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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: Times-News (TN)
SOURCE: Times-News (TN) (5-18-10)
Because of a recent complaint about the rebel flag, Sullivan County Director of Schools Jack Barnes said a special committee at the school will examine the issue and may make recommendations in what Barnes called a proactive approach to the matter.
“We’ve had a complaint,” Barnes said.
“We’re investigating it,” Barnes said. “There has been a concern about the rebel flag being considered or thought of as a symbol of South High School.”
Barnes said some, including the person who made the complaint, find the flag offensive....
Name of source: The Evening Sun (PA)
SOURCE: The Evening Sun (PA) (5-18-10)
Aryan Nations - which identifies itself as a white-supremacist organization and has been called a "continuing terrorist threat" by the FBI - will hold the rally on June 19 from 1 to 3 p.m. on the park's lawn west of the Cyclorama Center, according to the group's website.
"Because the land is publicly owned, we're obligated to make it publicly available for exercising First Amendment rights," Lawhon said last week when the permit request was received....
Name of source: Telegraph (UK)
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (5-15-10)
New evidence has emerged which allegedly shows Joe Ekins, 86, fired the fatal blast which ended the reign of terror of Nazi Germany's most feared tank gunner Michael Wittmann.
Historians argued for decades over who killed the Black Baron after the Canadian army, Polish forces and the RAF each claimed credit.
The Baron was a Nazi war hero and household name in Adolf Hitler's Germany during the Second World War after destroying 138 Allied tanks and took out 132 anti-tank guns.
Now the granddad-of-two, from Rushden, Northants., has been shown as the true hero firing off three shots which blew up the Baron's tank on the northern France battlefield on August 8 1944.
Historians with Battlefield History TV spent two years researching Wittmann v Ekins: Death of a Panzer Ace.
They claimed Mr Ekins was the sole gunner within range of the Black Baron and the only British tank which fitted with a gun which could take out the Nazi Tiger tanks....
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (5-14-10)
anthropologists.
Winning a mate used to depend only on physical prowess and men with the strongest jawline and thickest skulls were better able to survive onslaughts from love rivals.
That meant that over time all men developed thicker bones in the jaws, around the eyes and on the forehead than women.
They also developed a greater proportion of muscle to fat than women and became taller than women, said the study
Dr David Puts, whose findings are published in Evolution and Human Behaviour, said unlike many animal species men and women are similarly sized although men develop more muscle and women more fat....
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (5-19-10)
Viktor Yanukovych had just paid his respects to the war dead by bowing in front off the wreath when it was caught by a gust of wind.
The 8ft display came loose from its base and blew with some force directly into the Ukrainian president, who was attending the event with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev.
Officials rushed to Mr Yanukovych's aid and managed to free him from the foliage, but footage of the incident at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Kiev on Monday quickly found its way onto the web....
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (5-18-10)
Reigniting a dispute that has simmered for six years, Israel's left-leaning Haaretz newspaper claimed that overseers badly botched a "clandestine" five-month operation to excavate the highly-sensitive Mamilla Cemetery.
The allegations are almost certain to rouse anger among Palestinian campaigners who argue that the site holds the remains of some of the Prophet Mohammed's compatriots as well as soldiers in the army of Saladin, who recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders in the 12th century.
The planned museum has been the subject of acrimony ever since Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of California, formally inaugurated the project in a corner of the cemetery in 2004.
Two years ago, the Israeli Supreme Court dismissed a petition to prevent the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre from building the museum after hearing that any human remains discovered at the construction site would be excavated professionally and with dignity.
But according to Haaretz, up to 1,500 skeletons were discovered during the subsequent excavation -- far more than had been expected -- and many were treated with casual disdain.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (5-19-10)
n his most candid comments on the subject to date, the Russian prime minister said that at least part of his job as a KGB agent in East Germany involved acquiring sensitive technological and industrial secrets from the West.
But he told a meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences that he grew increasingly frustrated as the know-how he passed back to the Soviet Union to help it make good the yawning technological gap with the West went unused.
Mr Putin, who worked as a KGB spy in Dresden from 1985-1990, said he could not understand why Soviet scientists did not use the intelligence he and his colleagues were "acquiring" from the West.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (5-19-10)
Anton Geiser was born in what is now part of Croatia and came to the United States from Austria in 1956. He has lived outside of Pittsburgh since 1960, became a citizen in 1962 and is married with three sons.
Geiser has the right to appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals in Washington.
He has acknowledged being an armed guard who watched over and escorted prisoners at three Nazi death camps. But he has argued that his service was not voluntary and that he was therefore eligible to emigrate under the Refugee Relief Act of 1953.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (5-18-10)
But an analysis of human and primate behaviour indicates that the motifs were more likely symbols of non-aggression and good will, similar to a smile.
Dr Bridget Waller, co-author of the report, said the misunderstanding of the motif by Europeans could have affected the way they treated the indigenous people on the islands.
When first encountered by European explorers, the bared teeth motif was characterised variously as a death mask, an image of a skull, and as the face of a shaman in trance.
Fernández de Oviedo y Valdez, who travelled to the Caribbean in the early sixteenth century, wrote that the grinning idols represented an "abominable figure...deformed and frightening with ferocious fangs and teeth and disproportionate ears and burning eyes of a dragon."
Modern scholars have previously agreed with the original interpretation that the figures represented a ferocious devil image or shamanistic trance, but the new study is the first to consider the image as a positive symbol.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (5-18-10)
The Chicago pastor, who has had a rift with Mr Obama's administration for two years, told a group raising money for African relief that his pleas to release frozen funds for use in earthquake-ravaged Haiti would likely be ignored.
