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: AFP
October 23, 2008
Archaeologists in northern Greece have found the remains of a Stone Age homestead left intact for about 6,000 years, the culture ministry said on Thursday.
"This is a rare case where the antiquities remained undisturbed by farming or other activities for around 6,000 years," the ministry said in a statement.
The dwelling had been destroyed in a fire but its residents had time to flee taking most of their valuable stone tools with them, the ministry said.
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
October 23, 2008
The papers of the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, including correspondence with fellow justices during 33 years on the Supreme Court, have been donated by his family to the Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University, the institution announced Wednesday...
The papers include drafts and notes on his many books and speeches as well as documents and correspondence on court cases. Hoover spokeswoman Michele Horaney said the first material to be released to researche
Source: AFP
October 23, 2008
ATHENS – Archaeologists in northern Greece have found the remains of a Stone Age homestead left intact for about 6,000 years, the culture ministry said on Thursday.
"This is a rare case where the antiquities remained undisturbed by farming or other activities for around 6,000 years," the ministry said in a statement.
The dwelling had been destroyed in a fire but its residents had time to flee taking most of their valuable stone tools with them, the ministry sa
Source: Robert McFarlane in the NYT
October 23, 2008
Today is the 25th anniversary of [the Beirut] bombing, which killed 241 Americans who were part of a multinational peacekeeping force (a simultaneous attack on the French base killed 58 paratroopers). The attack was planned over several months at Hezbollah’s training camp in the Bekaa Valley in central Lebanon. Once American intelligence confirmed who was responsible and where the attack had been planned, President Reagan approved a joint French-American air assault on the camp — only to have th
Source: NYT
October 22, 2008
Last year, in the gleeful afterglow of his deal for The Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch agreed to cooperate with Michael Wolff, a columnist at Vanity Fair and a longtime chronicler of the media scene, for a book about Mr. Murdoch’s career and family.
Now, with about six weeks to go before publication, Mr. Murdoch has raised objections with Mr. Wolff and his publisher about portions of the book, titled “The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch,” that s
Source: Time Mag.
October 27, 2008
TIME recently gathered four presidential historians--George Mason University's Richard Norton Smith, Yale University's Beverly Gage, and Russell Riley and David Coleman of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia--to discuss presidential temperament: what it is, who had it and how much it matters in the White House. An excerpt of their conversation:
Gage: What people are trying to get at when they use the word temperament is something along the lines of inst
Source: Guardian (UK)
October 23, 2008
An Israeli cabinet minister stepped into a row with the Vatican today, saying it was "unacceptable" to consider canonising Pius XII, who was pope during the second world war and has been criticised by some for not publicly opposing the Holocaust.
In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, Isaac Herzog, Israel's social affairs minister, who is responsible for relations with Christian communities, said efforts to turn Pius into a saint were "an exploitation of
Source: AP
October 23, 2008
CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. — Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James T. Conway will deliver the Beirut memorial address marking the 25th anniversary of the Beirut barracks bombing.
The speech Thursday at the Camp Lejeune Memorial Gardens will be followed by a wreath laying and a private candlelight service.
Almost 250 American serviceman — including 220 Marines — were killed when two truck bombs struck the Marine barracks in 1983. Another 60 Americans were injured.
Source: MSNBC
October 22, 2008
Facing the biggest crisis of his political career in late 1989, John McCain telephoned Jay Smith, an old friend and strategist, and asked him to come to a damage-control session in McCain's Washington office.
McCain was under investigation for his connection to a pushy savings-and-loan operator named Charles H. Keating Jr., and Smith worried that the senator had created an appearance of impropriety because of his uncharacteristically guarded response to the accusations and his stubb
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 23, 2008
The monarch will meet Sir Nicholas Winton, 99, as she travels to the capital Bratislava.
The Nobel Peace Prize nominee rescued around 670 Jewish Czech children in the run up to the Second World War.
In 1938, Winton, then a young stockbroker, cancelled a skiing holiday to Switzerland and went instead to Czechoslovakia on a friend's recommendation.
