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: Discovery News
August 6, 2010
Even though it isn't wired for broadband, this prehistoric domicile does have beds and even a fireplace.
Anthropologists have unearthed the remains of an apparent Neanderthal cave sleeping chamber, complete with a hearth and nearby grass beds that might have once been covered with animal fur.
Neanderthals inhabited the cozy Late Pleistocene room, located within Esquilleu Cave in Cantabria, Spain, anywhere between 53,000 to 39,000 years ago, according to a Journal of Arc
Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer
August 6, 2010
The popular public archaeology lab at Independence National Historical Park, forced from its longtime home at Third and Chestnut Streets by a land deal undertaken by the park and a private group, will not reopen in its new quarters for up to two years, park officials said this week.
When they closed it in June, the officials predicted a late-summer reopening for the lab, which is analyzing about one million artifacts unearthed in the park a decade ago.
Although the mo
Source: BBC
July 30, 2010
Its name in Arabic is Wadi Hitan but it is known as the Valley of the Whales.
For years palaeontologists have been unearthing a remarkable collection of whale fossils, all the more surprising because the area is now inland desert in upper Egypt.
It is believed that about 40 million years ago the area was submerged in water, part of the Tethys Sea. As the sea retreated north to the Mediterranean it left a series of unique rock formations and also a cornucopia of fossils
Source: BBC
August 6, 2010
Southern Sudan has asked musicians and writers to compose a national anthem, six months ahead of a referendum on independence.
The South Sudan National Anthem Committee said the contest did not mean that it was backing separation.
However it said the region needed to be prepared for independence.
The BBC's Peter Martell in Juba says Sudan's national anthem is rarely played in the south, which fought a brutal two-decade war with the north....
Source: BBC
August 5, 2010
A doctor who examined the Lockerbie bomber says he could not have faked his illness.
Leading oncologist Professor Karol Sikora examined Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who has terminal prostate cancer, in prison and estimated he had about three months to live.
Last August, the Libyan was released from jail on compassionate grounds.
Former prison doctor and writer Theodore Dalrymple agreed that it would be impossible for Megrahi to fake the severity of his disease...
Source: BBC
August 8, 2010
Evidence of ruthless land clearance by Norman knights has been found in Lincoln.
Archaeologists working in the castle grounds have discovered remains of Anglo-Saxon houses.
When William the Conqueror decided to build a castle inside the old Roman fort, he swept away 166 homes - more than 10% of the existing town.
Now the first of a series of digs has uncovered a fireplace, pottery and the marks of structural timbers.
Lincoln was one of the fir
Source: BBC
August 8, 2010
The British historian and intellectual Tony Judt has died aged 62.
The London-born author and academic died from complications associated with motor neurone disease at his home in New York.
As Professor of European studies at New York University he courted controversy with his views on Israel and the conflict with the Palestinians.
He suggested Israel should accept Arabs as equal citizens in a secular state....
Source: BBC
August 8, 2010
Testimony given by model Naomi Campbell to Charles Taylor's war crimes trial will come under scrutiny on Monday.
Her ex-agent Carole White and actress Mia Farrow are due to give evidence as the prosecution seeks to link Mr Taylor to so-called "blood diamonds".
But she said she was given a pouch containing the stones by two unidentified men who appeared at her door later that evening, and she had no knowledge of who was the ultimate donor....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 6, 2010
Nelson Mandela, the Former South African president, may have fathered an illegitimate daughter following a brief affair with a woman he met in Cape Town, in 1945, his foundation has admitted.
Mpho Pule spent almost 12 years battling to see the man she believed was her father but died just a month before his office wrote to say that they were close to confirming her claim.
Now her children are continuing her fight to be recognised as the seventh child fathered by the f
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 8, 2010
As Rwandans prepare to vote in their presidential elections, many are questioning the rule of incumbent President Paul Kagame.
The former manager of the Hotel des Milles Collines, he famously sheltered more than 1,200 Tutsi refugees during the 1994 genocide, persuading local militiamen to turn a blind eye by plying them with best Burgundy.
But 16 years after the slaughter that killed 800,000 people, the man whose quiet tact inspired the Oscar-nominated film Hotel Rwan
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 8, 2010
Fidel Castro returned to address Cuba's parliament for the first time in four years, taking the opportunity to issue a dire warning of a nuclear "holocaust".
