RALEIGH -- The Carolina Charter of 1663 was a gift of land from England's King Charles II to eight friends who had helped him regain the throne. The Lords Proprietors of Carolina were given land in America stretching from ocean to ocean. The 350th anniversary of the signing of that document will be celebrated on Monday, March 25, with a public display in the State Capitol from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and a commemorative program in the House Chamber at 5:15 p.m.
Dr. William Price, Jr., former director of the N.C. Division of Archives and History in Cultural Resources, will give the evening speech on the history of the Carolina Charter of 1663. Although the proprietors had considerable power, the charter did grant colonists the rights to assembly, ownership and disposal of property, the establishment of courts and to religious tolerance. Ultimately proprietary rule failed in the Carolinas and seven of the eight proprietors returned the land to the Crown in 1728. Within 50 years North Carolina joined other colonies in the fight for independence....
Wednesday, March 20, 2013 - 11:31
Nuclear war is unthinkable. At least, that’s what we like to tell ourselves. Given the mass death and devastation from an atomic strike, surely only a desperate despot would even consider such a strike.
Slim Pickens joyfully rides a nuclear bomb onto a Russian target in the classic satire, “Dr. Strangelove.”
Well, think again. A new study finds that, among the American public, the taboo against the use of nukes is far weaker than you might imagine.
“When people are faced with scenarios they consider high-stakes, they end up supporting—or even preferring—actions that initially seem hard to imagine,” said Daryl Press, an associate professor at the Dartmouth College Department of Government....
Tuesday, March 19, 2013 - 15:26
KYIV, Ukraine — Click on a Wikipedia topic about optometry in the Polish language or Newtonian mechanics in Ukrainian and the article that pops up may well be a college student thesis.
That’s because universities in Poland and Ukraine are exploring new requirements. Instead of cribbing research from Wikipedia for papers that will probably only gather dust, advocates of the idea say students would be better off writing their own Wikipedia articles.
Although critics warn that Wikipedia articles are no substitute for rigorous academic papers, supporters say more than simply putting more information at public disposal, erasing boundaries between the internet and academia will invigorate scholarship by enabling it to benefit everyone.
“Contributing to Wikipedia considerably increases students’ motivation since their articles can be read by the whole world, not just their teachers or supervisors,” argues Sergei Petrov, one of the Wikipedia project coordinators in the eastern city of Kharkiv, where the Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute ran a test program during its last fall that produced 23 new or expanded articles on Wikipedia Ukraine....
Tuesday, March 19, 2013 - 15:22
The BBC is fielding complaints for editing the 1979 Elvis Costello hit “Oliver’s Army” on a 6 Music radio broadcast last week. The Mail reports that BBC censored the “one more widow, one less white n****r” lyric, despite the fact that the song has generally played uncensored on the radio for more than thirty years.
According to the Telegraph, one listener said, “‘Although it is not a nice phrase and I wouldn’t condone the use of the word these days, it is an anti-war song as far as I believe, arguing against British colonialism and the word would be appropriate for that song.”
BBC DJs Mike Read and Trevor Nelson also criticized the censorship on a program called Feedback. Nelson called the conspicuous edit “a little patronizing,” while Read said, “I think cutting a piece out and changing the whole tempo of the music simply draws attention to it. If you don’t like the sentiment or you don’t agree with the sentiment then don’t play it but to take the scissors and cut a bit out of it, I am sure Elvis Costello might have something to say about that.”...
Tuesday, March 19, 2013 - 15:20
Archaeologists at Tudor Place, an historic Georgetown estate with ties to George Washington, have unearthed artifacts that suggest the former existence of a dwelling for both enslaved and free workers on the site.
A team of archaeologists spent several days in the past week painstakingly digging and sifting through layers of soil in the northeast corner of the Tudor Place garden, in an area called the tennis lot.
"We’ve been wanting to know about slave patterns at Tudor Place," Jessica Zullinger, director of preservation at Tudor place, said in a phone interview with Patch....
Tuesday, March 19, 2013 - 15:05
The FBI knows who pulled off the biggest art heist in history, but they aren't naming names. And as for what become of the $580 million worth of masterpieces stolen exactly 23 years ago from a Boston museum, investigators say that trail went cold a decade ago.
The FBI said Monday it would be "imprudent" to disclose the identities of the thieves who stole 13 works of art from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990, but said they belong to a criminal organization, and they said they believe the art work has "changed hands several times" over the years....
Tuesday, March 19, 2013 - 14:46
The third episode of the History Channel's miniseries “The Bible” was supposed to be remembered for the brutality of Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar, the strength of Daniel in the lion’s den, and the birth of Jesus Christ.
But after viewers claimed there was a striking resemblance between Satan’s human form and President Barack Obama, that probably won't be the case.
Buzz on Twitter quickly grew. According to Topsy.com on Monday, there were an estimated 20,000 tweets containing the words “Obama” and “Satan” since the 9:00 p.m. ET hour on Sunday, the hour in which Satan appears in the two-hour show....
