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
Jun 21, 2010
Digs in Cyprus have uncovered what may be soldiers' barracks belonging to a sprawling Phoenician fortress that was the island's largest ancient administrative hub dating back at least 2,500 years, the Cypriot Antiquities Department director said Monday.
Maria Hadjicosti said the discovery this year of the two building complexes in the ancient kingdom of Idalion, some 10 miles (16 kilometers) south of the modern-day capital Nicosia, offers more proof of the site's significance.
Source: AFP
Jun 21, 2010
Name: Khoma. Looks like: A baby mammoth. Age: somewhere above 50,000 years. Discovered in the permafrost of northern Siberia just last year, this rare example of prehistoric monster is on its way to Paris to be analysed, treated for the germs it's harbouring and eventually placed on display.
Khoma -- it's unclear whether it's male or female -- died aged just six or seven months. It was discovered by a hunter in July 2009 in melting permafrost on the banks of the river Khroma some 2,
Source: THE TENNESSEAN
Jun 21, 2010
More than 200 years after he fell in a duel with a future president, and almost a century after his grave was lost and forgotten beneath someone's front lawn, Charles Dickinson will be laid to rest again.
President Andrew Jackson took part in more than a dozen duels over the course of his life. But Nashville attorney Charles Dickinson was the only man he killed.
Dickinson's lost tomb had been an enduring
mystery to Nashville historians. He was laid to rest on hi
Source: BBC
Jun 21, 2010
An ancient Egyptian city believed to be Avaris, the capital of the Hyksos people who ruled 3,500 years ago, has been located by radar, Egypt's culture ministry says.
A team of Austrian archaeologists used radar imaging to find the underground outlines of the city in the Nile Delta, a now densely populated area.
The Hyksos were foreign occupiers from Asia who ruled Egypt for a century.
Avaris was their summer capital, near what is now the town of Tal al-D
Source: CNN
Jun 21, 2010
A hundred years ago when German explorer Leo Frobenius visited West Africa and came across some sculpted bronze heads and terracotta figures, he was sure he had discovered remains of the mythical lost city of Atlantis.
He refused to believe that the sophisticated and ornately carved bronze sculptures were made in Africa.
Frobenius was referring to the people who lived in the Kingdom of Ife and whose artists, in fact, created the sculptures over the course of some four c
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 21, 2010
Families of British soldiers have reacted angrily after a pin badge resembling a war medal worn by Hitler went on sale at River Island, the clothing retailer.
The "military pin", which costs £3.99 at the high street chain, consists of a black cross outlined in silver, decorated with a face in the centre and embellished by two swords.
But the fashion jewellery is said to bear a strong resemblance to the Iron Cross, a military medal awarded to Nazi soldiers in
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 21, 2010
Paratroopers from the battalion involved in Bloody Sunday have attacked the Saville inquiry as “fundamentally flawed” with “cherry-picked evidence”.
In an extraordinary fight back against the inquiry’s finding that the shooting of 14 unarmed civilians was “unjustifiable” the Paras accused Lord Saville of coming to “subjective and inaccurate conclusions”.
In a letter passed to The Daily Telegraph on behalf of 35 former members of 1st Bn The Parachute Regiment present on
Source: National Geographic
Jun 21, 2010
A newfound male relative of the human ancestor "Lucy" supports the idea that walking upright evolved earlier than thought, a new study says.
Lucy—a 3.2-million-year-old skeleton discovered in 1974—belongs to Australopithecus afarensis, a species which scientists think was an early direct ancestor of modern humans.
An exceptionally petite female—her estimated height was 3.5 feet (1.1 meters)—Lucy's small frame has been interpreted as not being totally adapted f
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Jun 21, 2010
A soldier who seized a key German port during World War II has become the first Englishman to be given the freedom of a city - in Germany.
Major Tony Hibbert, 92, led a team of 500 commandos as part of Operation Eclipse to take Kiel in May, 1945.
The men secured the port which led to the surrender of a large German garrison and stopped Kiel falling into Soviet hands.
It also allowed the Allied forces to secure the whole of Denmark and seize all the Nazis th
Source: BBC News
Jun 21, 2010
A British author says a senior official from the Rwandan war crimes tribunal flew to London last week to question her about the secret confessions of a 1994 Rwandan genocide organiser that she obtained for inclusion in a recently-published book.
