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: Yahoo
July 8, 2008
Thailand's top court questioned on Tuesday the
legality of Bangkok's support for a Cambodian bid to list a disputed Hindu
temple as a World Heritage site, giving the opposition another weapon to
attack the government.
The Constitutional Court ruled 8-1 that a communique approved by the
cabinet in June backing Cambodia's bid to list the 900-year-old Preah
Vihear temple had required the approval of parliament.
UNESCO, the U.N. agency for culture and education, voted on Monday
Source: http://www.wnky.net
July 7, 2008
Today, the National Park Service announced the award of 32 grants totaling $1,367,144 to assist in the preservation and protection of America’s significant battlefield lands. With an increase in funding this year, the grant program was able to support a dozen more projects than in 2007—projects that will help preserve more than 100 battlefields nationwide.
“These grants help safeguard and preserve American battlefield lands,” said Mary A. Bomar, Director of the National Park Service
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 8, 2008
More than 40 per cent of Britain's historic shipwrecks are in danger of being lost forever through neglect and vandalism, an extensive survey has found.
English Heritage has identified 45 wrecks on a new list of important cultural sites that are "at risk", and in urgent need of protection and regeneration.
Many have been damaged by unauthorised divers during clumsy explorations and fishermen as they dredge the seabeds, while others have been allowed to decay.
Source: News24 (South Africa)
July 8, 2008
The Italian government declared a state of emergency at the Pompeii archaeological site on Friday to try to rescue one of the world's most important cultural treasures from decades of neglect. A cabinet statement said it would appoint a special commissioner for Pompeii, the ancient Roman city buried by an eruption of the Vesuvius volcano in AD 79 and now a Unesco World Heritage site.
A report in daily Corriere della Sera this week said most of the 1 500 houses
Source: Telegraph
July 8, 2008
English Heritage has warned that eight of the nation's most important battlefield sites, including the site of a major English Civil war conflict, are in danger of falling prey to developers. The conservation organisation warned that battlefields, sites of special archaeological interest and scheduled monuments are at a much greater risk than listed buildings because local authorities often view them as a loss-making "burden". \
The Heritage at Risk (H
Source: United Jewish Communities
July 8, 2008
A pre-Christian Hebrew text shows that the idea of a messiah rising from the dead after three days was already in Jewish tradition before the birth of Jesus, a prominent biblical scholar will argue today. The controversial theory of Professor Israel Knohl, citing his new reading of a tablet inscribed in the 1st century BC discovered nearly 10 years ago, is expected to trigger a new Judaeo-Christian debate over the meaning and origin of the most central tenet of Christianity,
Source: Telegraph
July 6, 2008
Amid the horror, camp officers and staff went about their lives: sunbathing, going on picnics, putting up decorations. As these astonishing photographs show, Auschwitz was not hell for everyone. By Alec Wilkinson
In June of 1945, after the war with Germany had ended, an American Army officer arriving in Frankfurt was told to look for a place to live within a part of the city which the Allies had enclosed with barbed wire. He found an abandoned apartment and did what he could to mak
Source: Evansville Courier & Press
July 6, 2008
DACHAU, Germany — The crow leads the way to the crematorium.
Past the "Arbeit macht frei" (Work will make you free) sign at the front gate of the former Nazi concentration camp that's a 20-minute train ride from Munich.
Past the 10-meter-by-100-meter rows of gravel that once held the wooden barracks where the enslaved were kept between 1933 and 1945 and where an estimated 32,000 persons lost their lives.
Past the guard towers and barbed-wire fence
Source: Norwich Evening News 24
July 7, 2008
A young boy who wants to emulate his hero Indiana Jones has made his first archaeological discovery - at the tender age of just four-years-old.
Max Farrow wants to be an archaeologist when he grows up and was, in his mother Joanna's words's “digging for tombs” in his back garden when he made his debut discovery.
He found a broken clay tobacco pipe which he was so pleased with he popped it into his toy box - where it remained for a year until he showed it to experts who
Source: TurkishPress.com
July 3, 2008
Iraq said on Thursday it has created a special task force to investigate the theft of
valuable ancient Judaic manuscripts that later turned up in Israel.
The rare books, confiscated during the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, were rescued from US bombing
at the start of the 2003 war and then sent to the United States for restoration but later wound up
in Israel instead.