Tuesday, March 19, 2013 - 14:43
They have been bulldozed over by shopping centers, crept over by weeds and forgotten by time. Across the country, from Lower Manhattan to the Deep South, are unmarked slave burial sites, often discovered only by chance or by ignominious circumstance as when construction crews accidentally exhume bodies when building a shopping mall.
Compounding the problem of preserving and locating slave graveyards, there is no comprehensive list of where they are and who lies within them. The situation troubled Sandra Arnold, 50, a history student at the School of Professional and Continuing Studies at Fordham University, who traces her ancestry to slaves in Tennessee.
“The fact that they lie in these unmarked abandoned sites,” Ms. Arnold said, “it’s almost like that they are kind of vanishing from the American consciousness.”...
Tuesday, March 19, 2013 - 12:52
OLYMPIA, Wash. — If history is any judge, the U.S. government will be paying for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for the next century as service members and their families grapple with the sacrifices of combat.
An Associated Press analysis of federal payment records found that the government is still making monthly payments to relatives of Civil War veterans — 148 years after the conflict ended.
At the 10 year anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, more than $40 billion a year are going to compensate veterans and survivors from the Spanish-American War from 1898, World War I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the two Iraq campaigns and the Afghanistan conflict. And those costs are rising rapidly....
Tuesday, March 19, 2013 - 12:15
WASHINGTON — The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History is collecting stories about agriculture innovations for a future exhibition on American business.
The museum is launching a web portal Tuesday for people to share stories, photographs and materials about innovations that changed farming. The museum also is accepting items already donated by farmers in Illinois, Tennessee and California for a new agriculture archive....
Tuesday, March 19, 2013 - 12:11
(Culpeper, Va.) – The Civil War Trust, the nation’s largest nonprofit battlefield preservation organization, has partnered with Culpeper, Va.-based businesses and local preservationists to complete the installation of an interpretive center at the Kelly’s Ford Battlefield. Signage, fencing, trails and other amenities are among the additions comprising the interpretive center, dedicated on the battle’s 150th anniversary.
“Completing the protection and interpretation of this site would have been impossible without the help of the landowners, local businesses and our members,” Trust president Jim Lighthizer said. “Future generations now have the chance to experience America’s history first hand by visiting this site.”
In November 2012, the Trust secured an easement on a 964-acre farm owned by the Woodward family, among the largest transactions in the organization’s 25-year history, with the intention of not only preserving, but interpreting the site. The landowners, Scott and Sam Woodward, agreed to donate time and labor to build, maintain and manage the center. Local businesses, historians and preservationists also donated time, energy and resources to complete the project, including Cedar Mountain Stone, Culpeper Wood Preservers, Kipps Nursery, CFC Farm Center and the Trust....
Tuesday, March 19, 2013 - 09:43
The F.B.I. said Monday that it believes it knows the identity of the thieves who stole 13 paintings 23 years ago from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, one of the most infamous art heists in history.
Officials from the F.B.I. said they believed that the paintings were moved through Connecticut and the Philadelphia area perhaps a decade ago by a criminal organization. They declined to reveal any more about the identity of the thieves, saying the investigation is continuing.
The F.B.I. is establishing a Web site, www.FBI.gov/gardner, as part of a publicity campaign to alert the public. That campaign includes billboards to be placed in Connecticut and Philadelphia, with reproductions of the paintings in hopes of prompting anyone with information to step forward....
Monday, March 18, 2013 - 15:57
What's in a pope's name?
By choosing the name Francis, the Argentine Jesuit who will lead the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics has signaled a devotion to simple living and social justice, analysts say.
No pope has ever chosen to be called Francis before, and it was not among the names favored by oddsmakers betting on which the new pontiff would choose. The name harks back to St. Francis of Assisi, who founded the Franciscan order.
Picking a name is the first decision made by the new pontiff and a closely watched sign of how he will lead the church....
Monday, March 18, 2013 - 15:20
SOURCE:
BBCNews (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-21800190)
A Roman sculpture of a Cotswold god has been found in a castle cupboard after being missing for over 100 years.
The artefact, dated 150-350AD, was first found during an archaeological dig on the estate of Sudeley Castle in 1875.
But when historians found records of the discovery in the 1960s, there was no trace of the sculpture.
The Roman altar God has now been found in a basement cupboard during a clear out at the Gloucestershire castle....
Monday, March 18, 2013 - 15:18
Ieng Sary, who co-founded Cambodia's brutal Khmer Rouge movement in 1970s, was its public face abroad and decades later became one of its few leaders to be put on trial for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people, died Thursday morning. He was 87.
His death, however, came before any verdict was reached in his case, dashing hopes among survivors and court prosecutors that he would ever be punished for his alleged war crimes stemming from the darkest chapter in the country's history.
