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: Today's Zaman
Nov 27, 2011
The Boğazköy Sphinx, one of two sphinxes that were taken to Germany for restoration during World War I, has finally returned home. After being away for 94 years and following many diplomatic struggles, both of the sphinxes, the first of which was returned by Germany some time between 1924 and 1937, are now on display at Boğazköy Museum. Ertuğrul Günay, the minister of culture and tourism, has said he places great importance on the return of the sphinx to its homeland, saying, “This is a historic day for archeology in Turkey.”
Turkey, being a very rich country archeologically, is among the leading countries that have been spending the most on archeology in recent years, and continues to make efforts toward the return of artifacts belonging to civilizations that lived in what is today’s Turkey. Nearly 1,900 artifacts have been returned to Turkey this year and over 3,000 relics have been returned since 2007, more than 1,000 of which were coins....
Source: AFP
Nov 27, 2011
JAMESTOWN, Virginia — Archeologist William Kelso is certain he's discovered the remains of the oldest Protestant church in the United States, standing between two holes he insists once held wooden posts.In 1614, Pocahontas was "married right here, I guarantee," Kelso told AFP at the Jamestown, Virginia archeological site southeast of the nation's capital.Near the James River, on May 14, 1607, a group of about a hundred men landed on commission from England to form the first colony in the Americas."It's fantastically exciting and significant because Jamestown is usually depicted -- the whole early settlement depicted -- as it was carried out by lazy gentlemen who wanted to get rich quick, and go right back to England."The area was carefully excavated to reveal several large post holes 6.5 feet (two meters) deep and the trace remnants of four graves....
Source: AP
Nov 27, 2011
OYSTER BAY, N.Y. (AP) — Theodore Roosevelt had a lot of stuff.There's the massive head of a 2,000-pound African cape buffalo hanging over a fireplace near the front entrance of his home, Sagamore Hill, on the north shore of Long Island. Next to a large desk in the North Room sits a wastepaper basket made from the hollowed foot of an elephant. Nearby, there's an inkwell crafted from part of a rhino. More than four dozen rugs made from bearskins and other creatures taken down by the noted big game hunter adorn nearly every room.There are 8,000 books, and thousands of items from flags to furniture, busts to baubles and medals to mementoes.Everything must go.
Source: StAugustine.com
Nov 26, 2011
MIAMI — A congresswoman from Florida is pressuring National Public Radio stations, the cable television network CNBC and others to stop airing sponsorships and advertising by a giant German insurer that collaborated with the Nazis.U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who is pushing legislation that would allow Holocaust survivors to sue Allianz AG, has launched a letter-writing campaign aimed at blocking the insurer from advertising with any U.S. media until it pays off all Holocaust survivors’ life insurance claims. During World War II, Allianz insured concentration camp facilities and sent money to the Nazis instead of rightful Jewish beneficiaries.“Allianz is no ordinary insurance conglomerate,” Ros-Lehtinen recently wrote to the media companies. “This company was involved in one of the greatest atrocities in recent history and has gone to great lengths to dodge acceptance of responsibility for its actions....
Source: CNN.com
Nov 26, 2011
(CNN) -- Alison Shein considers herself an amateur genealogist, spending hours online searching for information about family members she never knew.Among them: Alison's great-great-grandmother Bella Shein, who died in the Holocaust. The circumstances surrounding her death are still murky."They were living in this town called Volkovysk, which is currently in Belarus, and when the Germans were coming, some of her children and her grandchildren said, 'OK, we're going to leave. We're going to go with the Russian army.' And she said, 'I'm too old. I'm going to stay behind.' And that was the last they saw of her."...Shein is one of more than 2,100 volunteers around the world who have signed on to the World Memory Project, a joint effort by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and Ancestry.com, a family research website, to create the world's largest online searchable database of records related to victims of the Holocaust....
Source: CNN.com
Nov 26, 2011
Los Angeles (CNN) -- Sirhan Sirhan, convicted of the 1968 assassination of presidential candidate Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, should be freed from prison or granted a new trial based on "formidable evidence" asserting his innocence and "horrendous violations" of his rights, defense attorneys said in federal court papers filed this week.In a U.S. District Court brief, Sirhan's lawyers also say that an expert analysis of recently uncovered evidence shows two guns were fired in the assassination and that Sirhan's revolver was not the gun that shot Kennedy.Attorneys William F. Pepper and Laurie D. Dusek also allege that fraud was committed in Sirhan's 1969 trial when the court allowed a substitute bullet to be admitted as evidence for a real bullet removed from Kennedy's neck.
