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This page features brief excerpts of news 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.
Highlights
Breaking News
This page features brief excerpts of news 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. Because most of our readers read the NYT we usually do not include the paper's stories in HIGHLIGHTS.
Name of source: AP
SOURCE: AP (4-25-10)
The 1980 rescue attempt — called Operation Eagle Claw — turned into a major embarassment for Washington when a U.S. helicopter collided with a transport plane at a desert landing spot during a sandstorm. Eight American servicemen were killed.
Hundreds of Iranians, many of them members of the paramilitary Basij volunteers, prayed and gave thanks at the crash site Sunday.
SOURCE: AP (4-23-10)
Bizimana has a past, though, one that stretches all the way to equatorial Africa and the worst mass killing in a generation.
Now a U.S. citizen, Bizimana was the United Nations ambassador from his native Rwanda and spoke for its regime in the Security Council during the ethnic violence that claimed 800,000 lives in 1994. With the recent disclosure that he now lives in this city of 25,500, he is being investigated by Rwanda's current government for possible prosecution.
SOURCE: AP (4-24-10)
Politicians have passed resolutions, businesses have put up signs, letter-writing campaigns have begun, and, of course, a Facebook page has been created for the cause of leaving Grant's image just as it is on the currency. A bill pending in the U.S. House seeks to replace Grant with Reagan, the late 40th president and conservative icon.
Grant's backers will try to drum up more support Saturday with speeches following a 21-gun salute at his birthplace in Point Pleasant, and Civil War reenactments in his nearby boyhood hometown of Georgetown, part of annual celebrations of his April 27, 1822, birthday.
SOURCE: AP (4-22-10)
Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said Wednesday he had a wish list of objects he wants returned. He singled out several museums, including the St. Louis Art Museum, which he said has a 3,200-year-old mummy mask that was stolen before the museum acquired it.
Last week, he said, he turned over to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security "all the evidence that I have to prove that this mask was stolen, and we have to bring it back."
SOURCE: AP (4-23-10)
The anonymous reviews attacked books written by Figes' rivals, and last week his wife, law professor Stephanie Palmer, said she was responsible. But now Figes admits he actually wrote the nasty putdowns, which built up his reputation at other authors' expense.
Figes specifically apologized to his wife, his lawyer — who was misled about the source of the reviews — and to the authors he trashed on Amazon, including Rachel Polonsky, Robert Service and Kate Summerscale.
SOURCE: AP (4-22-10)
The statement said one side of the coins were inscribed with hybrid Greek-Egyptian god Amun-Zeus, while the other side showed an eagle and the words Ptolemy and king in Greek.
Founded by one of Alexander the Great's generals, the Ptolemaic Dynasty ruled Egypt for some 300 years, fusing Greek and ancient Egyptian cultures.
The coins were found north of Qarun lake in Fayoum Oasis 50 miles southwest of Cairo.
Other artifacts were unearthed in the area included three necklaces
made of ostrich egg shell dated back to the 4th millennium B.C. and a pot of kohl eyeliner from the Ottoman Empire.
Name of source: CNN
SOURCE: CNN (4-24-10)
In a statement commemorating Armenian Remembrance Day, Obama solemnly labeled the massacres and death marches as "one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century."
Tackling an issue fraught with political landmines, Obama referred to the event as "the Meds Yeghern," a term that means the "great catastrophe" and one that is used by Armenians to describe the killings.
SOURCE: CNN (4-24-10)
He was 88.
Schaefer was serving a 20-year sentence at the national penitentiary in Santiago for sexually abusing children at the notorious commune known as Colonia Dignidad (The Dignity Colony).
The commune in southern Chile, also called Villa Baviera, was created as a place to safeguard Germanic traditions. Under Schaefer's rule, contact with outsiders was largely forbidden.
Some of Schaefer's crimes date to the 1970s and 1980s, during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, who had visited the commune.
SOURCE: CNN (4-22-10)
Today, the house is a museum where visitors can see a virtual shrine to the boy -- now a 16-year-old military student in Cuba -- and his brief time in the United States.
His school uniform still hangs in the closet, along with dozens of outfits that he never got a chance to wear. His toys are on display inside the house, as well as a giant image of the infamous Associated Press photo showing a federal agent pointing a weapon toward Elian and Donato Dalrymple, who had been hiding the boy in a bedroom closet.
Name of source: Science Daily
SOURCE: Science Daily (4-20-10)
This result was published in the current issue of the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Six years ago Osedax was first described based on specimens living on a whale carcass in 2891 m depth off California. Since then paleontologists have been searching for fossil evidence to pin down its geologic age. Now researchers at the Institute of Geosciences at the Christian-Albrechts-University at Kiel, Germany, found 30 Million year old whale bones with holes and excavations matching those of living Osedax in size and shape. The evidence of the boreholes and cavities made by the living worms was provided by Greg Rouse (Scripps Institution of Oceanography), one of the original discoverers of Osedax.
SOURCE: Science Daily (4-22-10)
The discovery was made by McGill Professor Hans Larsson and Matthew Vavrek, a PhD student at the University. Using data from the Paleobiology Database (http://www.paleodb.org/), they found that the difference in species between regions over North America was relatively low -- low enough to consider it a single homogeneous fauna. The finding is significant as it confirms that dinosaur ecosystems may have been as large as continents. The paper is published in the April 19 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The McGill team zeroed in on alpha diversity, the number of species in an immediate area, versus beta diversity, which are the differences in species between two different areas. Their research shows low beta biodiversity among these dinosaurs with values comparable to species living in homogeneous climates today, but on smaller geographic scales.
