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: Haaretz (Israel)
Jun 15, 2010
Vandals defaced a late Ottoman-era archaeological site in Jaffa overnight Sunday that authorities had begun excavating earlier this month.
Yoav Arbel, the archaeologist heading the dig, said that underneath 19th-century structures such as buildings and a city wall, he expects to find relics from earlier periods such as the Crusader era or even the Iron Age.
"The site was significantly damaged. Several of the old stone walls were pushed over and are simply des
Source: BBC News
Jun 15, 2010
Slowly but steadily, a decade-old business around the dead and universally despised dictator Adolf Hitler is emerging as a small-scale industry in India.
Books and memorabilia on the German leader's life have found a steady market in some sections of Indian society where he is idolised and admired, mostly by the young.
The numbers are small but seem to be growing.
It's hard to narrow down what makes the dictator popular, but some young Indians say they are
Source: National Geographic
Jun 15, 2010
Sacrificial remains of humans and animals, believed to be at least 2,700 years old, have been found in central China's Luoyang city (map), Chinese archaeologists say.
The bones are part of a recently discovered burial complex covering nearly a quarter acre (945 square meters) and containing 14 tombs, a water channel, and 59 pits from the Western Zhou dynasty....
Source: Boston Globe
Jun 15, 2010
Top aides to President Richard M. Nixon asked the FBI to “discreetly’’ look into the background of the young political aide Mary Jo Kopechne, who drowned in 1969 when Edward M. Kennedy’s car careened off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, newly released FBI documents show.
Related
* FBI files: Death threats
hounded Kennedy for decades
* Bureau’s file on Ted Kennedy
was personal, political | Video
* Top aides to Nixon
pressed FB
Source: Guardian (UK)
Jun 15, 2010
In 1964, shortly after many countries had gained independence, Unesco launched the General History of Africa, a project free from "racial prejudices ensuing from slave trade and colonisation, and promoting an African perspective". It took more than 30 years to complete....
But all this erudition was of little practical value. The political climate changed, with pan-Africanism being overtaken by hard-line nationalism, so the tomes gathered dust on the shelves of government
Source: Guardian (UK)
Jun 15, 2010
David Cameron today issued a formal apology on behalf of the state for the "unjustified and unjustifiable" killing of 14 civil rights marchers by British soldiers on Bloody Sunday in Derry 38 years ago.
The prime minister said Lord Saville inquiry's long-awaited report showed soldiers lied about their involvement in the killings, and that all of those who died were innocent.
He said the inquiry was "absolutely clear" and there were "no ambiguiti
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 15, 2010
A photograph of Winston Churchill giving his victory salute has been airbrushed to remove his signature cigar.
In the well-known original image, Churchill makes a "V" shaped symbol with his fingers – while gripping a cigar in the corner of his mouth.
But in a reproduction of the picture, hanging over the main entrance to a London museum celebrating the wartime leader, he has been made into a non-smoker through the use of image-altering techniques.
Source: BBC Magazine
Jun 15, 2010
Fifty years after being published, To Kill A Mockingbird is still devoured by students, while simultaneously loved by their parents. But is it just a sentimental children's book?
It's just ahead of the Bible in the nation's affections.
On the eve of its 50th birthday, To Kill A Mockingbird still has a generation of schoolchildren transfixed, while regularly figuring high on lists of the country's "favourite books".
A poll for World Book Day placed
Source: BBC News
Jun 15, 2010
The Green Revolution of the 1960s raised crop yields and cut hunger - and also saved decades worth of greenhouse gas emissions, a study concludes.
US researchers found cumulative global emissions since 1850 would have been one third as much again without the Green Revolution's higher yields.
Although modern farming uses more energy and chemicals, much less land needs to be cleared.
The study is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Source: BBC
Jun 15, 2010
Evacuees who were sent from London's East End to Mousehole in Cornwall have returned 70 years after first arriving.
Hundreds of children were evacuated from large cities to the safety of the English countryside in 1940 at the start of World War II.
One hundred Jewish children from the Jews' Free School (JFS) in the East End were sent to Mousehole.
To celebrate the 70th anniversary former evacuees made the train journey from London Paddington to Penzance.