Source: BBC News
Nov 25, 2011
Like thousands of women, Steven Sinclair's mother took Thalidomide to ease morning sickness."She was suffering very badly with morning sickness," he said."They called the family doctor and he gave her three pills out of his bag. They didn't make much difference and she didn't bother asking for more."Three pills, and she's lived with the guilt all these years."This weekend marks 50 years since Thalidomide was withdrawn from sale, 12 days after two doctors voiced suspicions that the drug was to blame for a spate of deformities....
Source: Spiegel Online
Nov 25, 2011
The wreath is still quite fresh. It was laid on the war memorial on Nov. 13, Germany's day of national mourning for the victims of war, to commemorate the fallen of World War II, whose names are engraved on stone slabs. According to the community's official history, the war took "a very high toll in blood" in the municipality.But it is not the slabs with the names of the fallen soldiers that are attracting visitors' attention at this war memorial in Tümlauer-Koog, located on the Eiderstedt peninsula near the Danish border in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein. Instead, it is a massive bell that dominates the memorial -- and it is dedicated to Nazi leader Hermann Göring, Adolf Hitler's second-in-command.The small settlement of Tümlauer-Koog is built on land reclaimed from the sea ("Koog" is a northern German word for polder) during the Nazi period, under the influence of Hitler's "blood and soil" ideology, which glorified rural living and promoted the idea of Lebensraum ("living space"). Up until 1945, the community was known as Hermann-Göring-Koog. Göring himself traveled to the newly reclaimed polder in 1935 to inaugurate it.
Source: PBS NewsHour
Nov 25, 2011
It's hard to imagine an American president in this intensely security-conscious age leaving the White House in the middle of the night to meet protesters on their turf.It happened in May 1970. President Richard Nixon was under intense criticism for widening the Vietnam War to Cambodia. Four Kent State University students had been killed by National Guardsmen just days before. Thousands of young protesters quickly mobilized and headed to Washington, D.C.Around 4:00 a.m. on May 9, Mr. Nixon abruptly decided to surprise a group gathered at the Lincoln Memorial. The Nixon Presidential Library and Museum has released a series of recordings, including dictation from President Nixon to his chief staff, H.R. Haldeman, describing his version of that night's events....
Source: AP
Nov 25, 2011
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico's archaeology institute downplays theories that the ancient Mayas predicted some sort of apocalypse would occur in 2012, but on Thursday it acknowledged that a second reference to the date exists on a carved fragment found at a southern Mexico ruin site.Most experts had cited only one surviving reference to the date in Mayan glyphs, a stone tablet from the Tortuguero site in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco.But the National Institute of Anthropology and History said in a statement that there is in fact another apparent reference to the date at the nearby Comalcalco ruin. The inscription is on the carved or molded face of a brick. Comalcalco is unusual among Mayan temples in that it was constructed of bricks....
Source: NYT
Nov 24, 2011
SACKETS HARBOR, N.Y. — Clayton F. Nans, a 57-year-old retired Marine colonel, halted his Chevrolet pickup truck near Lake Ontario recently and pointed to a grassy embankment. It was the very spot, he said, where British troops first made landfall in this upstate village, before American soldiers fought off their invasion.That engagement was two centuries ago, in the Second Battle of Sackets Harbor, a key New York moment in the War of 1812, whose bicentennial is fast approaching. And Mr. Nans, who periodically dons the blue woolen coat of an early 19th-century Marine as a War of 1812 re-enactor, is upset that New York State is not doing anything to commemorate it....
Source: ScienceNow
Nov 24, 2011
In a shallow cave on an island north of Australia, researchers have made a surprising discovery: the 42,000-year-old bones of tuna and sharks that were clearly brought there by human hands. The find, reported online today in Science, provides the strongest evidence yet that people were deep-sea fishing so long ago. And those maritime skills may have allowed the inhabitants of this region to colonize lands far and wide.The earliest known boats, found in France and the Netherlands, are only 10,000 years old, but archaeologists know they don't tell the whole story. Wood and other common boat-building materials don't preserve well in the archaeological record. And the colonization of Australia and the nearby islands of Southeast Asia, which began at least 45,000 years ago, required sea crossings of at least 30 kilometers. Yet whether these early migrants put out to sea deliberately in boats or simply drifted with the tides in rafts meant for near-shore exploration has been a matter of fierce debate.
