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: NYT
September 19, 2008
TWO by two, the dozen or so people in my tour group took turns lying on
our backs, hands at our sides, and slowly sliding ourselves into a narrow
crevice under a rocky overhang, like mechanics sliding under a car. “Don’t
touch the ceiling!” our guide implored.
“It’s better if you just wriggle and scooch yourself in,” someone said
helpfully as one pair tried the maneuver.
A moment later a voice from inside called out, “Oh my God, amazing!” and
another yelled, “Woooowww! Incredi
Source: Bloomberg News
September 17, 2008
The remains of two outsized earthenware pots, a
ditch and evidence of a gate dating back more than 3,000 years are
changing scholars' perceptions about the city of Troy at the time Homer's
``Iliad'' was set.
The discoveries this year show that Troy's lower town was much bigger in
the late Bronze Age than previously thought, according to Ernst Pernicka,
the University of Tubingen professor leading excavations on the site in
northwestern Turkey.
His team has uncovered a trench
Source: Discovery Channel News
September 17, 2008
During the Viking Age from the late eighth to the
mid-eleventh centuries, Scandinavians tore across Europe attacking,
robbing and terrorizing locals. According to a new study, the young
warriors were driven to seek their fortunes to better their chances of
finding wives.
The odd twist to the story, said researcher James Barrett, is that it was
the selective killing of female newborns that led to a shortage of
Scandinavian women in the first place, resulting later in intense
competi
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
September 20, 2008
Artists and scientists have created the first model of a Neanderthal based in part on ancient DNA evidence.
She has been put together using analysis of DNA from 43,000-year-old bones that had be
Source: Tehran Times
September 21, 2008
An anthropologist said that the nails around the ancient Pahluj skeletons imply an unknown style of burial carried out for females during the early Islamic era.
“We face an unknown style of burial, in which nails have been located upside down on the earth, maybe in order to hold a sheet of wood above the bodies in the graves,” Farzad Foruzanfar told the Persian service of CHN on Saturday.
“The bodies have not been buried in coffins because no remains of wood have been
Source: BBC
September 21, 2008
RAF pilots who defeated the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain are being remembered at a thanksgiving service at Westminster Abbey.
Veterans and their families are attending, along with the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall and Defence Secretary Des Browne.
The service marks the 68th anniversary of the battle that cost 544 airmen.
It was these crewmen Winston Churchill referred to in his phrase "never was so much owed by so many to so few
Source: Observer (UK)
September 21, 2008
The painted pub sign, one of the oldest popular visual arts traditions in Britain, is locked in decline. That is the fear of conservationists who hope to alert pub chains and breweries to a 'catastrophic' loss of the traditional skills involved and a failure to preserve a heritage that dates back to Roman times.
The growing corporate ownership of public houses across the British Isles has led to the standardisation of what is on offer, both inside and outside the bar. The situation
Source: Observer (UK)
September 21, 2008
An early invention by Albert Einstein has been rebuilt by scientists at Oxford University who are trying to develop an environmentally friendly refrigerator that runs without electricity.
Modern fridges are notoriously damaging to the environment. They work by compressing and expanding man-made greenhouse gases called freons - far more damaging that carbon dioxide - and are being manufactured in increasing numbers. Sales of fridges around the world are rising as demand increases in
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 19, 2008
Police said the bomb went off when an excavator driving a digger drove over it. He injured his hand while the other victims were treated for light injuries and shock.
Safety officials said the victims were lucky the damage had not been much worse, however the bomb did damage several buildings in the area.
Armin Gebhard, head of the Arnsberg department for military ordnance removal, told local media: "The hole was astoundingly small for such a large bomb full of so
Source: Tehran Times
September 20, 2008
Palestinians are paying the price of the West's guilt over the Holocaust through its failure to pressure Israel to reach a just and lasting peace, Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu said Thursday.
""I think the West, quite rightly, is feeling contrite, penitent for its awful connivance with the Holocaust,"" the massacre of Europe's Jews by German Nazis in World War II, Tutu told journalists.
