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
June 13, 2008
A treasure trove of artefacts is being recovered from what experts describe as one of the most important maritime discoveries since the Mary Rose.
The late 16th Century shipwreck hails from a pivotal point in England's military history.
The raised haul includes a 2m-long (7ft) cannon, which will give archaeologists an insight into Elizabeth I's naval might.
The wreck, discovered 30 years ago, is situated off the coast of Alderney.
Dr Mensun Bou
Source: McClatchy
June 14, 2008
ROSARIO , Argentina - While Ernesto "Che" Guevara remains the most famous export of this sleepy city, his legacy here has long been a low-key one.
Except for a handful of businesses named in his honor, few markers alert visitors that the revolutionary leader was born here exactly 80 years ago before becoming one of the most mythic figures of the 20th century.
That changed Saturday when civic leaders inaugurated the first official monument honoring the revolut
Source: Boston Globe
June 15, 2008
At Princeton, she came to terms with being a black achiever in a white world.
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As Catherine Donnelly climbed the stairs to her dorm room at Princeton University over a quarter-century ago, the Louisiana freshman felt ready for whatever lay ahead. But then she met Michelle.
Her full name was Michelle LaVaughn Robinson. She was so tall that her head seemed to brush the sloping ceiling of the cramped fourth-floor room. She was Donnelly's new roommate. And s
Source: NYT
June 15, 2008
... “The historical memory of the first oil shock is much stronger for Europeans than for Americans,” Daniel Yergin, the chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, said. “For Americans, the memory is of gas lines. For Europeans, it was the end of their postwar economic miracle.”
He and other experts caution against overstating the comparison between 2008 and 1973. Europe, they say, is better equipped to absorb these kinds of shocks than it was 35 years ago — with a sturdy, sh
Source: NYT
June 15, 2008
“The most important thing we do is not doing,” Justice Louis D. Brandeis once said of the Supreme Court’s abiding humility, its overwhelming preference to allow the people, through their elected representatives, to govern themselves.
And never is the court more reluctant to act than when faced with a challenge to the president during wartime. Consider the historical record.
The court has ruled against a president in a time of armed conflict no more than a handful of tim
Source: NYT
June 15, 2008
About a year after his release from a North Vietnamese prison camp, Cmdr. John S. McCain III sat down to address one of the most vexing questions confronting his fellow prisoners: Why did some choose to collaborate with the North Vietnamese?
Mr. McCain blamed American politics.
“The biggest factor in a man’s ability to perform credibly as a prisoner of war is a strong belief in the correctness of his nation’s foreign policy,” Mr. McCain wrote in a 1974 essay submitted t
Source: NYT
June 14, 2008
North Korea said Friday that it would reopen an investigation into abductions of Japanese citizens, reversing its longstanding position that the issue had been settled.
In return, Japan announced that it had agreed to lift some sanctions imposed on the North for its nuclear program, including the ban on travel between the countries, but that more serious sanctions would stay in place.
The Japanese announcement, which followed two days of bilateral talks in Beijing this
Source: WaPo
June 14, 2008
The rookie state senator from Chicago had driven 340 miles to explore southern Illinois, but Barb Brown could muster only 20 Democrats in this small town on the Mississippi River to have breakfast with him. She asked her niece and sister-in-law, who were helping in the kitchen, to come out to pad the audience.
"We tried to convince people that they needed to come out and meet with this senator from Chicago, who on top of everything else was African American," Brown, a circ
Source: WaPo
June 14, 2008
Hemant Singh Yadav, a lean and sprightly 15-year-old, was sent by his parents to a summer camp to learn to speak Sanskrit, or what he calls the language of the gods.
He had studied the 4,000-year-old classical Indian language at school for six years. He knew its grammar and could chant the ancient hymns. But he could not converse in it. During a two-week course at the camp, Sanskrit Samvad Shala, he had no choice: He was forbidden to speak any other language.
"At f
Source: LAT
June 14, 2008
On an infamous summer night in 1969, young followers of Charles Manson entered a Benedict Canyon mansion and murdered five people gathered on the compound.
