This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: BBC News
May 5, 2010
On 5 May 1980, the world looked on as the SAS brought the Iranian embassy siege to a bloody end in London.
Six days earlier, Met police Ch Insp Max Vernon had received a phone call summoning his hostage negotiation skills. Here, he relives the events of 30 years ago:
"I was part of the fraud squad in Holborn at the time the siege started but I had done the negotiation course and so it happened that I was pulled in.
"I had no idea what had happened
Source: BBC News
May 5, 2010
A Pablo Picasso painting has set a new record for the most expensive art work sold at auction, fetching $106m (£70m).
The Spanish artist's 1932 picture Nude, Green Leaves and Bust was sold at Christie's auction house in New York.
It had belonged to the late Los Angeles collectors Frances and Sidney Brody since the 1950s.
The winning bid was made by an unnamed telephone bidder. It breaks the record held by Giacometti's Walking Man I, which sold in February f
Source: NYT
May 4, 2010
As Britain prepares for its most unpredictable election in decades, the country’s method of selecting a government is coming under nearly as much scrutiny as the candidates or their political positions.
British elections generally produce clear winners in Parliament. But this time, polls suggest that the voting Thursday is unlikely to result in a legislative majority for any of the three main parties — the Conservatives, Labour or the Liberal Democrats.
That would be a
Source: Reuters
May 4, 2010
A U.S. scientist is supporting a theory that has been widely dismissed as a personal obsession of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez: that his hero Simon Bolivar might have died from arsenic poisoning.
Venezuela's leftist president rejects the traditional account that Bolivar, a brilliant Venezuelan military tactician who liberated much of South America from centuries of Spanish rule, died of tuberculosis in Colombia in 1830.
Now, Paul Auwaerter of Johns Hopkins University School
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 5, 2010
For years New Zealand has sought the return of Maori heads kept in collections abroad, many of which were obtained by Westerners in exchange for weapons and other goods.
Dozens of museums worldwide, though not all, have agreed to return them. Maori, the island nation's indigenous people, believe their ancestors' remains should be respected in their home area without being disturbed.
France's National Assembly voted 437-8 on Tuesday to give back the 16 heads counted in F
Source: Medieval News
May 3, 2010
An archaeological dig covering over six kilometres of land in England has come up with discoveries from the medieval, Roman and Bronze age eras. The work is now being filmed by the BBC for a documentary Digging for Britain, which will be broadcast in August.
The Archaeology of the East Kent Access Road project is a survey being done in preparation for a new road being built on the Isle of Thanet on the eastern coast of England. The road runs close to the mouth of the Wantsum Sea Cha
Source: WaPo
May 4, 2010
First a new law was put on the books requiring police to question anyone who simply appears to be in the country illegally. It’s the most restrictive in the country.
Then there was news that the state Education Department had ordered school districts to remove from classrooms teachers who speak English with a very heavy accent or whose speech is ungrammatical. Of course nobody would want a teacher to stay in the classroom if students can’t understand them, but determining who that i
Source: Lee White at the National Coalition for History
May 3, 2010
On April 30 “Discovering the Civil War,” a major new exhibit marking the 150th anniversary of the Civil War opened at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.
“Discovering the Civil War” will be shown in two parts in Washington, D.C. Part One, “Beginnings,” will run from April 30, 2010, through September 6, 2010, in the Lawrence F. O’Brien Gallery in the National Archives Building. Part Two, “Consequences,” will open in the O’Brien Gallery on November 10, 2010. After the Washington
Source: Lee White at the National Coalition for History
May 3, 2010
The “Preserving the American Historical Record Act (PAHR)” (S. 3227) was recently introduced by Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Carl Le
Source: Lee White at the National Coalition for History
May 3, 2010
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) recently transmitted to Congress a report entitled: “Records Management Self-Assessment 2009: An Assessment of Records Management Programs in the Federal Government.”
