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: www.mediabistro.com
June 6, 2008
Well here's kind of a funny one. So the Association of Art Museum Directors has assembled a big batch of museum directors from all over the country to put together a new set of guidelines and publish a report called "Acquisition of Archaeological Materials and Ancient Art." (PDF) Basically, it boils down to this message: "We need to stop stealing stuff." Apparently tired of museums getting raided by federal agents with guns, having to return pieces to the foreign countries th
Source: AFP
June 6, 2008
A massive unexploded World War II bomb discovered in an east London river was defused by a specialist army team Friday, police said.
The discovery of the 2,200-pound (1,000-kilogramme) device, said by police to be "the largest bomb ever to be dropped on London" forced the closure of several rail services and part of the Underground.
The bomb was dredged from a river by a mechanical digger near Bromley-by-Bow Underground station on Monday, during work to clear
Source: http://www.iraqupdates.com
June 6, 2008
More than five years after their disappearance, the Antiquities Department issues special identification cards of all artifacts that were looted from Iraq Museum shortly after the 2003 U.S. invasion.
The museum’s procurement manager, Muna Hassan, said more than 10,000 cards have been printed and passed to Interpol, the International Criminal Police Organization.
The department hopes the presence of these cards will make it easy for police across the world to identify th
Source: Guardian
June 6, 2008
As Lake Victoria disappeared to the south, the road rose and fell, winding gently through the boulder-strewn hills of far western Kenya. Men rode heavy single-speed bicycles with sacks of charcoal strapped to the back; women walked, buckets of bananas balanced perfectly on their heads. Where a sign pointed the route to the Senator Obama Secondary School - Motto: Endeavour to excel - the asphalt gave way to bumpy red dirt. An American flag hung in front of the New Apostolic Church, providing a fu
Source: National Security Archive
June 4, 2008
Soviet nuclear-tipped cruise missiles were ready to destroy the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo had the U.S. military persuaded President Kennedy to invade Cuba during the missile crisis in 1962, according to a new book by Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs (citing documents and interviews posted today on the Web by the National Security Archive, www.nsarchive.org).
The documents show that U.S. intelligence listed the Soviet weapons as "
Source: BBC
June 6, 2008
A team of historians says the lost city of the Incas, Machu Picchu, in Peru was discovered more than 40 years earlier than previously thought and ransacked.The story about its discovery by the western world has been shaken up by a team of historians who say a German businessman looted its treasures more than 40 years before.
They say the adventurer, Augusto Berns, who traded in Peru's wood and gold, raided the citadel's tombs in 1867 apparently with the blessing
Source: History Today
June 5, 2008
A marine archaeological dig has started off the Suffolk coast to locate a prosperous medieval city swallowed by the sea. A research team from the University of Southampton began their search at Dunwich on June 5th using acoustic imaging technology. The group, which is funded by English Heritage and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, hope to find evidence of 16 large buildings, including a monastery and palace, dating from the 14th century. The prosperous Middle Ages port was submerged five centurie
Source: NYT
June 5, 2008
A long-delayed Senate report endorsed by Democrats and some Republicans has concluded that President Bush and his aides built the public case for war against Iraq by exaggerating available intelligence and by ignoring disagreements among spy agencies about Iraq’s weapons programs and Saddam Hussein’s links to Al Qaeda.
The report was released Thursday after years of partisan squabbling, and it marks the close of five years of investigations by the Senate Intelligence Committee into
Source: NBC News
June 5, 2008
Today is the 40th anniversary of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination in Los Angeles.[Brian Williams reports.]Related StoryPhotos taken after Robert F. Kennedy assassination released:
The Los Angeles Fire Department(LAFD) on Thursday released new photos taken moments after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, 40 years after the death of the former senator and younger brother of Pr
Source: AP
June 5, 2008
Jack Lucas, who at 14 lied his way into military service during World War II and became the youngest Marine to receive the Medal of Honor, died Thursday in a Hattiesburg, Miss., hospital. He was 80.
Lucas had been battling cancer. Ponda Lee at Moore Funeral Service said the funeral home was told he died before dawn.
