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: Discovery News
Aug 16, 2011
What do the characters in The Grapes of Wrath, Icelandic shepherds in the Middle Ages and ancient Peruvians have in common? They all suffered from the effects of intensive agriculture on sensitive environments.Throughout human history unsustainable agricultural practices have turned fragile ecosystems into wastelands and left people starving. During the Dust Bowl, American farmers learned the consequences of removing the deep rooted grasses from the Great Plains when the soil blew away in tremendous dust storms. Icelandic shepherds learned that the sheep rearing practices their ancestors used on the European mainland destroyed the thin soils of their island and left them with starving herds and little to eat.The ancient inhabitants of what is now Peru also learned the unhappy consequences of farming in a delicate ecosystem. The Ica Valley, near the coast of southern Peru and the famous Nazca lines, is now a barren desert, but was once a fertile floodplain, anchored by the roots of the huarango tree.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 16, 2011
A rare statue depicting the Roman god Hercules has been discovered during an excavation in the Jezeel Valley in the north of Israel.The white marble figure stands at 0.5 metres and is thought to have originally decorated an alcove in a Roman bathhouse. It has been dated to the second century AD and is said to be of exceptional quality.Dr Walid Atrash of the Israel Antiquities Authority said: "This statue is unusual because it is small. Most statues of gods from this period were life-size. This is something special."The demigod is depicted leaning on a club, draped with the skin of the Nemean lion that he slew in the first of his twelve labours.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 16, 2011
French designer Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel spied for the Nazis during the German occupation of France in World War II, according to a new book, Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel's Secret War , by Hal Vaughan.Vaughan expands on long-standing evidence that the iconic designer had a double life and was the lover of a spy, Baron Hans Gunther von Dincklage." Sleeping with the Enemy pieces together how Coco Chanel became a German Intelligence operative; how and why she was enlisted in a number of spy missions; how she escaped arrest in France after the war," New York publishers Knopf said in a statement.Vaughan's book reveals that not only was Chanel recruited to the Abwehr military intelligence organization, but that von Dincklage was himself a "Nazi master spy."....
Source: CNN
Aug 16, 2011
When debris rained from the sky in lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001, the first responders to the terrorist attack did not turn away. They rushed to the World Trade Center buildings while the world around them crumbled.Yet now, after all the wreckage has been cleared and the rebuilding has begun, their path is again blocked -- not by flying chunks of smoldering rubble, but by space constraints.The first responders are not invited to this year's September 11 memorial ceremony at ground zero, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office confirmed Monday.In addition to the victims' families, several politicians, including two presidents, are expected to be in attendance. Bloomberg's office would not provide specifics on the ceremony's arrangements, but did note that the first responders have not been invited to the preceding nine memorial services, either.....
Source: BBC
Aug 15, 2011
A suspected Iron Age road, made of timber and preserved in peat for 2,000 years, has been uncovered by archaeologists in East Anglia.The site, excavated in June, may have been part of a route across the River Waveney and surrounding wetland at Geldeston in Norfolk, say experts.Causeways were first found in the area in 2006, during flood defence work at the nearby Suffolk town of Beccles.It is thought the road is pre-Roman, built by the local Iceni tribe.Exact dating has yet to be carried out but tree-ring evidence suggests a date of 75BC.That dates the timber road to more than 100 years before the Roman invasion, which saw the Iceni and their leader Boudicca lead a revolt which threatened to end Roman rule.....
Source: WSJ
Aug 15, 2011
The next time you try to bring antiques into the U.S., think again: if they look old enough and don’t have any documentation, customs officials might just seize them as potentially looted cultural artifacts.
That was the case in 2009 when the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild, a non-profit group that seeks to ensure a free market for the exchange and sale of collector coins, bought 23 ancient coins of unknown provenance from a London dealer. U.S. Customs seized the coins, which ranged from 1,000 to 2,000 years old, due to the possibility that they were looted objects, according to the Blog of Legal Times.