When he was still a senator, Mr Obama cut ties with Mr Wright after the pastor's more incendiary remarks became an internet sensation in the spring of 2008. At a National Press Club appearance in April 2008, he claimed the US government could plant AIDS in the black community, praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and suggested Mr Obama was putting his pastor at arm's length for political purposes while privately agreeing with him.
Name of source: Guardian (UK)
SOURCE: Guardian (UK) (5-16-10)
An extensive list of the contagious agents and plagues that could be turned into weapons of mass destruction is revealed in files from a War Cabinet committee released to the National Archives.
The government was known to have produced 5m anthrax-filled cakes to infect cattle in Germany during the war, but the latest documents show research was carried out into a far larger variety of diseases, mostly in Porton Down, near Salisbury, and Pirbright in Surrey.
Experts reported to the War Cabinet's Porton experiments sub-committee, which acknowledged that "bacteriological warfare" was outlawed by the 1925 Geneva protocol. The minutes, only now released, are labelled "secret" and "to be kept under lock and key". One session on "Toxin X" – thought to be botulinum – was so sensitive the minute records: "Not circulated."
An interim report in January 1941 said: "The diseases considered most likely to be effective in bacteriological warfare are:
• Human diseases: enteric group (typhoid and para-typhoid), dysentery and cholera.
• Animal diseases: anthrax, foot-and-mouth disease, rinderpest, glanders, and swine fever. (Anthrax and glanders also affect human beings under conditions favourable for infection)."...
Name of source: CNN.com
SOURCE: CNN.com (5-18-10)
The response comes after Argentine President Cristina Kirchner requested new talks with Britain over the disputed islands, which lie off Argentina's coast in the South Atlantic.
Speaking at a summit in Spain for countries of Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean, British Foreign Office minister Jeremy Browne said British sovereignty is supported by the European Union.
"We have no doubt about our sovereignty over the Falkland Islands," said Browne, who is Britain's minister of state for Latin America. "The principle of self-determination as set out in the U.N. charter applies. There cannot be negotiation on sovereignty unless and until the Falkland Islanders so wish."
Kirchner asked at the summit that the United Kingdom open negotiations on the islands, repeating a request she first issued Friday to the new British government. The Falklands are known in Argentina as the Malvinas....
Name of source: San Antonio Express-News
SOURCE: San Antonio Express-News (5-18-10)
More than 200 people have signed up to speak during the public hearing that will cap months of contentious debate over new social studies curriculum standards for 4.8 million public school students.
Paige, who was Houston school superintendent before President George W. Bush elevated him to a Cabinet position in 2001, said the proposed standards are loaded up with ideology.
“The history of our nation and the history of the state should not be handmaidens to carry political ideology for either party,” Paige said Tuesday, adding the board appears to be too involved in establishing what details of history students should learn. “Let history speak its authoritative voice through the qualified historians and educators.”
Jealous said the proposed standards don't mention the state's secession from the Union to fight with the Confederacy during the Civil War, and it doesn't require students to learn about the NAACP....
Name of source: AP
SOURCE: AP (5-18-10)
McLeroy, the most outspoken member of the board's conservative wing, has pushed for standards that reflect conservative Christian values. Although he lost his bid for re-election in the March primary, he has refused to go quietly and still hopes to leave his stamp on the state's social studies curriculum with a series of amendments he'll offer this week.
Among other things, the amendments would suggest that the nation's founders might not have intended a separation of church and state as the courts have interpreted it, and that the United Nations poses a threat to individual liberties.
The board is scheduled to have a public hearing on the standards today and take a final vote Friday. A record 206 people have signed up to testify at today's hearing, Texas Education Agency spokeswoman Debbie Ratcliffe said.
The curriculum will set the standards for teaching history and social studies to about 4.8 million public school students for 10 years....
SOURCE: AP (5-19-10)
Maria Hadjicosti said the coffins adorned with floral patterns date from the east Mediterranean island's Hellenistic to early Roman periods, between 300 B.C. and 100 A.D.
Hadjicosti said similar coffins dating from the same period have been discovered. Two such coffins are on display in the capital's Archaeological Museum, while three others remain in storage there. But she called the latest find significant because the coffins were untouched by grave robbers.
SOURCE: AP (5-19-10)
Now, thanks to the dogged efforts of modern-day supporters, 1st Lt. Alonzo Cushing shall not have died in vain, nor shall his memory have perished from the earth.
Descendants and some Civil War history buffs have been pushing the U.S. Army to award the soldier the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military decoration. They'll soon get their wish.
SOURCE: AP (5-19-10)
The striking black and white 1997 Testino image shows the princess of Wales reclining on a sofa, her chin resting on folded hands. It is valued at 18,000 pounds-22,000 pounds ($26,000-32,000) and was taken only months before her death.
Also included in the sale are images by Andy Warhol of the Rolling Stones, including an image of Mick Jagger that was later used for the cover of the "Love you Live" album.
SOURCE: AP (5-16-10)
Officers forcibly carried off dozens of demonstrators who had staged a sit-in to try to stop the work outside Barzilai Hospital in the southern city of Ashkelon. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said 30 protesters were arrested.
Archaeologists have determined the graves belonged to Christians or pagans from the Byzantine period, about 1,400 years ago. But ultra-Orthodox Jews insist they are Jewish bones that should not be moved, in accordance with religious practice.