Source: Live Science
Jun 14, 2010
Scuba diving scientists today explored the remains of a ship that sank in 1914, but they weren't looking for buried treasures - at least not the kind that pirates in movies search for. They were in search of something far more valuable to archeologists - historical treasures.
Marine archaeologists swam in and around and photographed the wooden freighter Montana at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary and broadcasted their
Source: AFP
Jun 14, 2010
Two distinct groups from Asia settled in the New World and not one single migration as suggested by previous genetic studies, experts said Monday after comparing the skulls of early Americans.
Paleoanthropologists from Brazil, Chile and Germany compared the skulls of several dozen Paleoamericans, dating back to the early days of migration 11,000 years ago, with the more recent remains of more than 300 Amerindians.
Their landmark research found differences in the cranial
Source: BBC News
Jun 14, 2010
Earthquakes have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in the last 100 years and improvements in technology have only slightly reduced the death toll.
14 April 2010:
At least 400 people die after a magnitude 6.9 earthquake strikes western China's Qinghai province.
27 February 2010:
A magnitude 8.8 earthquake hits central Chile north-east of the second city, Concepcion. Official figures put the number of people killed at 452, but many are still
Source: ANA (Turkey)
Jun 14, 2010
A group of American archeologists found ruins of four ancient castles dated back to the 2nd century B.C. in western Turkey.
The group including 16 students from the universities of Boston, Pennsylvania and Brown led by Assistant Professor of Archaeology Christopher H. Roosevelt has been searching for ancient ruins in Golmarmara town of the western province of Manisa upon permission of the Turkish Ministry of Culture & Tourism.
In an interview with the Anatolia news
Source: Culture 24 (UK)
Jun 14, 2010
A captured Nazi sign commemorating a buccaneering World War Two raid by the navy has been donated to the National Museum of the Royal Navy at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.
The Altmark Incident was an early wartime morale boost for Britain which saw a boarding party from the British destroyer, HMS Cossack, release 299 British prisoners from the German ship Altmark in a Norwegian fjord....
Source: AP
Jun 14, 2010
Using undersea scanning devices, archaeologists from the U.S. and Albania believe they have found the wreckage of an Italian ship that British forces torpedoed during World War II when Albania was occupied by Mussolini's Fascists.
The remnants — found just off Albania's coast last weekend — probably were part of the 8,000-ton Rosandra freighter, which was hit by a British submarine on June 14, 1943, the team said on Monday, the 67th anniversary of the sinking.
The vesse
Source: Science Daily
Jun 14, 2010
...While the evolution from the Neolithic solid stone wheel with a single hole for an axle to the sleek wheels of today's racing bikes can be seen as the result of human ingenuity, it also represents how animals, including humans, have come to move more efficiently and quicker over millions of years on Earth, according to a Duke University engineer.
Adrian Bejan, professor of mechanical engineering at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering, argues that just as the design of wheels becam
Source: Science Daily
Jun 14, 2010
Between 200 and 65 million years ago, fearsome marine reptiles reigned over the oceans. Were they warm-blooded like today's mammals and birds or cold-blooded like nowadays fish and reptiles? For the first time, a study has settled the debate: some large marine reptiles were warm-blooded (in other words, they were endothermic), giving them a considerable advantage to swim fast over long distances and to conquer cold regions.
This work, conducted by researchers from the Laboratoire P
Source: Science Daily
Jun 14, 2010
...In 2005 the archaeologists investigated a grave at Avaldsnes in Karmøy in southwestern Norway, supposed to be from the late Iron Age, i.e. from 600 to 1000 AD. Avaldsnes is rich in archeological finds. They dot an area that has been a seat of power all the way back to around 300. Archaeologist Olle Hemdorff at the University of Stavanger's Museum of Archaeology was responsible for a series of excavations at Avaldsnes in 1993-94 and 2005-06.
Plundering of graves was very common in
Source: Mirror (UK)
Jun 14, 2010
A mass grave has been unearthed by Russian motorway builders.
Experts believe the estimated 500 victims - including children - were shot in the back of the head by dictator Josef Stalin's secret police in the 1930s.
Instead of being taken to work camps, victims were executed at the tree-shrouded site near Vladivostok....
