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: canada.com
Jan 13, 2006
A scientist who found deep grooves chiselled into the teeth of dozens of 1,000-year-old Viking skeletons unearthed in Sweden believes the strange custom might have been learned from aboriginal tribes during ancient Norse voyages to North America -- a finding that would represent an unprecedented case of transatlantic, cross-cultural exchange during the age of Leif Ericsson.
The marks are believed to be decorations meant to enhance a man's appearance, or badges of honour for a group of grea
Source: USA Today
Jan 13, 2006
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who fought the laws and spirit of segregation, may soon take his historical place alongside the most illustrious of U.S. presidents.
Organizers of a King memorial hope to break ground on the National Mall in November, placing the civil rights leader in the same class as Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They are accelerating their efforts to raise enough money to begin construction and complete the project in 2008, the 40t
Source: CNN
Jan 13, 2006
The central Ohio city of Westerville, once known as the "dry capital of the world," is dry no more.
A pizza parlor on Thursday became the first establishment in Westerville's uptown business district to legally serve a beer since 1875.
"Here's to a new tradition in Westerville," local jeweler Bill Morgan said as he raised his plastic cup of Budweiser at Michael's Pizza.
Source: BBC News
Jan 13, 2006
Scientists claim to have solved the murder mystery of the baby that holds the key to all of humanity's ancestry.
For decades, scientists have argued over what killed the 2m-year-old Taung Child, found in 1924: the first ape-man fossil to be discovered in Africa.
Some scientists had believed the child was killed by leopards.
Prof Lee Berger challenged this, suggesting that the Taung child was attacked from above by a bird. But u
Source: BBC News
Jan 13, 2006
Middlesex University is to suspend its history courses, blaming falling numbers of applicants.
Source: BBC News
Jan 13, 2006
The government has been urged to fund the return to Belfast of a ship described as an "important building block" in a Titanic tourist project.
North Belfast MP Nigel Dodds says cash is needed to bring back SS Nomadic, the last of the White Star ships.
The ship, built at Harland and Wolff the year before the Titanic, was used as a tender to take first-class passengers to and from the great liner.
It is currently in Le Harve, France, and will be auctio
Source: BBC News
Jan 13, 2006
Almost half of Europe's Jews are descended from just four women, according to a new study. Scientists studied the mitochondrial DNA - passed from mother to daughter - of 11,000 women of Ashkenazi Jewish origin living in 67 countries.
The Ashkenazis moved from the Mid-East to Italy and then to Eastern Europe, where their population exploded in the 13th Century, the scientists say. The four women are thought to have lived in the Middle East about 1,000 year
Source: BBC News
Jan 13, 2006
A map due to be unveiled in Beijing and London next week may lend weight to a theory a Chinese admiral discovered America before Christopher Columbus. The map, which shows North and South America, apparently states that it is a 1763 copy of another map made in 1418.
If true, it could imply Chinese mariners discovered and mapped America decades before Columbus' 1492 arrival. The map, which is being dated to check it was made in 1763, faces a lot of scepticism from experts.
Source: NYT
Jan 13, 2006
The Italian government has relayed a formal proposal to the Metropolitan Museum of Art that would grant the museum special access to long-term loans in exchange for the return of 20 works of Greek and Roman art that the Italians say were illegally removed from their country. The proposed accord, a copy of which was provided to The New York Times, would specifically absolve the museum of any knowledge of wrongdoing and avert possible legal steps against the museum by the Italian government.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Jan 13, 2006
MEXICO'S SUPREME COURT on Wednesday rejected prosecutors' latest attempt to try a former president for genocide in a 1968 massacre of student protesters. A panel of justices upheld a lower court's ruling that the prosecutors did not have enough evidence to justify a trial.
Source: WSJ
Jan 13, 2006
It is almost an article of religious faith among opponents of the Iraq War that Iraq became a terrorist destination only after the U.S. toppled Saddam Hussein. But what if that's false, and documents from Saddam's own regime show that his government trained thousands of Islamic terrorists at camps inside Iraq before the war?
