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: Slate
Feb 2, 2012
A Maine-based treasure hunter says he and his crew have discovered a sunken World War II-era ship carrying a trove of valuable platinum, gold and diamonds worth as much as $3 billion. The British government isn't so sure.The BBC reports that Greg Brooks and his Sub Sea Research crew say that they discovered the wreckage of the SS Port Nicholson back in 2008, but that new underwater footage showing a platinum bar and 30 boxes -- believed to hold platinum ingots -- confirms that the valuable metals are aboard and prime to be recovered. The wreckage is about 50 miles off the Massachusetts coast....
Source: Meath Chronicle (IE)
Feb 1, 2012
A conservation plan has been commissioned for the State-owned lands on the Hill of Tara by the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Jimmy Deenihan.The minister, in collaboration with the Office of Public Works (OPW) and the Heritage Council, has commissioned the Discovery Programme to undertake the plan which, he said, "will illustrate the unique cultural and historical significance of Tara and identify appropriate policies to ensure its preservation and presentation".The area to be examined includes the immediate environs of the Hill which contribute to the experience and enjoyment of the monument.While the conservation plan will also consider access and visitor amenity issues, Mr Deenihan stressed that Tara was "essentially an outdoor experience and that should not change".The minister emphasised that the emerging conservation plan would "place a key emphasis on consultation with stakeholders, and the local community in particular". Ultimately, it is intended that the conservation plan for the Tara complex will act as an overarching framework for management and interpretation....
Source: Fox News
Feb 1, 2012
Another September 11th-related funding clash is poised to erupt in Congress, as one fiscal hawk senator blocks a bill that would see $20 million in taxpayer funds go to the creation of the 9/11 Memorial Museum.Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who proudly wears the moniker of "Dr. No" due to his opposition to deficit spending, has refused to sanction the legislation in the wake of trillion dollar deficits that are now projected to continue through the current fiscal year and possibly beyond."Dr. Coburn believes we can best honor the heroism and sacrifices of 9/11 by making hard choices and reducing spending on less vital priorities rather than borrowing money," Coburn spokesman John Hart tells Fox. "This funding dispute could be solved in minutes if the sponsors would look at the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and duplication in the federal government that has been identified by the Government Accountability Office and others. Finding $20 million in savings is the least we can do to demonstrate that Congress also understands the value of service and sacrifice."...
Source: News & Observer
Feb 1, 2012
WASHINGTON -- Congress will squabble over just about everything anymore, it seems, even where to honor the soldiers and sailors of World War I:Kansas City, Mo., which has a heritage of honoring the war, or Washington, D.C., which has the National Mall?Washington also already has a memorial to World War I, though it's strictly a tribute to the 26,000 city residents who served overseas. But pride of place among politicians can be a powerful incentive....Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/02/01/1823807/kansas-city-dc-in-tug-of-war-over.html#storylink=cpy..
Source: WaPo
Feb 1, 2012
The corporate ads for Black History month have started. The special events are planned at schools, businesses and libraries.And, once again, the debate in the black community has re-emerged about whether Black History Month should be celebrated or ditched because it has outlived its usefulness. Historian Carter G. Woodson in 1926 called for “Negro History Week.” He chose February because it coincided with the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and President Abraham Lincoln, who both played key roles in freeing slaves.In 1976, the week was expanded to a month and has been that way ever since....
Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch
Feb 1, 2012
Richmond National Battlefield Park has a Civil War story just as important as Gettysburg, in the eyes of Superintendent David Ruth, and now it's $4 million closer to generating Gettysburg-level attention.Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar on Wednesday announced a $4 million grant from the U.S. Land and Water Conservation Fund at Glendale National Cemetery, site of the sixth of the Seven Days Battles that protected Richmond from capture in 1862.The money will allow the park to add more than 300 acres to the Glendale property on Willis Church Road near state Route 5 east of Richmond. The land has been preserved by the Civil War Trust, whose president, James Lighthizer, said he recalled visiting the site as a student when only a single acre was preserved at Malvern Hill and at Glendale....