Name of source: Discovery News
SOURCE: Discovery News (5-19-10)
King Tutankhamun's mummy was wrapped in custom-made bandages similar to modern first aid gauzes, an exhibition at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art has revealed.
For a century, the narrow linen bandages were contained in a rather overlooked cache of large ceramic jars at the museum's Department of Egyptian Art. The collection was recovered from the Valley of the Kings between 1907-08, more than a decade before Howard Carter discovered King Tut's treasure-packed tomb.
Name of source: BBC
SOURCE: BBC (5-19-10)
Two skeletons, pottery and a large timber hall, all thought to date back to between the 6th to 8th Century, have been uncovered.
Steve Sheldon, of Cotswold Archaeology, said it was previously thought the area did not succumb to Saxon control during that period.
He said the settlement was one of the best finds of his career.
SOURCE: BBC (5-19-10)
Experts said they were surprised by the female find because the site, near Monsal Dale in the Peak District, had been believed to be a military scene.
Now, extra lottery funding means there can be a second dig at the Fin Cop hill fort site to find out more.
Archaeologists unearthed the Iron Age skeleton last August.
During the excavation, the woman was uncovered among the jumbled stone of a collapsed rampart.
SOURCE: BBC (5-18-10)
More than 1,000 sailors drowned when the British warship, the predecessor to Lord Nelson's Victory, sank in a storm.
The report is part of the public consultation into the future management of the 1744 shipwreck in the English Channel. Consultation ends on 30 June.
The authors of the report said unauthorised salvage could result in "irreparable damage" to the wreck site.
SOURCE: BBC (5-18-10)
Only 65 years later is his full story coming to light, as his Military Cross and accompanying documents were sold for £3,200 at a Colwyn Bay auctioneers on Tuesday.
Born in Stratford Upon Avon, Capt Neale lived the latter half of his life in north Wales, firstly in Deganwy, and then in Llandudno.
Displaying the modesty typical of his generation, Capt Neale, along with his wife Isabel, was known in Llandudno for his charitable work, in particular with the church and young offenders, but didn't like to speak of his role during World War II.
SOURCE: BBC (5-18-10)
The device, believed to be a mortar, was discovered at the rear of the Assembly Hall at Banbridge Academy on the Lurgan Road.
SOURCE: BBC (5-18-10)
The New York Times ran video from a 2008 veterans ceremony in which he said: "I served in Vietnam."
The Democrat did not serve in Vietnam, instead spending six months in the Marine Reserve in the US.
His campaign team said the newspaper coverage was an "outrageous distortion".
SOURCE: BBC (5-17-10)
When Chris last saw Kim, she was lying on a hospital bed with third-degree burns to more than half of her body, after a South Vietnamese napalm bomb attack.
It was 8 June 1972 and Chris and his crew had been in Vietnam for seven weeks, covering the conflict for ITN.
Then, 10 years later, a journalist from Germany tracked Kim down.
She was at university studying medicine but the Vietnamese government cut short her studies and ordered her back to her village to be filmed and interviewed. She was now a propaganda tool.
Even when she succeeded in resuming her studies, this time in Cuba, she was still expected to fulfil her duties as a "symbol of war".
SOURCE: BBC (5-17-10)
The Art Fund Prize annually awards £100,000 to a museum or gallery for a project completed in the last year.
News of the shortlisting follows the announcement that the museum has lifted a prestigious award for the best permanent exhibition in the UK.
Since reopening last October, the museum has become Northern Ireland's busiest tourist attraction with current visitor numbers standing at more than 355,000.
SOURCE: BBC (5-14-10)
Mr Slabbert was best known for his efforts in the late 1980s to open up dialogue between Afrikaners and the then-exiled ANC.
He was one of the few members of South Africa's white-dominated parliament to oppose apartheid.
The ANC said he had made an "indelible mark" in fighting white minority rule.
Name of source: Fox News
SOURCE: Fox News (5-19-10)
As a way to protest the network's decision -- which came after an Islamic extremist website warned of retaliation against the show's creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker -- Norris created a poster with likenesses of Muhammad as a domino, a teacup and a box of pasta.
She declared May 20 "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!" -- and her efforts quickly went viral, spawning several Facebook pages with thousands of followers dedicated to the event.
They also prompted a "protest" movement by thousands of other Facebook users opposed to it.
Name of source: CNN
SOURCE: CNN (5-19-10)
Malcolm X, the African-American Muslim leader who once called King "Rev. Dr. Chicken-wing," extended his hand and smiled.
That encounter on March 26, 1964, lasted only a minute. But a photo of that meeting has tantalized scholars and supporters of both men for more than 45 years.
As the 85th birthday of Malcolm X is marked on Wednesday, history has freeze-framed him as the angry black separatist who saw whites as blue-eyed devils.
Yet near the end of his life, Malcolm X was becoming more like King -- and King was becoming more like him.
Name of source: NYT
SOURCE: NYT (5-18-10)
The album was one of the long-missing volumes cataloging the never-built Führermuseum in Linz, Austria, which Hitler envisioned someday rivaling Dresden and Munich. Starting in 1939, Nazi henchmen and art dealers bought and stole thousands of paintings, sculptures, tapestries and other objects from private collections across Europe, then stockpiled them. Hitler helped draw up architectural plans, which megomaniacally grew to include a theater and an opera house, a hotel, a library and parade grounds. Photographs show him, pencil in hand, pondering plans and gazing raptly on the model for the site.
“And so they are ever returning to us, the dead,” the German novelist W. G. Sebald wrote in “The Emigrants.” “At times they come back from the ice more than seven decades later and are found at the edge of the moraine, a few polished bones and a pair of hobnailed boots.” He was recalling a long-forgotten Alpine climber, whose remains a glacier in Switzerland suddenly released, 72 years after the man had gone missing....