Sounds like news to us, and that's exactly what is reported this week by Stephen Hayes in the Weekly Standard magazine. Yet the rest of the press has ignored th
Source: Wa Po
Jan 13, 2006
When the House speaker's job opened up in 1998, Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.) -- a telegenic policy intellectual from the nation's most populous state -- seemed like a logical candidate. Cox certainly thought so. He brooded over his options and mused about a possible run on CNN.
But while Cox was in the studio, J. Dennis Hastert was winning the cloakroom. With powerful backing from Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), Hastert -- a decidedly untelegenic, nuts-and-bolts pol from small-town Illi
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Jan 13, 2006
In recent days, the public has learned volumes about a now-defunct university group called the Concerned Alumni of Princeton. Founded in 1972 by alumni who were disturbed that Princeton had started to admit women, some members also claimed that the university had lowered its standards to admit more minority students. The group’s membership roster reads like a who’s who of politics, including notables from across party lines.
Alito, a 1972 graduate of Princeton, listed his membership
Source: San Antonio Express-News
Jan 13, 2006
SAN ANTONIO A bitter dispute over the planned military flyover at Monday's Martin Luther King march has split peace activists, longtime march supporters and East Side community members, and could result in a smaller turnout for what has been the nation's largest MLK march.
Some opponents of the flyover are calling for a boycott of the march, while others plan to attend with bandanas over their mouths and black and yellow ribbons around their arms in a show of protest.
Source: cronaca.com
Jan 13, 2006
Archaeologists excavating two American Indian burial sites in downtown Miami say they have found hundreds of remains piled in limestone fissures, some of the bones layered in limestone boxes.
"In terms of the rest of Florida, we've never seen anything that's been the same," said state archaeologist Ryan Wheeler. "It's a very unusual mode of burial". . .
The remains, about five centuries old, are likely those of ancestors of the Tequesta tribe that me
Source: Independent (UK)
Jan 13, 2006
Spanish scientists are to test the DNA of hundreds of Catalans with the surname Colom to prove that Christopher Columbus, far from the Italian gentleman he has long been believed to be, was in fact a pirate born in Catalonia.The experiment, in determining whether any of the participants are related to the explorer, is designed to clarify the disputed origins of the man who made landfall in America in 1492. While historians have mostly reckoned he was born in Genoa in 1451, a
Source: Haaretz
Jan 13, 2006
It will be the most important Jewish history museum in Europe, and it will be located in the most sensitive spot: The museum for the history of Polish Jewry will be built where the Warsaw Ghetto used to stand.Three weeks ago, the project director, Jerzy Halbersztadt, sent the master plan for the museum to a group of historians. The recipients undertook, in writing, not to share it with anyone.
On Thursday, they all gathered at Tel Aviv University: Halbersztadt a
Source: NYT
Jan 13, 2006
President Bush's ordering the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants contradicts a long evolution toward the secrecy of communications. Centuries ago, people in England, France and the German states fought for the right to send letters without their being opened by the "black chambers" of absolutist monarchs. Martin Luther, whose letters had been opened by the Duke of Saxony, raged that "a thief is a thief, whether he is a money thief or a letter thief
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 13, 2006
A plan to build a motorway beside the hill where ancient Celtic kings were crowned has been challenged in court as campaigners fight to save a monument described by W B Yeats as the "most consecrated spot in Ireland".
The Irish government's proposal to build a new commuter route for Dublin through the valley containing the Hill of Tara has infuriated archaeologists, historians and conservationists.The battle, which has been depicted as a conflict betwe
Source: Watertown Tab and Press (Watertown, MA)
Jan 13, 2006
A concerned group of Armenian-Americans has filed a motion to intervene in a lawsuit concerning the state's curriculum and teaching of the
1915 deportation and murder of 1.5 million Armenians from Turkey during World War I.
Controversy swirls around the event as people argue whether or not it constitutes genocide.The maternal 98-year-old grandmother of Geri Lyn Ajemian, director of Instructional Services at Marlborough Public Schools, is a descendant of t