Source: Nature
Nov 23, 2011
The beautifully preserved leather trappings of an ancient Egyptian chariot have been rediscovered in a storeroom of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Researchers say that the find, which includes intact harnesses, gauntlets and a bow case, is unique, and will help them to reconstruct how such chariots were made and used.The ancient Egyptians used chariots — typically with one or two riders and pulled by two horses — for hunting and warfare as well as in processions. They are frequently shown in ancient Egyptian art, and several examples of the wooden frames survive, including six dismantled chariots found in King Tutankhamun’s tomb, dating to around 3,300 years ago.But researchers knew little about the leather trappings and harnesses used with such chariots, as leather decomposes quickly if any moisture is present. Barely any leather survives on the chariots from Tutankhamun’s tomb, though some fragments are known from chariots found in other tombs, such as that of Yuya and Thuya, Tutankhamun’s great-grandparents....
Source: National Geographic
Nov 23, 2011
Long before the dinosaurs, a bleak environment of widespread fires and oxygen-poor coastal seawater killed off some 90 percent of all Earth's living species. The whole process took less than 200,000 years, according to a new study of the planet's most catastrophic mass-extinction event.The end-Permian extinction probably isn't as well known as the Cretaceous extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago. But the end-Permian collapse nearly spelled the end of life on Earth.Now scientists have painted a picture of just how fast the "Great Dying" unfolded 252 million years ago (prehistoric time line).
Source: Dunya News
Nov 23, 2011
Suspects accused of collaborating with Pakistani forces in Bangladesh's war of independence are now on trial, but claims of appalling crimes are also tarnishing the "heroes" of that bloody struggle.Migrant families who moved to what was then East Pakistan after the subcontinent was partitioned in 1947 say they were targeted as outsiders during the 1971 fight to become the independent nation of Bangladesh.Thrown out of their homes and often murdered during the country s bloody birth, they believe their suffering at the hands of native Bengalis has been forgotten as Bangladesh focuses instead on alleged collaborators with Pakistan.The day after Bangladesh declared independence from Pakistan on December 16, 1971, Sairun Nesa survived a massacre in which 15 of her family -- including her husband, son and daughter -- were killed by "freedom fighters"...
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 23, 2011
A drought in Germany has brought water levels in the Rhine to dangerous lows, exposing ships to unexploded Second World War munitions.Bomb disposal experts have already had to blow up an incendiary bomb near Cologne and have yet to decide how to deal with a larger bomb spotted lying in 16 inches of water near Koblenz.River traffic was also disrupted earlier this week after a hand grenade was spotted on the banks of the Rhine near Bonn, and authorities along the course of the river have asked people to report any suspicious objects.During the Second World War the Rhine saw intensive fighting as German troops used it as a barrier to stem the eastern advance of Allied forces....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 23, 2011
In 1911 she furiously penned a strongly worded letter against the testing of a Britain's first successful sea plane, called 'Waterbird', over and on her treasured Lake Windermere, in the Lake District, blasting: "Those who want noise go to Blackpool."Despite her loud opposition the tests went ahead on 25th November 1911 after Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, ignored her pleas and pressed on with Edward Wakefield's unique aircraft.But plans to celebrate the centenary of that maiden flight and landing this Friday using a different sea plane were sunk when air enthusiasts lost a council application to temporarily lift Windermere's 10mph speed limit - which was introduced in 2005 and inspired by Potter's years of conservation campaigning....
Source: Independent (IE)
Nov 22, 2011
HE was once Ireland's richest man, with a fortune of €4.7bn, before his huge gamble on Anglo Irish Bank shares toppled him into bankruptcy.But for some in his heartland on the Cavan/Fermanagh border, the downfall of Sean Quinn has more to do with the wrath of the fairies than risky business moves.According to these locals, it was the decision to move a megalithic burial tomb 20 years ago which led to the fall of his cement, hotels, and insurance empire.The Aughrim Wedge Tomb stood for 4,000 years in the townland after which it is named, two miles outside Ballyconnell, Co Cavan....
Source: Discovery News
Nov 22, 2011
A series of crude graffiti drawn on the walls of a London flat are the "Lascaux of Punk," according to a controversial claim made by two British archaeologists who compared the rude markings to Paleolithic cave art.Found behind cupboards in the upper room of a two-storey 19th-century house at 6 Denmark Street in London, the intact graffiti was drawn by the Sex Pistols' John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten). The Sex Pistols ushered in an era of punk in the United Kingdom in the 1970s. According to John Schofield, of the Department of Archaeology at the University of York, and independent researcher Dr Paul Graves-Brown, the Pistols "cave art" is worthy of being reviewed in the same way archaeologists examine prehistoric art. While Lydon drew the pictures, other members of the band wrote some text on the walls....
Source: BBC
Nov 22, 2011
A Warwickshire man has described the moment builders found human bones under his patio.Stephen and Nicky West were having their home redeveloped when one of the builders unearthed the remains.Mr West said: "There was a tap on the door and the builder said 'Stephen, I think there's something you need to see'."He had a skull in his hand and I thought 'oh my goodness'."...