Source: NYT
Feb 1, 2012
SEOUL, South Korea — When Kim Jong-un made his debut as the North Korean heir apparent in September 2010, he looked so much like his grandfather, the closest thing North Koreans had to a god, that South Korean intelligence officials noted that many North Koreans who saw the young man for the first time on television broke down in tears.“The regime wants its people to see Kim Jong-un as Great Leader Kim Il-sung reincarnated,” said Kim Kwang-in, head of the North Korea Strategy Center, a research organization based in Seoul that collects information from sources inside North Korea. “They fattened him up and gave him a thorough training — and plastic surgery, too, some even say — to make him look just like his grandfather.”
Source: Secrecy News
Feb 1, 2012
A handful of historical intelligence satellite images were declassified last month to coincide with a new display of the GAMBIT and HEXAGON spy satellites at the National Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.The GAMBIT and HEXAGON satellites were formally declassified last September on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the National Reconnaissance Office. At that time, the NRO released voluminous documentation on the development of those satellites. But the associated imagery, which is held by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, was not released. Now a small number of satellite images have been made public.
Source: NY Daily News
Feb 1, 2012
OK, they aren't exactly knee-slappers, but 3,500 years ago, the six riddles found on an ancient tablet in Iraq could well have been quite the howlers — and may even contain the oldest "Yo Mama" joke known to man.The cuneiform chucklers, believed to be written by a Babylonian student circa 1,500 B.C., were carved on a damaged tablet, discovered in 1976 by an archaeologist, J.J. van Dijk. The tablet has since vanished, but van Dijk preserved what was written on it. Michael Streck and Nathan Wasserman studied the riddles and published their findings in the noted journal Iraq, published by the British Institute for the Study of Iraq.The riddles' subject matter is earthy - sex, beer, and, of course, humor at the expense of mom....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 1, 2012
The discovery, hailed as one of the most remarkable in recent times, was made during conservation work and is believed to reveal how the famous sitter would have looked at the time."This sensational find will transform our understanding of the world's most famous picture," said Art Newspaper which published the findings.The Prado painting was long thought to be one of dozens surviving replicas of the masterpiece made after Leonardo's death but it is now believed to have been painted by one of his key pupils working alongside the master.The Louvre original, displayed behind glass, is obscured by cracked darkened varnish, making the woman appear much older than her true age. Because of its fragility, cleaning and restoration is thought to be too risky....
Source: Reuters
Feb 1, 2012
BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Steps away from Budapest's ornate Parliament building, hidden in a basement studio on a leafy street, art dealer Peter Pinter was holding the third of his hugely successful auctions, entitled 'Going once, going twice... gone for good.'What Pinter is offering - communist-era art, paintings, sculptures and posters - has gone beyond tourist kitsch and become popular with serious collectors, including locals. Price tags in the thousands of dollars are not uncommon."It's retro, it's fashionable," Pinter told Reuters before the auction. "Some people have an urge to do away with this part of their past. Others harbor strong nostalgia toward these objects... You can see people are very intrigued by them."...
Source: The American Interest
Feb 1, 2012
Since Vaclav Havel's death this past December, Czech mourners have celebrated his legacy and reflected on the Velvet Revolution that he helped lead. One of his oldest allies was Pavel Bratinka, who served with Havel on the Civic Forum, the umbrella group that unified anti-Communist forces. Bratinka was also one of the founders of the Civic Democratic Alliance (a center-right party) and was elected to the legislatures of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic.Born in 1946 in Bratislava, Bratinka studied solid state physics but was prevented from defending his thesis when he refused to join the Communist-dominated Youth Union. Bratinka was active in numerous “in-home” or underground seminars—including the famous gathering at Kampa island (“Kampademie”) with Havel, his brother Ivan and Radim and Martin Palouš. He was also a translator of Friedrich Hayek and Eric Voegelin and the organizer of the underground publishing house “Edice Svíce” (Candle Edition). In 1998 he co-founded Euroffice, a Czech and European public affairs consultancy, where he has worked ever since.Flagg Taylor recently spoke with Bratinka for the American Interest.Flagg Taylor: What is the legacy of totalitarianism in Czech society today?
Source: NYT
Jan 31, 2012
The tip of a girl’s 40,000-year-old pinky finger found in a cold Siberian cave, paired with faster and cheaper genetic sequencing technology, is helping scientists draw a surprisingly complex new picture of human origins.The new view is fast supplanting the traditional idea that modern humans triumphantly marched out of Africa about 50,000 years ago, replacing all other types that had gone before.Instead, the genetic analysis shows, modern humans encountered and bred with at least two groups of ancient humans in relatively recent times: the Neanderthals, who lived in Europe and Asia, dying out roughly 30,000 years ago, and a mysterious group known as the Denisovans, who lived in Asia and most likely vanished around the same time....
