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: physorg.com
April 3, 2006
Thousands of years after the advent of agriculture, ancient farmers in India routinely foraged for wild plants — even weeds — when times got tough, a UCLA archaeologist has found.
Source: NYT
April 4, 2006
Only a few months ago Mariwan Halabjayi was an obscure 42-year-old Kurdish writer. Now he is a famous fugitive who moves from house to house, not daring to go near the windows for fear that assassins will catch sight of him.
Mr. Halabjayi denies that he was hunting for fame or political asylum. He said his book, "Sex, Legislation and Women in Islamic History," was an honest effort to examine questions that matter deeply to him.
Source: NYT
April 4, 2006
Egypt's leading Islamic jurist has issued a fatwa that declares the exhibition of statues in homes un-Islamic. The religious edict by the grand mufti, Ali Gomaa, overturning a ruling issued more than 100 years ago, did not mention statues in museums or public places but aroused fears among art lovers that it might prompt extremists to attack thousands of ancient statues on view at tourist sites across the country, Agence France-Presse reported.
Source: NYT
April 4, 2006
During the heated immigration debate on Capitol Hill, some Republicans have portrayed immigrants as invaders, criminals and burdens to society. But for Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, the image that comes to mind is that of his mother and the day the authorities took her away.
It was 1943, World War II was raging, and federal agents were sweeping through Albuquerque hunting for Italian sympathizers. They found Mr. Domenici's mother, Alda V. Domenici, a curly-hair
Source: NYT
April 4, 2006
There's another battle brewing in Gettysburg, and this one has to do with whether gambling is fitting and proper for the historic Pennsylvania community.
The area, site of the most decisive battle of the Civil War more than a century ago, is fighting over a proposal to build a 3,000- slot machine parlor about two miles from its center.After a contentious two-hour meeting Monday night, the borough council voted 6 to 3 to support the application of Cro
Source: Haaretz
April 4, 2006
In 1943, at the height of World War II and the systematic annihilation of European Jewry, Gitl Lerner, a 45-year-old Jewish woman, hid with five of her children in the home of a Polish farmer. The six managed to escape a transport to the Majdanek death camp and found shelter along with two Jewish youths. On the night of October 30, Polish farmers in the area stabbed Lerner and the five children to death.
Sixty years later Roni Lerner, an Israeli businessman and Gitl's grandson, set
Source: Yahoo News
April 4, 2006
Sweden helped the Nazis stop Germans and Jews marrying and suppressed criticism of Hitler and reports of atrocities, says new research suggesting neutral Sweden accommodated the Nazis more than previously thought. "We are finding new areas of collaboration which we didn't know about," said Stockholm University historian Klas Amark, who coordinated the research commissioned by Prime Minister Goran Persson in 2000 in connection with a Holocaust conference.
Source: MSNBC
April 4, 2006
For centuries, historians have portrayed Mozart as poor, but new documents suggest the composer was not nearly as hard-up for cash as many have believed.Scholars who combed through Austrian archives for an exhibition opening Tuesday on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s later years in Vienna found evidence that he was solidly upper-crust and lived the good life.
Letters show that Mozart repeatedly borrowed money from friends to pay for his travels and his social ob
Source: Yahoo News
April 4, 2006
Southeast Asia's richest underwater archeological find are stashed at a site that is at the center of a shadowy scandal entwining accused modern-day pirates, booty worth millions of dollars, stern diplomatic protests and murky corruption allegations. At risk, experts say, is priceless Indonesian history.Timber and iron beams from a 10th-century wreck -- which could provide information about ancient trading routes and the arrival of Islam in Indo
Source: China View
April 1, 2006
Chinese archaeologists are studying the DNA samples extracted from the bones of horses unearthed from ancient sites to probe the origin of domestic horses in China.
It's still a mystery to archaeologists when and where horses were first tamed in China, said Cai Dawei, a researcher with the center of archaeological research for China's border area under the Jilin University in Northwest China.