SOURCE: Science Daily (4-23-10)
Named Pliopithecus canmatensis, in honour of the place they were discovered in Catalonia, the new fossil species sheds light on the evolution of the superfamily of the Pliopithecoidea, primates that include various genera of basal Catarrhini, a group that diverged before the separation of the two current superfamilies of the group: the cercopithecoids (Old World monkeys) and the hominoids (anthromorphs and humans); and which prospered in Eurasia during the Early and Late Miocene (between 23.5 and 5.3 million years ago).
The analysis of the dental pieces and the fragments of jaw discovered on the Catalan site has been published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
According to the conclusions of the study, the new species belongs to the subfamily of the pliopithecines, which could have originated from an ancestor called the dionsisopithecine in Asia, from where they would have dispersed into Europe at the end of the Early Miocene (some 15 million years ago).
Name of source: BBC
SOURCE: BBC (4-24-10)
More than 200 cadets took part in the parade, which was followed by a ceremony at The Cenotaph.
The Cadet Corps was formed in 1860 to increase the UK's fighting force after heavy losses in the Crimean War.
They have since evolved into voluntary organisations, offering young people opportunities to develop themselves.
SOURCE: BBC (4-22-10)
A posting on the website of the US-based group, Revolution Muslim, told Matt Stone and Trey Parker they would "probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh".
The Dutch film-maker was shot and stabbed to death in 2004 by an Islamist angered by his film about Muslim women.
A subsequent episode of the cartoon bleeped out references to Muhammad.
SOURCE: BBC (4-23-10)
It was, from the 1930s to the 1960s, at the heart of the city's literary life. Great writers of the Spanish-speaking world, among them Federico Garcia Lorca, Pablo Neruda and Julio Cortazar, visited here.
The cafe has now been chosen with 14 others, all connected with what is considered the richest period in Argentine literature, for a new city government scheme to promote reading.
The plan is to put books on display in cafes and encourage patrons to pick them up and read them while they are there.
The first collection chosen for the scheme is the works of perhaps Argentina's most brilliant and complex writer, Jorge Luis Borges.
SOURCE: BBC (4-23-10)
The 65 year-old watchmaker, Jack Barouh, argued his secretive behaviour was motivated by his fear as a Jew of persecution and sudden loss.
He is just one of many US citizens being tried for tax evasion who held secret accounts at the Swiss bank, UBS.
The bank last year admitted to the US government it had hundreds of such accounts.
SOURCE: BBC (4-23-10)
The stones have been described as the most significant find of their kind in the past 100 years.
Renovations were planned at the pavilion but archaeologists had to survey the protected building before work could begin.
Their unearthing of the stones and other artefacts has postponed the planned developments on the pavilion.
SOURCE: BBC (4-23-10)
St George paraded through the streets of the Square Mile, for the first time since 1585, when Elizabeth I was on the throne.
The patron saint of England was mounted on horseback with traditional figures of a king and his daughter and a lamb led by a maiden in the parade.
The pageant started at Armourers Hall in Coleman Street.
The occasion was an annual feature of London life from the time of Edward III, but faded away in the aftermath of the Reformation and English Civil War.
SOURCE: BBC (4-23-10)
Lotfi Raissi, an Algerian-born British resident, was arrested in the UK shortly after the attacks amid claims that he was a key member of the plot.
He was held in custody for nearly five months before being released when a judge found there was no evidence to link him to any form of terrorism.
The Ministry of Justice has said Mr Raissi was "eligible" for compensation.
SOURCE: BBC (4-22-10)
The scrawled notes are a transcript of a witness statement about the shootout between lawmen including Wyatt Earp and three outlaws, who were killed.
The documents were last seen about 1960 when they were photocopied.
Researchers hope that restoration by archivists will reveal margin notes not visible on the reproductions.
But the notes are unlikely to shed much new light on the incident, as researchers already had access to the copies.
SOURCE: BBC (4-22-10)
Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza was accused of collaborating with a terrorist group and denying the genocide.
Ms Ingabire, who plans to challenge President Paul Kagame in August's election, has been ordered to report to the authorities twice a month.
She is also banned from leaving the capital city, a Kigali court ruled on Thursday.
Name of source: Telegraph (UK)
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (4-24-10)
"Second Hand" aims to "explore an issue inherent to the history of art: the copy as the basis of artistic apprenticeship and as a constant of artistic creation", according to the museum of modern art in Paris.
The show offers what it dubs "look-alike" works claiming to be by Picasso, Matisse, Giacometti Mondrian and Modigliani, among others.
The forgeries are hung between original paintings in the museum's permanent collection. Thus, an original Picasso is confronted with "NOT Picasso", by Mike Bidlo, an American "appropriation" artist, who has painted a near-exact replica of the cubist master's "Girl with a Cock", 1938.
What appears to be a perfect "Modigliani" is in fact a work by Elmyr de Hory, one of the greatest forgers of the twentieth century who is immortalised in the Orson Welles' film F for Fake.
