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: BBC
April 16, 2010
A court has been told a solicitor would not have put his unblemished record at risk by getting involved in a plot to ransom a stolen Leonardo da Vinci.
In his closing speech, defence QC David Burns said David Boyce, 63, should be cleared of a conspiracy charge.
He said claiming his client could have got involved amounted to a "startling proposition".
Mr Boyce is one of five men who deny conspiring to extort £4.25m to bring back the Madonna of th
Source: BBC
April 16, 2010
A renegade British bishop has been fined 10,000 euros (£8,750) for denying the Holocaust in a case that has acutely embarrassed the Vatican.
The case went ahead in a German court without Richard Williamson, whose breakaway Catholic fraternity told him not to testify, his lawyer said.
Denying that the Holocaust took place, or questioning key elements, is illegal in Germany.
The bishop acknowledged the offending comments in a statement read in court.
Source: BBC
April 17, 2010
The jailed leader of Peru's Shining Path rebel group and his girlfriend say they will go on hunger strike unless they are allowed to wed.
Abimael Guzman and Elena Yparraguirre are both serving life sentences.
Their lawyer said they had been asking for permission to marry for several years and were tired of waiting.
The Mao-inspired Shining Path unleashed a brutal civil conflict in the 1980s and 1990s in Peru, in which nearly 70,000 people were killed.
Source: BBC
April 18, 2010
Librarians in New York's oldest library have uncovered a surprising book thief: George Washington.
The first president of the United States of America borrowed two books from the New York Society Library in 1789 but failed to return them.
Adjusted for inflation, he has since racked up $300,000 (£195,000) in fines for being some 220 years late.
The New York Society Library says it will not pursue the fine. It would simply like the books back.
Source: BBC
April 17, 2010
US President Barack Obama will not attend Lech Kacyznski's state funeral on Sunday because of the travel chaos across Europe, the White House says.
Other figures unable to attend include the UK's Prince of Wales, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Most of Europe's major airports remain closed because of a volcanic ash cloud.
Thousands of mourners in Warsaw were at an evening Mass for Mr Kacyznski who died with 95 others
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 17, 2010
The opening sequence of James Bond film Goldfinger was inspired by a real mission carried out by MI6 during the Second World War and written into the script by an expert on secret wartime operations.
It is one of James Bond's most famous scenes, showing the agent at his deadliest – and most dapper.
Emerging from the water in a wetsuit, he knocks out a sentry and plants explosives before unzipping his suit to reveal a pristine dinner jacket underneath. He then walks in
Source: AP
April 17, 2010
Cuban writer and political activist Carlos Franqui, an important figure in the Cuban revolution who later became one of the most outspoken critics of Fidel Castro, has died. He was 89.
Franqui died late Thursday in Puerto Rico after a brief hospitalization for bronchial and heart problems, according to family friend Andres Candelario.
The son of a poor farmer, Franqui entered leftist political movements as a youth, joined and left the Communist Party and became a journa
Source: CNN
April 17, 2010
The Pakistan Peoples Party, led by former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto before she was slain in 2007, said Saturday it accepts a United Nations commission report into her death and placed blame on former Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf for failing to prevent it.
A core group of PPP members met Saturday to discuss the report, the party said in a statement. Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan's current president and Bhutto's widower, presided over the meeting. Those present "con
Source: CNN
April 16, 2010
Former President Clinton said he sees parallels in the mood of the country now and on April 19, 1995, when the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City killed 168 people while he was in the White House.
Clinton said the Oklahoma City bombing -- then the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history -- was the "last in a series of very high-profile violent encounters" during the 1990s between anti-government activists and authorities.
He said the country is bett
Source: CNN
April 17, 2010
Luci Baines Johnson, the younger of the late President Lyndon Baines Johnson's daughters, has been hospitalized at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, according to a former member of Johnson's staff.
Luci Johnson, 62, was first taken to the Seton Medical Center in Austin, Texas, on Wednesday after complaining of extreme weakness in all her extremities, said Tom Johnson, who worked for the Johnson administration and later served as president of CNN in the 1990s.