Ieng Sary was being tried by a joint Cambodian-international tribunal along with two other former Khmer Rouge leaders, both in their 80s, and there are fears that they, too, could also die before justice is served. Ieng Sary's wife, former Social Affairs Minister Ieng Thirith, had also been charged but was ruled unfit to stand trial last year because she suffered from a degenerative mental illness, probably Alzheimer's disease....
Monday, March 18, 2013 - 15:15
Congressional backers of a proposed Smithsonian-affiliated museum devoted to the history and culture of American Latinos didn't succeed the first time around, so they're trying again.
The bipartisan bills resubmitted Friday in the U.S. House and Senate aim to designate an unused, 132-year-old Smithsonian building on the National Mall in Washington as the future site of an American Latino Museum.
If passed, it would not commit the federal government to build and fund the museum. Instead, it would designate the historic Arts and Industries building as its main site, and launch a planning process by the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents to consider design and construction issues and funding....
Monday, March 18, 2013 - 14:58
Researchers have unearthed one of the world's oldest Egyptian sun dials - possibly dating back to 13th century BC - used by the people to tell time with the position of the Sun.
The discovery was made during archaeological excavations in the Kings' Valley in Upper Egypt by a team of researchers from the University of Basel.
The team led by Professor Susanne Bickel made the significant discovery while clearing the entrance to one of the tombs.
During this year's excavations the researchers found a flattened piece of limestone (so-called Ostracon) on which a semicircle in black colour had been drawn. The semicircle is divided into twelve sections of about 15 degrees each....
Monday, March 18, 2013 - 14:57
From the History channel statement:
HISTORY channel has the highest respect for President Obama. The series was produced with an international and diverse cast of respected actors. It’s unfortunate that anyone made this false connection. HISTORY’s ‘The Bible’ is meant to enlighten people on its rich stories and deep history.
From “The Bible” Executive Producers, Mark Burnett & Roma Downey:
“This is utter nonsense. The actor who played Satan, Mehdi Ouzaani [sic], is a highly acclaimed Moroccan actor. He has previously played parts in several Biblical epics– including Satanic characters long before Barack Obama was elected as our President.”
Executive Producer, Roma Downey added, ”Both Mark and I have nothing but respect and love our President, who is a fellow Christian. False statements such as these are just designed as a foolish distraction to try and discredit the beauty of the story of The Bible.”
Monday, March 18, 2013 - 14:40
NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland — A panel at the Conservative Political Action Committee on Republican minority outreach exploded into controversy on Friday afternoon, after an audience member defended slavery as good for African-Americans.
The exchange occurred after an audience member from North Carolina, 30-year-old Scott Terry, asked whether Republicans could endorse races remaining separate but equal. After the presenter, K. Carl Smith of Frederick Douglass Republicans, answered by referencing a letter by Frederick Douglass forgiving his former master, the audience member said “For what? For feeding him and housing him?” Several people in the audience cheered and applauded Terry’s outburst.
After the exchange, Terry muttered under his breath, “why can’t we just have segregation?” noting the Constitution’s protections for freedom of association. ...
Monday, March 18, 2013 - 14:17
IN THE INTRODUCTION to his novel “Bend Sinister” (1947), Vladimir Nabokov writes the following:
I am not “sincere,” I am not “provocative,” I am not “satirical.” I am neither a didacticist nor an allegorizer. Politics and economics, atomic bombs, primitive and abstract art forms, the entire Orient, symptoms of “thaw” in Soviet Russia, the Future of Mankind, and so on, leave me supremely indifferent.
Nabokov was no stranger to the political atrocities of the 20th century. In 1919, he and his immediate family fled revolutionary Russia on the last ship out of Sevastopol, a vessel aptly named “Nadezhda” (“Hope”). In 1937 he escaped Hitler’s Germany by fleeing to France, and in 1940, just weeks before Paris fell to the Nazis, he boarded a French ocean liner’s last voyage to New York with his Jewish wife and son. So, was his insistence that his art was independent of politics and society fact or fiction? In “The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov,” Andrea Pitzer suggests that such pronouncements were merely part of Nabokov’s public façade — “the genteel, charming cosmopolitan, incapable of being dented or diminished by history.” The Nabokov that Pitzer presents to us “is more vulnerable to the past than he publically led the world to believe,” recording events “that have fallen so completely out of public memory that they went unnoticed.” Pitzer is particularly interested in tracing how Nabokov planted references to concentration camps in his art. To prove her point, she chronicles historical events as they unfolded in the course of Nabokov’s life and shows how Nabokov’s works “refract” these events. While the result is an admirable work of archival research, Nabokov’s art, unfortunately, comes out as a mere apparatus for capturing history — a heroic service no doubt but one that raises the question: if all you wanted to do was record events, why go through the trouble of writing fiction? Pitzer suggests that, by burying “his past in his art” and waiting “for readers to exhume it,” Nabokov had devised a new and different method for documenting inhumanity and the history of violence....