But while the prospect of a forgery usually strikes fear in the hearts of museum workers, Fabrice Hergott, director of the museum of modern art, relishes the challenge presented in "Second Hand". He warned: "this hanging may disorient those who expect to see only 'real' Picassos and Matisses rather than their avatars."
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (4-24-10)
British researchers claim that a sudden plummeting in the sea temperature of 16F (9C) more than 137 million years ago was the first step towards their eventual road to extinction.
While studying fossils and minerals from the Arctic Svalbard, Norway, they concluded the sudden change in the Atlantic Gulf Stream during the Cretaceous period would almost certainly have wiped out the ''abundance'' of the world's dinosaurs.
Some experts believe the creatures were wiped out by one cataclysmic event 65 million years ago – such as a meteor hitting the planet.
But the new research suggests they were wiped out by a series of environmental changes, starting with a drop in sea temperatures.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (4-23-10)
The 79-year-old actor, who was part of the original Star Trek cast when the series began in 1966, has announced his retirement.
Nimoy, one of the cult show's best-known characters, said he wanted to "get off the stage" in order to let Zachary Quinto, the young actor who assumed the role for the Star Trek movie last year, take over.
He said he planned to give up acting altogether after a last visit to Vulcan, the small town in Canada which has made him an honorary citizen.
He said: "I love the idea of going out on a positive note. I've had a great, great time.
"Since Star Trek began, I've never had to worry about where the next job was."
The actor has earned millions of dollars from his role as pointy-eared Spock in the television series and seven films, as well as making numerous appearances at Star Trek conventions, the Daily Mail reported.
He rekindled his love for the show after becoming disillusioned with it in the 1970s, in the fear that its popularity might prevent his career from developing.
He named his 1975 autobiography I Am Not Spock, but later got over what he called an "identity crisis" and re-released his book in 1995, calling it I Am Spock.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (4-22-10)
The team believe the building, at Torre Satriano, may have been a temple or palace.
It has been found in a region of southern Italy in which colonists and traders from Ancient Greece settled from the 8th century BC onwards.
They established a number of independent city-states along the coast and in Sicily that together were known as Magna Graecia.
The archaeologists have speculated that the indigenous, pre-Roman nobility may have developed a taste for Greek fashion and that enterprising local builders came up with the idea of relatively cheap, DIY buildings to satisfy local demand.
Each stone component bears identification symbols showing how they fit together, just like a bed or book case produced by the Swedish low-cost furniture manufacturer....
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (4-22-10)
Veterans in the Ural Mountains city of Perm were furious after designers at a local publishing house illustrated the poster with Nazi propaganda pictures downloaded from the internet.
The committee was especially upset because it paid for the printing of the posters, which were meant to be distributed ahead of the 65th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany, celebrated in Russia on May 9.
The designers at the Perm Book Publishing House apparently could not tell the Nazi and Soviet soldiers apart, and of the six photographs in the poster, four featured German forces rather than the Red Army.
Name of source: BBC News
SOURCE: BBC News (4-23-10)
The far-right contender in Austria's presidential election on Sunday has stirred up debate about the country's anti-Nazi legislation, the BBC's Bethany Bell reports.
A brass band in traditional Austrian costume played oompah music in a baroque cobbled square in the town of St Poelten.
A rally for Barbara Rosenkranz, the far-right Austrian Freedom Party (FPOe) candidate for president, was under way.
There was a visible police presence. In the neighbouring square, a counter-demonstration by left-wing protesters was taking place.
Barbara Rosenkranz, a 51-year-old mother of 10, is a controversial figure. She is married to a man who belonged to a banned extreme right-wing party.
And she has criticised parts of Austria's strict anti-Nazi legislation, known as the Verbotsgesetz .
In an interview on Austrian television in 2007 she talked about the Verbotsgesetz, saying "the way lawyers interpret it is wishy-washy, open to abuse and isn't in line with our constitution, which protects freedom of opinion."
No whitewashing of past
Austria was annexed to Nazi Germany in 1938 and was deeply involved in the crimes of the Third Reich. Now it is illegal to deny the Holocaust or to make statements which glorify the Nazi regime.
There is a debate in Austria about whether the anti-Nazi legislation is too strict. But the political analyst Thomas Hofer says Mrs Rosenkranz's motives are questionable.
"There are liberals in Austria who want to do away with those laws because they are obviously going against freedom of speech. But if she comes from a far-right background - and she does come from that background - it is a different story."
Thomas Hofer says Mrs Rosenkranz is trying to appeal to an extreme right-wing minority.
"There are some people in Austria who still think that not everything was bad during the Nazi era, so she tried to secure the small base, in terms of revisionists, for the Freedom Party and thought there wouldn't be a big fuss - but there was."
International image
Mrs Rosenkranz is not expected to win the election on Sunday. Opinion polls say up to 80% of the vote will go to the current president, Heinz Fischer of the Social Democrats (SPOe).
But her nomination as the Freedom Party's presidential candidate has caused outrage among Jewish groups, and politicians from the centre-left and centre-right.
The presidency is a largely ceremonial post but it involves frequent international visits.
Over the past few weeks, Mrs Rosenkranz has denied ever wanting to get rid of the anti-Nazi legislation.
She told Austrian television that she "accepts the law, in the form that it is in".
Many of her supporters at the rally in St Poelten insisted that she does not have extreme right views.