Doctors there
Source: Science Daily
April 12, 2010
A team of researchers from the University of Arizona has revisited evidence pointing to a cataclysmic event thought by many scientists to have wiped out the North American megafauna -- such as mammoths, saber tooth cats, giant ground sloths and Dire wolves -- along with the Clovis hunter-gatherer culture some 13,000 years ago.
The team obtained their findings following an unusual, multidisciplinary approach and published them in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (P
Source: Science Daily
April 15, 2010
A new study led by Ohio University scientists suggests that early Native Americans left a bigger carbon footprint than previously thought, providing more evidence that humans impacted global climate long before the modern industrial era.
Chemical analysis of a stalagmite found in the mountainous Buckeye Creek basin of West Virginia suggests that native people contributed a significant level of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere through land use practices. The early Native Americans
Source: Science Daily
April 16, 2010
They were illiterate farmers, builders and servants, but Maya commoners found a way to record their own history -- by burying it within their homes. A new study of the objects embedded in the floors of homes occupied more than 1,000 years ago in central Belize begins to decode their story.
The study, from University of Illinois anthropology professor Lisa J. Lucero, appears in the Journal of Social Archaeology.
Maya in the Classic period (A.D. 250-900) regularly "t
Source: BBC
April 16, 2010
A volcanic eruption in Iceland is continuing to ground flights in the UK and Europe, but 227 years ago a far more devastating eruption occurred wiping out a fifth of the island's population - as well as tens of thousands across Europe.
On 8 June, 1783, the young country of Iceland - inhabited for less than 1,000 years - had a population of 50,000. In the coming years, as a result of what began that Sunday morning at 9am, 10,000 of those people would die.
The Laki erupt
Source: BBC
April 16, 2010
Part of a lost petition relating to Scotland's ill-fated attempt to establish a colony in Central America has been uncovered by a historian.
Nothing was believed to exist of the National Address, which appealed to King William to lift a ban on English colonies trading with the Scots.
Blair Kerr found the Angus and Dundee section while researching for a degree.
The collapse of the Darien Venture in April 1700 played a part in the signing of the Act of Unio
Source: BBC
April 16, 2010
A book given to a Devon branch of Oxfam has netted the charity's largest windfall at an auction.
The rare photo book, one of several given to the shop in Teignmouth by an anonymous donor, fetched £37,200.
The 1882 book tells of Royal Society of London scientist Gerard Ansdell and his brother's search for a long-lost brother in Fiji.
He was eventually tracked down in the island of Viti Levu and the brothers documented their trip in the book.
Source: BBC
April 16, 2010
A ceremony is to be held to commemorate the bravery of a Spitfire pilot from Denbighshire who was shot down in World War II.
Flight Lieutenant Norman Carter Macqueen was 22 when he was killed in Malta in 1942.
He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) days before his death.
A replica of the medal will be presented to Glyn Pickering, mayor of his home town, Rhyl, at Rhyl Library, at 1100 BST.
Source: BBC
April 16, 2010
The National Gallery is dusting off some of its most embarrassing acquisitions for a new exhibition looking at fake artworks.
Close Examination will display works of art that have been quietly removed from view after research showed they were not what they were thought to be.
They include works supposedly by Sandro Botticelli and Hans Holbein which were mistakenly thought to be genuine.
More than 40 works of art will go on display at the gallery in June.
Source: Discovery News
April 14, 2010
If it seems like cockroaches have been around forever, they nearly have. Check out this 300-million-year-old cockroach ancestor that lived several million years before the world's first dinosaurs emerged.
A new 3-D virtual model of the insect is described in the journal Biology Letters.
Imperial College London scientists created the model, which you'll view shortly, to show all of the details on Archimylacris eggintoni, which is an ancient ancestor of modern cockroaches
Source: Discovery News
April 12, 2010
Part of an ankylosaurid skull has likely just been found by a persistent high school science teacher whose hobby is dinosaurs, according to a report in Grand Junction, Colorado's The Daily Sentinel.
If verified, the fossil would be among the first of its kind for this armadillo-like dinosaur that lived from around 125 to 65 million years ago in North America, Europe and East Asia.
Kent Hups, a high school teacher in Westminster, Colorado, made the find
