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: Science Daily
4-16-12
Cincinnati research is revealing early farming in a former wetlands region that was largely cut off from Western researchers until recently. The UC collaboration with the Southern Albania Neolithic Archaeological Project (SANAP) will be presented April 20 at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA).Susan Allen, a professor in the UC Department of Anthropology who co-directs SANAP, says she and co-director Ilirjan Gjipali of the Albanian Institute of Archaeology created the project in order to address a gap not only in Albanian archaeology, but in the archaeology in Eastern Europe as a whole, by focusing attention on the initial transition to farming in the region."For Albania, there has been a significant gap in documenting the Early Neolithic (EN), the earliest phase of farming in the region," explains Allen. "While several EN sites were excavated in Albania in the '70s and '80s, plant and animal remains - the keys to exploring early farming - were not recovered from the sites, and sites were not dated with the use of radiocarbon techniques," Allen says....
Source: NYT
4-17-12
Luxembourg is about as cuddly as countries come: prosperous, picturesque and delightfully tiny. At 999 square miles, it is the smallest but one of the European Union states [1]. You could drive its length (55 miles) or its width (35 miles) in less time than it takes to watch a feature-length movie — provided you don’t stop at one of the many touristy villages or vineyards along the way. The capital, also called Luxembourg [2], is a cozy city of barely 100,000 souls; its major problem is not drugs or urban decay, but the apparently unfixable fact that it’s rather boring [3].
Source: WaPo
4-17-12
DALLAS -- It seems almost quaint to mention today, in the era of the “birther’’ movement, but we used to debate where presidential candidates were during the Vietnam War, not where they were born.Just eight years ago, this line of inquiry produced two spectacular efforts: Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and "Rathergate.''It’s hard to argue the significance of the Swift Boat movement. But former CBS newsman Dan Rather is still fighting history’s judgment on his botched investigation of former President George W. Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard. A scathing independent report chronicled a long list of journalistic and ethical missteps.But now Rather is pressing his case in a lengthy interview in the May issue of Texas Monthly magazine.
Source: WaPo
4-14-12
Faced with little public understanding of its modern mission, the U.S. Navy is reaching back 200 years to the War of 1812 in the hopes of bolstering its standing with the American people.This week it launches an ambitious, three-year commemoration to mark the bicentennial of the often overlooked war. Beginning Tuesday in New Orleans, and continuing through the summer in New York, Norfolk, Baltimore and Boston, tall ships and warships from around the world will parade through American ports.But unlike previous commemorations, the Navy wants to reap lasting benefits from the War of 1812 and plans to immerse the public in a flood of information and events, including educational outreach, Web sites, social media, online games, books and museum displays.Polling for the Navy by Gallup has shown that less than 9 percent of Americans understand its mission. Equally worrisome, the public ranks the Navy ahead of only the Coast Guard in its importance to national defense, and well behind the Army, Marines and Air Force....
Source: Fox News
4-16-12
Spc. Leslie H. Sabo Jr., who died in 1970 while saving the lives of his fellow troops during the Vietnam War, has been cleared to receive a posthumous Medal of Honor after a decades-long wait by his family.The White House announced Monday that President Obama would honor Sabo's heroic service with the military's highest honor at an upcoming ceremony.Sabo died on May 10, 1970, while serving as a rifleman in Cambodia. That day, his platoon was ambushed by enemy forces and Sabo charged the enemy position, killing several enemy soldiers.His actions drew fire away from his fellow soldiers and forced a retreat of enemy forces. A grenade later landed near where he was resupplying and he threw it away and shielded a wounded comrade with his body, saving his life....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
4-16-12
Former Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla has admitted for the first time his regime stole babies, kidnapped thousands of opponents and murdered them.Videla, 86, who was jailed for life in 2010 for murder, torture and kidnapping, has repeatedly justified the brutality of the military junta in the so-called Dirty War crackdown on left-wing opponents.The country's brutal seven-year dictatorship has long been accused of 'disappearing' leftist opponents....
Source: Medieval News
4-17-12
A bronze, Viking-era "piggy-bank" containing thousands silver coins dating from the 11th century has been unearthed on the Baltic island of Gotland in what Swedish archaeologists have described as a "fantastic" treasure find....
