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: Ansa.it
Apr 3, 2006
A fourth-century papyrus manuscript containing the long-lost 'Gospel of Judas' will be presented in Washington on Thursday .
The Gospel of Judas is one of several ancient accounts of Christ's life which were rejected as suspect by the fathers of the early Church and so they did not become part of the Bible .
Vatican officials have denied that the publication this week is part of a rehabilitation of Judas by the Catholic Church .The document re
Source: macleans.ca
Apr 3, 2006
Nina von Stauffenberg, widow of the aristocratic Nazi army officer who tried to kill Adolf Hitler with a briefcase bomb, has died, an official said Monday. She was 92.
Peter Kirchner, mayor of Kirchlauter in the southern state of Bavaria where von Stauffenberg lived, said the widow of Col. Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg died Sunday morning, but gave no further details.Col. von Stauffenberg was one of the best known internal German resistance figh
Source: AP
Apr 3, 2006
With a year to go before it even touches the water, the Navy's amphibious assault ship USS New York has already made history twice. It was built with 24 tons of scrap steel from the World Trade Center, and it survived Hurricane Katrina.
USS New York is about 45 percent complete and should be ready for launch in mid-2007. Katrina disrupted construction when it pounded the Gulf Coast last summer, but the 684-foot vessel escaped serious damage, and workers were back at the yard near New Orl
Source: physorg.com
Apr 3, 2006
Thousands of years after the advent of agriculture, ancient farmers in India routinely foraged for wild plants — even weeds — when times got tough, a UCLA archaeologist has found.
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Apr 3, 2006
New York University triumphantly announced last week that it had received a $200 million gift to finance a new Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, designed as a haven for top-notch, cross-disciplinary scholarship “across geographic and cultural boundaries.”
But while celebrated in certain quarters at NYU, the mammoth gift has laid bare deep divisions among anthropologists, art historians and others who study antiquity at the university and elsewhere in academe, centered ar
Source: WaPo
Apr 3, 2006
Two prominent academics, a dean at Harvard and a professor at the University of Chicago, have stirred a tempest by writing a paper arguing that the Israel lobby often persuades the United States to set aside its own security to pursue the best interests of Israel."No lobby has managed to divert U.S. foreign policy as far from what the American national interest would otherwise suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. and Israeli interests are essenti
Source: The Daily Telegraph
Apr 3, 2006
TWO British adventurers who retraced the steps of Chairman Mao's Long March have come under attack from Chinese media for claiming in a book that the Red Army's trek was not nearly as long as previously thought. Ed Jocelyn and Andy McEwen hiked across China's most remote places in a tribute to the men and women whose escape from their nationalist enemies in China's civil war is the founding legend of the Communist Party.
Their year-long trip, which ended in 2003, was met at first wi
Source: Time (Canada)
Apr 2, 2006
In February, the English cricket team — virtual demigods in their country after defeating Australia last summer — were attending a reception amid the Rembrandts and Rubenses in the Picture Gallery of Buckingham Palace. Queen Elizabeth had just pinned medals on the athletes' chests signifying their new status as Members of the Order of the British Empire, and was strolling among them, chatting and laughing with their proud families. She was the star of the show, making people grin — indeed, somet
Source: CBS News/Weekly Standard
Apr 2, 2006
Thousands of troops have died fighting a war he chose to fight — a war that increasingly appears to be a microcosm of something much larger than what the American people had bargained for. He seems to be stretching presidential power beyond what his predecessors ever imagined. His approval ratings hover around the freezing point. It's no coincidence that his party is beginning to stray from him, and the press is writing him off as a failure.
What sounds like a thumbnail sketch of G
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Apr 2, 2006
A bill of sale for a slave is one of hundreds of documents on display at the Atlanta History Center's new exhibit, "Old Money, New Money: The Rise of Southern Capitalism" — an unabashed look at the upside and downside of 150 years of Southern economic and business history.