Monday, March 18, 2013 - 14:07
STAVROPOL, Russia — Outside this city’s police headquarters on a recent night, a priest in a purple velvet hat and gold stole moved from one man to the next, offering a cross to be kissed and drenching their faces with holy water from a long brush.
And so began another night of law enforcement as Cossacks, the fierce horsemen who once secured the frontier for the Russian empire, marched out to join the police patrolling the city....
The Kremlin is dipping into a deep pool of history: Cossacks are revered here for their bravery and pre-modern code of honor, like cowboys in the United States or samurai in Japan. But their legacy is bound up with battle and vigilante-style violence, including campaigns against Turks, Jews and Muslim highlanders.
These days men in Cossack uniforms are making appearances all over Russia, carrying out blustery raids of art exhibits, museums and theaters as standard-bearers for a resurgent church. But here on Russia’s southern flank, the Cossack revival is more than an idea. Regional leaders are granting them an increasing role in law enforcement, in some cases explicitly asking them to stem an influx of ethnic minorities, mainly Muslims from the Caucasus, into territory long dominated by Orthodox Slavs....
Monday, March 18, 2013 - 13:54
The Brooklyn Heights library is neither the oldest nor the most dilapidated branch of the Brooklyn Public Library system. But the 52-year-old limestone building is nonetheless ripe for demolition.
It sits on land that developers crave, in a fashionable neighborhood where housing is in high demand. And so the library system, desperate for money to pay for $230 million in long-deferred repairs for its 60 branches, has embraced a novel financing model that is increasingly being used around New York City as a way to pay for government services.
The library, on Cadman Plaza, along with another library near the Barclays Center, would be sold to developers, torn down and then rebuilt at no public expense on the ground floor of a new apartment tower....
Monday, March 18, 2013 - 13:52
RIGA, Latvia — Over a thousand Latvians on Saturday commemorated Nazi-allied World War II soldiers while police used force to prevent violence from erupting between participants and ethnic Russians, who are a minority in the country.
Many Latvians consider March 16, or Legionnaires Day, an opportunity to commemorate war veterans, while Russians see it as an attempt to glorify fascism and whitewash a black chapter in Latvia’s history.
Latvia, which gained its independence after World War I, was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940, then by Nazi Germany a year later, and again by the Soviets in 1944. During the Nazi occupation thousands of Latvians were forcibly conscripted into the Waffen SS divisions, and many Latvians consider them to be heroes who fought for independence from communism.
Some 250,000 Latvians fought alongside either the Germans or the Soviets, with approximately 150,000 eventually dying in battles....
Monday, March 18, 2013 - 13:47
WASHINGTON — Mohammed Rashed slipped a bomb beneath the jetliner seat cushion, set the timer and disembarked with his wife and child when the plane landed in Tokyo. The device exploded as Pan Am Flight 830 continued on to Honolulu, killing a Japanese teenager in a 1982 attack that investigators linked to a terrorist organization known for making sophisticated bombs.
It would be 20 years before the bomber — and one-time apprentice to Abu Ibrahim, currently featured on the FBI list of most wanted terrorists — would admit guilt in an American courtroom.
Now, credited for his cooperation against associates, Rashed will be released from federal prison within days after more than two decades in custody in Greece and the United States....
Monday, March 18, 2013 - 13:44
Carlow, Ireland — Ewen Mullins is the face of modern Ireland: Young, cosmopolitan, highly educated, he is a plant scientist whose work on a genetically modified potato inherently looks to the future. But Mullins also must think back to one of Ireland’s darkest chapters, the Great Famine of the 1840s.
“It’s always there,” he said. “It’s not something we forget or something we should be allowed to forget.”
From his laboratory and greenhouse in a research farm outside Carlow, 42-year-old Mullins deals daily with a disease that not only afflicts his native land but haunts it: the potato blight, a pernicious rot caused by a fungus that still thrives in Ireland’s wet, cold climate....
Monday, March 18, 2013 - 13:43
CHICAGO — She inspired a novel and a movie starring Robert Redford when in 1949 she lured a major league ballplayer she’d never met into a hotel room with a cryptic note and shot him, nearly killing him.
After the headlines faded, Ruth Ann Steinhagen did something else just as surprising: She disappeared into obscurity, living a quiet life unnoticed in Chicago until now, more than a half century later, when news broke that she had died three months earlier.
The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed Friday that Steinhagen passed away of natural causes on Dec. 29, at the age of 83. First reported by the Chicago Tribune last week, her identity was a surprise even to the morgue employees who knew about the 1984 movie “The Natural,” in which she was portrayed by actress Barbara Hershey....
Monday, March 18, 2013 - 13:41
BAGHDAD — The soaring half domes of the Martyr Monument stand out against the drabness of eastern Baghdad, not far from where Saddam Hussein’s feared eldest son was said to torture underperforming athletes.