There he found camps full of Jewish refugees who had fled Nazi-occupied Sudetenland, and set about trying to
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
October 22, 2008
The University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities will help the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation develop interactive digital re-creations of five of the town’s historic sites as they appeared in 1776.
The three-dimensional models, intended for use by researchers as well as the general public, will incorporate “the wealth of historical documentation amassed by Williamsburg scholars,” the foundation said in a news release. The project is being paid for b
Source: AP
October 21, 2008
MILAN, Italy – Curators of Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Atlanticus said Tuesday that fears the collection of drawings and writings had been infiltrated by mold are groundless.
The Biblioteca Ambrosiana commissioned a microbiological analysis of the document after some scholars warned last year that the Codex had sprouted mold. The library said Tuesday that the study found black stains that seemed to be mold were in fact caused by mercury salts that had been added to protect the Codex f
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 22, 2008
Thousands of tiny gold pins which lay hidden in a desk drawer for 40 years have been described as one of Britian's most important archeological finds.
The artifacts were part of a dagger buried with a warrior chief, near Stonehenge, nearly 4,000 years ago.
Archeologists said they were known as 'the work of the gods'.
The pinhead-sized studs form an intricate pattern on the handle of a dagger, but archeologists failed to realise their significance when they
Source: AP
October 22, 2008
Milan Kundera, the author of "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," has demanded that a Czech weekly apologize for publishing allegations that he once informed on a purported Western spy, his representative said Wednesday.
The Respekt weekly was given two weeks to apologize in a letter delivered to the publisher Oct. 16, said Jiri Srstka, the director of the Dilia agency, which represents Kundera in the Czech Republic.
"We haven't heard from them yet,"
Source: Time Mag.
October 21, 2008
Barack Obama has said that his biggest mistake was not being at his mother's side when she died of cancer in Hawaii in 1995 at the age of 52. His first book, Dreams from My Father, had come out only four months before, and he was starting his first campaign, for the Illinois state senate. Her death came quickly, and he didn't make it back in time.
So it makes sense that now he would do things differently. Just two weeks before Election Day, Obama has decided to leave his campaign to
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 22, 2008
Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were working on a Big Brother-style cable television propaganda industry to be broadcast across Germany.
Plans for the system were first found when Soviet soldiers entered Berlin but have recently been reexamined by researchers for a new Russian documentary.
The Orwellian screens would have been set up in public places and would show "people's television", depicting how the Aryan race should live, with the Nazis focusing
Source: http://www.publicopiniononline.com
October 20, 2008
As the nation prepares for the upcoming presidential election, a local historian is investigating political slogans painted on an attic wall some 170 years ago.
Last spring, Mercersburg historian and archeologist Tim Rockwell began researching the writing on the attic stairwell of Flannery's Restaurant, located on the square in Mercersburg.
"I find it fascinating, especially in a presidential election year. A hundred, seventy years ago, they were talking about issues jus
Source: National Parks traveler Online
October 20, 2008
On November 6, 1998, President Clinton signed legislation establishing Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site at Moton Field in Tuskegee, Alabama. This was an honor fairly won and long overdue. During World War II the Tuskegee Airmen, the name given to the patriots participating in the "Tuskegee Experiment," did a truly remarkable thing when they overcame prejudice to not only become America's first all-black American fighter squadron, but also compile an enviable combat record in war
Source: NYT
October 20, 2008
Over the years of exploring the old houses and streets of Annapolis, Md., archaeologists have uncovered a trove of artifacts of early American slave culture. Among them are humble remains connected with religious practices, which bear the stamp of the slaves’ West African heritage.
Early in the 18th century, as they were being baptized, African-Americans clung to “spirit practices” in rituals of healing and the invocation of ancestral and supernatural powers. Sometimes called black
Source: BBC
October 22, 2008
Italy's top court has ordered the German government to pay compensation to the families of Italian civilians killed by Nazi soldiers in 1944.
The Cassation Court said Berlin must pay one million euros (£787,000) to the relatives of nine victims of the massacre in the town of Civitella.
In all, 203 civilians were shot in revenge for an Italian partisan attack.
Germany argued it had immunity from being held financially responsible for Nazi crimes during Wo
