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: AP
Jul 25, 2010
Touring the site of Croatia's World War II concentration camp, Israeli President Shimon Peres said Sunday it was a demonstration of "sheer sadism" and that Iran's president, who has denied the Holocaust, should visit it.
Peres and Croatian President Ivo Josipovic toured Jasenovac, where a memorial honors about 85,000 of Jews, Serbs, Gypsies and anti-fascist Croats who died here in 1941-45 at the hands of Croatia's pro-Nazi regime. Thousands of people also were deported fro
Source: CNN
Jul 25, 2010
...In the film, directed and produced by Cambodian Teth Sambath and Briton Rob Lemkin, Teth tracks down about 100 former Khmer Rouge fighters who were responsible for the killing to learn why they participated.
Teth's odyssey began in 1996. His family's earnings went to his search for the fighters, leading him crisscrossing the southeast Asian nation looking for scarred men and women. But he never told his family or close friends about his mission since he did not want to bring up t
Source: NYT
Jul 24, 2010
Like everything else, war is a lot more expensive than it used to be.
The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost Americans a staggering $1 trillion to date, second only in inflation-adjusted dollars to the $4 trillion price tag for World War II, when the United States put 16 million men and women into uniform and fought on three continents.
Sticker shock is the inevitable first reaction to the latest statistics on the costs of all major United States wars since the
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 24, 2010
A multi-millionaire banker has lost a legal action against an Austrian magazine after a judge ruled its cover story that "linked" him to Hitler was not defamatory.
Julius Meinl V, 51, who is Jewish and whose family fled their Austrian homeland shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, was incensed when he saw what he claimed was a "doctored" photograph of himself on the front of Format magazine.
He claims the image was deliberately chang
Source: Billings Gazette
Jul 23, 2010
Sacajawea may have spent part of her early childhood among the Crow, Crow historian Elias Goes Ahead said.
Goes Ahead, who has been researching the Lewis and Clark Expedition from the Crow point of view, said his information came from an old account taken by a nephew of White Dog, who died in the 1930s at the age of 106.
It’s impossible to verify more than 200 years later, but the story apparently came down as oral tradition before it was written down sometime in the 20
Source: AP
Jul 23, 2010
A scientific reconstruction of one of the oldest sets of human remains found in the Americas appears to support theories that the first people who came to the hemisphere migrated from a broader area than once thought, researchers say.
Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History on Thursday released photos of the reconstructed image of a woman who probably lived on Mexico's Caribbean coast 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. She peeks out of the picture as a short, spry-looking w
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 23, 2010
An ancient ceremonial ground used by a Pre-Columbian civilisation for human sacrifices has been uncovered on Peru's northern coast, archaeologists said on Thursday.
The discovery appears to reinforce prevailing theories about a ceremony known as "the presentation" that was carried out by the Moche people, an agricultural civilisation that flourished between 100 BC and 800 AD.
Carlos Wester La Torre, director of the Bruning Museum in Peru and a leader of the di
Source: AP
Jul 23, 2010
McGill, a program officer with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, will spend Saturday night in a cabin at Hobcaw Barony near the coastal community of Georgetown.
It will be the fifth night this year that he has slept on a cabin floor, trying to attract attention to the need to preserve the structures and the history they hold.
McGill, who is black, is also a reenactor with the 54th Massachusetts, the black Union regiment that fought at Battery Wagner on Charl
Source: BBC
Jul 23, 2010
Scottish ministers and officials have turned down a request to attend a US Senate hearing next week over the release of the Lockerbie bomber.
Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill and the Scottish Prison Service's medical chief Dr Andrew Fraser were invited.
Senators also invited Westminster former justice secretary Jack Straw.
BP chief executive Tony Hayward was asked to attend after allegations that Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi's release was linked to an oil de
Source: WaPo
Jul 23, 2010
From Washington to Hollywood, once again those crazed stanzas echo and howl, drunk on adjectives yet oddly dispassionate, like a newspaper dispatch, dateline surreal:
<em>
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night .