Saddam built the split teardrop-shaped sculpture in the middle of a manmade lake in the early 1980s to commemorate Iraqis killed in the Iran-Iraq War. The names of hundreds of thousands of fallen Iraqi soldiers are inscribed in simple Arabic script around the base.
Today the monument stands as a memorial to a different sort of martyr. In recent years, the Shiite-led government has begun turning it into a museum honoring the overwhelmingly Shiite and Kurdish victims of Saddam’s Sunni-dominated regime....
Monday, March 18, 2013 - 13:37
BAGHDAD — The soaring half domes of the Martyr Monument stand out against the drabness of eastern Baghdad, not far from where Saddam Hussein’s feared eldest son was said to torture underperforming athletes.
Saddam built the split teardrop-shaped sculpture in the middle of a manmade lake in the early 1980s to commemorate Iraqis killed in the Iran-Iraq War. The names of hundreds of thousands of fallen Iraqi soldiers are inscribed in simple Arabic script around the base.
Today the monument stands as a memorial to a different sort of martyr. In recent years, the Shiite-led government has begun turning it into a museum honoring the overwhelmingly Shiite and Kurdish victims of Saddam’s Sunni-dominated regime....
Monday, March 18, 2013 - 13:37
It is remarkable how fast the issue of same-sex marriage has moved the American public. Of course, some long-time proponents will argue the opposite, that it has taken far too long for it to gain acceptance. And they say that there is no shortage of efforts around the country to block or overturn the practice.
But there is no question that since Vice President Biden first announced his support for the issue last May — jumping the gun on President Obama, whose position on the issue was said to still be "evolving" — things have changed rapidly. Almost immediately, and far more significant, was Obama's declaration he felt the same. After that came dramatic shifting in public opinion, where for the first time ever, polls show that more people support gay marriage than oppose it. It became a cause to be celebrated at the Democratic National Convention last summer. Voters in three states, after an unbroken string of defeats, chose to legalize gay marriage in November. And it got considerable attention at Obama's inauguration in January, where he said, "Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law, for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well."...
But if we're talking about politicians who have had a change of heart, add former President Bill Clinton to the list. The issue here is the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (known by its acronym DOMA), which defines marriage as being between a man and a woman and which would deny federal rights to same-sex spouses. (Portman, then a House member, was a sponsor of the Act.) Recently Clinton penned an op-ed in the Washington Post saying it should be overturned. Clinton, of course, was president when he signed DOMA into law on Sept. 21, 1996. The issue of overturning it comes before the U.S. Supreme Court on March 27, when the constitutionality of California's Proposition 8 — a 2008 anti-gay marriage initiative passed by the voters — will be decided....
Monday, March 18, 2013 - 12:08
The lies of two Iraqi spies were central to the claim - at the heart of the UK and US decision to go to war in Iraq - that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. But even before the fighting started, intelligence from highly-placed sources was available suggesting he did not, Panorama has learned.
Six months before the invasion, the then Prime Minister Tony Blair warned the country about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
"The programme is not shut down," he said. "It is up and running now." Mr Blair used the intelligence on WMD to justify the war.
That same day, 24 September 2002, the government published its controversial dossier on the former Iraqi leader's WMD....
Monday, March 18, 2013 - 12:07
A Buddhist site, probably belonging to the Satavahana/Ikshvaku dynasties, has been unearthed by a freelance archaeologist Kadiyala Venkateswara Rao, near Pondugula village in Mylavaram mandal of Krishna district.
Mr. Rao, who hails from Tenali, is also an ex-documentation officer with the Archaeological Survey of India. Among his recent discoveries was a megalith menhir with rock engravings near Karampudi in Guntur district.
On trail of Buddhist remnants in Guntur and Krishna districts, Mr. Rao stumbled upon two marble pillars with engravings of Lotus Medallions and bricks used during the Satavahana period buried in a pit on a field at Pangadi village on the outskirts of Pondugula village, about 10 km from Mylavaram.
The row of sitting bulls and lion motifs carved intricately on the huge Palnadu white marble stones, is strikingly reminiscent of the Amravati School of Art, says Mr. Rao. Similar pillars have been found at Buddhist sites at Jaggaiahpet, Ghantasala, Amaravati, Nagarjunakonda, and Chinaganjam....
Monday, March 18, 2013 - 11:31
Although a relatively large number of late Middle Pleistocene hominins have been found in East Asia, these fossils have not been consistently included in current debates about the origin of anatomically modern humans (AMHS), and little is known about their phylogenetic place in relation to contemporary hominins from Africa and Europe as well as to Upper Pleistocene hominins. Dr. LIU Wu, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his international collaborators present a detailed description and comparative analysis of four hominin teeth (I1, C1, P3 and P3) recovered from the late Middle Pleistocene cave site of Panxian Dadong, Guizhou of southwestern China, including two new teeth recovered in 1998-2000 and the reassessment of two teeth already described. The Panxian Dadong teeth combine archaic and derived features that align them with Middle and Upper Pleistocene fossils from East and West Asia and Europe, providing new data for the discussion about the evolutionary course of the Middle Pleistocene of Asia. Researchers reported online March 4 in Journal of Human Evolution (2013).