Source: Reuters
Jan 31, 2012
(Reuters) - Germany this week returned an ancient pre-Islamic sculpture looted during Afghanistan's civil war, giving hope to Kabul's cultural mavens that the rest of its stolen treasures will also make their way home.Eight figures, one missing a torso and others without noses, make up the 30-cm high (12 inches) limestone antiquity from the second century AD, a reminder of Afghanistan's rich classical past as a confluence of cultures on the crossroads of Asia.Faces turned to their left, they are believed to be audience members watching Buddha on his throne in the ancient kingdom of Gandhara, which stretched across part of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Foreign Ministry said....
Source: Yahoo News
Jan 31, 2012
A newly discovered letter from a freed former slave to his onetime master is creating a buzz. Letters of Note explains that in August of 1865, a Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee wrote to his former slave Jourdan Anderson, requesting that Jourdan return to work on his farm.In the time since escaping from slavery, Anderson had become emancipated, moved to Ohio where he found paid work and was now supporting his family. The letter turned up in the August 22 edition of the New York Daily Tribune. Some excerpts:
Source: Guardian (UK)
Jan 31, 2012
Archaeologists are notoriously nervous of attributing ritual significance to anything (the old joke used to be that if you found an artefact and couldn't identify it, it had to have ritual significance), yet they still like to do so whenever possible. I used to work on a site in the mid-1980s – a hill fort in Gloucestershire – where items of potential religious note occasionally turned up (a horse skull buried at the entrance, for example) and this was always cause for some excitement, and also some gnashing of teeth at the prospect of other people who weren't archaeologists getting excited about it ("And now I suppose we'll have druids turning up").The Brodgar complex has, however, got everyone excited. It ticks all the boxes that make archaeologists, other academics, lay historians and pagans jump up and down. Its age is significant: it's around 800 years older than Stonehenge (although lately, having had to do some research into ancient Britain, I've been exercised by just how widely dates for sites vary, so perhaps some caution is called for). Pottery found at Stonehenge apparently originated in Orkney, or was modelled on pottery that did....
Source: BBC News
Jan 31, 2012
The Sheriff of Nottingham has said he is confident a £25m medieval village tourist attraction could still be built at the foot of Nottingham Castle.Plans were put forward as part of the Sheriff's Commission two years ago.The aim of the commission was to suggest how the city could make more of the legend of Robin Hood.Several investors registered an initial interest in the plans but everything went on hold when the country entered a recession, Councillor Leon Unczer said....
Source: AP
Jan 31, 2012
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Argentina said it doesn't seek another war over the Falkland Islands, and accused Britain of militarizing their sovereignty dispute by announcing Tuesday that it is sending an advanced warship to the islands along with Prince William "in the uniform of a conquistador."The assignment of Prince William, a Royal Air Force helicopter pilot, for a six-week military mission in the Falklands in February and March has been a sore point for Argentina. It has sought to reclaim the South Atlantic archipelago that it calls the Malvinas Islands ever since Britain seized the islands some 180 years ago.
Source: AP
Jan 31, 2012
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — The U.S. Forest Service says it will re-authorize a permit for a 57-year-old statue of Jesus that had been facing eviction from a northwestern Montana ski resort.The agency faced a firestorm of criticism from religious groups, the state's congressman and residents after it decided last fall to boot the Jesus statue from its hillside perch in the trees....
Source: Huffington Post
Jan 31, 2012
LAKELAND, Fla. -- The Newt Gingrich campaign has a robocall out in Florida claiming that Mitt Romney once took kosher food away from Holocaust survivors.The allegation made in the call, obtained by anti-robocall activist Shaun Dakin, is undoubtedly targeted at Florida's large Jewish and elderly populations.The text of the call:As governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney vetoed a bill paying for kosher food for our seniors in nursing homes. Holocaust survivors, who for the first time, were forced to eat non-kosher, because Romney thought $5 was too much to pay for our grandparents to eat kosher. Where is Mitt Romney's compassion for our seniors? Tuesday you can end Mitt Romney's hypocrisy on religious freedom, with a vote for Newt Gingrich. Paid for by Newt 2012....
