rights protest, choosing to serve jail time on a
chain gang for the crime of sitting at a whites-only lunch counter, has
died. He was 64.
McCullough died Monday, Robinson Funeral Home spokesman Samuel Reid said. He
did not give a cause of death.
McCullough, along with eight other black students from Friendship Junior
College, gained widespread attention when they used the"ja
Source: China.org
Aug 9, 2006
One of the world's oldest handicraft workshops, dating back more than 3,600 years, may have been discovered by Chinese archaeologists in the country's Henan Province.
Covering about 1,000 square meters the workshop used turquoise to make elaborate and ornate works of art. The workshop was found in the village of Erlitou of Yanshi City and is part of the ruins of the imperial city belonging to the Xia dynasty (2100 BC-1600 BC), China's earliest. The imperial city was discovered two y
Source: Washington Times
Aug 9, 2006
At least 125 persons died at the Berlin Wall in the three decades before the great symbol of divided Cold War Europe was finally torn down in 1989, German researchers said yesterday.
But the latest findings of a government-backed project hoping to close this chapter of German history suggest that fewer people died at the barrier between formerly communist East Berlin and free West Berlin than previously thought.
Although there are still 81 cases under investigation, the f
Source: Newsletter of Secrecy News, which is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Aug 9, 2006
The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) said this week that it
will not administer a grant to a San Antonio, Texas law school to
study state freedom of information laws. In a story that prompted new concerns about official secrecy, USA
Today reported last month that the government was going to pay St. Mary's University School of Law $1 million to reevaluate state
freedom of information laws in light of the threat of terrorism.But the proposed freedom of information stud
Source: Independent (UK)
Aug 9, 2006
A spectacular discovery of Stone Age menhirs in Brittany could unlock the code to one of the most puzzling chapters of human development, and transform our knowledge of mankind's early history.Some months ago builders were clearing a piece of wasteland in southern Brittany when they struck an enormous hunk of granite. The developer was no historian but he knew instantly what the obstacle must be: the remains of a buried "menhir" or neolithic standing st
Source: Independent (UK)
Aug 9, 2006
Russia has suffered its second major art theft in as many weeks, with the plundering of hundreds of drawings worth at least £1.5m from the State Archive of Literature and Art in Moscow.
The drawings were the work of the late Yakov Chernikhov, a leading artist and architect of the Soviet era who specialised in "constructivist" socialist design. The thief or thieves emptied hundreds of folders containing drawings, replacing them with worthless "dummy" sketches to d
Source: NYT
Aug 9, 2006
PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 7 — Hands off our Liberty. That is what Philadelphia officials are saying to a plan by the National Park Service to erect a seven-foot-tall fence behind Independence Hall. One effect of the project would be to bisect the historic square where the Declaration of Independence was publicly read for the first time, on July 8, 1776.
The plan calls for a wrought-iron fence about 130 feet behind the building, the original home of the Liberty Bell. The Park Service, which