Kathi, a young FPOe worker who said she knew the Rosenkranz family, said Mrs Rosenkranz was "misrepresented by the media".
"She was led into a trap. That's not fair. I think Barbara Rosenkranz is a very good woman."
Maximilian, wearing a bright blue FPOe jacket, said he was a fan. "I think she was misinterpreted. She has ten children and I also have three siblings so I understand her. She is against immigration. She has the right political views."
But many other Austrians disagree. At the counter-demonstration in St Poelten, feelings against her candidacy were running high.
One protester, Martin, said it was "a scandal for Austria" that someone with her background was running for the highest position in the state.
"Austria was part of Nazi Germany and Barbara Rosenkranz is definitely a sign that this country did not learn from its history."
Roman, another protester, said freedom of speech was important, but some lines had to be drawn. "Horrible things happened in that time. If she wants to be president in Austria she shouldn't say such things. Someone like this shouldn't be the representative of our country."
Sensitivities about Austria's past still run deep.
Name of source: PR-Inside.com
SOURCE: PR-Inside.com (4-23-10)
has settled a lawsuit against a German filmma ker who accused him of performing for Nazi guards at a concentration camp during World War II.
Johannes Heesters filed suit against German author and documentarian Vo lker Kuehn in a Berlin state court in 2008 after the filmmaker went publi c with claims the singer performed for SS troops at Dachau concentration camp in 1941....
Name of source: KFVS 12 (KY)
SOURCE: KFVS 12 (KY) (4-21-10)
The Paducah Police Department Bomb Squad responded to a call from Daniel McKendree about a cannon ball that he moved from his parents' yard on Kentucky Avenue. McKendree moved the ball to his home on Clay Street and thought it might be a live ordnance....
Name of source: Muskogee Phoenix (OK)
SOURCE: Muskogee Phoenix (OK) (4-21-10)
Blackburn made the announcement standing beneath the deteriorating canopy in the center of the re-created historic fort of the 1800s.
OHS has been able to parlay a $200,000 appropriation into $1 million with the help of a number of state officials, Blackburn said. The state money was matched with a grant from the National Park Service’s Save America’s Treasures program. It was supplemented with $645,000 obtained through the Oklahoma Department of Transportation and the U.S. Department of Transportation.
The compilation of funds will make it possible to fully restore all the buildings of the fort re-created by the Works Progress Administration, Blackburn said. Some of the WPA work that has been hidden by time, such as some of the walks they built, also will be restored in the project....
Name of source: NYT
SOURCE: NYT (4-15-10)
On Thursday evening, the heads of the three main political parties in Britain will gather for the first of three live TV clashes set to take place before voters go to the polls May 6.
The debate is being billed as a seminal event for British society and television. Optimists see it as a chance for leaders to reconnect with a jaded electorate. Pessimists fear that it will further the ascendance of show business over substance in British politics.
“We’re suddenly going to have a significant portion of the British population spending the length of a football match watching three people talking about politics,” said Stephen Coleman, a professor of political communication at the University of Leeds. “I think what we watch Thursday night will become a water-cooler moment on Friday morning, which is something we get very rarely in British politics.”...
“It’s kind of Cameron’s to lose,” said Steven Fielding, a professor of political history at the University of Nottingham. “For Brown, expectations are so low that he can only gain.”
The main task for advisers to Mr. Cameron, the son of a stockbroker who counts King William IV as an ancestor, has been to make him more palatable to Middle England, where class resentments remain strong. To try to connect with ordinary voters, Mr. Cameron has embraced some of the Web 2.0 tactics of the Obama campaign....
Related News
SOURCE: NYT (4-21-10)
Members of the tiny, isolated tribe had given DNA samples to university researchers starting in 1990, in the hope that they might provide genetic clues to the tribe’s devastating rate of diabetes. But they learned that their blood samples had been used to study many other things, including mental illness and theories of the tribe’s geographical origins that contradict their traditional stories.
The geneticist responsible for the research has said that she had obtained permission for wider-ranging genetic studies.
Acknowledging a desire to “remedy the wrong that was done,” the university’s Board of Regents on Tuesday agreed to pay $700,000 to 41 of the tribe’s members, return the blood samples and provide other forms of assistance to the impoverished Havasupai — a settlement that legal experts said was significant because it implied that the rights of research subjects can be violated when they are not fully informed about how theirDNA might be used....
Name of source: Discovery News
SOURCE: Discovery News (4-23-10)
The shift could be abrupt, and climate experts advise that we must continue to monitor the present warning signs, such as influxes of fresh water into the North Atlantic, and slowdowns of the Atlantic Gulf Stream.
A popular theory concerning the extinction of dinosaurs is that a sudden, external event, such as an asteroid hit or volcano eruption, led to the dino demise. But new research, published in Nature Geoscience and the journal Geology, argues climate was more to blame. The research determined that the greenhouse climate of the Cretaceous period experienced a sudden drop in global temperatures.
SOURCE: Discovery News (4-20-10)
British RAF pilots in the early 20th century were the first to spot the strange kite-like lines on the deserts of Israel, Jordan and Egypt from the air and wonder about their origins. The lines are low, stone walls, usually found as angled pairs, that begin far apart and converge at circular pits. In some places in Jordan the lines formed chains up to 40 miles long.
Were they made by some weird kind of fault? Ancient astronauts?