Source: WSJ
4-16-12
WASHINGTON—In a Pentagon hallway hung an austere portrait of a Navy man lost at sea in 1908, with his brass buttons, blue-knit uniform and what looks like meticulously blow-dried hair.Wait. Blow-dried hair?The portrait of "Ensign Chuck Hord," framed in the heavy gilt typical of government offices, may be the greatest—or perhaps only—prank in Pentagon art history. "Chuck Hord" can't be found in Navy records of the day. It isn't even a real painting. The textured, 30-year-old photo is actually of Capt. Eldridge Hord III, 53 years old, known to friends as "Tuck," a military retiree with a beer belly and graying hair who lives in Burke, Va.Most military officers who climb the ranks or command daring battles only dream of having a portrait hang in a corridor of power at the Pentagon alongside the likes of Patton, Nimitz and Eisenhower. Capt. Hord's made its way to the Pentagon's C-ring hallway via several parties, an alliance of British and Canadian military officers and a clandestine, predawn operation later dubbed "THE PROJECT."...
Source: NYT
4-14-12
The ancient Greeks depicted Aphrodite in elevator shoes. Centuries later, Venetian courtesans clopped around in towering chopines, while during the reign of Louis XIV, red heels were a mark of nobility. But it was after World War II that the stiletto took hold. Soldiers who spent years abroad dreaming of high-heeled pinups, one historian wrote, came home to wives whose wartime work required more sensible shoes. As women returned to domestic life, higher heels could, and did, become all the rage. From the 1950s’ froth of experimentation, the stiletto was born.
Source: NYT
4-14-12
...In 1939, when John L. Goldwater, Louis H. Silberkleit and Maurice Coyne, Mr. Silberkleit’s accountant and partner in his pulp publishing business, Columbia Productions, decided to expand into comic books, their investment was $8,000 apiece. The company, called MLJ, was based in Lower Manhattan.Mr. Goldwater was the visionary who dreamed up superheroes like The Shield and The Wizard and decided, after a few years, that their Pep Comics series could use a few characters who were not superpowered or monsters. In 1941, he sketched the face of a childhood friend: it was Archie, a girl-crazy, pratfall-prone, boy-next-door type.
Source: NYT
4-14-12
Federal officials, who have long struggled to assert protective authority over the resting place of the Titanic, say the site may harbor many undiscovered corpses and thus should be accorded the respect of a graveyard and shielded from looters and artifact hunters.“There are people inside,” said James P. Delgado, director of maritime heritage at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which monitors the wreck....The bold federal assertions are dividing Titanic experts. The most experienced divers say they doubt that bodies lie intact in unexplored compartments of the deteriorating ship.“I’ve seen zero human remains,” James Cameron, the moviemaker and explorer, who has visited the wreck 33 times and extensively probed its interior, said in an interview....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
4-11-12
Martin Luther King was shot dead because a £62,000 bounty had been placed on his head by the Ku Klux Klan, according to a new book.Assassin James Earl Ray was in jail when he is said to have heard on the prison grapevine that the racist group would pay out to anyone who ended the life of the black U.S. civil rights leader.The book’s authors say the KKK in the 1960s functioned like an Al Qaeda-style organisation raising money to fight a ‘holy war’ against black people.By collecting donations from supporters who hated racial integration it put together the huge ‘reward’.Speculation has long raged that Dr King was killed in 1968 as part of a wider conspiracy, even though the FBI immediately dismissed the idea that Klansmen were responsible....
Source: Huffington Post
4-11-12
FREDERICK, Md. -- Long after the guns fell silent at Antietam, the earth yielded up gruesome reminders of the bloodiest day of the American Civil War: bodies, bones, buttons and entire severed limbs – one of which is now the focus of intense study at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine.A Sharpsburg-area farmer is said to have found the human forearm while plowing a field two weeks after the 1862 battle.Officials at the museum in Frederick, Md., are trying to learn more about the limb in hopes of verifying that it's a relic of the Battle of Antietam and exhibiting the well-preserved specimen during the battle's 150th anniversary in September....
Source: AP
4-11-12
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) ' A rare engraved print created by Paul Revere has been found in a 19th century book at Brown University.A university preservationist discovered the print while studying the 1811 book once owned by a 1773 graduate of Brown. The graduate's descendants donated the book to the Rhode Island school.The print shows Jesus and John the Baptist in the Jordan River. Revere's name is featured on the bottom. Only five copies of the print are known to exist. Richard Noble, who catalogues rare items at Brown, says he has some unanswered questions, including Revere's reasons for making the print....