At a press briefing at the National Museum in Baghdad, Iraqi Minister of Tourism and Archaeology
Mohammad Abba
Source: NYT
July 7, 2008
As a Los Angeles county prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi batted a thousand in murder cases: 21 trials, 21 convictions, including the Charles Manson case in 1971.
As an author, Mr. Bugliosi has written three No. 1 best sellers and won three Edgar Allan Poe awards, the top honor for crime writers. More than 30 years ago he co-wrote the best seller “Helter Skelter,” about the Manson case.
So Mr. Bugliosi could be forgiven for perhaps thinking that a new book would genera
Source: Independent (UK)
July 8, 2008
A special coin minted to mark Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday was launched yesterday. South Africa's central bank said five million of the five rand (33p) coins, featuring a smiling portrait of the former president and anti-apartheid icon, would go into circulation on his birthday – 18 July.
"We want people to touch a bit of Madiba [Mandela], to share the love and leadership as the coin goes around," Finance Minister Trevor Manuel said at a ceremonial minting of one of the
Source: AP
July 4, 2008
The American colonel, troubled by what he was hearing, tried to stall at first. But the declassified record shows he finally told his South Korean counterpart it "would be permitted" to machine-gun 3,500 political prisoners, to keep them from joining approaching enemy forces.
In the early days of the Korean War, other American officers observed, photographed and confidentially reported on such wholesale executions by their South Korean ally, a secretive slaughter believed
Source: http://www.9news.com
July 4, 2008
For the Fourth of July weekend, nearly 1,000 people from around the country will meet in Colorado to talk about a part of this country's past many often forget or ignore.
"This conference will explore: What does it mean today to be an American?" said Irene Hirano, longtime president and CEO of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.
Hirano just stepped down and now serves as an executive advisor for the organization which purposefully held their
Source: WaPo
July 6, 2008
Under pressure from fundamentalist forms of Islam and bursts of sectarian violence, the most populous Christian community in the Middle East is seeking safety by turning inward, cutting day-to-day social ties that have bound Muslim to Christian in Egypt for centuries, members of both communities say.
Attacks this summer on monks and shopkeepers belonging to Egypt's Coptic Christian minority, and scattered clashes between Muslims and Christians, have compelled many of Egypt's estima
Source: LiveScience
July 7, 2008
Ancient hunters painted the sections of their cave dwellings where singing, humming and music sounded best, a new study suggests.
Analyzing the famous, ochre-splashed cave walls of southwestern France, the most densely painted areas were also those with the best acoustics, the scientists found.
Humming into some bends in the wall even produced sounds mimicking the animals painted there.
The Upper Paleolithic people responsible for the paintings had likely f
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 6, 2008
Parish churches are to be marketed as tourist attractions under plans agreed by the Church of England's governing body.
A tourism officer will be appointed in every diocese of the country to encourage more people to look around the historic buildings.
It is hoped the move will raise money for cash-strapped churches, but may also result in casual visitors learning more about religion and becoming worshippers.
Source: http://www.catholicnews.com
July 3, 2008
In mid-April Silvio Berlusconi was elected prime minister of Italy in a campaign focused on increasing security and fighting crime, particularly by cracking down on illegal immigration.
In addition to strengthening local government's power to expel undocumented foreigners, the Berlusconi government has focused its crime-fighting efforts on the estimated 140,000 Roma and Sinti -- Gypsies -- who live in the country.
At least half the Gypsies are Italian citizens.
Source: AFP
July 6, 2008
UNESCO's World Heritage Committee on Sunday added three new sites to its heritage list, including a former slave hideout in Mauritius, the Nabataean archaeological site in Saudi Arabia, and China's Fujian Tulou earthen houses.
The Archaeological Site of Al-Hijr, the largest conserved site of the civilization of the Nabataeans south of Petra in Jordan, is the first World Heritage site in Saudi Arabia.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization a
Source: WaPo
July 6, 2008
The presidential candidate needed to prove beyond a doubt that he loved his country and could appeal to a wide range of skeptical voters. So he wrapped himself in red, white and blue.
No, not Sen. Barack Obama, who took to a flag-adorned stage to orate on patriotism last week. The candidate in question was William McKinley, whose campaign manager, Mark Hanna, draped the Civil War veteran in the Stars and Stripes during the presidential election of 1896. In McKinley's contest against