Name of source: NPR
SOURCE: NPR (5-18-10)
Police said two Greeks aged 42 and 48 were arrested in the Peloponnese area late Friday as they were loading the illegally excavated figures of young men into a truck. Authorities are seeking a third man suspected of belonging to a smuggling gang that planned to spirit the 6th century B.C. works out of the country.
Archaeologists said Tuesday the statues are "outstanding works of art" and may have come from a temple or cemetery in a lost ancient city in the Peloponnese region in southern Greece. Both are in excellent condition, but lack sections of their lower legs and were gashed by a plow or digging machinery.
Name of source: Newsweek
SOURCE: Newsweek (5-18-10)
When Chandra Levy went missing in 2001, she left a road map to her body. The 24-year-old intern quit her gym the day before she disappeared and spent her last known moments searching online for jogging paths in the same Washington, D.C., park where she would ultimately be found dead. But right from the start, a combination of police incompetence and media obsession with the politician Levy was sleeping with derailed the investigation. Finding Chandra, a new book about the case by Washington Post reporters Sari Horwitz and Scott Higham, details a shocking series of blunders by the police, who failed to retrieve security-camera footage showing Levy's final departure from home and somehow were unaware of a pattern of similar attacks on other female joggers. Meanwhile, Horwitz and Higham recount, the press corps failed to ask smart questions, instead jockeying for scoops concerning the most intriguing suspect: congressman Gary Condit.
The failure of both the police and journalists to properly investigate the crime could have tragic consequences. It seems clear now that the culprit was Ingmar Guandique, who was arrested for the other assaults just weeks after Levy vanished. But he may well be acquitted at his upcoming trial. Even though Guandique has confessed to murdering Levy, no forensic evidence exists. Thirteen months went by before Levy's bones were found. The evidence was so eroded that the medical examiner couldn't even determine how Levy died.
The summer of Chandra Levy seems like yesterday, though almost a decade has passed. I'd like to think I'm a better reporter now, less likely to follow the pack. More important, the media landscape has changed. Blogs barely existed in 2001. Now, when I cover any high-profile crime, I make sure to check out Web Sleuths, an Internet forum for armchair detectives who analyze cases and post court filings. When I followed the Duke lacrosse rape story, blogs—many written by people with expertise about North Carolina politics, the law, or even, say, protocol for forensic nurses collecting rape kits—were the best source for appropriately skeptical reporting. The herd mentality of the mainstream media still exists, but it is no longer in control of the narrative. That's a good thing.
Bloggers are unrestrained by the orthodoxies of the professional reporter. They don't need to follow the conventions of the 800-word newspaper story and can instead toss out an idea in two sentences that will nonetheless spur national discussion. They can ask questions without necessarily supplying an answer. Critically, bloggers also do not typically rely on official sources for information. Reporters and their anonymous sources both benefit from the relationship. Reporters get exclusive information, which earns them promotions; sources weave narratives that serve their interests. This corrupting symbiosis makes the reporter all too quick to take an official's word at face value.
In the Levy case, this dynamic was clearly at work. At routine press conferences, all that reporters wanted to hear about was Condit. This suited the police just fine because they didn't have the slightest idea what had happened to Levy. And so, even as they were careful to say he was not a suspect, police dished on Condit, suggesting repeatedly that when the congressman was pressed for information regarding Levy, he was shifty and uncooperative. In fact, as Horwitz and Higham reveal, Condit disclosed his relationship with Levy in his first interview with police, agreed to three more interviews, allowed a search of his apartment, and voluntarily supplied DNA. But press coverage at the time propagated police officials' incomplete portrayal.
Name of source: AFP
SOURCE: AFP (5-18-10)
Mountaineer Duncan Chessell said conditions were the best in decades to find the missing body of Andrew "Sandy" Irvine and perhaps photographic evidence that he reached the world's highest peak with fellow Briton George Mallory.
Mallory and Irvine perished near the summit during their expedition, leaving many wondering whether they had successfully scaled Everest. Mallory's body was recovered in 1999 but not the camera equipment he was believed to be carrying.
Name of source: KGUN 9 {AZ)
SOURCE: KGUN 9 {AZ) (5-18-10)
James Anaya, is a professor of Human Rights Law and Policy at the university. He's also a member of a six person panel, appointed by the U.N., that issued a statement last Monday in Geneva.
In the statement, the team criticizes Arizona's new crackdown on illegal immigration and a new law targeting the ethnic studies program at Tucson Unified School District. It calls the new laws a "disturbing pattern of legislative activity hostile to ethnic minorities and immigrants."
Anaya's primary role as UN Special Rapporteur is to monitor human rights conditions around the world. When questioned about other nations' view of Arizona, Anaya described it as "very negative."...
Name of source: BBC News
SOURCE: BBC News (5-17-10)
Experts are now attempting to discover the identity of the warrior, who is likely to have been killed in the 13th or 14th Century.
The skeleton is one of 10 excavated from the site of a lost royal chapel at the castle. The skeleton of a woman was found near the knight.
Forensic anthropologist Professor Sue Black is leading the investigation.
It is believed the knight could have been killed during Scotland's Wars of Independence with England....
SOURCE: BBC News (5-17-10)
The Hotel Drenica still graces the sea-front in Durres, on Albania's Adriatic coast - one of a long line of hotels and restaurants waiting for the summer influx of tourists.