Unlike most Southern history, written in the grand sweep of big events, this is an on-the-street look at the deeds, bonds, bills of sale, stock certificates, bank notes, posters and other documents that
Source: BBC
Apr 2, 2006
Workers renovating a plaza in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, have stumbled across a forgotten cemetery. It was used by early immigrants in the first half of the 19th Century. It was called the dissident cemetery since it was used by the Protestant and Jewish communities who were not allowed to bury their dead in the Roman Catholic cemeteries used by the majority of the population.
The find has excited experts keen to learn more about their cou
Source: BBCNews
Apr 2, 2006
As unions and students gear up for another strike against French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin's controversial youth employment law, the BBC news website looks at how previous "people power" protests have forced climbdowns in government policy.2005: SCHOOL REFORM
In February 2005, education minister Francois Fillon was forced to withdraw key elements of school reform after protests by pupils and teachers.
President Jacques Chirac's
Source: Rocky Mountain News
Apr 2, 2006
A Kansas judge told two University of Colorado professors on Friday that they can exhume a 127-year-old cadaver to, perhaps, determine its true identity. CU law professor Mimi Wesson and anthropology professor Dennis Van Gerven were present at the brief hearing in Lawrence. "We're elated," Wesson said. "We were geared up for a hammer-and-tong fight. And we're laughing because it was so anti-climactic." Their petition was unopposed, although it represented new legal terrain fo
Source: LAT
Apr 2, 2006
The year was 1906. The city was demolished by an earthquake. Then ravaged by fire. San Francisco quickly rebuilt and trumpeted itself as a world-class city gracefully risen from the ashes. What would be remembered through the years were the positives: the heroism, the generosity of neighboring cities, the gorgeous architecture that replaced what was lost.
Hidden in the city's rewritten history were darker realities. In the chaos, San Franciscans lashed out at the underclass -- beati
Source: The Daily Telegraph
Apr 2, 2006
ANYONE with an ancestor who travelled on the Titanic's doomed maiden voyage will soon be able to gain access to their details on the internet.
1837online.com, the family history website, has signed a pounds 2.5m deal to scan and place online the National Archives' entire historical database of passengers who embarked on sea voyages from Britain's shores between 1890 and 1960. This includes the one and only voyage of Titanic, which was made into a Hollywood blockbuster starring Kate
Source: Berkeley
Apr 1, 2006
Some lectures from historians at Berkeley are being putting online.
They are available for free through the iTune store.
Click on the Source link above to see the list.
Source: Robert Townsend in AHA Perspectives (April 2006)
Apr 1, 2006
Historians teach more and slightly larger classes than faculty in most other disciplines, but make less use of technology, according to the 2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty.
Alongside the valuable data on who teaches history in two- and four-year colleges and universities and what they earn that we reported in the March 2006 Perspectives, the new study also provides important insights into some work practices of historians, and allows us to see them in the larger contex
Source: Bruce Craig in the AHA Perspectives (April 2006)
Apr 1, 2006
Over the last couple of years, several historians and scholars have been either prevented from taking up teaching posts or not allowed to make presentations to scholarly organizations because they have been determined by government officials to be security risks. For example, back in October 2004, the government made a wholesale rejection of visa applications from Cuban scholars and intellectuals invited to attend a national meeting of the Latin American Studies Association (see "AHA Expres
Source: China View
Apr 1, 2006
Chinese archaeologists are studying the DNA samples extracted from the bones of horses unearthed from ancient sites to probe the origin of domestic horses in China.
It's still a mystery to archaeologists when and where horses were first tamed in China, said Cai Dawei, a researcher with the center of archaeological research for China's border area under the Jilin University in Northwest China.
Source: Yahoo
Apr 1, 2006
Archaeologists are expected to begin searching thousands of acres on the Middle Peninsula this summer for Indian artifacts, marking one of the biggest investigations of its kind in Virginia history. The area to be explored is the future site of a reservoir approved for construction last year, a project that has drawn fierce opposition from three Indian tribes.
The tribes also are upset about the archaeological dig, which will focus on 6,000 acres of forest