For the past two decades, research and debates on modern human origins have focused on the emergence of AMHS around the world. Some recent fossil discoveries are interpreted as evidence that early modern humans appeared in East Africa by 160 ka or even earlier. In East Asia, because of the paucity of fossil discoveries and unreliable dating, it has long been argued that early AMHS did not appear until 50 ka. Recently, studies of new Upper Pleistocene hominin fossils from the Huanglong and Zhiren caves suggest that early AMHS may have been present in East Asia as early as 100 ka. In addition, a recent analysis of a Middle Pleistocene dental assemblage from Qesem Cave (Israel) leaves open the possibility that this non-African population may belong to early Homo sapiens. Thus, the phylogenetic and taxonomic assessments of the Middle Pleistocene lineages preceding the appearance of H. sapiens have become a crucial piece in the debate about the origins of modern humans....
Monday, March 18, 2013 - 11:30
During archaeological excavations in the Valley of the Kings in Upper Egypt a team of researchers from the University of Basel found one of the world’s oldest ancient Egyptian sundials. The team of the Egyptological Seminar under the direction of Prof. Susanne Bickel made the significant discovery while clearing the entrance to one of the tombs.
During this year’s excavations the researchers found a flattened piece of limestone (so-called Ostracon) on which a semicircle in black color had been drawn. The semicircle is divided into twelve sections of about 15 degrees each. A dent in the middle of the approximately 16 centimeter long horizontal baseline served to insert a wooden or metal bolt that would cast a shadow to show the hours of the day. Small dots in the middle of each section were used for even more detailed time measuring....
Monday, March 18, 2013 - 11:29
Workers building a new railway in London have unearthed 13 skeletons thought to be victims of the Black Death plague that swept through Europe in the 14th century, archaeologists said on Friday.
The remains were dug up at Charterhouse Square in central London during excavation work for the city's £15 billion ($22.7 billion, 17.4 billion euro) Crossrail project.
Archaeologists believe the site could be the location of a plague cemetery described in medieval records, where up to 50,000 victims of the Black Death were buried. The plague wiped out a third of Europe's population between 1348 and 1353.
"The depth of burials, the pottery found with the skeletons and the way the skeletons have been set out all point towards this being part of the 14th century emergency burial ground," said Jay Carver, Crossrail's lead archaeologist....
Monday, March 18, 2013 - 11:25
Analysis of remains from a cemetery at the city of Tell el-Amarna is painting an unsettling picture of the reign of the famously monotheistic pharaoh Akhenaten.
According to researchers led by University of Arkansas bioarchaeologist Jerome Rose, the remains of bodies found in the commoners’ cemetery in Tell el-Amarna -some 200 miles south of modern Cairo- show signs of a hard life which contrasts to the idyllic images of everyday life pictured in the high ranking officials’ tombs.
Sometime around 1350 B.C, Akhenaten rejected the traditional pantheon of Egyptian gods and moved his capital to Amarna, where he established a religion dedicated to the worship of the sun god Aten. The new city, complete with palaces, lavish villas for all the King’s men and houses for the hopeful who followed Akhenaten in his daring project, was surrounded by a number of cemeteries allocated according to the King’s ideas about the cosmos. While the King and his family was to be buried in a massive tomb hewn in the bedrock, similarly glamorous monuments, decorated with reliefs showing life in the royal court had been prepared for the elite members of the society. As for the commoners (forming the 90% of the city’s population) there was a special cemetery where they were to be buried in a basic way. The so-called South Tombs cemetery consists of tightly packed graves marked by piles of rocks....
Monday, March 18, 2013 - 11:22
Some of the world's ancient art is at risk of disappearing, Newcastle University experts have warned. Researchers from the International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies (ICCHS) and School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences (CEG) studied the physical underpinnings and condition of Neolithic and Bronze Age rock art panels in Northumberland. They conclude climate change could cause the art to vanish because new evidence suggests stones may deteriorate more rapidly in the future.
Writing in the Journal of Cultural and Heritage Studies, they say urgent action is needed so the art can be preserved for future generations, but they also urge that a deeper understanding is needed of what causes rock art to deteriorate.
David Graham, Professor of Ecosystems Engineering (CEG) said: “We wanted to understand the scientific reasons why these stones may deteriorate. Our findings show that predicted changes to our broader environment – such as more wind and warmer, wetter weather - could have a devastating effect on these artworks. If we want to keep them, we need to start looking at how we can preserve them now.”...
Monday, March 18, 2013 - 11:19
Ten years after the start of the Iraq war, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds nearly six in 10 Americans say the war was not worth fighting. Nearly as many say the same about the war in Afghanistan.