Source: Reuters
4-4-12
(Reuters) - Watched by residents of the old quarter of Tunis, a court official stepped forward and unlocked the huge wooden doors. From the gloom within, volunteers began to bring out stools and chairs that had gathered dust and cobwebs for half a century.The school at Tunisia's 8th-century Zaitouna Mosque, one of the world's leading centers of Islamic learning, was closed by independence leader and secularist strongman Habib Bourguiba in 1964 as part of an effort to curb the influence of religion. Its ancient university was merged with the state's Tunis University.The college reopened its ancient doors to students on Monday, part of a drive by religious scholars and activists to revive Zaitouna's moderate brand of Islam, which once dominated North Africa, and counter the spread of more radical views....
Source: Civil War News
4-12-12
PARKERS CROSSROADS, Tenn. — The last major purchase of ground at Parker’s Crossroads Battlefield has been completed. In another development, unmarked graves may have been discovered on park land.According to park historian Steve McDaniel, one of the driving forces in creating the park, a half acre and two buildings formerly housing a car repair and tire sales lot, and located next to the exit ramp of Interstate 40, were acquired in December. One of the buildings will be torn down and the other may possibly be used as a storage and meeting facility, said McDaniel. They have long been considered somewhat of an eyesore given the rest of the pristine park view south.“We have talked with the owner for years and fortunately one day he offered it to us at a price we couldn’t pass up,” McDaniel said. Most of the critical ground for interpretation has now been purchased and anything else acquired “would likely be through conservation easements,” he said....
Source: Civil War News
4-12-12
RICHMOND, Va. – The U.S. National Slavery Museum former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder hoped to open in Fredericksburg, Va., filed a reorganization plan in federal bankruptcy court on Feb. 17. The plan proposes a way for the museum to resume operations and pay off its debts of over $7 million.The museum filed for Chapter 11 protection from its creditors last September following 10 years of controversy, strained relations with the city, shaky finances and a penchant for secrecy (see November 2011 CWN).A hearing on the disclosure statement about the museum’s assets and debts has been set for April 11. At a subsequent hearing the reorganization plan will be discussed and at that or a follow-up hearing, the creditors will vote whether to accept the museum’s proposed reorganization plan....
Source: WaPo
4-12-12
Clara Barton’s post-Civil War office, where the battlefield nurse had helped families find missing soldiers, may finally get the care and respect it deserves.The top floor of an old brick commercial building in downtown Washington was Barton’s apartment and office where she collected donated medical supplies for the battlefield and later ran the Missing Soldiers Office. She closed the office in 1867, storing files and personal clothing in the crude attic above her rooms. She never came back for them, and they stayed in their hidden storage space until 1996, when a federal government carpenter discovered the cache while preparing the building for demolition.The discovery saved the building but little else had happened until today when officials of the National Museum of Civil War Medicine of Frederick, Md. announced they had signed an agreement with the building’s owner, the General Services Administration, to open the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum in that third floor space....
Source: NYT
4-12-12
The blossoming cherry trees around the Tidal Basin in Washington, a gift of friendship from Japan in 1912, attract millions of ogling, photo-snapping visitors each spring. For their 100th anniversary, the fluffy pink blooms are receiving more attention than ever, featuring celebrations organized by the Japanese Embassy across this country and a special-issue 45-cent stamp.Far less celebrated, and largely forgotten, are the cherry trees — 2,500 of them, nearly as many as were sent to Washington — that Japan gave New York City a century ago.While Washington’s cherries were planted in one area, probably a wise marketing decision, New York spread its out across Upper Manhattan, in several areas of Central Park, Riverside Park and an annex to Riverside east of Riverside Drive and Grant’s Tomb that was renamed Sakura Park. Sakura is Japanese for cherry tree....
Source: NYT
4-12-12
ISTANBUL — A former general and 30 other officers were detained Thursday for their roles in a 1997 coup, continuing the clash between the government and the nation’s once-indomitable military.Long considered the untouchable guardian of a staunchly secular state, the Turkish military has lost its immunity since the pro-Islamic government took power and paved the way for a series of cases against current and retired officers.Hundreds of people — from the former head of the army and other officers to academics and journalists — have been arrested and accused of plotting to overthrow the current government through an ultranationalist network known as Ergenekon.Many critics of the arrests have called it a pretext for a clampdown against government opponents, pointing out that actual coups remained unpunished while a broad spectrum of suspects in an alleged plot were being rounded up....