In September 2009, NARA issued a mandatory records management self-assessment to 245 Federal cabinet-level agencies and their components, and independent agencies. The goal of the initial self-assessment was to gather data to determine how effective Federal agenci
Source: Lee White at the National Coalition for History
May 3, 2010
A ranking of agencies’ Open Government Plans compiled during an independent audit reveals the strongest and weakest agency plans, with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) at the top of the list and the Department of Justice (DOJ) at the bottom. Strikingly, the audit also found that several agencies that are supp
Source: Lee White at the National Coalition for History
May 3, 2010
The National Park Service (NPS) has announced the availability of $14 million in Save America’s Treasures (SAT) Grants funding for fiscal year 2010. Applications for the grants are due by May 21, 2010.
The SAT program awards competitive, matching grants to federal, state, local, and tribal government entities, and nonprofit organizations for preservation and/or conservation work on nationally significant historic properties and collections. Applications and more information are avai
Source: AP
May 2, 2010
Pope Benedict XVI all but gave an outright endorsement of the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin on Sunday, calling the cloth that some believe is Christ's burial shroud an icon "written with the blood" of a crucified man.
During a visit to the Shroud in the northern Italian city of Turin, Benedict didn't raise the scientific questions that surround the linen and whether it might be a medieval forgery. Instead, he delivered a powerful meditation on the faith that holds t
Source: Discovery News
May 3, 2010
One of my favorite stories to cover over the years at Discovery concerns the Transylvania dwarf dinosaurs. To recap, in 1895, the sister of an eccentric palaeontologist called Franz Baron Nopcsa discovered small dinosaur bones on their family estate in Transylvania. Nopcsa interpreted these as being the remains of dwarfed animals that had once lived on an island.
Nearly everyone thought he was nuts.
Science, however, is now proving Nopsca's theories to be valid.
Source: Discovery News
May 3, 2010
The once mighty Jordan River, where Christians believe Jesus was baptized, is now little more than a polluted stream that could die next year unless the decay is halted, environmentalists said on Monday.
More than 98 percent of the river's flow has been diverted by Israel, Syria and Jordan over the years.
Every year, thousands of pilgrims take the plunge in the biblical river despite alarmingly high pollution.
Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian communities
Source: BBC
May 4, 2010
An internationally important archaeological dig in Carlisle has unearthed rare articulated armour and a nit comb, with a louse still in it.
The dig, which took place over a decade in front of Carlisle Castle, has uncovered about 80,000 Roman artefacts.
The evidence provides Carlisle with almost 2,000 years of documented history.
Experts say the city is now ranked as one of the most important settlements in the north of England.
Source: AP
May 4, 2010
Archaeologists in Egypt say they have discovered a headless granite statue more than 2,000 years old belonging to an unidentified Ptolemaic-era king.
Tuesday's statement by the Supreme Council of Antiquities says an Egyptian-Dominican team made the discovery at the temple of Taposiris Magna, west of the coastal city of Alexandria.
Archaeology chief Zahi Hawass says the well-preserved statue may be among the most beautiful carvings in the ancient Egyptian style. He says
Source: AFP
May 4, 2010
Historians and anti-racism campaigners are to urge the countries that oversaw and profited from the Atlantic slave trade to recognise it as a crime against humanity, opening the way for reparations.
Next week, activists are to send a letter to the leaders of Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain asking them to recognise the trade as an historic injustice a century and a half after it ended.
They have already convinced France to do so.
Source: USA Today
May 4, 2010
Forty springs ago, on the day the Vietnam War came home as it never had before, Mary Ann Vecchio was there. She's the girl in the haunting photo — crying, kneeling over the student's body.
That was Kent State University, May 4, 1970, a few days after Richard Nixon, who'd campaigned for president on an implicit promise to end the war, widened it by invading Cambodia.
But things have changed in 40 years, during which the United States left Vietnam and entered Iraq and Afg
Source: BBC
May 4, 2010
Police are continuing to investigate the death of an 85-year-old World War II veteran whose body was found in his home in west Dorset.
The pensioner was discovered in his home in Anning Road in Lyme Regis on Monday by a local man who phoned 999.
Police said there was no sign of forced entry and nothing had been stolen.
