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
July 10, 2008
A statue symbolising the mythical origins and power of Rome, long thought to have been made around 500BC, has been found to date from the 1200s.The figures of Romulus and Remus have already been shown to be 15th Century additions to the statue.
In a front page article in the Italian newspaper, La Repubblica, Rome's former top heritage official, Professor Adriano La Regina, said about 20 tests were carried out on the she-wolf at the University of Salerno.
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
July 10, 2008
The Jewish community says it is "greatly concerned" NSW students can pass through school without learning about the Holocaust.
NSW Education Department head Michael Coutts-Trotter learned a month ago that the Holocaust had been omitted from the state's mandatory history course.
"You can get through compulsory schooling in NSW and never know that the Holocaust, the destruction of Jews in Europe, actually happened," he said in a speech to high school p
Source: LiveScience
July 9, 2008
Scientists set off this week to study the wrecks of three German submarines sunk by U.S. forces in 1942 off the coast of North Carolina during the Battle of the Atlantic.
"This expedition is the first part of a larger multi-year project to research and document a number of historically significant shipwrecks tragically lost during World War II, including U.S. and British naval vessels and merchant marine vessels," said David W. Alberg, expedition leader and superintendent
Source: Press Release posted on IraqCrisis list
July 9, 2008
More than a thousand archaeologists from all over the world gathered in Dublin
at the end of June to attend the 6th World Archaeological Congress (WAC). WAC
is the only archaeological organisation with global elected representation, and
one which places particular emphasis on archaeological ethics.
(www.worldarchaeologicalcongress.org).
In the final plenary session on Friday 4 July 2008, the delegates passed a
resolution which not only opposes any military attack on Iran, but also ur
Source: WaPo
July 10, 2008
The country's largest medical association is set to issue a formal apology today for its historical antipathy toward African American doctors, expressing regret for a litany of transgressions, including barring black physicians from its ranks for decades and remaining silent during battles on landmark legislation to end racial discrimination.
The apology marks one of the rare times a major national organization has expressed contrition for its role in the segregation and discriminat
Source: McClatchy
July 9, 2008
A court forensics expert said Wednesday that former Chilean President Eduardo Frei Montalva was assassinated in January 1982 after a simple hernia operation during the rule of dictator Augusto Pinochet.
The statement by Carmen Cerda, the chief of the forensics team investigating the case, confirmed longtime suspicions that Frei Montalva, who was Chile's elected president from 1964 to 1970, had died of foul play at age 71. Medical officials had said that infection related to the surgery was
Source: Guardian
July 10, 2008
A newly discovered collection of more than 3,000 aerial photographs of Germany before and during the allied bombing campaign of the second world war presents the most comprehensive record yet of how devastating the campaign was on the country's cultural heritage, historians claim.
Experts have called "spectacular" and "unique" a wooden box full of negatives found in an attic in the northern city of Kiel, describing them as an inventory of 1940s Germany which thro
Source: NYT
July 9, 2008
After a year and a half of controversy and intense opposition by preservationists and neighborhood groups, the New-York Historical Society at 77th Street and Central Park West has abandoned its pursuit of a $100 million, 23-story luxury condominium tower, along with a five-story annex that would have risen above an adjacent empty lot the society owns at 7-13 West 76th Street.
Instead, the society has embarked on a $55 million, three-year renovation of its galleries, entrance and fac
Source: BBC
July 9, 2008
A refurbished WWII bomber has completed a historic flight from the US to Duxford in Cambridgeshire.
The American B-17 Liberty Belle was flown on the journey by the son of one of its original crew members.
The flight aims to commemorate the thousands of US airmen who died while serving at bases around East Anglia.
Source: AP
July 8, 2008
It flew on a daring but unsuccessful raid to free U.S. POWs
in North Vietnam in 1970. Thirty-eight years later, after subsequent tours
in Bosnia and Iraq, helicopter No. 357 is being retired — with honor.
The 88-foot-long special operations chopper has made its final landing at
the National Museum of the United States Air Force, where it went on
permanent display Monday."It's been a busy aircraft," said museum historian Jeff Underwood."It
absolutely encompasses U.S. military hist
Source: BBC
July 8, 2008
Hours after flying on a rickety 19-seater propeller plane and landing on a
dirt strip, you get to the village of San Buenaventura in the heart of the
Bolivian Amazon.