At least 800,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the genocide at a rate - over just 100 days - that was far faster than the Holocaust of the Jews in World War Two.
According to the author, Linda Melvern, the official
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 21, 2010
The roar of combat and smell of gunpowder returned to the fileds of Belgium on Sunday as enthusiasts re-enacted the Battle of Waterloo.
The June 18, 1815 battle saw Napoleon Bonaparte defeated by the Duke of Wellington.
Around 3,000 military enthusiasts from across Europe, armed with 50 heavy guns and supported by 150 cavalry, took part in the reconstruction of five scenes of the battle, organised as a rehearsal for the 200th anniversary of the battle in 2015.
Source: BBC
Jun 21, 2010
Cyprus police have arrested a Romanian man suspected of vandalising the tombs of three archbishops in a cemetery in the capital city of Nicosia.
The 34-year old man confessed to removing the marble slabs covering the graves of the churchmen, police said.
The remains of two of the bishops first appeared to have been stolen, but the bones of one of them were in fact buried elsewhere years ago, police say.
Source: NYT
Jun 20, 2010
When John Updike died of lung cancer in January 2009, at 76, there seemed little left to learn about him. Not only was he among the most prolific writers of his time, but he was also among the most autobiographical, recasting the details of his life in an outpouring of fiction, poetry, essays and criticism that appeared with metronomic regularity in the pages of The New Yorker and in books published at a rate of almost one a year for more than half a century.
Yet Updike was a privat
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 20, 2010
The 3,500-year-old capital of Egypt's foreign occupiers has been revealed by archaeologists using radar imaging....
Irene Mueller, the head of the Austrian archaeological team, said the main purpose of the project was to determine how far the underground city extended....
Source: AP
Jun 20, 2010
Detail by painful detail, the CIA is coming to grips with one of the most devastating episodes in its history, a botched cloak-and-dagger flight into China that stole two decades of freedom from a pair of fresh-faced American operatives and cost the lives of their two pilots.
In opening up about the 1952 debacle, the CIA is finding ways to use it as a teaching tool. Mistakes of the past can serve as cautionary tales for today's spies and paramilitary officers taking on al-Qaida and
Source: Guardian (UK)
Jun 20, 2010
t was the list that would have sent thousands more Jews to their deaths in Auschwitz and other extermination camps run by Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime during the second world war, but this time the victims were to be Spaniards.
The Spanish dictator, General Francisco Franco, whose apologists usually claim that he protected Jews, ordered his officials to draw up a list of some 6,000 Jews living in Spain and include them in a secret Jewish archive.
That list was handed over
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 20, 2010
A new film based on the legend of Pope Joan – an Englishwoman who purportedly disguised herself as a man and rose to become the only female pontiff in history – has sparked debate in the Roman Catholic Church.
The film has fuelled disagreements over whether Pope Joan really existed or, as the Church has always maintained, she was a mythical figure used by the early Protestant Church to discredit and embarrass Rome.
For a Church that even in the 21st century remains st
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 20, 2010
The only photos of French Resistance agents facing the firing squad at the Nazis' largest execution site in France are on public display for the first time.
They are being displayed to the public for the first time in Mont Valérien, a 19th century fort outside Paris where the Nazis executed more than 1,000 resistance fighters and hostages during the Second World War – the largest number in one site in France.
The Nazis arrested Resistance members and "hostages&qu
Source: AP
Jun 20, 2010
The Rev. Nico Smith, a white pastor who challenged South Africa's apartheid system by moving with his wife into a black township in the 1980s, has died of a heart attack, one of his daughters said Sunday. He was 81.
Smith collapsed while attending a friend's birthday party Saturday in Pretoria, and died before he could be taken to a hospital, said Marita Laubscher, the eldest of his three daughters.
In the tumultuous '80s, Smith was one of a tiny handful of clerics who
Source: AP
Jun 20, 2010
New Agers and neo-pagans descended on Stonehenge to celebrate the summer solstice, each hoping to catch a glimpse of the sun as it rises above the ancient stone circle early Monday morning.
The annual all-night party typically draws thousands of alternative-minded revelers to the prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain as they wait for dawn at the Heel Stone, a pockmarked pillar just outside the circle proper which aligns with the rising sun.
The annual celebrations at