A key reason: "A substantial sense that neither war did much to achieve their goals of enhancing U.S. security. Only about half of Americans say either war contributed to the long-term security of the United States, and just two in 10 say either contributed "a great deal" to U.S. security - clearly insufficient, in the minds of most, to justify their costs in lives and lucre."...
Sunday, March 17, 2013 - 15:05
FERRIDAY, La. — In the spring of 1965, the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington received a letter from Concordia Parish in northeastern Louisiana. Addressed to the bureau’s director, J. Edgar Hoover, the letter pleaded for justice in the killing of a well-respected black merchant.
A few months earlier, the businessman, Frank Morris, had come upon two white men early one morning at the front of his shoe-repair shop, one pointing a shotgun at him, the other holding a canister of gas. A match was ignited, a conflagration begun, and Morris died four days later of his burns without naming the men, perhaps fearing retribution against his family.
The letter expressed grave concern that the crime would go unpunished because the local police were probably complicit. “Your office is our only hope so don’t fail us,” it concluded. It was signed:
“Yours truly, The Colored People of Concordia Parish.”
Nearly five decades later, the Justice Department has written back — not directly to the family of Mr. Morris or to the black community of Concordia Parish, but to dozens of other families who lost loved ones during this country’s tumultuous and violent civil rights era....
Sunday, March 17, 2013 - 13:05
By the time of the election in November 1968, LBJ had evidence Nixon had sabotaged the Vietnam war peace talks - or, as he put it, that Nixon was guilty of treason and had "blood on his hands".
The BBC's former Washington correspondent Charles Wheeler learned of this in 1994 and conducted a series of interviews with key Johnson staff, such as defence secretary Clark Clifford, and national security adviser Walt Rostow.
But by the time the tapes were declassified in 2008 all the main protagonists had died, including Wheeler.
Now, for the first time, the whole story can be told.
It begins in the summer of 1968. Nixon feared a breakthrough at the Paris Peace talks designed to find a negotiated settlement to the Vietnam war, and he knew this would derail his campaign….
Saturday, March 16, 2013 - 16:54
'We need to have our Rosa Parks moment,' says Rep. Crane during debate.
The No. 3 Republican leader in the Idaho House says he made a "slight mistake" when he described Rosa Parks as a champion of states' rights.
"One little lady got tired of the federal government telling her what to do," Assistant Majority Leader Brent Crane of Nampa said during Wednesday's debate on Gov. Butch Otter's bill establishing a state-run health insurance exchange. "I've reached that point, Mr. Speaker, that I'm tired of giving in to the federal government."
In fact, Parks' arrest for violating a local law by refusing to give up her seat on a segregated Montgomery, Ala., bus in 1955 sparked the civil rights movement, which ultimately ended a century of state-enforced racial discrimination in "Jim Crow" laws.
Saturday, March 16, 2013 - 14:41
NBC and other media are reporting that this year marks the 100th anniversary of the presidential press conference. On NBC Nightly News a clip of Woodrow Wilson was shown. Wilson was said to have been shocked when over 100 reporters showed up for a news conference.
Actually, the first president to hold a news conference on a regular basis was William McKinley. Teddy Roosevelt continued the tradition.
Saturday, March 16, 2013 - 01:06
This week marks 75 years on the air for the CBS World News Roundup, making it the longest-running newscast in history. Jim Axelrod reports.
Friday, March 15, 2013 - 00:03
Like many other older churchmen, politicians and businessmen in Argentina, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio has been questioned by some for his role during this country’s bloody 1976–83 military dictatorship, when tens of thousands of young dissidents were made to “disappear” in the death camps set up by the generals who ruled the country.
The Catholic Church in Argentina realized that its behavior during that dark period was so unsaintly that in 2000 it made a public apology for its failure to take a stand against the generals. “We want to confess before God everything we have done badly,” Argentina’s Episcopal Conference said at that time. “We share everyone’s pain and once again ask the forgiveness of everyone we failed or didn’t support as we should have,” Argentina’s bishops said in a statement again last year after former dictator Jorge Videla, now serving a life sentence, claimed in an interview that he had received the blessing of the country’s top clergymen for the actions of his regime....
Thursday, March 14, 2013 - 17:37
It’s most likely that Menachem Bodner last saw his identical twin in 1945, in Dr. Josef Mengele’s gruesome Auschwitz laboratory. He was 4 then and doesn’t remember his time in the notorious death camp. But in the 68 years that have followed, Bodner says he’s “always” been certain he was one of a pair. He just didn’t have any proof until this past year. Now, he’s searching for Jeno, a man who probably looks just like him, and who has a distinctive “A-7734” tattoo on his forearm. And 1 million Facebook users are helping him look.