""Now when you are contrite, when you are penitent, you
Source: NYT
September 20, 2008
A federal judge on Saturday ordered Dick Cheney to preserve a wide range of the records from his time as vice president.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly is a setback for the Bush administration in its effort to promote a narrow definition of materials that must be safeguarded under by the Presidential Records Act.
The Bush administration's legal position ''heightens the court's concern'' that some records may not be preserved, said the judge.
Source: FoxNews.com
September 20, 2008
MOSCOW — A Russian archaeologist says he has found the lost capital of the Khazars, a powerful nation that adopted Judaism as its official religion more than 1,000 years ago, only to disappear leaving little trace of its culture.
Dmitry Vasilyev, a professor at Astrakhan State University, said his nine-year excavation near the Caspian Sea has finally unearthed the foundations of a triangular fortress of flamed brick, along with modest yurt-shaped dwellings, and he bel
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
September 20, 2008
An entire wing of the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum that was built to hold a peerless collection of art from Papua New Guinea could be emptied by an inheritance battle between heirs of the Annenberg publishing fortune.
That threat in the coast-to-coast dispute prompted San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera to obtain an emergency court order Friday to prevent the art from being seized and sold.
"We're going to do everything possible to make sure the collection
Source: NYT
September 18, 2008
A 14,600-acre piece of the Adirondacks long prized by environmentalists for its forests and wetlands, including a pond where Ralph Waldo Emerson led a “philosophers’ camp,” was purchased on Thursday by a preservation group for $16 million, the group said.
The property, which had been owned by a Vermont family for 56 years, will not immediately be open to the public because of leases for recreational hunting and fishing that will last several more years. But the group, the Nature Con
Source: Telegraph
September 20, 2008
One of the earliest number plates ever issued fetched a world record price of £397,500 after going under the hammer at auction last night...
The historic plate was the first registration number to be issued in Edinburgh and it belonged to a leading pioneer of motoring.
Tonight's sale marked the first time the registration number had come on the market since it was created in 1903...
The mystery bidder...said of the sale: "The registration number will r
Source: BBC
September 18, 2008
Pope Benedict XVI has defended the actions of predecessor Pius XII during World War II, saying the pontiff spared no effort to try to save Jews.
Pius XII has long been accused by Jewish groups and scholars of turning a blind eye to the fate of the Jews.
Pope Benedict said that Pius had intervened directly and indirectly but often had to be "secret and silent" given the circumstances.
Pope Benedict said he wanted prejudice against Pius to be ove
Source: BBC News
September 20, 2008
A Berlin auction house says it has sold one of the few remaining sections of the Berlin Wall for more than 7,800 euros (£6,150 or $11,300).
The large graffiti-covered stretch of the wall, which once divided capitalist West Berlin from the communist East, was bought for display in an office.
Many fake pieces of the Berlin Wall have been sold in the past, but the auctioneers said this item was genuine...
Much of the demolished wall was used for constructing r
Source: Washington Post
September 20, 2008
GETTYSBURG, Pa. -- For generations, kids have begged to see it, and for generations they have walked away wondering, is that all?
The Gettysburg Cyclorama, a huge dinosaur of a painting left over from the heyday of circuses, magic shows and brass bands playing on the town square, has never been a great painting. Its cartoonish soldiers and clutter of horses never really delivered on the promise of an illusion so real you'd swear you were in the middle of the great Civil War battle.
Source: NYT
September 20, 2008
HANOI, Vietnam — Senator John McCain’s wartime jailer thrust two fingers into the air as if he were on a campaign trail and shouted: “John McCain! My friend! Victory!”
It is a fiction he seems to revel in — the jailer who was actually the prisoner’s friend, who has watched his political career with paternal pride, and who is now hurt and offended when Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, says he was tortured by his captors.
Tran Trong Duyet, 75, was head of
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
September 19, 2008
Archaeologists are using cutting-edge technology -- including ground radar and laser scanning -- to uncover vanished walls and dwellings of the original Spanish Presidio of San Francisco...
There are written accounts, pictures and drawings of the fort dating from the late 18th century, but the real El Presidio of Spanish times lies under a couple of streets, a parking lot and lawn that rings Pershing Square, where the main flagpole marks the center of the Presidio as it was in U.S.