Children take their first dip of the season in the warming sea, while their parents sip coffee and watch them from the terraces, and boys play football on the sand.
Ties to neighbouring Kosovo run deep. Tens of thousands of refugees found shelter here during the war, and local people are proud of their role in helping their ethnic-Albanian brethren in their hour of need.
Many bars incorporate Kosovo in their names. In the 1998-99 conflict, the Hotel Drenica was at the centre of everything - it was the local headquarters of the Kosovo Liberation Army.
There is still an engraving on a red marble block at the back of the hotel, of a soldier and the initials UCK - the KLA.
But the arrest of Sabit Geci in Pristina on 6 May, and an ongoing investigation by the War Crimes Unit of Eulex - the European Union Law and Justice Mission in Kosovo - look set to show the role of Durres in a different light.
Mr Geci, 51, stands accused of the torture and killing of ethnic Albanian prisoners of the KLA at a detention facility within a KLA base in the north-east Albanian town of Kukes in 1999. According to investigators, some of the 40 people who were mistreated in Kukes were detained by the KLA in Durres.
There were also Serb prisoners kept in Kukes - apparently kidnapped and smuggled in from across the border, and kept in a separate room.
Lawyers for Mr Geci say he denies all charges, and was receiving medical treatment in Slovenia during the period mentioned by Eulex, April-June 1999.
Interrogated
As Serb military and paramilitary forces swept through Kosovo in the spring of 1999, forcing 800,000 Kosovo Albanians from their homes, and killing more than 10,000, many refugees found shelter in Albania.
Some stayed in makeshift refugee camps near the border. Others were redistributed around the country, and an out-of-season tourist resort like Durres proved very useful.
But the KLA was curious about some of the new arrivals. Why were young men of military age not joining their ranks in the desperate conflict with the Serbs? Had some collaborated with the Serbs in the past? Did some belong to rival Albanian political and military factions? Had some even been sent as spies for the Serbs, to uncover KLA supply routes for men and guns into the country?
In Durres, the interrogations took place in the Hotel Drenica.
"Bad things happened here," said a man on the beach at Durres, nodding in the direction of the Hotel Drenica, "but I am not willing to talk about them."
Buses bedecked with red and black Albanian flags took the willing - and less willing - recruits back to the front.
Some men were taken prisoner and held in terrible conditions in detention facilities inside KLA camps. The one at Kukes, in a disused factory, was among the worst. A BBC investigation last year contacted former inmates.
"We panicked every time they opened the door, wondering who they were going to pick on next," one survivor of the Kukes camp told us.
"There were no good guards there. The ones who came from the fronts and had lost relatives would beat us up, or threaten us with automatic rifles.
"One man was killed in front of all the prisoners in that room, including myself. He was shot and left to bleed to death."
He could have understood such mistreatment, the witness added, if he had really been a traitor to the Albanian cause.
'Misuse of uniform'
The Prime Minster of Kosovo, and former political commander of the KLA, Hashim Thaci, last year denied that the KLA had mistreated prisoners in Kukes or elsewhere, telling the BBC: "It just didn't happen. At any time, in any case, in any place... this has nothing to do with the Kosovo Liberation Army."
He admitted that war crimes had been committed after the war, but said the culprits were "pretending they belonged to the KLA", by wearing its uniform.
But Eulex war crimes investigators believe Mr Geci, who is said to have been a key figure in KLA intelligence in Kukes, took part in the beatings there.
On 12 May, the house of another Kosovo Albanian suspect, Xhemshit Krasniqi, was raided in the western Kosovo town of Prizren. Some items were reportedly removed.
Eulex inherited 980 war-crimes cases from the outgoing UN mission in Kosovo. They have narrowed their investigations to just 20 cases - two of them across the border in Albania.
But they say their requests for help from the Albanian government - to visit former camps, interview witnesses, and exhume graves - have been stonewalled.
In February this year, Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur for extra-judicial killings, visited Albania and reported that "none of the international efforts to investigate KLA abuses in Albania has received meaningful co-operation from the government of Albania".
Ilir Meta, the Albanian deputy prime minister and foreign minister, denied that.
"Albania is willing to co-operate for respecting... international law with the international community, and I think that for every request we... will give the right answer," he told the BBC.
"Including with Eulex?" I asked.
"Why not?" he replied.
SOURCE: BBC News (5-18-10)
They say it could be 2,700 years old, making it the oldest burial site in a pyramid in Mesoamerica.
Inside the tomb, they found the skeletons of four people, one of them of a man surrounded by jade and amber.
The researchers believe he could have been a high priest or ruler of Chiapa de Corzo, a prominent settlement at the time.
Rich offerings
The team of archaeologists from Brigham Young University in the US, the Mexican National Institute of History and Anthropology, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico said the discovery suggests that the use of pyramids as burial sites goes back much further than previously thought and could pre-date Mayan culture.
"A thousand years before we see pyramid tombs used for royal burials in the Mayan region, here in Chiapa de Corzo, they were already burying members of the elite inside pyramids. We're talking about 700BC," the team explained.
The tomb is located inside a pyramid which would have been around 6m-7m (20ft -22ft) high when it was first built, with mud stairs leading to a temple on top of the structure.
The researchers found the tomb deep inside the pyramid. After 24 hours of digging, they unearthed a funerary chamber measuring 4m by 3m. The chamber held the bones of three people: a middle-aged man, a child of about one, and a young man.
Human sacrfice?
The middle-aged man was richly adorned, his mouth was covered with a shell and his teeth were incrusted with jade. He also wore bracelets, anklets, necklaces and what the archaeologists believe to be a funerary mask with eyes made of green obsidian.