A new study of 16 of what are called desert kites in the eastern Sinai Desert confirms what many researchers have long suspected: The walls form large funnels to direct gazelle and other large game animals into killing pits. What's more, the kites are between 2,300 and 2,400-years-old, were abandoned about 2,200 years ago and are just the right size to have worked on local gazelles and other hooved game.
SOURCE: Discovery News (4-23-10)
Evidence of the civilization that formed the basis of urban life in the entire Middle East lies beneath three large mounds about three miles from the modern town of Raqqa in Syria, according to U.S. and Syrian archaeologists.
The mounds, the tallest standing some 50 feet high, cover about 31 acres and enclose the ruins of Tell Zeidan, a proto-urban community dating from between 6000 and 4000 B.C.
At this time, much of Mesopotamia shared a common culture, called Ubaid, which led to the emergence of the first true city centers in the subsequent Uruk period (about 4000 to 3100 B.C.).
SOURCE: Discovery News (4-19-10)
A tiny fossil thumb bone provides a gripping look at the early evolution of human hands, according to a study presented April 16 at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.
An upright gait and a relatively sophisticated ability to manipulate objects apparently evolved in tandem among the earliest hominids at least 6 million years ago, said Sergio Almécijaof the Autonomous University of Barcelona. That's well before the earliest evidence of stone toolmaking, about 2.6 million years ago, arguing against the idea that fine motor skills for toolmaking drove the evolution of opposable thumbs.
Name of source: Reuters
SOURCE: Reuters (4-23-10)
In what some see as necessary and others see as excessive, anthropologists and forensics experts are sifting yet again through rubble for remnants of the nearly 3,000 people killed when two hijacked jetliners crashed into the twin towers.
With buildings slowly being erected where the towers stood, the latest effort to comb through 844 cubic yards of debris collected since 2007 from excavation of new sections of Ground Zero was launched this month.
Scientists have sifted through two batches of debris already and are testing those samples for human DNA. The new batch of debris has been dug up as construction progresses.
SOURCE: Reuters (4-23-10)
Iraq, which the ancient Greeks called Mesopotamia or 'land between the rivers' because of the Tigris and Euphrates that flow through it, is regarded by archaeologists as a cradle of civilization.
But historic sites have been neglected and damaged by decades of war, sanctions and looting and Iraqi officials say the country needs millions of dollars to reverse the damage.
Name of source: ABC
SOURCE: ABC (4-23-10)
The team is also hoping to find military relics like the remains of small boats, ammunition and what is left of battlefield jetties.
NSW state maritime archaeologist and team leader Tim Smith says it is important the items are comprehensively documented.
Name of source: Science News
SOURCE: Science News (4-22-10)
Since 2004, the discoverers of unusual “hobbit” fossils on the Indonesian island of Flores have attributed their find to a pint-sized species, Homo floresiensis, that lived there from 95,000 to 17,000 years ago. These researchers also suspect, on the basis of hobbit anatomy and recent stone tool discoveries on Flores, that H. floresiensis evolved from a currently unknown hominid species that migrated from Africa to Indonesia more than 1 million years ago.
Critics say the finds represent nothing more than human pygmies like those still living on Flores. In their opinion, the centerpiece hobbit find — a partial skeleton of an adult female known as LB1 — is what’s left of a woman who suffered from a developmental disorder that resulted in an unusually small brain and a misshapen skull and lower body.
But arm and leg fossils from LB1 and a second hobbit appear robust, not unhealthy, according to a new study directed by William Jungers of Stony Brook University in New York. The bones display humanlike thickness in the tough tissue that forms the outer shell of most bones, and opposite sides of the limb bones exhibit comparable thickness, a sign of healthy growth, said Stony Brook anthropologist and study coauthor Frederick Grine, who presented Jungers’ paper at the meeting.
SOURCE: Science News (4-22-10)
Using DNA to trace the evolutionary split between head and body lice, researchers conclude that body lice first came on the scene approximately 190,000 years ago. And that shift, the scientists propose, followed soon after people first began wearing clothing.
The new estimate, presented April 16 at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists annual meeting, sheds light on a poorly understood cultural development that allowed people to settle in northern, cold regions, said Andrew Kitchen of Pennsylvania State University in University Park. Armed with little direct evidence, scientists had previously estimated that clothing originated anywhere from around 1 million to 40,000 years ago.
An earlier analysis of mitochondrial DNA from the two modern types of lice indicated that body lice evolved from head lice only about 70,000 years ago. Because body lice thrive in the folds of clothing, they likely appeared not long after clothes were invented, many scientists believe.
Name of source: Salisbury Journal
SOURCE: Salisbury Journal (4-22-10)
He sent his find (pictured) to Wessex Archaeology with a letter asking if experts could identify it.
Sadly, Sam forgot to send them his address or phone number.
Name of source: UPI
SOURCE: UPI (4-22-10)
The archaeologists are likening the possibly 6th-century temple discovery in Torre Satriano, Italy, to Ikea furniture, the inexpensive home furnishings the purchaser assembles at home, the British Daily Telegraph and the Times of London reported Thursday.
The head of archaeology at Basilica University, Professor Massimo Osanna, said that the team working at what was once Magna Graecia had found a sloping roof with red and black decorations, with "masculine" and "feminine" pieces inscribed with instructions on how to slot them together.
