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
October 5, 2006
Archeologists have uncovered a 600-year-old, large underground cemetery belonging to a Peruvian warrior culture, thought to be the first discovery of its kind, an official said on Thursday.
After a tip-off from a farmer in Peru's northern Amazon jungle, archeologists from Peru's National Culture Institute last week found the 820-feet-(250-meter)deep cave that was used for burial and worship by the Chachapoyas tribe.
Source: NYT
October 6, 2006
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Oct. 5— The old men stared at one another through squinted eyes on Thursday and began to remember the lives they once lived.
Slowed by age and bent with frailty, about 50 veterans of the Manhattan Project gathered at the Best Western Hilltop House Hotel here as part of three days of events to commemorate their work on the atomic bomb.
Source: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2006/10/05/international/i121208D63.DTL
October 5, 2006
Mongolia's legislature on Thursday began debating a law on regulating the use of Genghis Khan's name in a bid to prevent the memory of the legendary conqueror from being cheapened.
Since Mongolia emerged from the shadow of the Soviet Union in 1991, the isolated Asian nation has applied the moniker of its favorite son to more than half a dozen brands of vodka and beer and a variety of other commercial products.
The trend reflects the immense pride Mongolians feel about a
Source: AP
October 5, 2006
Kenyan independence veterans want Britain to apologize publicly for the beating, starvation and torture they say they suffered at the hands of British authorities when they fought against colonial rule over 50 years ago, their lawyer said Thursday.
The veterans next week will start a legal process in which they also want general compensation for the people affected, reparations to survivors and cancellation of Kenya's debt to Britain, Martyn Day said at a news conference in the Ken
Source: ABC.net.au
October 5, 2006
The public is being asked to comment on plans to protect what's been called the world's largest art gallery, a collection of ancient Aboriginal rock art on the Dampier Archipelago.
Federal environment and heritage minister Senator Ian Campbell has called for submissions on a proposal that would see most of the area, which is in northwestern Australia, placed on the National Heritage List.
The proposal would hinder the development of the A$50 billion Pluto Gas natural ga
Source: NYT
October 4, 2006
For more than two centuries, the Freemasons and their grandiose rituals have played a secretive, mysterious role in American life. One of the Masons’ symbols looks a lot like the all-seeing eye on the back of every $1 bill. And look whose picture is on the other side.
George Washington was not the first Mason, and not the only famous one. Mozart worked thinly disguised touches of Masonry into operas. Fourteen presidents and everyone from the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale to the comedian
Source: NYT
October 4, 2006
UPPER DEERFIELD, N.J., Sept. 28 — To assess what it meant for about 2,500 Japanese-Americans to live here in the 1940’s in cinder-block barracks and work seven days a week, 12 hours a day at a vegetable packaging and processing plant for 55 cents an hour, it is necessary to ask, “Compared with what?”
They came here during World War II to live and work at the Seabrook Farms complex from one of 10 internment camps for Japanese-Americans out West, where the routine was enforced idlenes
Source: International Herald Tribune
October 4, 2006
Indonesian authorities are investigating a history text book that re-examines the events that led to ex-dictator Suharto assuming power and may bring criminal charges against its authors, the attorney general's office said Wednesday.The book has already been withdrawn from schools across the country, said Muchtar Arifin, a junior attorney general.
Gen. Suharto rose to power after an attempted coup in 1965 that he blamed on the Communist party. During his brutal
Source: Ottowa Citizen
October 4, 2006
As part of its latest secrecy push, the Defence Department declared Tuesday that releasing information showing that Canadians fought valiantly with the famed Devil's Brigade during the Second World War could harm national security.The name of the First Special Service Force, better known as the Devil's Brigade, has been censored from all the records that outline which unit has the closest historical military links to Canada's existing commando unit, Joint Task Force 2.
Source: Reuters
October 5, 2006
German authorities have unearthed the remains of 51 people, many of them children, in what may be a mass grave for murdered victims of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.Local officials said on Thursday that the skeletons of 22 children and 29 adults had been exhumed from the grave in a Catholic church cemetery in the village of Menden-Barge. The exhumation process was still underway.
"We assume that these were victims of the Nazi regime," state prosecutor Ulr
Source: BBC
October 3, 2006
A simple tag to prevent shoelaces from fraying was deemed to be worth more than gold by the indigenous Cubans who traded with Christopher Columbus.
