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: orkneyjar.com
Aug 3, 2006
After four weeks of excavation at the Knowe o' Skea in Westray, archaeologists Graeme Wilson and Hazel Moore can boast a remarkable statistic.
The burials they have unearthed at the Berstness site make of an incredible 90 per cent of the known Iron Age remains found in Scotland to date.
And this year, the bodies are still turning up.
Prior to the start of work in 2000, Iron Age burials were rare - in the whole of Scotland, let alone Orkney.
Source: Introduction to the newly revised report filed by Rep. John Conyers
Aug 3, 2006
I (anti-immigrant “Palmer Raids”); World War II
(internment of Japanese Americans); and the Vietnam War (COINTELPRO); the risks to
our citizens’ rights today are potentially more grave, as the war on terror has no
specific end point.
-
are quite serious. However, the current Majority Party has shown little inclination to
engage in basic oversight, let alone question the Administration directly. The media,
though showing some signs of aggressiveness as of late, is increasingly conce
Source: USA Today
Aug 3, 2006
Local folklore has it that the small town of Bluffton, Ind., once had an ordinance to keep blacks out, Mayor Ted Ellis says. He never found proof but says he wondered why Bluffton remained 96% white while many other cities became more diverse.
"I always thought that Bluffton was no more hostile than other communities around," Ellis says.
Then came an anonymous letter about 18 months ago. It was a photocopy of a newspaper clipping about the opening of a restaurant in
Source: Hartford Courant
Aug 3, 2006
An attempt is underway to literally resurrect John Paul Jones' ship, the Bonhomme Richard, and its place in history. Since mid-July, an expedition launched from the Avery Point campus of the University of Connecticut in Groton has been searching the North Sea for the wreck of the Bonhomme Richard. The day before he left for England, the chief organizer of the hunt, Ret. Navy Capt. John "Jack" Ringelberg, turned on his office computer and punched up a map of the app
Source: NY Sun
Aug 3, 2006
The Brooklyn Public Library has agreed to stock a book that refers to London as a hotbed of terrorism, as an acquisitions librarian who initially rejected a patron's suggestion to buy the book, calling it "potentially incendiary," reversed his decision.
The librarian, Wayne Roylance, changed his mind days after the patron, disappointed with the decision, emailed him prominent critics' appraisals of the book, "Londonistan" by Melanie Phillips, a library spokeswoma
Source: Independent (UK)
Aug 3, 2006
Tomorrow, 920 years after it was compiled by an anonymous scribe, William the Conqueror's epic audit of life in medieval times will become available on the internet.He has become known as Scribe A and was, by the standards of the 11th century, an educated man who could read and write Latin. Deduced from his writings, Scribe A was English, but probably worked for the Bishop of Durham, one William of St Calais, a member of what was the French elite ruling England.
Source: Independent (UK)
Aug 3, 2006
For decades, anthropologists have combed the mountainous landscape of south-west France and the Spanish Pyrenees in an attempt to piece together the history of the Basque diaspora. Now, researchers are completing the puzzle with the help of a treasure trove of arborglyphs; thousands of 19th- and 20th-century tree carvings elaborately etched on to the trunks of aspen trees in the United States.
Some are rallying political cries for Basque solidarity, others depict the sexua
Source: USA Today
Aug 2, 2006
A 450-year-old piece of Charles V's pinkie lends support to the theory that it was gout that led one of the most powerful rulers of all time to abdicate, Spanish researchers report.
Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, whose empire stretched across Europe and included Spanish America, was diagnosed with gout by his doctors in early adulthood. By the end of his reign in 1556, he was a crippled man who could barely walk at times or ride a horse, said Dr. Pedro Luis Fernandez, a pathologist at the Uni
Source: NYT
Aug 2, 2006
John Stubbs, an American historic preservationist, had flicked on his flashlight and was slowly ascending a darkened staircase inside the Forbidden City when he stopped at a dusty paneled wall etched with elegant lines of calligraphy. “I didn’t even see this until yesterday, or two days ago!” exclaimed Mr. Stubbs, almost ecstatic, as he stood in the dank, musty air. The calligraphy was a poem by the 18th-century Qing dynasty emperor Qianlong, who built the room as part
Source: NYT
Aug 2, 2006
The United States should create a “deployable reserve” of contracting experts for emergency reconstruction efforts like the one in Iraq and should change federal law to remove the legal straitjackets that have helped slow the effort there, the first official history of the Iraq rebuilding effort has concluded.The 140-page history, based on dozens of inspections and audits of construction sites, interviews with participants and input from a panel of government, academic
Source: NYT
Aug 2, 2006
No more than four people at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg regularly visited the repository from which 221 objects have apparently been stolen, the museum’s director said on Tuesday. The director, Mikhail Piotrovsky, who described the missing items as Russian objects made from silver and enamel, did not accuse specific employees of the theft, which was announced abruptly on Monday in a statement on the museum’s Russian-language Web site.
