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: Barbados Advocate
November 25, 2009
THE lone collection of Prehistoric Amerindian carvings so far discovered on this island has been damaged.
“Unfortunately, these have not been looked after awfully well,” Archaeologist and Professor at the University of Sussex Professor Peter Drewett said while displaying pictures of carvings in the Spring Head cave.
He pointed out several modern carvings that have been placed on top of the prehistoric ones, some of which were scoured out with a knife.
“Fort
Source: Nashua Telegraph
November 25, 2009
BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) — Archaeologists from the University of Vermont are searching for the remains of a War of 1812 hospital near Battery Park in Burlington.
The archaeologists are using a grant from the National Park Service’s American Battlefield Protection Program to try to learn more about the encampment where 5,000 soldiers were stationed. The war against Great Britain lasted from 1812 through 1815.
Source: Google News
November 25, 2009
MILFORD, Conn. — A Colonial-era skull believed to belong to a Revolutionary War soldier is set to be reburied in Connecticut with full military honors.
The unidentified skull was discovered in the 1840s when railroad tracks were being laid near where 46 soldiers died of smallpox. British troops had captured the soldiers in 1776 and abandoned them by what is now Milford Cemetery.
Source: Times (UK)
November 26, 2009
The British Museum and the BBC are collaborating on one of the most ambitious public history projects ever undertaken, with a programme of events and activities that has the potential to change the way that people all over the world think about the past.
Central to it is an online challenge for people to present heirlooms to museum curators and other experts who will examine how they feed into the story of civilisation. Mark Damazer, controller of Radio 4, described it as “an upmar
Source: BBC
November 26, 2009
A ruined theatre under the Acropolis, believed to be the birthplace of modern theatre, is to be partially restored.
The restoration of the Theatre of Dionysos will include extending and modernising surviving stone seats, but no new performances are planned there.
Works by playwrights such as Euripides and Sophocles premiered at the open air theatre more than 2,500 years ago.
Theatre first emerged as an artform in Athens in 6th Century BC, at a competition
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 26, 2009
Tony Blair and George Bush might have “signed in blood” their agreement to topple Saddam Hussein a year before the Iraq war, according to Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain’s former ambassador to Washington.
Sir Christopher Meyer told the Iraq Inquiry that the two men spent an afternoon meeting in private at the former president’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002, which appeared to lead to a shift in the then Prime Minister’s stance on Iraq.
Sir Christopher, who wa
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 26, 2009
The Staffordshire Hoard, the largest collection of Anglo-Saxon treasure ever found, has been valued at £3.28 million, the British Museum said today.
The independent Treasure Valuation Committee reached the figure after meeting at the museum.
The money will be split equally between the finder Terry Herbert and the landowner Fred Johnson, the museum said.
The two men and the two museums which hope to acquire the hoard, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery a
Source: 11-25-09
November 25, 2009
Former Khmer Rouge prison chief Duch should be jailed for 40 years, a prosecutor has told Cambodia's UN-backed war crimes court.
Duch, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, had overseen the deaths of 15,000 people at Tuol Sleng jail in the 1970s, the court heard.
In a closing statement, Duch apologised to his victims but said he had not carried out the massacres alone.
The tribunal is not expected to give a verdict before early next year.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 26, 2009
A proposed litmus test of Republicans' conservative credentials has triggered warnings of a "disaster in the making" for the party just as it stands to make major gains from President Barack Obama's falling popularity.
The draft resolution would withhold central party funding for candidates in next year's midterm elections who failed to meet eight out of ten principles that supporters of the idea describe as fundamental to Ronald Reagan's rule.
They include s
Source: BBC
November 25, 2009
Seventy former Argentine army officers are accused of crimes against humanity for the alleged abuse, torture and, in one case, murder of their own troops during the 1982 war with Britain over the Falklands, or Malvinas, Islands. As the BBC's Angus Crawford reports, the case has divided Argentina's veteran community.
After the brief war with Britain, Argentine forces were defeated, and soon after the dictatorship fell.