A federal judge in Maryland dismissed on summary judgment the Guild’s lawsuit against U.S. Customs and Border Protection last week, citing procedural issues but also ruling that it is better to err on the side of restricting imports when their origin is unclear.
Moreover, the judge found that the burden of proof rests with the importer of artifacts, who must demonstrate that they are legitimate; otherwise, the State Department can rightfully restrict their importation.....
Source: BBC
Aug 15, 2011
For the past 15 years, archaeologist Dr Alan Peacey has been digging into the history of Shropshire's tobacco pipe industry.
Making pipes was a cottage industry in the 18th century and the village of Pipe Aston near Ludlow had more kilns than most.
Now Dr Peacey has excavated his last, and best Shropshire kiln and is going home to Stroud in Gloucestershire to write up his findings and publish a book next year....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 15, 2011
A Rembrandt drawing valued at more than $250,000 (£152,000) was stolen from a hotel during what police called a well planned heist.
The pen and ink drawing called "The Judgment" was on display as part of an exhibition in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Los Angeles.
Police believe the thief had accomplices and had worked out a detailed strategy for stealing the 11in by 6in work.
The hotel was hosting a private exhibition which was offering artworks for sale to possible buyers.
A curator was distracted by another person during which time the thief snatched the drawing from the wall and escaped undetected....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 15, 2011
Canada's Conservative government, stressing traditional ties to the Queen and the monarchy, is reinstating the names Royal Canadian Air Force and Royal Canadian Navy after a gap of 43 years.
The Liberals removed the "royal" designation in 1968 when they amalgamated the branches of service and called the military the Canadian Forces.
General Walter Natynczyk, chief of the defence staff, announced the decision to bring back the word "royal" for the official names of the two branches of the military in a memo posted on Monday on the military discussion site Milnet.ca.
The initiative to restore the names of Canada's former services "is aimed at restoring an important and recognisable part of Canada's military heritage," Gen Natynczyk said....
Source: Fox News
Aug 15, 2011
The House Homeland Security Committee “has initiated an investigation” into the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and whether he was an overlooked key player in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a letter from the committee chairman to Attorney General Eric Holder says.
The three-page letter, obtained exclusively by Fox News, makes the case that a decade after the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, the full story of 9/11 has not been told.
The letter to Holder, sent by Republican Rep.
Source: Slate
Aug 15, 2011
Two experts on the life of Butch Cassidy say new evidence points to a surprising possibility: the famous Old West outlaw allegedly killed in a Bolivia shootout may have survived quietly into old age, the Associated Press reports.
Source: AP
Aug 14, 2011
KENNESAW, Ga. (AP) — The privately owned 16-acre tract on Burnt Hickory Road is thick with pines and young hardwoods, but little else of interest other than its role as a staging ground for a Civil War battle 147 years ago.The land's history has its next-door neighbor, Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, working to scrounge up $2.7 million to buy land. That's the asking price sought by the Cherokee County tract's private owners, who have put the land up for sale.The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Sunday that the site was crossed by Union troops in 1864 as they launched a key skirmish in the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain during Gen. William T. Sherman's march to the sea....
Source: AFP
Aug 14, 2011
Cars zoom by on the boulevards overhead as work progresses on expanding the subway underneath -- and in between a full-fledged Roman city has emerged right in the heart of the Bulgarian capital.
Archaeologists have little by little unearthed well-preserved stretches of cobbled Roman streets, a public bath, the ruins of a dignitary's house and the curved wall of an early Christian basilica, all dating back to the 4th century AD.
If all goes well, the ruins will be fashioned into a vast underground museum due to open to the public in late 2012....
Source: BBC
Aug 13, 2011
William Randolph Hearst lives on 60 years after his death as the mythical bogeyman of American journalism, the personification of the field's most egregious impulses.Hearst is typically remembered as the irresponsible media tycoon of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries who set standards by which journalism ought not be practised. It's little wonder why Hearst was, and remains, the object of so much myth and misunderstanding. As Hearst envisioned it, the "journalism of action" was to be a sustained force, defined by activism on many fronts and fuelled by frequent doses of self-promotion and self-congratulation....