Name of source: Boston Globe
SOURCE: Boston Globe (4-23-10)
Dassault Systèmes is a French company specializing in 3D and product lifecycle management software. Its 3DVIA brand division, which focuses on "virtual reality platforms," has offices in Concord.
A digital initiative called the Giza Archives Project is housed at the MFA. The project aims to “assemble and link” the world’s archaeological information on the Egyptian Pyramids at the Giza Plateau.
Name of source: Orange County Register
SOURCE: Orange County Register (4-22-10)
The archive will arrive from College Park at an interval of three trucks per week until the end of May.
By then, all classified and unclassified materials – except for the notorious White House tapes – will be available for inspection in the basement of the Nixon Presidential Library & Museum on Yorba Linda Boulevard.
Last year the Nixon library and museum saw an estimated 95,000 patrons, a figure that administrators hope will increase thanks to upcoming shows and the inclusion of artifacts brought to California.
Visitors coming in solely to view the archives aren't expected to make a huge difference in museum patronage. Administrators at the Nixon museum said other presidential libraries report that less than 1 percent of museum attendees each year come to visit their archives....
Name of source: Washington Post
SOURCE: Washington Post (4-23-10)
Only in recent years did Col. Grimes speak extensively of his wartime experiences, in part, he said, because the military had ordered airmen to treat their experiences as secret. When he sat down for extensive interviews about the war in 2002, he said he felt relief about being able to share his memories. After that, he met with Air Force jet pilots at a base in Colorado, in which he described flying night training missions in the dark, without radar and under radio silence. He knew other planes were nearby but used instinct and occasional flares to avoid collisions. The top-gun pilots were shocked and rendered speechless.
In 1943, then-Lt. Grimes and a nine-man crew flew bombing runs over Nazi Europe from an English air base, north of London. He was 20, unknown to the others, and was the youngest of the crew. It was the height of the U.S. Army Eighth Air Force daylight bombings of strategic targets over Nazi territory. On a mission near Gdansk, Poland, on Oct. 9, they faced intense ground fire and flak.
After dropping his bombs, he was able to return to his base at Snetterton Heath, but the B-17 was riddled with holes and taken out of service. Lt. Grimes and crew set off with a different plane on the morning of Oct. 20, six days after what became known as "Black Thursday" -- an attack on a Schweinfurt, Germany, ball-bearing plant in which 60 B-17s and 600 men were lost.
The target this time was a bomb manufacturing plant near Aachen, Germany. Nazi fighter planes zoomed in when Lt. Grimes experienced engine trouble over central Belgium. He was forced to linger beneath the clouds and separated from the rest of his squadron.
Within minutes, cannon fire destroyed the plane's tail, and Lt. Grimes struggled for control. As he sounded the alarm, not realizing he had been wounded in the leg by machine-gun fire, the pilot held a slow circle and fought for crucial seconds so the crew could jump free of the stricken plane. He was the last to bail out before the B-17 crashed into a field close to a Luftwaffe base, 35 miles southwest of Brussels.
Col. Grimes later learned that four of his crewmen were killed in action, but five had survived the crash. "You never stop thinking about it," he said in a 2004 interview. "In my mind, I'm back in the cockpit, left seat, looking at the controls, and I'm dodging and diving around the Nazi fighters, trying to make it to a cloud bank. And I look for every option, but I never come up with anything to save us."
On the ground in Belgium, he heard Nazi patrols and barking dogs but was able to hide in the brush until dark, when farmers saved him, knowing the penalty for harboring airmen was execution. He was handed over to members of the Comet Line, a civilian escape organization that saved an estimated 700 airmen during the war. A young member of the organization, Micheline Dumont, arranged for a doctor to remove a bullet from Lt. Grimes's leg and nursed him back to health.
He recalled celebrating his 21st birthday in Brussels on Thanksgiving Day, hidden by Micheline and her friends.
In mid-December, Comet operatives provided forged Belgian and French identity papers and led him on foot, by bicycle and train to a village near the French-Spanish border. Basque guides took Lt. Grimes and several other airmen on an overnight hike in the freezing rain through the Pyrenees. He and his companions waded to safety across the Bidassoa River into Spain before dawn Dec. 23, pursued by Nazi patrols and facing fire from border guards.
Lt. Grimes returned to the United States, trained other bomber pilots in 1944 and was preparing for an impending invasion of Japan when the war ended in 1945. As part of the new Air Force, he went back to Europe for the Berlin Airlift that brought supplies to Berliners during a communist blockade of that city.
He later was a staff officer at U.S. bases in France and Vietnam, and finished his military career as chief of the logistics operations division with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After military retirement in 1972, at the rank of colonel, he spent 10 years as an associate superintendent of schools in Prince William County.
Robert Zeno Grimes was born in Portsmouth, Va., on Nov. 24, 1922. He was one of seven children born to a master carpenter at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.
In 1945, he married Mary Helen Moore. Besides his wife, of Fort Belvoir, survivors include three daughters, Susan Grimes of Washington, Jennifer Grimes of Falls Church and Dale Soper of Woodbine, Md.; two brothers; two sisters; two grandsons; and three great-grandchildren.
After the war, Col. Grimes received a bachelor's degree in military science from the University of Maryland and a master's degree in business administration from George Washington University. His military decorations included the Legion of Merit, the Air Medal and the Purple Heart.