Scientists from University College London, UK, have been analysing grave goods from indigenous burials on Cuba dating to the Spanish contact.
They were surprised to find little gold - which is abundant in the region.
Instead, the most common artefacts were small brass tubes thought to be cheap lacetags fro
Source: Guardian
October 5, 2006
The slackers, the looters, the promiscuous and the just plain terrified men and women of the Blitz are finally being heard, more than 60 years after the last bombs fell. The voices often edited out of the patriotic official version of Britain's finest hour resurface in a new history of the Blitz and the Battle of Britain, based on thousands of hours of recordings of survivors, held in the archives of the Imperial War Museum.
Joshua Levine, who spent almost a year listening to the m
Source: Independent (UK)
October 5, 2006
Some 450 years after it was given to an Elizabethan nobleman on the condition he keep it free of pirates, the Channel island of Sark has ceased to be the last feudal fiefdom in Europe.
The population of the tiny Crown dependency, 20 miles off the French coast, voted yesterday for a new system of government which will mean it is ruled entirely by elected representatives for the first time in its history.
The referendum ends the rule of the Seigneur of Sark - an inherited
Source: Reuters
October 4, 2006
Mexican archeologists have found what may be the most significant Aztec ruin in decades, with the unearthing of an altar and a monolith in the busy heart of Mexico City, Mayor Alejandro Encinas said on Wednesday.
The 15th-century altar, part of the Aztec empire's main temple, was uncovered last weekend near the city's main Zocalo square along with the 11-foot (3.5-meter) stone slab, most of which is still buried under earth.
"It is a very important discovery, the b
Source: Weekly Standard
October 9, 2006
A fascinating historical footnote to the story of Sen. George Allen's Jewish forebears appeared last week in Washington Jewish Week. Rafael Medoff reports on the discovery by Time magazine in 1939 that Secretary of State Cordell Hull's "entry in Who's Who wrongly stated that his wife's last name was Whitney, which was her married name from her first marriage." Hull's wife, Frances Witz, was the daughter of a Jewish immigrant from Austria--a fact he feared would doom his presidential ho
Source: NYT
October 4, 2006
Just before 6 p.m. on a recent evening, students began to fill a lecture hall at Vanderbilt University. Some pressed cellphones to their ears, others sipped cups of coffee. Flip-flops scuffed the carpet as the students shed book bags and opened laptops.
A typical class, perhaps — until the teacher with the shock of white hair rose from the table at the front of the hall, greeted the students and asked a question: “How many of you have experienced a hate crime against yourself? Let’s
Source: AP
October 3, 2006
Before the Internet came along, vodka with cranberry juice and a bet over a six-pack of beer were tools of seduction in the hands of House members with designs on congressional pages....
In 1983, an investigation into dozens of reports of sexual misconduct between House members and pages noted the more permissive nature of society at the time, with the age of consent dropping, sexual mores relaxing and people appreciating ''an increasing recognition of the frailty of human nature.''
Source: The Australian
October 4, 2006
THE remains of the unknown sailor believed to be the sole survivor of Australia's most enduring wartime mystery -- the sinking of HMAS Sydney off Western Australia -- have been unearthed on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. The Defence Department last night confirmed that bones had been discovered in the island's Old European Cemetery by a navy-led team of experts and, once removed, would be taken to Sydney for further forensic tests in an attempt to establish identity.
The disc
Source: NYT
October 4, 2006
A consortium of major universities, using Homeland Security Department money, is developing software that would let the government monitor negative opinions of the United States or its leaders in newspapers and other publications overseas. Such a "sentiment analysis" is intended to identify potential threats to the nation, security officials said.
Researchers at institutions including Cornell, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Utah intend to test the syste
Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch
October 2, 2006
University of Illinois archaeologist Robert Mazrim wasn't looking for anyone who made history or even earned a footnote. He just wanted to understand the average lives of French settlers who lived in the Mississippi River Valley hundreds of years ago.
But a shard of "too-fashionable" pottery stoked his curiosity and led him eventually to claim a thrilling discovery: the site of the home where Pierre Laclede, the founder of St. Louis, likely lived when he first sailed up th
