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: ABC News (AU)
May 7, 2010
Another 19 Australian soldiers buried at Fromelles in northern France have been identified.
The remains of the soldiers, who were killed in the 1916 Battle of Fromelles, were discovered in 2008....
Source: NYT
May 7, 2010
At a mall food court here, where she was sitting with reporters covering her campaign for the House of Representatives, Imelda Marcos inserted iPod earbuds on either side of her bouffant coiffure.
Her life may already have been distilled into pop culture, her name reduced to a punch line about shoes. But a couple of months shy of 81 years, Mrs. Marcos is battling to restore the Marcos dynasty in nationwide elections on Monday, watching over a daughter running for provincial governor
Source: NYT
May 7, 2010
Given the speed with which Hong Kong’s colonial buildings have been torn down, it’s fortunate that the old British marine police headquarters survived at all. The 19th-century white-stucco structure had been neglected for more than a decade. Most visitors to the bustling Tsim Sha Tsui area probably did not notice its elegant curving staircase entrance, set back from the neon and noise of Salisbury Road. Late last year the complex, known as 1881 Heritage (1881heritage.com), began reopening in sta
Source: The Independent
May 7, 2010
A team of archaeologists have discovered a fortification system at the Minoan town of Gournia, a discovery which rebukes the popular myth that the Minoans were a peaceful society with no need for defensive structures.
The team's efforts were led by Professor Vance Watrous and Matt Buell of the University at Buffalo. Located on the north coast, Gournia was in use during the neo-palatial period (ca. 1700-1450 BC), when Minoan civilization was at its height. The town sits atop a low r
Source: Fox News
May 7, 2010
Archaeologists in Morocco uncovered an ancient burial ground in a cave east of the capital Rabat, digging up human skeletons dating back 5,000 years, they told AFP Friday.
It is the first time that human skeletons dating from the end of the Neolithic period to the Bronze Age have been discovered in Morocco, said Youssef Bokbot, leader of the team carrying out the digs.
The digs, which began in 2006, were in a cave 11 miles from Khemisset.
Source: BBC
May 7, 2010
Silverware stolen from the British stately home of the former Viceroy of India Lord Curzon is of "priceless historical importance", officials say.
The National Trust charity says the stolen objects provide a unique insight into the Raj and are irreplaceable.
The artefacts, including a Burmese bowl, caskets and a wine cooler were stolen from Kedleston Hall.
They were acquired by the viceroy for the 1903 Delhi Durbar - the celebration to mark a ro
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 7, 2010
A Second World War fighter plane buried under sand on a Welsh beach for 65 years is to be recovered and placed in a museum under a new plan.
Conservationists are in discussions with museums over hosting the United States Army Air Force fighter thought to be the oldest surviving aircraft of its type.
The Lockheed-P38 Lighting, known as the Maid of Harlech, crashed on the Gwynedd coast in 1942 when its engines cut out while taking part in secret training exercises.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 7, 2010
Simon Bolivar, the 19th Century political leader, probably died of arsenic poisoning rather than tuberculosis and may even have been murdered, according to new research.
Bolivar, a brilliant military tactician who liberated much of the continent of South America from centuries of Spanish rule, died at the age of 47 in Santa Marta, Colombia on Dec 17, 1830.
He had suffered from a mysterious illness that was believed at the time to be tuberculosis and spent his final da
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 7, 2010
Dmitry Medvedev has launched a wide-ranging attack on the Soviet Union as a totalitarian state that crushed individual liberties in the most outspoken comments on the USSR by a Russian leader in recent years.
Mr Medvedev's comments, which also included stinging criticism on the historical role of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, will be interpreted by many as an attempt to distance himself from Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, who has adopted a more ambiguous stance on Russia's oft
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 7, 2010
Russia's top KGB archivist has claimed Adolf Hitler poisoned himself rather than committing suicide with a gun in the manner of a "soldier".
Lieutenant-General Vasily Khristoforov, the top archivist for Russia's FSB security service, said Soviet military medics at the time were only able to determine that Hitler and his mistress Eva Braun had died after ingesting cyanide on April 30, 1945.
