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: AFP
June 21, 2010
Name: Khoma. Looks like: A baby mammoth. Age: somewhere above 50,000 years. Discovered in the permafrost of northern Siberia just last year, this rare example of prehistoric monster is on its way to Paris to be analysed, treated for the germs it's harbouring and eventually placed on display.
Khoma -- it's unclear whether it's male or female -- died aged just six or seven months. It was discovered by a hunter in July 2009 in melting permafrost on the banks of the river Khroma some 2,
Source: THE TENNESSEAN
June 21, 2010
More than 200 years after he fell in a duel with a future president, and almost a century after his grave was lost and forgotten beneath someone's front lawn, Charles Dickinson will be laid to rest again.
President Andrew Jackson took part in more than a dozen duels over the course of his life. But Nashville attorney Charles Dickinson was the only man he killed.
Dickinson's lost tomb had been an enduring
mystery to Nashville historians. He was laid to rest on hi
Source: BBC
June 22, 2010
A Roman fort which has been discovered in Cornwall is challenging previous historical views about the South West.
Pottery and pieces of slag have been found at the undisclosed location near St Austell, suggesting an ironworks.
Experts said the discovery challenges previous thinking about the region's history as it had been thought Romans did not settle much beyond Exeter.
Source: BBC
June 22, 2010
A three-day celebration of the life and works of JRR Tolkien aims to turn a part of mid Wales into Middle Earth.
The Festival in the Shire will include re-enactments, games, and storytelling on a Tolkien theme.
It will analyse The Lord of the Rings author, looking at Welsh influences on his work, and welcome fans.
The event, at the Pavilion in Pontrhydfendigaid, Ceredigion, in August, also includes an exhibition of Tolkien-inspired art....
Source: BBC
June 21, 2010
An ancient Egyptian city believed to be Avaris, the capital of the Hyksos people who ruled 3,500 years ago, has been located by radar, Egypt's culture ministry says.
A team of Austrian archaeologists used radar imaging to find the underground outlines of the city in the Nile Delta, a now densely populated area.
The Hyksos were foreign occupiers from Asia who ruled Egypt for a century.
Avaris was their summer capital, near what is now the town of Tal al-D
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 22, 2010
Souvenir statues of Chairman Mao must not be cast from plastic or plaster and must be an "authentic likeness" of the Great Helmsman, according to new Chinese regulations.
Chinese officials in Mao's home province of Hunan said they were concerned about the flow of shoddy Mao souvenirs that has flooded the Chinese market.
According to Xinhua, Mao's hometown of Shaoshan sold 124 million yuan (£12.4 million) worth of trinkets last year, of which almost three-quart
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 22, 2010
A single plume from the extinct huia bird has sold for a record sum at auction in New Zealand making it the most expensive feather ever.
The brown and white feather fetched NZ$8,000 (£3,800), far exceeding the NZ$500 that it had been estimated to reach. The feathers were traditionally used to adorn Maori chiefs.
The huia bird is thought to be extinct and has not been seen since 1907.
The feather went under the hammer at Webb's Auction House in Auckland..
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 22, 2010
Dutch police are to use "decoy Jews", by dressing law enforcers in Jewish religious dress such as skullcaps, in an effort to catch anti-Semitic attackers.
Lodewijk Asscher, Amsterdam's mayor, has ordered the new decoy strategy to cut the number of verbal and physical attacks on Jews, amid fears that anti-Semitic "hate crime" is on the rise.
Secret television recordings by the Jewish broadcasting company, Joodse Omroep, broadcast at the weekend, hav
Source: AP
June 22, 2010
A red wooden box that has carried the government's budget to the House of Commons since 1860 made its last official appearance on Tuesday.
Treasury chief George Osborne struck the traditional pose, holding the box aloft for photographers, before he set off to the House of Commons to announce the government's budget plans. But he left it behind.
The box was first used by William Ewart Gladstone in 1860, and most Chancellors of the Exchequer have used it ever since. Forme
Source: AP
June 22, 2010
Americans remain a generally upbeat lot, but all the skepticism, snark and dismal rhetoric being bandied about may be taking their toll.