Mengele, known among prisoners as “the Angel of Death,” was deeply fascinated with twins and used them for research experiments in his macabre Auschwitz lab. Thankfully, Bodner, now 72, has no recollection of the cruelty he most certainly endured while undergoing experiments, though he can remember a sense of paralyzing fear. Unfortunately he also has few impressions of his family’s prewar life in a small town east of Munkacs, Hungary, which is now in the Ukraine. But despite the lack of memories from a war-marred childhood, Bodner says that throughout his life he’s felt a deep connection with his twin—and is positive he’s still alive and out there. But where?...
Thursday, March 14, 2013 - 17:31
NO one will confuse typical retirees today with the Emperor Augustus, who constructed a huge mausoleum to celebrate his life for eternity. And yet they belong to the first generation of elders within easy grasp of something once so rare and valuable that relatively few historic figures could enjoy it until now: virtual immortality.
Where their grandparents may have left behind a few grainy photos, a death certificate or a record from Ellis Island, retirees today have the ability to leave a cradle-to-grave record of their lives. Their descendants will be able to witness births and first steps, Pee Wee football games and grade school dance recitals, high school graduations, wedding ceremonies, first homes, vacations and family reunions. They will also be able to read their opinions on politics and religion, know that they loved the music of Junior Kimbrough, the films of Billy Wilder, the New York Yankees and mint chocolate chip ice cream.
Ancestors from the distant past are, at best, names in the family Bible. Fifty, 100, even 500 years hence people will be able to see how their forebears looked and moved, hear them speak, learn about their aspirations and achievements and that sizzling ski trip to Vermont....
Thursday, March 14, 2013 - 16:25
After initial survey, archaeologists claim to have found remains of a 2,500-year-old city, buried at Tarighat in Durg district of Chhattisgarh where excavation work is to begin shortly.
Talking to TOI, J R Bhagat, deputy director, archaeology department, said, "The ancient city located 30km away from the capital was found buried in 2008 in Patan tehsil of Durg district. Its remains indicate that it was a well-planned settlement dating back to 2nd and 3rd century BC."...
Thursday, March 14, 2013 - 16:24
Before Erica Hubbard could portray an enslaved housekeeper, which she’ll do this weekend at Colonial Williamsburg, she had to learn some things about life in revolutionary times — including how slaves interacted with their masters circa 1776.
These lessons are so painful that some African American actors simply can’t bear to learn them. Even as Colonial Williamsburg and other historic sites have tried to do justice to the story of slavery and attract more minority visitors, they’ve sometimes had difficulty persuading black actors to take jobs interpreting enslaved figures.
It was easy to see why as Hubbard was being schooled on slavery in 18th-century Virginia one recent Sunday by two men from Colonial Williamsburg’s theatrical division....
Thursday, March 14, 2013 - 13:09
Carvings on the walls of the ancient Egyptian city of Amarna depict a world of plenty. Oxen are fattened in a cattle yard. Storehouses bulge with grain and fish. Musicians serenade the pharaoh as he feasts on meat at a banquet.
But new research hints that life in Amarna was a combination of grinding toil and want—at least for the ordinary people who would have hauled the city's water, unloaded the boats on the Nile, and built Amarna's grand stone temples, which were erected in a rush on the orders of a ruler named Akhenaten, sometimes called the "Heretic Pharaoh."
Researchers examining skeletons in the commoners' cemetery in Amarna have discovered that many of the city's children were malnourished and stunted. Adults show signs of backbreaking work, including high levels of injuries associated with accidents....
Thursday, March 14, 2013 - 11:28
Mariko Oi is a reporter for the BBC.
Japanese people often fail to understand why neighbouring countries harbour a grudge over events that happened in the 1930s and 40s. The reason, in many cases, is that they barely learned any 20th Century history. I myself only got a full picture when I left Japan and went to school in Australia.
From Homo erectus to the present day - 300,000 years of history in just one year of lessons. That is how, at the age of 14, I first learned of Japan's relations with the outside world.
For three hours a week - 105 hours over the year - we edged towards the 20th Century.
It's hardly surprising that some classes, in some schools, never get there, and are told by teachers to finish the book in their spare time.
When I returned recently to my old school, Sacred Heart in Tokyo, teachers told me they often have to start hurrying, near the end of the year, to make sure they have time for World War II....
Thursday, March 14, 2013 - 10:51
Were we wrong about the Wright Brothers?
That's the shocking claim by Australian aviation historian John Brown, who told FoxNews.com he has photographic proof that German immigrant Gustav Whitehead flew over Connecticut in 1901 -- Orville and Wilbur were second.
“Two years, four months, and three days before the Wright brothers, somebody else flew first,” Brown said via phone from Germany. "It’s really a radical revision of the history of aviation."
Even “Jane’s: All the World’s Aircraft” -- widely considered the essential bible of flight -- has acknowledged Whitehead's achievement
and Brown's research. With the headline "justice delayed is justice denied," editor-in-chief Paul Jackson wrote about the early aviator's story for the overview to the newly released 100th edition of the reference guide, published online on Saturday....
Wednesday, March 13, 2013 - 17:21