Source: NYT
Aug 13, 2011
Nancy Wake did not like killing people. But in wartime, she once told an interviewer, “I don’t see why we women should just wave our men a proud goodbye and then knit them balaclavas.”Ms. Wake, a onetime freelance journalist whose life careered along a path that Hemingway might have sketched, from impoverished childhood to high-society hostess in the south of France to decorated heroine of the French Resistance during World War II, died last Sunday in London. She was 98.In the war, she was credited with saving the lives of hundreds of Allied soldiers and downed airmen between 1940 and 1943 by escorting them through occupied France to safety in Spain.
Source: Discovery News
Aug 12, 2011
Italian archaeologists have retrieved a sunken treasure of 3,422 ancient bronze coins in the small Sicilian island of Pantelleria, they announced today.Discovered by chance during a survey to create an underwater archaeological itinerary,the coins have been dated between 264 and 241 BC.At that time, Pantelleria, which lies about 70 miles southwest of Sicily, in the middle of the Sicily Strait, became a bone of contention between the Romans and Carthaginians.Rome captured the small Mediterranean island in the First Punic War in 255 BC, but lost it a year later.In 217 BC, in the Second Punic War, Rome finally regained the island, and even celebrated the event with commemorative coins and a holiday.....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 12, 2011
Nearly two dozen singers and musicians from nine Latin American nations gathered to honour Fidel Castro with a happy-birthday concert on Friday on the eve of the former leader's 85th birthday.
Dubbed the "Serenade to Fidelity," the spectacle was planned as a "homage to the life of a man, of a people, of a nation and of a revolution," the Communist Party newspaper Granma said.
Dignitaries from other countries were expected and the event's planner promised there would be surprise visitors, but it was not known whether Castro himself would attend.
Castro has been a prolific writer of newspaper columns and books in recent years, including autobiographical accounts of the events that led him to take power in a 1959 revolution.
Castro has published just one opinion column since late May, though it's not unusual or unprecedented for his pen to go silent for extended periods....
Source: AP
Aug 12, 2011
Bob Howe points to an overgrown, muddy patch of land in a cemetery in Owensboro, gesturing to where the grave of the last man publicly executed in the United States may be.
The grave is anonymous and unmarked, like other places associated with Rainey Bethea's hanging on Aug. 14, 1936. As the 75th anniversary of the execution approaches, it is something some in Owensboro would like history to remember differently.
Bethea, a farmhand and sometime criminal, went to the gallows near the banks of the Ohio River before a throng of people estimated at as many as 20,000 strong. The execution drew national media coverage focused on a black man being executed by a white, female sheriff with the help of a professional hangman....
Source: NYT
Aug 11, 2011
...Two years ago, the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall was celebrated by the German government with guests from all over Europe. A ceremonial toppling of giant dominoes was meant to represent the fall of Communism across Eastern Europe.This is a darker moment to recall, the morning of Aug. 13, 1961, when Berliners awoke to find that soldiers had erected barbed-wire barricades, closed down road traffic and sealed off rail links between East Berlin and West Berlin. To this day, the memory dredges up unresolved issues. Germans have never quite come to terms with the building of a wall that sundered their city for 28 years, forging a border where Germans shot Germans for trying to travel across town.The degree of ambivalence about the fall of Communism and the end of the East German state was evident in a survey published by the daily newspaper Berliner Zeitung, in which a third of Berliners thought that the building of the wall was either justified or partly justified to stem the tide of refugees leaving for the West....
Source: BBC
Aug 11, 2011
Indian President Pratibha Patil has rejected mercy pleas from three Tamils convicted of the 1991 assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.In theory, the ruling paves the way for their execution, officials say.However, there are a growing number of people on death row who have exhausted all legal appeals but whose sentences have not been carried out.Correspondents say bureaucratic delays and a shortage of hangmen have contributed to the backlog....