The conscripts were sent home and, according to Mic
Source: BBC
November 26, 2009
Bogomila always suspected that her mother had a secret.
"She always looked frightened," Bogomila tells me. "My husband used to say, "Your mother is afraid of her own shadow."
This summer, her 67-year-old mother Barbara finally revealed her secret. She is a Jewish child of the Holocaust. Suddenly, at the age of 37, Bogomila realised she was Jewish, too.
DEATH CAMP SURVIVOR
On Friday, Steve Rosenberg speaks to a survivor of So
Source: Rasmussen Reports
November 25, 2009
Voters are a bit less inclined this month to blame President Obama’s policies for the country’s current economic problems.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 50% of U.S. voters now say the problems are due to the recession which began under the Bush administration. Forty-two percent (42%) blame Obama’s policies, and eight percent (8%) are not sure.
In a survey at the end of last month, voters were inclined to assess blame a bit more evenly. For
Source: BBC
November 26, 2009
A CIA manual instructing US agents on the use of magic tricks during the Cold War has gone on sale.
It was written in 1953 by magician John Mulholland for a fee of $3,000 (£1,800) - considerable at the time.
It includes deceptions such as spiking drinks, pocketing small objects and tying shoelaces to communicate in code.
The CIA ordered copies destroyed in the 1970s, but one survived. It has been republished as The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Dece
Source: NYT
November 25, 2009
Since at least the time of Abraham Lincoln, presidents have sent letters of condolence to the families of service members killed in action, whether the deaths came by hostile fire or in an accident.
So after his son killed himself in Iraq in June, Gregg Keesling expected that his family would receive a letter from President Obama. What it got instead was a call from an Army official telling family members that they were not eligible because their son had committed suicide.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 26, 2009
In his prison cell in Concepción, a town 400 miles south of the Chilean capital Santiago, an indigenous leader dreams of recovering his ancestral lands.
The model for the "Mapuche nation" he foresees in the central southern region of Chile is based on the autonomous rule enjoyed by Basques and Catalans in Spain.
But the hurdles he faces are numerous, including governmental opposition that extends to imprisoning him and other militants, and a division among t
Source: NYT
November 25, 2009
NIKOLSKI, Alaska — This distant dot in the Aleutian Islands needed just 10 students for its school to dodge a fatal cut from the state budget. It reached across Alaska and beyond but could find only nine.
Built by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1939, the little Nikolski School will not be the last in Alaska to close. Four others have closed this fall and at least 30 more are at risk because of dwindling enrollment; one school in remote southeast Alaska survived only by advertising
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 26, 2009
Mumbai has held tearful memorial events to mark the first anniversary of the attacks that killed 166 people and ratcheted up tensions with Pakistan.
While emotional onlookers waved Indian flags and banners with slogans such as "End The Violence", police commandos with new weapons and armoured cars tracked the route the 10 gunmen took for an attack that stunned the country.
The show of strength was in contrast to more emotional events across India's commercia
Source: AP
November 26, 2009
South Korean soldiers and police executed nearly 5,000 citizens during the early months of the 1950-53 Korean War, fearing they could collaborate with invading North Korean troops, a government commission said Thursday.
The victims were members of the National Guidance League, or "Bodo" League, that the then-staunchly anti-communist government created to "re-educate" recanting leftists and others suspected of communist leanings.
Historians say offici
Source: AP
November 26, 2009
Haiti's electoral council has banned the influential party of exiled former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from running in next year's legislative elections.
Fanmi Lavalas is among the 17 parties barred from February's elections because it submitted improper documents, provisional council spokesman Richardson Dumesle said Thursday.
Aristide, who has been living in exile in South Africa after he was overthrown during a 2004 rebellion, called the decision "an elect
Source: CNN
November 26, 2009
Newly released text messages reportedly from the morning of September 11, 2001, show panicked family members trying to contact loved ones and officials frantically trying to grasp what was happening.
More than half a million messages, released by whistleblower site Wikileaks, reveal the panic, horror and pain of what happened that morning in the words of those who experienced it.
Another text message references "a bomb detonation" in the World Trade Center and