Castro, 83, looked much fitter and more energetic than in previous appearances as he rose to the podium of the National Assembly Saturday to expand on his favourite theme of recent days – alleged US preparations for a nuclear war in the Middle East.
In a series of internet articles and public comments,
Source: AP
August 8, 2010
A Khmer Rouge prison chief who oversaw crimes of savagery a generation ago is told he will spend the next 19 years in jail: That's the same sentence that many low-level drug dealers, women who shoot their husbands after a lifetime of abuse and political scapegoats receive.
Far from providing closure from the trauma of the "killing fields" regime that scarred a generation of Cambodians, the sentence given to Kaing Guek Eav, or Duch, seen by many as too lenient, has become a
Source: AP
August 8, 2010
U.S. military officers were flying in Sunday to serve as jurors in war-crimes proceedings as the Guantanamo tribunal system geared up for one of its busiest weeks under President Barack Obama.
The Pentagon is holding military commission sessions this week for two detainees: a young Canadian going on trial for the slaying of a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan and an aide to Osama bin Laden who is to be sentenced after pleading guilty in a deal with prosecutors.
The tribunal s
Source: AP
August 8, 2010
Muslims trying to build houses of worship in the nation's heartland, far from the heated fight in New York over plans for a mosque near ground zero, are running into opponents even more hostile and aggressive.
Foes of proposed mosques have deployed dogs to intimidate Muslims holding prayer services and spray painted "Not Welcome" on a construction sign, then later ripped it apart.
In the Nashville suburb of Murfreesboro, opponents of a new Islamic center say t
Source: AP
August 8, 2010
Beatrice Munyenyezi brought her three daughters to the United States from war-ravaged Rwanda in 1998 and focused on the American Dream: private schooling for her girls, a home with a swimming pool, a sport utility vehicle.
Before long, she had a $13-an-hour job at Manchester's Housing Authority in New Hampshire, her children were enrolled in Catholic school, and she was on her way to financing a comfortable American lifestyle through mortgages, loans and credit cards.
N
Source: CNN
August 6, 2010
While he's not on the ballot, George W. Bush is still vital to the midterm election as far as the nation's top Democrat is concerned.
President Obama has made a point recently to invoke Bush's name in what many say is a calculated effort to remind voters of the previous administration's economic policies, which Democrats argue led to the worst recession in modern history.
On Monday, the president told those attending a Democratic fundraiser in Atlanta, Georgia, that the
Source: AP
August 5, 2010
A city in southern Mexico agreed Wednesday to consider a petition by Mayan Indians to remove a recently installed monument to the Spanish conquistadores who led the bloody conquest of the region in the 1500s.
Over 100 Mayan groups and individuals from Yucatan and other Mexican states signed the petition asking that the monument to Francisco de Montejo and his son be removed from a boulevard in Merida, Yucatan's state capital. It was installed in June.
Between 1528 and 1
Source: ABC News
August 6, 2010
Their skin is charred. Their bones melted away. Many watched their parents die. Yet they consider themselves the lucky ones. 65 years ago, they survived the unimaginable: the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
They are called the Hibakusha. They are a unique group which hopes their dramatic stories will convey the need to eliminate the scourge that nearly killed them during two days that changed the world, 65 years ago.
Mikiso Iwasa says August 6th, 1945 began
Source: Saipan Tribune
August 7, 2010
Participants in the two-day Manhattan Project Symposium held at the Tinian Dynasty Hotel and Casino were joined by island residents yesterday at the atomic bomb assembly pits in North Field Tinian to memorialize the 65th anniversary of the dropping of the first A-bomb used in combat over Hiroshima.
In a brief ceremony littered with moments of high drama, a stunning moment of reverence was occasioned when “taps” was sounded in an ambience where only the sound of the wildlife in the s
Source: Guardian (UK)
August 6, 2010
When Wolf Hall won last year's Booker prize some commentators suggested that the term "historical fiction" was itself becoming a thing of the past. So many novels these days are set prior to the author's lifetime that to label a novel "historical" is almost as meaningless as to call it "literary". Eight of the last 10 Booker prize shortlists have included a novel set in the 19th century, and with the inclusion of David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoe