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 22, 2010
A crate of Scotch whisky that has been frozen in Antarctic ice for more than a century is being slowly thawed by New Zealand museum officials.
The crate of whisky was recovered earlier this year - along with four other crates containing whisky and brandy - beneath the floor of a hut built by British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton during his 1908 Antarctic expedition.
Four of the crates were left in the ice, but one labelled Mackinlay's whisky was brought to the Canterb
Source: Tonic.com
Jul 22, 2010
Found in a neighboring galaxy, the massive star burns 10 million times brighter the sun.
In what's being hailed as a record-breaking discovery, UK astronomers have stumbled upon a giant star. The super-sparkly R136a1 has been spotted thousands of light years away from our solar system — and it's so luminous, it burns 10 million times brighter the sun....
Source: Balkan travellers
Jul 22, 2010
A team of archaeologists recently discovered a unique residence of the rulers of the Odrysian Kingdom - a union of the ancient Thracian tribes that lasted between the fifth and the third centuries BC, in central Bulgaria.
Called “the Bulgarian Machu Picchu” by Bulgarian archaeologists because of the similarities in the two ancient cities’ organization, the site is located at 1,200 metres above sea level in the Kozi Gramadi mount, close to the resort town of Hisar in the outskirts o
Source: BBC News
Jul 22, 2010
For hundreds of years, North African Muslims ruled southern Spain. Now some of their descendants are contributing to a "Moorish revival" that is regenerating parts of Andalucia, says the BBC's Sylvia Smith.
Sitting in Abdul Hedi Benattia's tea shop you forget for a moment where you are.
The sound of sweet mint tea being poured into tiny glasses, the murmur of Arabic in the background, and piles of almond cornes de gazelle, served to customers sitting on low so
Source: BBC News
Jul 22, 2010
Archaeologists have discovered a second henge at Stonehenge, described as the most exciting find there in 50 years.
The circular ditch surrounding a smaller circle of deep pits about a metre (3ft) wide has been unearthed at the world-famous site in Wiltshire.
Archaeologists conducting a multi-million pound study believe timber posts were in the pits.
Project leader Professor Vince Gaffney, from the University of Birmingham, said the discovery was "exce
Source: BBC News
Jul 22, 2010
Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008 did not break international law, top UN judges have ruled in a non-binding decision.
The International Court of Justice rejected Serbian claims that the move had violated its territorial integrity.
Kosovo officials said all doubt about its status had now been removed, but Serbia's president insisted Belgrade would never recognise the secession.
The US and many EU countries support independence; Russia
Source: The Independent
Jul 22, 2010
Stonehenge had a previously unknown wooden "twin" just 900m to its north-west, according to remarkable new archaeological investigations.
Using the ground-penetrating equivalent of an X-ray, scientists have discovered what appears to have been a circle of massive timber obelisks, constructed more than 4,200 years ago.
The newly discovered "henge" would have been visible from Stonehenge itself – and seems to have been part of a wider prehistoric ritua
Source: AHA Blog
Jul 21, 2010
Digital Humanities AwardsOn July 20, 2010, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft or DFG) announced they have awarded $1.67 million to five international digital humanities projects.
The NEH/DFG Enriching Digital Collections Grants support collaborations between U.S. and German scholars to develop digitization projects that will benefit research in the humanities. Each project was sponsored jointly by an Am
Source: AP
Jul 21, 2010
The Office of State Parks says budget cuts have made five more historic sites available by appointment only.
The Plaquemine Lock, Marksville, Fort Pike, Fort Jesup and Centenary state historic sites will go into "caretaker status" on July 26....
Source: BBC News
Jul 21, 2010
It has been more than 150 years since Capt Sir John Franklin and his 128 men perished in the Canadian Arctic, their ships lost in one of the greatest disasters of British polar exploration.
Now, a Canadian archaeological team is en route to the Arctic in a fresh hunt for Franklin's ships.
Relying on 150-year-old testimony of indigenous Inuits and 21st-Century methods like sea-floor surveying, the team hopes to find HMS Terror and HMS Erebus and discover once and for all