Actress Sharon Tate, 8 1/2 months pregnant with the son of director Roman Polanski, begged one of the knife-wielding killers to spare her life. The attacker was Susan Atkins, and her response was cold and unequivocal.
"She asked me to let her baby live," Atkins told parole officials in 1993. "I told
Source: AP
June 13, 2008
A 22-gun British warship that sank during the American Revolution and has long been regarded as one of the "Holy Grail" shipwrecks in the Great Lakes has been discovered at the bottom of Lake Ontario, astonishingly well-preserved in the cold, deep water, explorers announced Friday.
Shipwreck enthusiasts Jim Kennard and Dan Scoville used side-scanning sonar and an unmanned submersible to locate the HMS Ontario, which was lost with barely a trace and as many as 130 people ab
Source: Spiegel Online
June 11, 2008
Researchers in the decidedly un-tropical German city of Chemnitz are uncovering spectacular remains of a petrified rainforest. The forest was preserved under a thick layer of ash after a volcanic eruption 290 million years ago.
Source: http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun
June 12, 2008
ARCHAEOLOGISTS have dug up the skeletons of 16 horses and a two-wheeled chariot in a grave dating back to the Roman Empire in north-east Greece, the culture ministry announced today.
Half of the horses were buried in pairs, whilst two human skeletons were also discovered in a dig near Lithohori, in the Kavala region.
Near to the remains of six of the horses archaeologists found a shield, weapons and various other accessories.
Source: LiveScience
June 13, 2008
Scientists have grown a tree from what may be the oldest seed ever germinated.
The new sapling was sprouted from a 2,000-year-old date palm excavated in Masada, the site of a cliff-side fortress in Israel where ancient Jews are said to have killed themselves to avoid capture by Roman invaders.
Dubbed the "Methuselah Tree" after the oldest person in the Bible, the new plant has been growing steadily, and after 26 months, the tree was nearly four feet (1.2 meter
Source: Editor & Publisher
June 13, 2008
Bucking conventional wisdom, Ann Coulter in her latest syndicated column calls President Bush a "great president" and predicts that "the man responsible for keeping Americans safe from another terrorist attack on American soil for nearly seven years now will go down in history as one of America's greatest presidents."
She adds: "It is unquestionable that Bush has made this country safe by keeping Islamic lunatics pinned down fighting our troops in Iraq.... O
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 13, 2008
The UN Human Rights Council said the UK must "consider holding a referendum on the desirability or otherwise of a written constitution, preferably republican".
The council has 29 members including Saudi Arabia, Cuba and Sri Lanka.
It was the Sri Lankan envoy who raised concerns over the British monarchy.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 13, 2008
A quintessentially British item accidentally invented by New York merchant Thomas Sullivan celebrates its centenary this month.
In June 1908, tea dealer Mr Sullivan was sending samples to potential customers when, to cut costs, he put a few pinches of loose leaves in several small silk pouches.
The confused clients received the samples and, unsure of the instructions, reputedly dunked them into hot water, and the tea bag was born.
Previously, all tea had to
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 13, 2008
British archaeologists have for the first time unearthed "absolute" proof of the remains of British soldiers at a recently-discovered mass World War I grave in northern France.
Two British Army buttons, a collar fastener and a British matchbox have been unearthed at the site of the grave in Fromelles, the British ministry of defence has announced.
Source: Independent Online (South Africa)
June 12, 2008
Members of the Tseycum First Nation visited the American Museum of Natural History in New York City this week to reclaim the remains of ancestors taken from their land about a century ago.The group planned to take the remains late Wednesday back to Vancouver Island in Canada's British Columbia. An interment is planned for Friday, Chief Vern Jacks said.
"Our people don't belong in boxes in a museum," he said. "This is our life, we still respect our
Source: Pan Armenian Net
June 12, 2008
The Swedish parliament, with a vote 245 to 37 , rejected a call for recognition of the 1915 genocide in the Ottoman Empire. On June 11, a long debate took place in the Swedish Parliament in regard to the Foreign Committee report on Human Rights, including five motions calling upon the Swedish Government and Parliament to officially recognize the 1915 Armenian Genocide
The argumentation for why recognition should be rejected was based on four main assumptions: “n