Nearly two-thirds of people answering a Pew Research Center for the People and the Press/Smithsonian Magazine poll said they are optimistic about their future and that of the country — and a majority expect the economy to be strong in the future.
A whopping 89 percent expect to see a woman president within 40 years and 69 percent say a
Source: CNN
June 21, 2010
A hundred years ago when German explorer Leo Frobenius visited West Africa and came across some sculpted bronze heads and terracotta figures, he was sure he had discovered remains of the mythical lost city of Atlantis.
He refused to believe that the sophisticated and ornately carved bronze sculptures were made in Africa.
Frobenius was referring to the people who lived in the Kingdom of Ife and whose artists, in fact, created the sculptures over the course of some four c
Source: CNN
June 22, 2010
...One president sealed his greatness with his handling of an oil crisis. Another was doomed by his inability to contain an oil crisis, scholars say.
President Eisenhower was the first president to warn the nation about oil in 1957, says James Hedtke, a history professor at Cabrini College in Radnor, Pennsylvania.
Other presidents delivered the same talk -- Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush -- but America's depen
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 22, 2010
Chinese archaeologists have unearthed about 120 more clay figures in their latest round of excavations at the terracotta army site that surrounds the tomb of the nation's first emperor in the northwestern Shaanxi Province [Photo gallery <a href"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/7843691/China-unearths-more-Terracotta-Warriors.html">
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 21, 2010
Families of British soldiers have reacted angrily after a pin badge resembling a war medal worn by Hitler went on sale at River Island, the clothing retailer.
The "military pin", which costs £3.99 at the high street chain, consists of a black cross outlined in silver, decorated with a face in the centre and embellished by two swords.
But the fashion jewellery is said to bear a strong resemblance to the Iron Cross, a military medal awarded to Nazi soldiers in
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 21, 2010
Paratroopers from the battalion involved in Bloody Sunday have attacked the Saville inquiry as “fundamentally flawed” with “cherry-picked evidence”.
In an extraordinary fight back against the inquiry’s finding that the shooting of 14 unarmed civilians was “unjustifiable” the Paras accused Lord Saville of coming to “subjective and inaccurate conclusions”.
In a letter passed to The Daily Telegraph on behalf of 35 former members of 1st Bn The Parachute Regiment present on
Source: National Geographic
June 21, 2010
A newfound male relative of the human ancestor "Lucy" supports the idea that walking upright evolved earlier than thought, a new study says.
Lucy—a 3.2-million-year-old skeleton discovered in 1974—belongs to Australopithecus afarensis, a species which scientists think was an early direct ancestor of modern humans.
An exceptionally petite female—her estimated height was 3.5 feet (1.1 meters)—Lucy's small frame has been interpreted as not being totally adapted f
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 20, 2010
The 3,500-year-old capital of Egypt's foreign occupiers has been revealed by archaeologists using radar imaging....
Irene Mueller, the head of the Austrian archaeological team, said the main purpose of the project was to determine how far the underground city extended....
Source: AP
June 20, 2010
Detail by painful detail, the CIA is coming to grips with one of the most devastating episodes in its history, a botched cloak-and-dagger flight into China that stole two decades of freedom from a pair of fresh-faced American operatives and cost the lives of their two pilots.
In opening up about the 1952 debacle, the CIA is finding ways to use it as a teaching tool. Mistakes of the past can serve as cautionary tales for today's spies and paramilitary officers taking on al-Qaida and
Source: Keene Sentinel
June 18, 2010
Tools made about 11,000 years ago were found at the Maple Avenue site of Keene’s new middle school, which Stoddard archaeologist Robert Goodby said could “easily be one of the most important (archaeological) sites in the state, if not New England.
Goodby began his site review, overseen by the N.H. Division of Historical Resources, in November. The review is a federal requirement for projects that are constructed near wetlands. In addition to the high number of artifacts, few Granite
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
June 19, 2010
Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini hid a set of secret diaries in an Italian hillside and ordered them not to be opened until 2025, the son of the man who buried them has revealed.
Mussolini, who ruled Italy from 1922 until he was executed by partisans in 1945, has long been rumoured to have kept diaries which could detail the extent of his relationship with wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
There is even a theory among some Italian historians that he was execute
