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: Gold Coast Mail (Australia)
April 23, 2009
AN Australian school teacher who pinpointed the spot where nearly 200 World War I diggers lie in a mass grave in France has been effectively banned from helping to recover and rebury their bodies.
Lambis Englezos led Australian army officials to the spot of the mass grave on the outskirts of the rural town of Fromelles, near Lille in northern France, after years of painstaking research.
A team of archaeologists uncovered what were believed to be the remains of about 400
Source: ABC News
April 23, 2009
From the Bodies of the Heroes of the American Revolution to Common Bostonians, Basement Contains Over 1,100 Bodies.
The Old North Church is best known for the pivotal role it played in the American Revolution. It's the site of the famous "One if by land and two if by sea" warning: On April 18, 1775, after Paul Revere's ride, two lanterns hung in the church steeple signaled the advancement of the British troops to Lexington.
But the church also has a few skelet
Source: Stone Pages Archaeo News
April 19, 2009
The discovery of a remarkably well-preserved monumental temple in Turkey - thought to be constructed during the time of King Solomon in the 10th/9th-centuries BCE - sheds light on the so-called Dark Age. Uncovered by the University of Toronto's Tayinat Archaeological Project (TAP) in the summer of 2008, the discovery casts doubt upon the traditional view that the transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age was violent, sudden and culturally disruptive.
Source: Stone Pages Archaeo News
April 19, 2009
Last week's powerful earthquake in the central Italian Abruzzo regional capital L'Aquila has unearthed prehistoric dwellings there. Some of the vaulted caves measure up to five metres in height, according to Italian geologist Gianluca Ferretti. "We are exploring them," said Ferretti, who teaches geology at L'Aquila's university.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 24, 2009
Proud of the role that his grandmother, Princess Alice of Greece, played during the Second World War, the Prince of Wales is to appear in a film that will tell the stories of 12 figures who helped save Jews from the Nazis.
In The Rescuers: Heroes of the Holocaust, Prince Charles praises the "very remarkable" mother of the Duke of Edinburgh, who hid Jews in the royal palace in Athens and withstood interrogations by German officials.
The film, which says the 12
Source: AP
April 25, 2009
Turkey's president said Saturday that President Barack Obama failed to honor Turks slain by Armenians in a message remembering the dead in massacres nearly a century ago.
Obama on Friday refrained from branding the WWI-era massacre of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey a "genocide," and instead referred to the killings that began in 1915 as "one of the great atrocities of the 20th century."
Turkish President Abdullah Gul said, however, that
Source: CNN
April 25, 2009
An American professor doing research in London stumbled across a series of previously unknown letters written by, to, and about Benjamin Franklin, a stunning find that sheds new light on early U.S. history.
The collection of 47 letters are hand-written copies made 250 years ago, when Franklin lived in London. That they were filed under the copyist's name, not Franklin's, may explain why they were overlooked by historians until now, said a curator at the British Library, where the le
Source: WaPo
April 23, 2009
WaPo video series.
Source: AP
April 23, 2009
Of all Barry H. Landau's anecdotes about his friendships with presidential dogs - and trust us, he has lots of 'em - perhaps the best is the one about the time the Clinton White House called to postpone his play date with Buddy.
Yes, Landau is both human and an adult - a 60-year-old author, presidential historian, former White House protocol officer and memorabilia collector. But so enamored is he of dogs, and so well connected to a succession of presidents, that he had an appointme
Source: National Journal (subscribers only)
April 24, 2009
Presidents dread it, historians decry it and professors denounce it. But thanks to the abiding image of Franklin D. Roosevelt taking the government by storm seven decades ago, President Obama gets his first report card next week when he celebrates his 100th day in the Oval Office.
It is a milestone whose importance the president played down while he sought the office, but one he cannot escape.
"The first hundred days is going to be important," Obama told a Col
Source: CBS News
April 24, 2009
Steve Hartman presents this week's "Assignment America" from Great Falls, Mont., where 112-year-old Walter Breuning proudly stands as the oldest man currently living in the nation.
Source: Foxnews
April 24, 2009
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez wasn't the first to discover the book he gave to President Obama last week in an attempt to ease diplomatic tensions — college students in the U.S. have been turning its pages for years.
The 317-page "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent" has been identified on the syllabi of at least 20 U.S. colleges and universities since 2003, and it's been taught for decades on American campuses.
The vir
Source: Wired
April 23, 2009
An ancient script that's defied generations of archaeologists has yielded some of its secrets to artificially intelligent computers.
Computational analysis of symbols used 4,000 years ago by a long-lost Indus Valley civilization suggests they represent a spoken language. Some frustrated linguists thought the symbols were merely pretty pictures.
"The underlying grammatical structure seems similar to what's found in many languages," said University of Washington
Source: LAT
April 24, 2009
The Obama administration agreed late Thursday to release dozens of photographs depicting alleged abuses at U.S. prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush White House.
The decision will make public for the first time photos obtained in military investigations at facilities other than the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Forty-four photos that the American Civil Liberties Union was seeking in a court case, plus a "substantial number" of other images, will be released by May
Source: Politico.com
April 24, 2009
The president retains — but doesn’t depend on — his global star power. He is like Nike: Kids still love him; foreigners still love him. Obama remains a powerful brand that commands constant media coverage, much of it fawning, and that moves markets.
But emphasis on personality and style obscures one of the biggest things that look different now than three months ago: the familiar categories that had classified Democrats for a generation. When Obama took office, a raft of stories ta
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
April 24, 2009
Just weeks ago, suspected Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk was pictured being carried out of his Cleverland home too frail to even walk or face trial.
But as these pictures claim to show, the 89-year-old is fit to be extradited to Germany where is he accused of more than 29,000 counts of accessory to murder.
Demjanjuk's lawyers claimed earlier this month the extradition amounted to torture because of his ill health.
Source: Times (UK)
April 25, 2009
A bravery award given to Rip, a homeless stray dog who became a Second World War hero by saving the lives of more than 100 air-raid victims during the Blitz, fetched £24,250 [$35,600] at auction [in London] yesterday –- two and a half times more than expected.
The Dickin medal, known as the “animal VC”, was presented to Rip in 1945, five years after he was found bedraggled and starving by ARP warden Edward King after a heavy raid in Poplar, East London.
The friendly mon
Source: BBC News
April 24, 2009
Barack Obama has refrained from calling the killing of Armenians by Turks in World War I "genocide" despite using the term during his election campaign.
However, the US president did describe the killing of hundreds of thousands of Armenians as "one of the great atrocities of the 20th century".
He appealed for Turks and Armenians to "address the facts of the past as a part of their efforts to move forward".
The two countries ag
Source: NYT
April 23, 2009
Turkey and Armenia have agreed to a framework for improving their strained relations, the two countries said in a statement this week, apparently in the first breakthrough in diplomacy in more than a decade...
The statement’s timing seemed calculated to dampen enthusiasm in the United States for passing a resolution in Congress to recognize the Armenian killings as genocide. In a trip to Turkey this month, President Obama praised the two countries’ efforts to overcome their differe
Source: AP
April 24, 2009
Tens of thousands of Armenians marched through the capital on Friday to commemorate the 94th anniversary of the start of mass killings by Ottoman Turks, many calling on Turkey to recognize the slayings as genocide.
Armenia and Turkey said Thursday they are close to restoring full relations and reopening their border after 15 years. But neither side has indicated how they might resolve the dispute over the killings.
Friday's procession began with a burning of Turkish fla