Investigators from the Archaeological Project Chiapa de Corzo say that judging by the wealth of jewellery he was buried with, he would have been of high rank.
They said the two other bodies may have been added to the tomb to accompany the dead man to the afterworld and were possibly sacrificed.
The researchers say the position of the bones suggests the baby was carefully placed in the tomb, while the young man was possibly thrown into the burial chamber.
In an annex to the main chamber, the archaeologists found another smaller room containing the skeleton of a woman, also richly adorned with amber and pendants depicting birds and a monkey.
The number and variety of the offerings suggests the people living in this region at the time were trading with places as far away as the Gulf coast of Mexico and Valle Motagua in Guatemala, which was rich in jade.
Bruce Bachand, Emiliano Gallaga and Lynneth Lowe of the archaeological team say the discovery suggests humans have been living in Chiapas at least since 1200BC.
SOURCE: BBC News (5-17-10)
When Chris last saw Kim, she was lying on a hospital bed with first-degree burns to more than half of her body, after a South Vietnamese napalm bomb attack.
It was 8 June 1972 and Chris and his crew had been in Vietnam for seven weeks, covering the conflict for ITN.
He remembers the day clearly: "That morning we'd arrived at the village of Trang Bang, which had been infiltrated by the North Vietnamese two days earlier. They were dug in, awaiting a counter-attack.
"In the late morning, two vintage Vietnamese bombers started to circle overhead - this wasn't anything unusual, but because we had been into the village we knew something was going wrong."
Many of the villagers had already fled to the shelter of a temple, among them nine-year-old Kim.
"We thought this would be a safe place - but then I saw the plane - it got so close," she remembers.
"I heard the noise of the bombs then suddenly I saw the fire everywhere around me.
"I was terrified and I ran out of the fire. I saw my brother and my cousin. We just kept running. My clothes were burnt off by the fire."
Chris and his crew were about 400m from the point where the four canisters of napalm had exploded.
"There was a blast of heat which felt like someone had opened the door of an oven. Then we saw Kim and the rest of the children. None of them were making any sound at all - until they saw the adults. Then they started to scream."
Lasting memory
A Vietnamese photographer, Nick Ut, was also covering events in South Vietnam that day.
As Kim ran down the road, her arms outstretched and screaming for help, he took what is now seen as one of the most memorable images of the Vietnam War.
She was still running when Chris stopped her and poured water over her, while directing his crew to record the terrible scenes.
"We were short of film and my cameraman, the late, great Alan Downes, was worried that I was asking him to waste precious film shooting horrific pictures which were too awful to use. My attitude was that we needed to show what it was like, and to their lasting credit, ITN ran the shots."
Nick took Kim to the nearest hospital, the US-run Saigon First Children's Hospital. Shortly afterwards, his photograph and the film footage appeared all over the Western media.
One result was that everyone wanted to know what had happened to the little girl.
It was Chris who found Kim the following Sunday, in a small room at the American hospital.
"I asked a nurse how she was and she said she would die tomorrow," he says. So he got her moved to a specialist plastic surgery hospital, for life-saving treatment.
Kim stayed in hospital for 14 months and went through 17 operations, remaining in constant pain to this day.
Her image became a lasting memory for a generation - but the little girl herself disappeared from public view.
Powerful gift
Then, 10 years later, a journalist from Germany tracked Kim down.
She was at university studying medicine but the Vietnamese government cut short her studies and ordered her back to her village to be filmed and interviewed. She was now a propaganda tool.
Even when she succeeded in resuming her studies, this time in Cuba, she was still expected to fulfil her duties as a "symbol of war".
It was at Havana University that she met Toan, a fellow student from Vietnam. They married and took a honeymoon in Russia, which provided them with a unique opportunity to flee to Canada.
"I heard rumours that a lot of Cuban students stay in Canada on the way back from Moscow, when the plane stops to refuel. By doing this I was finally able to gain my freedom."
Kim settled down to a peaceful and anonymous life in Canada with her husband and two children, but in 1995 she was traced by another journalist and the picture was splashed across the front page of the Toronto Sun.
"I wanted to escape the picture because the more famous it got, the more it cost me my private life. It seemed to me that my picture would not let me go," she says.
However, the realisation came to her she did not have to remain an unwilling victim. The photo was, in fact, a powerful gift that she could use to help promote peace.
"I realised that now that I have freedom and am in a free country, I can take control of that picture," she says.
'Impressive woman'
This idea led her to establish the Kim Phuc Foundation, which provides medical and psychological assistance to child victims of war.
Chris continued with ITN for another three years as defence correspondent, covering amongst other things the Yom Kippur War and the invasion of Cyprus. Later he moved to the BBC.
He retired in 1999 and never expected to see Kim again.
"At the time, it was just another story, though an appalling one. It was certainly the worst thing I ever saw.
"Later, when interest was rekindled, I felt that Kim was being used. That was why 10 years ago I declined a proposed on-screen reunion with her on the Oprah Winfrey Show - it sounded exploitative."
Now, having met Kim, he's changed his mind, and no longer thinks of her as a victim of that picture .
"Despite everything that has happened to her, and all she's endured, she's become a very impressive woman."
SOURCE: BBC News (5-17-10)
Experts say the vaccine used to wipe out smallpox offered some protection against the Aids virus and, now it is no longer used, HIV has flourished.
The US investigators said trials indicated the smallpox jab interferes with how well HIV multiplies.