Source: Inside Higher Ed
April 3, 2006
New York University triumphantly announced last week that it had received a $200 million gift to finance a new Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, designed as a haven for top-notch, cross-disciplinary scholarship “across geographic and cultural boundaries.”
But while celebrated in certain quarters at NYU, the mammoth gift has laid bare deep divisions among anthropologists, art historians and others who study antiquity at the university and elsewhere in academe, centered ar
Source: BBC
April 2, 2006
Workers renovating a plaza in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, have stumbled across a forgotten cemetery. It was used by early immigrants in the first half of the 19th Century. It was called the dissident cemetery since it was used by the Protestant and Jewish communities who were not allowed to bury their dead in the Roman Catholic cemeteries used by the majority of the population.
The find has excited experts keen to learn more about their cou
Source: Yahoo
April 1, 2006
Archaeologists are expected to begin searching thousands of acres on the Middle Peninsula this summer for Indian artifacts, marking one of the biggest investigations of its kind in Virginia history. The area to be explored is the future site of a reservoir approved for construction last year, a project that has drawn fierce opposition from three Indian tribes.
The tribes also are upset about the archaeological dig, which will focus on 6,000 acres of forest
Source: WaPo
April 3, 2006
Two prominent academics, a dean at Harvard and a professor at the University of Chicago, have stirred a tempest by writing a paper arguing that the Israel lobby often persuades the United States to set aside its own security to pursue the best interests of Israel."No lobby has managed to divert U.S. foreign policy as far from what the American national interest would otherwise suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. and Israeli interests are essenti
Source: The Daily Telegraph
April 3, 2006
TWO British adventurers who retraced the steps of Chairman Mao's Long March have come under attack from Chinese media for claiming in a book that the Red Army's trek was not nearly as long as previously thought. Ed Jocelyn and Andy McEwen hiked across China's most remote places in a tribute to the men and women whose escape from their nationalist enemies in China's civil war is the founding legend of the Communist Party.
Their year-long trip, which ended in 2003, was met at first wi
Source: BBCNews
April 2, 2006
As unions and students gear up for another strike against French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin's controversial youth employment law, the BBC news website looks at how previous "people power" protests have forced climbdowns in government policy.2005: SCHOOL REFORM
In February 2005, education minister Francois Fillon was forced to withdraw key elements of school reform after protests by pupils and teachers.
President Jacques Chirac's
Source: Independent (London)
April 1, 2006
Thirty-five years after the US sprayed the jungles of Vietnam with toxic defoliant, thousands of babies are still being born with horrific defects. But unlike the American veterans, no one in the war-ravaged country has received any compensation.
Source: Rocky Mountain News
April 2, 2006
A Kansas judge told two University of Colorado professors on Friday that they can exhume a 127-year-old cadaver to, perhaps, determine its true identity. CU law professor Mimi Wesson and anthropology professor Dennis Van Gerven were present at the brief hearing in Lawrence. "We're elated," Wesson said. "We were geared up for a hammer-and-tong fight. And we're laughing because it was so anti-climactic." Their petition was unopposed, although it represented new legal terrain fo
Source: LAT
April 2, 2006
The year was 1906. The city was demolished by an earthquake. Then ravaged by fire. San Francisco quickly rebuilt and trumpeted itself as a world-class city gracefully risen from the ashes. What would be remembered through the years were the positives: the heroism, the generosity of neighboring cities, the gorgeous architecture that replaced what was lost.
Hidden in the city's rewritten history were darker realities. In the chaos, San Franciscans lashed out at the underclass -- beati
Source: The Daily Telegraph
April 2, 2006
ANYONE with an ancestor who travelled on the Titanic's doomed maiden voyage will soon be able to gain access to their details on the internet.
1837online.com, the family history website, has signed a pounds 2.5m deal to scan and place online the National Archives' entire historical database of passengers who embarked on sea voyages from Britain's shores between 1890 and 1960. This includes the one and only voyage of Titanic, which was made into a Hollywood blockbuster starring Kate