He said the "myth" that Hitler died an honourable death by s
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 7, 2010
A portrait of a young woman, which had been dismissed as a fake Raphael and lay forgotten in the basement of an Italian palace for 40 years, has been confirmed as genuine by art experts and could be worth up to £25 million.
The newly-discovered 12 by 16 inch oil painting was long thought to have been a copy made in the style of the Renaissance master long after his death and dismissed as almost worthless.
But art historians now believe it to be a first draft by Raphae
Source: CNN
May 7, 2010
For third-generation fisherman John Platt, the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill is a financial and psychological nightmare that won't end.
Three years after the 11 million-gallon spill in Prince William Sound blackened 1,500 miles of Alaska coastline, the herring on which he and other Cordova fishermen heavily relied disappeared from the area. Platt and some others stuck around, fishing for salmon and hoping things would improve.
The herring never returned to Cordova. Platt
Source: CNN
May 7, 2010
Jesus Christ is regularly depicted as a supporting character on one of Comedy Central’s staple programs, “South Park,” but now he might star in his own animated series.
The network announced their programming plans for the upcoming year Thursday, and among some of the shows in the script development phase is a half-hour cartoon called “JC.”
The series would be about “JC (Jesus Christ) wanting to escape his father's enormous shadow and to live life in NYC as a regular gu
Source: LA Times
May 7, 2010
Archaeologists and architects will tell you that an unoccupied building decays and crumbles much faster than an occupied one.
There's no one to fix a leaky roof or complain about a broken window in a vacant building, which is one of the reasons why so many gems of late 19th- and early 20th-century architecture have disappeared from the depopulated hearts of American cities.
So in a way we Angelenos owe a collective thank you to Regino Mendez, a 60-year-old immigrant fro
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 7, 2010
A group of Islamist lawyers in Egypt has called for the book Arabian Nights to be banned because they believe it is obscene.
The literary classic, which features characters such as Sinbad the Sailor, Aladdin and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, was described by the group as a call to "vice and sin".
Known in the original Arabic as One Thousand And One Nights, the collection of folk tales and short stories was first published in medieval times.
But
Source: Daily Press
May 7, 2010
Army officials estimate it will cost $60 to $70 million to remove munitions, pollutants and other debris from the soon-to-be closed Fort Monroe.
The estimate is the most concrete figure revealed since the Department of Defense announced in 2005 that it would shutter the historic post. Previous estimates had the cost as high as $700 million.
Those figures were "widely outrageous," said Robert Reali, who, as the environmental coordinator with Defense Base Closur
Source: UPI.com
May 7, 2010
Half of U.S. residents support proclaiming Confederate History Month, a new poll reports.
Almost one-third support a ban on public displays of Confederate symbols, while 43 percent oppose a ban, Angus Reid Public Opinion said Tuesday.
Governors in several Southern states issue proclamations of Confederate History Month. This year, Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell's proclamation became controversial because the original document omitted any mention of slavery and because t
Source: Gulf Times (Qatar)
May 7, 2010
Austria’s parliament yesterday commemorated the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the former Nazi death camp of Mauthausen, with strong calls to fight indifference and remember history.
In a moving speech, Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, Poland’s current state secretary for international affairs and a survivor of the Auschwitz death camp, called for people “to deal with the past - especially its tragic aspects - responsibly.”
“Indifference to evil is the biggest sin,” he to
Source: Guardian (UK)
May 7, 2010
Election night 2010 was extraordinary, and it is still not really over. As dawn broke on 2 May 1997, there was no doubt that Tony Blair would be heading to Downing Street and leading a majority Labour government; but while it was obvious by breakfast time on 7 May 2010 that there would be a hung parliament with no overall majority, the rest of the story was far from clear.
Doubt over the last few results, which are still trickling in, means it remains to be seen what sort of hung pa
Source: Discovery News
May 6, 2010
Our understanding of the origin of dinosaurs has changed dramatically over the past 25 years, and in a new paper in the journal Earth-Science Reviews, paleontologists offer a glimpse into the dinosaurs’ rise to dominance.
For a long time, scientists believed that evolution was progressive, and that organisms evolved toward perfection through competition and superiority, much like the progression of human invention and technology. The prevailing wisdom has been that dinosaurs out-co