But
Source: NYT
Aug 2, 2006
When they first met as United States president and Israeli prime minister, George W. Bush made clear to Ariel Sharon he would not follow in the footsteps of his father.
The first President Bush had been tough on Israel, especially the Israeli settlements in occupied lands that Mr. Sharon had helped develop. But over tea in the Oval Office that day in March 2001 — six months before the Sept. 11 attacks tightened their bond — the new president signaled a strong predisposition to suppo
Source: NYT
Aug 2, 2006
President Bush offered White House reporters plush armchair seating in the West Wing briefing room, with suede or velvet upholstery, and double the space.
Then he took it all back.
''Forget it,'' the president said Wednesday, as he and reporters bid goodbye to the briefing room and work spaces that the White House press corps has occupied in some form since the Nixon administration. ''You get to work like the rest of us,'' Bush said.
What reporters hope th
Source: Bryan-College Station Eagle
Aug 2, 2006
On the 40th anniversary of one of its darkest days, the University of Texas took possession of a box of documents related to the infamous massacre at the school's landmark tower. The university's Center for American History accepted the documents Tuesday from a bookstore chain pertaining to what was then the nation's worst mass shooting.On Aug. 1, 1966, Charles Whitman went to the 28th floor observation deck and began shooting at people below. He killed 16 people and wounded
Source: The Age (Australia)
Aug 2, 2006
The key to unlocking the Lebanese crisis may come down to a small plot of land, a badly drawn map, a softly spoken historian and some long-forgotten papers in an archive in Paris.For almost 40 years, a stumbling point between Syria, Lebanon and Israel has been the ownership of a sparsely populated enclave called the Shebaa Farms, which sits on the border of the three states and was seized by Israel from Syria in the 1967 war.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Ri
Source: Salt Lake Tribune
Aug 2, 2006
President Bush may have issued only one veto, but he has added more than 750 "signing statements" to new laws on issues such as detainee torture, the USA Patriot Act and whistle-blower protections. Last week, a task force from the American Bar Association came out against presidents using such statements to show their intention "to disregard or decline to enforce all or part of a law." The ABA also detailed how Bush is far from the first president to add his own interpretatio
Source: KVOA 4 (Tucson)
Aug 2, 2006
A national group is asking Arizona's public universities to require at least one United States history course of every student before graduation.American History currently isn't a required course at any of the state's major public universities.
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni has written letters to Gov. Janet Napolitano and 20 state lawmakers, asking them to pressure college regents and administrators to make the change.
"The flag d
Source: NYT
Aug 2, 2006
Most visitors are probably too busy watching the polished guards make their endless march in front of the Tomb of the Unknowns to see the cracks working their way across the monument. But each year those cracks creep farther and deeper.
The tomb, a must-see stop for the four million annual visitors to Arlington National Cemetery, is not in danger of crumbling anytime soon. But the cemetery is deciding whether to patch the fissures or replace the marble altogether.
“We k
Source: physorg,com
Aug 1, 2006
The thumbnail-sized bone fragments are engraved with parallel lines and match similar artefacts uncovered in the same area during the 19th century. They were carved by hunter-gatherers as they slowly made their way north in pursuit of moving populations of mammoth and reindeer 25-30,000 years ago.
The unusual find was made by a Cambridge scholar, Becky Farbstein, who has been working at Predmosti in north Moravia, in the Czech Republic. The excavation team comprises archaeologists
Source: Scotsman.com
Aug 1, 2006
IN ANCIENT times, when Scotland was virtually covered in dense forest, there was only one way to get around. Traveling by boat helped early Scots to find food and trade goods with their neighbours.
Now, with the excavation of a 3,000-year-old log boat, archaeologists are hoping to learn more about how prehistoric Scots used the vast network of rivers and lochs. . .
While the remains of 30 log boats survive today – the oldest was a stern portion of a log boat, carbon da