But they say in the journal BMC Immunology it is too early to recommend smallpox vaccine for fighting HIV.
Kill no cure
Lead researcher Dr Raymond Weinstein, from Virginia's George Mason University, said: "There have been several proposed explanations for the rapid spread of HIV in Africa, including wars, the reuse of unsterilised needles and the contamination of early batches of polio vaccine.
"However, all of these have been either disproved or do not sufficiently explain the behaviour of the HIV pandemic."
Dr Weinstein and his colleagues believe immunisation against smallpox may go some way to explain the recent rises in HIV prevalence.
Smallpox immunisation was gradually withdrawn from the 1950s to the 1970s, following the worldwide eradication of the disease, and HIV has been spreading exponentially since then, they say.
Now, only scientists and medical professionals working with smallpox are vaccinated.
To test if the events may be linked, the researchers looked at the white blood cells taken from people recently immunised against smallpox and tested how they responded to HIV.
They found significantly lower replication rates of HIV in blood cells from vaccinated individuals, compared with those from unvaccinated controls.
The smallpox vaccine appeared to cut HIV replication five-fold.
Immune boost
The researchers believe vaccination may offer some protection against HIV by producing long-term alterations in the immune system, possibly including the expression of a receptor called CCR5 on the surface of white blood cells, which is exploited by the smallpox virus and HIV.
Jason Warriner, clinical director for the Terrence Higgins Trust, said: "It's impossible to say whether the withdrawal of the smallpox vaccine contributed to the initial explosion of HIV cases worldwide, but it is a plausible explanation.
"This is an interesting piece of research, and not just as a history lesson. Anything that gives us greater understanding of how the virus replicates is another step on the road towards a vaccine and, one day, a cure.
"Further studies into the role receptor cells play are needed, and even then any discoveries are likely to be just one part of the solution.
"Until we find a way to eradicate the virus from the body, the focus should remain on stopping it being passed on in the first place."
SOURCE: BBC News (5-18-10)
Ali Vakili Rad, who faced a deportation order, boarded a flight from Orly airport to Tehran soon after leaving his prison in Poissy under escort.
Iran recently freed a French teacher who had been convicted of espionage after the presidential election.
France has denied any deal with Iran to secure Clotilde Reiss's release.
Vakili Rad's lawyer, Sorin Margulis, also denied any deal. "This must not be seen as an exchange," he said, adding that Ms Reiss's arrest had only delayed his client's release.
Vakili Rad was convicted in 1994 of assassinating Bakhtiar, who had fled Iran after the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
Engineer released
Bakhtiar was the final prime minister to serve under Shah Reza Pahlavi, heading the regency council the Shah set up when he left Tehran at the start of 1979. He fled to Paris in 1980.
Vakili Rad was convicted of stabbing and strangling him after gaining access to his house in Suresnes, a suburb in western Paris.
Two alleged accomplices were never caught.
Vakili Rad became eligible for parole last year, and the French interior minister signed an order for his deportation on Monday.
A French decision earlier this month to release an Iranian engineer, Majid Kakavand, had also fuelled speculation about a possible deal to secure Ms Reiss's freedom.
Mr Kakavand had been detained for the alleged illegal export of electronic parts for use by Iran's military.
The US had wanted to extradite him, but a French court rejected the request.
Ms Reiss had been sentenced to 10 years in prison before having her prison term commuted to a fine of $285,000 (£190,000). She arrived back in France on Sunday.
Name of source: The Atlantic
SOURCE: The Atlantic (5-18-10)
Outside of academic circles and op-ed pages, however, this scenario has been largely regarded as hysterical. The silliness seemed to peak last month when charitable groups attempted showings of "Hotel Rwanda" in Bangkok on huge outdoor screens -- a cautionary tale for Thais consumed with class hatred.
But now, the Thai capital looks, smells, and sounds like war. Rifle fire crackles throughout the day. On back alleys, protesters vowing to end the "rule of elites" concoct molotov cocktails from spent bottles of Red Bull.
As I write this, pyres demarcating nighttime conflict zones light up glass skyscrapers with a hellish glow. And for the second consecutive night, explosions rumble outside my balcony's sliding glass door.
Bangkok is 10 weeks and more than 60 deaths into a stand-off between the military-backed government and a faction of self-proclaimed "commoners" -- the Red Shirts -- that insists the ruling party must fall....
Name of source: Lee P Ruddin
SOURCE: Lee P Ruddin (5-17-10)
Speaking before a packed auditorium, the prominent journalist and author chronicled the history of anti-Americanism from the late 19th century to the early twenty-first. The 35-minute lecture spanned Charles Dickens to the shift in global opinion from “sympathy to dismay post-9/11”.
Since 1993 the Eccles Centre has hosted an annual lecture named in memory of Douglas W. Bryant, the President of the American Trust for the British Library, 1990-1994.
Name of source: Science Daily
SOURCE: Science Daily (5-17-10)
Paleontologists from the Smithsonian and the University of Florida collected more than 400 fossil shark teeth from Panama´s 10-million-year-old Gatun Formation as part of ongoing work to reveal the origins of this narrow land-bridge that rose to connect North and South America about 3 million years ago. "The 28 teeth that we identified as C. megalodon were mostly from neonates and juveniles," said Pimiento. Researchers used reference collections at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and the Florida Museum of Natural History to characterize the teeth.
The team discarded several other explanations for the concentration of small teeth at the site. Before their discovery in Panama, two other fossil beds have been proposed as paleo-shark nurseries: the Williamsburg Formation from the Paleocene and the Oligocene Chandler Bridge Formation, both in the U.S. state of South Carolina.