One of Col. Grimes's riveting memories was having been on a Brussels street car the night of his birthday celebration, which was halted by Nazi guards. "I gave the first guard my Belgian ID card and got through it. Then the second guard came and asked me in French if I'd already shown my identification. I somehow saved myself with my high school French. And this was what I said, 'Oui, oui.' Those words saved my life."
Name of source: LA Times
SOURCE: LA Times (4-23-10)
Whitney R. Harris, one of the original prosecutors of Nazi crimes after World War II, died Wednesday from complications of cancer at his home in Frontenac, Mo. He was 97.
Harris was part of the team, led by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, that began the prosecution of war criminals in Nuremberg, Germany, shortly after the war's end. In 1945, Harris led the team's first case, that of Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the highest-ranking leader of the Nazi Security Police to face trial.
In concentrating on the secret services, or SS, Harris interrogated Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Hess, former commander of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
"Mr. Hess told me, as unemotionally as if he were talking at the breakfast table, that 2.5 million people were killed at Auschwitz," Harris said in Nuremberg in 1996, during the 50th anniversary commemoration of the trials.
Harris moved to St. Louis in 1963 as general solicitor of the former Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. He endowed programs at Washington University and was active until last year in seminars at the university's law school.
"He was a tireless advocate for bringing the rule of law to relations among countries, and of trying to prevent any repetition of the Holocaust," said Leila Sadat, director of the university's Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute.
Harris won a conviction of Kaltenbrunner for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including his roles in running the Gestapo, the Nazi concentration camps and the massacre of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto in 1943. Kaltenbrunner was executed by hanging. Harris' three-day interview of Hess in April 1946 helped a Polish tribunal convict him and order his execution.
Harris said he and other lawyers and investigators gathered an abundance of evidence from German files.
"We were really surprised at the documentation we were able to come up with," he said. "I went through Gestapo offices and dug through rubbish and found documents ordering the extermination of Jews. We scurried all over Europe getting documentary evidence."
Harris was born Aug. 12, 1912, in Seattle, the son of a car dealer, and graduated from the University of Washington. He received his law degree from UC Berkeley and practiced in Los Angeles from 1936 until 1942. He was a lawyer in the Navy at the rank of captain when he was selected to work with Jackson.
The special international court tried 22 high-ranking Nazis, convicted 19 and sentenced 12 to death. For his work there, Harris was decorated with the Legion of Merit.
In 1948, Harris returned to the U.S. to teach law at Southern Methodist University and wrote a book, "Tyranny on Trial: The Evidence at Nuremberg."
In 1954 and 1955, he was national executive director of the American Bar Assn. He then joined Southwestern Bell before going into private practice.
Harris' survivors include his wife, Anna; a son, three stepsons, a stepdaughter, four grandchildren, and nine step-grandchildren.
Name of source: Honolulu Weekly
SOURCE: Honolulu Weekly (4-21-10)
Dozens of community members turned out for a meeting with SHPD administrators at Wilson Elementary School on April 14 to air grievances about the division’s operations. Community members voiced concerns over whether ancient burial sites are being adequately protected, the level of transparency and quality of communications between SHPD and the general public, and potential conflicts of interest in Hawaii law, which permits developers to hire archaeological consultants to assess the cultural and historical value of sites on which those developers hope to build.
“This conversation needed to occur, and it’s been a long time coming,” said Rep. Lyla Berg, who facilitated the community forum. “It became very obvious to me that across the state, there are not isolated but very pervasive issues within this division. So, in January, I introduced a resolution to have an audit–a managerial, not financial, audit–of SHPD.”
But SHPD officials insist that they’re caught in the middle of a battle between community members frustrated by the process by which SHPD is required to operate, and a State Legislature whose responsibility it is to change the law if that’s what’s right for Hawaii.
“The process for SHPD right now is the way the law works,” said SHPD Administrator Puaalaokalani Aiu. “People are frustrated about the process, but for us to change our process, it would require a law change. Our process is to operate within the law.”
Shielded by the law
Despite legality, elements of the process that’s in place–like the credentials required for those taking inventories at culturally sacred sites–are what have disgruntled community members most upset.
“This whole process stinks,” said Hawaii Kai Neighborhood Board member Gary Weller at the community forum, “I talked to someone [who was taking inventory of archaeological objects at an Oahu development site] from North Carolina. I asked her, ‘What do these things mean at the site?’ She said, ‘I don’t know, the boss just sent me out here to look around. They look like rocks to me.’”
SHPD officials, who grant archaeological permits and have fought for stricter required archaeological licensing in Hawaii, say it’s up to the State to support the changes for which the division has lobbied.
“We wanted the archaeologists to get licensed, and we submitted a bill for that and it got defeated,” said Aiu. “We don’t have any authority over archaeologists. All we do is permit them. If they meet the minimum requirements, we have to permit them. We don’t look at who pays them, the permit is strictly on their qualifications. So how do you address the ethics of archaeology? How do you help them avoid a conflict situation if they’re being paid by developer?”
Weller and others complain that SHPD isn’t taking advantage of the cultural and historical understanding that local kupuna have, including knowledge of the whereabouts of important sites that may be largely unknown because of the lack of a comprehensive, publicly accessible database. One of the major implications of those concerns involves the City’s multi-billion dollar rail project, which some say they fear will be constructed over ground that covers tens of thousands of iwi, or human remains.