Jacklyn "Jack" Lucas was just six days past his 17th birthday in February 1945 when his heroism at Iwo Jima earned him the nation's highest milita
Source: NBC
June 5, 2008
Nearly 8.5 million homeowners now have negative or no equity in their homes — a level not seen since the 1940s. Experts say equity levels will tumble further as home prices erode.
Source: LAT
June 5, 2008
If elected president, Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, would be the oldest president to take office. That's why it was a big deal two weeks ago when McCain's personal doctors proclaimed him to be in excellent health. The assessment on McCain's health, however, was released in a tightly controlled news conference in which reporters were not provided with copies of McCain's medical records and were granted limited information in order, McCain's doctors said, to protect McCain'
Source: Christian Science Monitor
June 4, 2008
Like most people, Hedrick Ellis grew up listening to his parents and grand parents tell family stories. As a teenager, he often tuned them out, but this year, eager to keep those memories alive, he hired a personal historian to interview his father and mother.
"You hear these stories over the years, but nobody ever really gets around to writing them down," says Mr. Ellis, of Arlington, Mass. "This seemed like an easy and practical way of capturing them."
Source: http://www.dailypress.com/news/local/williamsburg/dp-local_wangola_0605jun05,0,3949747.story
June 5, 2008
The director of Angola's slavery museum visited The Mariners' Museum in Newport News and Jamestown on Tuesday as part of his trip through the United States arranged by the State Department. In Chicago, he saw a woman re-enact Angolan Queen Njinga, who led her people in revolt against Portuguese slave traders in the 1640s, and at Jamestown he saw museum space devoted to her story.
"Our relationship with the United States can't be based exclusively on trade exchanges and the comm
Source: NYT
June 5, 2008
A somewhat smaller crowd than in previous years turned out here on Wednesday evening for the annual candlelight vigil commemorating the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, the participation depressed by a growing reluctance among many Hong Kong residents to confront Beijing officials on human rights issues.
Enthusiasm for the Olympic Games in Beijing, sympathy for victims of the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan Province and growing prosperity because of Chin
Source: WaPo
June 4, 2008
They say that history is written by the victorious, which begs the question as to how Al Gore and Friendster manage to get center stage in a history of the Internet.
Vanity Fair writes a rambling eight-part 22 page story on history of the Internet called "How The Web Was Won" for its latest edition. The article pays tribute to Internet pioneers, including Al Gore, as well as some of the companies that have defined the commercial Internet (Amazon, Ebay, PayPal, Ning, MySpac
Source: http://www.tampabay.com
June 5, 2008
They are two events linked mostly by a single, jarring coincidence.
On the same Tuesday that Barack Obama became the first African-American to win the Democratic nomination for president, local activists raised a Confederate flag the size of a semitrailer truck at the intersection of Interstates 75 and 4.
Some might suggest an indirect connection — that supporters of Confederate history, angry that their heritage has been overlooked in the rush to celebrate multicultura
Source: AP
June 5, 2008
Egyptian archaeologists unveiled on Thursday a 4,000-year-old "missing pyramid" that is believed to have been discovered by an archaeologist almost 200 years ago and never seen again.
Zahi Hawass, Egypt's antiquities chief, said the pyramid appears to have been built by King Menkauhor, an obscure pharaoh who ruled for only eight years.
In 1842, German archaeologist Karl Richard Lepsius mentioned it among his finds at Saqqara, referring to it as number 29 and c
Source: Education Week
June 5, 2008
Middle and high school history textbooks generally paint a positive or benign picture of Islam that tends to clash with confrontational images students might see or read in the news, according to a review by the American Textbook Council, financed, in part, by the Searle Freedom Foundation, the Achelis Foundation, and the Stuart Family Foundation.
Nearly seven years after the 9/11 attacks highlighted the need for Americans to
Source: LAT
June 5, 2008
The laughter went flat. The smiles froze before they had time to disappear. In the back of the Ambassador Hotel ballroom, David Steiner couldn't tell what was happening. But a change in mood raced through the crowd like an electrical charge, arcing from face to face.
Sen. Robert F. Kennedy had just finished his victory speech after winning the California primary and exited through a door near the podium. It was just after midnight on June 5, 1968.
At 25, Steiner, who le