SOURCE: Science Daily (5-17-10)
The mass extinction scrambled the species pool near the time at which the first vertebrates crawled from water towards land, University of Chicago scientists report. Those few species that survived the bottleneck were the evolutionary starting point for all vertebrates -- including humans -- that exist today, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Devonian Period, which spanned from 416 to 359 million years ago, is also known as the Age of Fishes for the broad array of species present in Earth's aquatic environments. Armored placoderms such as the gigantic Dunkleosteus and lobe-finned fishes -- similar to the modern lungfish -- dominated the waters, while ray-finned fishes, sharks, and tetrapods were in the minority.
But between the latest Devonian Period and the subsequent Carboniferous period, placoderms disappeared and ray-finned fishes rapidly replaced lobe-finned fishes as the dominant group, a demographic shift that persists to today.
SOURCE: Science Daily (5-17-10)
The research, published in two separate articles in BMC Evolutionary Biology and the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, covers one of the widest geographical areas and most diverse population samples studied to date in the Mediterranean region and reveals differences in the genetic structure of the populations inhabiting the north and south shores.
Reconstructing the shared history of the shores of the Mare Nostrum and the gene flow between populations in the Mediterranean region is also the focus of the second article, published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. The study, which focuses on a larger sample from a wider geographical area, analyzes the genetic footprint of different populations through the study of genetic markers corresponding to different mutations (Alu, STR and Alu/STR combinations) in a sample of 1,831 individuals from Mediterranean countries (Spain, France, Greece, Turkey, Morocco, Algeria and Egypt) and other countries used as reference populations (Germany and Ivory Coast).
Name of source: Independent (UK)
SOURCE: Independent (UK) (5-17-10)
The 3.5 metre tall red granite statue is one of several artefacts discovered in the area since excavations began. The head of a 2.5 metre high statue depicting Pharaoh Amenhotep III in a standing position – possibly the best preserved depiction of the pharaoh’s face found to date - was unearthed at the King's funeral temple at Kom El-Hettan only months ago. A statue of the god Thoth in the shape of a baboon was also discovered. Last year two black granite statues of Amenhotep III were found at the temple, as well as a 5 metre high statue similar to the Thoth statue just found.
Amenhotep III ruled Egypt between 1390 BC and 1352 BC, and recent DNA and forensic research suggests that he was probably the grandfather of Tutankhamun. His temple was built closer to the river than any other temple at Thebes - right on the edge of the floodplain – and within 200 years it had collapsed. Many of its stones were subsequently removed for the building projects of later pharaohs.
The famous Colossi of Memnon, two 18-metre-high stone statues of Amenhotep III, are all that remains of the pharaoh's mortuary temple, once the largest religious complex in ancient Egypt.
Name of source: USA Today
SOURCE: USA Today (5-17-10)
In the current Journal of Human Evolution, a study tells the story of how they didn't — and how science checks out extraordinary claims.
A handful of sites, notably a suspected hearth in Chile's Monte Verde ruins suggest some people arrived a bit earlier, perhaps 15,000 years ago. But 40,000-year-old footprints in Mexico would suggest that prehistoric modern humans, who are thought to have left Africa as recently 60,000 years ago, raced across Asia and colonized the New World remarkably fast.
A debate erupted. In December of 2005, a team led by geochronologist Paul Renne of the University of California, Berkeley, reported in Naturethat the trackway ash layer dated to 1.3 million years ago, according to analysis of radioactive Argon elements in the rock. If the ash dated to 1.3 million years, that meant the footprints in it couldn't have been made by modern humans, who have only been around for about 200,000 years, tops, as indicated by bones and tools. "I never thought they were tracks," Renne says now. "I've seen them and they really don't have the left-and-right pattern of footsteps. They only look like tracks if you see them in the right light." Quarry marks and recent foot traffic from people who today live nearby more likely explained the impressions, Renne and others suggested.
A number of papers flew back and forth, some supporting the Argon results and one confirming the younger luminescence date. But in the latest turn, the Journal of Human Evolution paper led by Darren Mark of the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre, and co-authored by Gonzalez, concedes the fight, replicating the Argon results from Renne's lab.
Name of source: The Jakart Globe
SOURCE: The Jakart Globe (5-14-10)
Last week’s lack of bidders at an auction of 10th-century ceramics and jewelry recovered from the depths was clear proof that the government had a long way to go toward managing such items, said speakers at a discussion organized by the Indonesian Heritage Trust (BPPI) in Jakarta on Tuesday.
Ratu Raja Arimbi Nurtina, a spokeswoman for the Cirebon royal family at the Kanoman Palace, said the recovered items had been taken from the waters off Cirebon, West Java, without the involvement of local residents.
Name of source: AOL News
SOURCE: AOL News (5-17-10)
About half a square yard of mortar fell off Rome's Colosseum earlier this month, fortunately so early in the morning that the usually crowded downtown square hosting the amphitheater was deserted. Archaeologists who rushed to the site have downplayed the alarm, saying the falling mortar was not a structural failure and noting that the towering Colosseum, where ancient Romans watched gladiator combats, has successfully resisted the ravages of time since it was completed in 80 A.D.
However, the crumbling pieces are pushing experts to focus on how a lack of funds is making it difficult to prevent water infiltration, tree roots, pollution and a massive tourist presence from taking a toll on the Roman Empire's classical archaeological heritage.
Rome city officials have vowed to launch a $29 million conservation project for the Colosseum, but archaeologists say emergency funds are not enough to tackle the problem at its origin.