Ticking clock
Tension at the division, which operates within the State Department of Land and Natural Resources, has mounted since the March release of a report from the National Park Service that cited a series of operational issues. The National Park Service found the division has too few staffers, an inadequate database of culturally and historically important sites and operates under an outdated historic preservation plan. The Park Service said it is giving SHPD two years to make upgrades before pulling its federal funding.
Berg says the report’s findings are a large part of why she believes the division should be audited at the State level, which she says would enable the Legislature to identify areas in which it can help SHPD meet National Park Service standards.
“I’m astounded there hasn’t been more of a cry for help [from SHPD],” said Berg. “Especially now, with all these issues in our forefront, they haven’t asked the Legislature to help with the law.”
Aiu counters that, as SHPD scrambles to meet the Park Service’s requirements, a managerial audit would only hurt the division.
“I can understand why people might think a management audit might be helpful,” says Aiu. “But we’ve already had two audits that show that we’re under-resourced. We just went through the National Parks Service, which wasn’t an audit but ended up being an audit because we have to fulfill all of those [requirements] within two years. The real issue is I only have a staff of 13 and they can only do so much work because there is only so much time in the day. To have an audit, I would have to pull staffers away to help auditors find records. We would have to let other things drop.”
Berg said that the division, which operates under Hawaii Administrative Rules, lacks–and sorely needs–a procedural handbook tailored to its mission.
“I don’t know of any other State department that’s in this bad of shape, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist,” said Berg. “There needs to be information so we know what to do but also flexibility to be able to handle individual situations.”
While Aiu argues that the Hawaii Administrative Rules are “actually quite specific,” she acknowledges there are some small gaps in operational process that the division can work to fill. Beyond that, she said it’s up to the State to make broader changes to the law. Aiu also said that clarifying the division’s mission may be the first step toward finding common ground between division administrators and those who claim SHPD isn’t doing its job.
“What does preservation mean?” asked Aiu. “To some people, preservation means you preserve everything that anybody thinks is important. But if you look at SHPD, there’s very clear guidelines on what gets preserved… People may disagree with the eligibility criteria, but for as long as that’s state law, that’s how we decide.”
Name of source: Lee White at the National Coalition for History
SOURCE: Lee White at the National Coalition for History (4-16-10)
The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) has issued a proposed rule that would remove individuals from eligibility for NHPRC grants, and change the time for posting of grant opportunity announcements from four to three months before the application deadline.
The NHPRC’s rationale is that it is more effective for eligible institutions to offer professional opportunities and manage Federally-funded grant projects than for the Commission to award grants to individuals directly. The NHPRC currently has only one program, Publishing Historical Records, in which individuals are eligible to apply. The NHPRC cites the fact that the last successful application from an individual under that program was in 2003 and that they have not received any eligible applications since then.
For grant opportunity announcements, the NHPRC asserts changing the posting time from four months to three months before the application deadline will provide the Commission with greater flexibility.
Comments on the rule must be filed on or before June 7, 2010.
Comments may be submitted, identified by RIN 3095-AB67, by any of the following methods:
Federal eRulemaking Portal: http://www.regulations.gov. Follow the instructions for submitting comments.
E-mail (laura.mccarthy@nara.gov). Include RIN 3095-AB67 in the subject line of the message.
Mail: The National and Archives Records Administration; Policy and Planning Office; ATTN: Laura McCarthy; Room 4100, 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD 20740 (For paper, disk, or CD-ROM submissions. Include RIN 3095-AB67 on the submission).
Instructions: All submissions received must include the agency name and Regulatory Information Number (RIN) for this rulemaking. All comments received may be published without changes, including any personal information provided.
For further information contact: Lucy Barber, Deputy Executive Director, National Historical Publications and Records Commission, National Archives and Records Administration, 700 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW., Room 106, Washington, DC 20408-0001, 202-357-5306.
Name of source: WaPo
SOURCE: WaPo (4-22-10)
It was 1970. They worked 15-hour days. They stuffed a lot of envelopes.
And, at first, they didn't like the name.
"Who in the hell do they think we are, the Grange?" Stephen Cotton recalled about reading the name an advertising agency had proposed for their national protest. Earth Day sounded like an event for farmers. "But it grew on us."
Earth Day turns 40 on Thursday, making its founders 60-somethings. To this group of about 20, both the day and the country look very different now.
In those four decades, the angrier, more ambitious environmental movement that sprang out of Earth Day made vast changes in Washington. New federal laws took on dirty air and poisoned water -- and won.
But today, American environmentalism is struggling in a new kind of fight.
The problems are more slippery: pollutants like greenhouse-gas emissions, which don't stink or sting the eyes. And current activists, by their own admission, rarely muster the kind of collar-grabbing immediacy that the first Earth Day gave to environmental causes.
"I don't think we've come up with a good way in the conservation movement of making it real for people," said Arturo Sandoval, who was 22 when he organized activities across the West on the first Earth Day.
In 1970, "you could say, 'Have you been down to the river lately?' And people would say, 'Oh my God, I don't even let my kids go there,' "said Sandoval, now 62 and still working on environmental causes in Albuquerque. "Global warming, to most people, is an abstract issue."