Here, in a simple one-storey brick house next to a row of wooden shacks,
is the home of Antonio Garcia Baron.
He is the only survivor still alive of the anarchist Durruti column which
held Francoist forces at bay in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War
(1936-1939) and the founder of an anarchist community in the h
Source: NYT
July 9, 2008
Ruth Greenglass, whose damning testimony in the Rosenberg atomic-bomb spy case of the early 1950s helped lead to the execution of her sister-in-law Ethel Rosenberg, died on April 7. She was 84.
Mrs. Greenglass’s testimony was later called into question.
Along with her husband, David Greenglass — Ethel’s brother and a central figure in the case — Mrs. Greenglass had lived in the New York metropolitan area under an assumed name for more than four decades. Her death was re
Source: Independent (UK)
July 9, 2008
Neglectful owners of historic landmarks risk being named and shamed by English Heritage, which has placed one fifth of all the nation's monuments and battlefields on a register of threatened structures and warned that they are in danger of being lost.
The country's steward of significant historical and archaeological sites has put 1,680 sites on its annual "at risk" register – a rise since last year of 87 grade I and II listed buildings, eight battlefields, and 10 underwat
Source: Reuters
July 8, 2008
Forensics experts began digging for secret graves on an army base in southwestern Mexico this week to find proof of government atrocities during the country's 1970s 'dirty war.'
Using high-tech scanners, picks and shovels, they searched for bodies of community leaders who were abducted by soldiers, taken to the isolated base at the Pacific town of Atoyac de Alvarez in Guerrero state and never heard from again.
Human rights advocates said it was the first time dirty war
Source: http://www.financialsense.com
July 7, 2008
Kevin Phillips, author of Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism, has expertly detailed the history of false economic achievement in a recent Harper’s Magazine article. The culmination of 40+ years of gradual but consistent distortion of economic statistics have come home to roost and explain much of our current morass. Inflation statistics help determine interest rates, cost-of-living increases for wages and Social Security benefits as well as
Source: Chicago Tribune
July 8, 2008
Growing up in the now-demolished Stateway Gardens housing project in the shadow of U.S. Cellular Field, Ronzelle Fort had no idea his old neighborhood was once home to one of the most significant events in the history of African-American baseball.
Fort and a group of his peers received the opportunity to learn about that history and take part in a piece of it in the first Double Duty Classic on Monday, which commemorated the 75th anniversary of the first East-West All-Star Game, an
Source: NYT
July 7, 2008
Not since at least 1980, when the United States was reeling from the oil shocks, inflation and slow growth of the previous decade, has the economy been in worse shape heading into the heart of a presidential campaign. The crush of bad economic news — six consecutive months of job losses, rising rates of home foreclosures, gasoline prices seemingly headed toward $5 a gallon — is increasingly setting the contours of the race between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain.
Source: NYT
July 8, 2008
Saying that his powers were too limited to rectify what he referred to as a “grave harm,” a federal judge on Monday dismissed a request from several families of 9/11 victims to sift through tons of debris at the Fresh Kills landfill to search for human remains from the attack on the World Trade Center.
The judge, Alvin K. Hellerstein of Federal District Court in Manhattan, had hinted strongly at an emotional hearing in February that he would deny the request, praising the city for u
Source: NYT
July 7, 2008
The year was 1985 and Gerald Kellman, a community organizer, was interviewing an applicant named Barack Obama to work in the demoralized landscape of poor neighborhoods on this city’s South Side. He liked the young man’s intelligence, motivation and acutely personal understanding of how it felt to be an outsider. He also remembers that Mr. Obama drove a hard bargain.
“He challenged me on whether we could teach him anything,” Mr. Kellman recalled. “He wanted to know things like ‘How
Source: AP
July 8, 2008
If you've been swimming, you probably tried it at least once: Dive into
the water and see how far you can get without taking a stroke. Coast past
19 meters (62 feet) and you could have earned a gold medal at the 1904
Olympics.
The tug-of-war you played with friends at school? That could have been
worth a podium spot at six Games. A gym class favorite like the rope climb
and a game that looked like hopscotch — the standing hop, step, jump —
also were once medal events.
Long be
