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
March 10, 2010
A long cooling period may have led to famine in Greenland and Iceland more than 1,000 years ago.
New research reveals just how bad an idea it was to colonize Greenland and Iceland more than a millennium ago: average temperatures in Iceland plummeted nearly 6 degrees Celsius in the century that followed the island's Norse settlement in about A.D. 870, a climate record gleaned from mollusk shells shows.
The record is the most precise year-by-year chronology yet of tempera
Source: Discovery News
March 12, 2010
George Mallory's camera may contain photographic evidence of whether he and Andrew Irvine were the first to summit Everest.
Tom Holzel really wants a camera. The problem is, the only camera that he'll settle for was lost somewhere on Mount Everest 86 years ago.
The lost camera is a Vestpocket Kodak that belonged to George Mallory, the climber who died just 2,030 feet below Everest's summit in 1924.
If the camera is intact, there is a possibility its photog
Source: BBC
March 14, 2010
Archaeologists hope to find signs of an old Viking town during excavations in Norfolk.
The dig at the Anchor Hotel in Bridge Street, Thetford, is being carried out ahead of a possible redevelopment of the area.
The proximity of the Little Ouse river means there is every likelihood of well preserved remains under the car park, Breckland District Council said.
It is expected the work will take up to six weeks, depending on what is found.
Source: CNN
March 14, 2010
Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was discharged from a hospital in Seoul on Sunday after being treated for a stomach virus.
He is "in good spirits," said Dr. John Linton of Yonsei Severance Hospital.
Kissinger was hospitalized Saturday. A special medical team conducted a check-up and an MRI scan and took X-rays, but found nothing serious, hospital staffers said.
Source: Houston Chronicle
March 13, 2010
The State Board of Education tentatively approved new standards for social studies Friday with members divided along party lines — some blasting them as a fraud and conservative whitewash, others praising them as a tribute to the Founding Fathers that rightly portrays America as an exceptional country.
The standards, which will influence history and government textbooks arriving in public schools in fall 2011, were adopted by 10 Republicans against five Democrats after weeks of deba
Source: Discovery News
March 10, 2010
The 40,000-year-old site may hold the world's southernmost traces of early human life.
Australian archaeologists have uncovered what they believe to be the world's southernmost site of early human life, a 40,000-year-old tribal meeting ground, an Aboriginal leader said Wednesday.
The site appears to have been the last place of refuge for Aboriginal tribes from the cannon fire of Australia's first white settlers, said Michael Mansell of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre.
Source: Tehran Times
March 11, 2010
Construction by local residents has imperiled an ancient structure, believed to be the tomb of Cyrus I, the Achaemenid king and son of Teispes and grandfather of Cyrus II the Great, near the village of Tang-e Eram in Bushehr Province.
Experts have demarcated a 100-meter perimeter for the site, which was registered on the National Heritage List in 1997, the Persian service of the Mehr News Agency reported on Wednesday.
Any construction done on this perimeter is illegal
Source: AP
March 13, 2010
In the long and painful debate over whether he should have done more to halt the murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators in World War II, Pope Pius XII has an unusual defender.
Gary Krupp, who is Jewish, says he grew up hating the late pontiff. Now, at 62, the retired Long Island businessman is caught up in the controversy over the Vatican's effort to make Pius a saint. He says that as a Jew he's not interested in the sainthood issue — he just wants to defend t
Source: New York Times
March 12, 2010
Richard Stites, who opened up new territory for historians with a landmark work on the Russian women’s movement and in numerous articles and books on Russian and Soviet mass culture, died on Sunday in Helsinki, where he was doing research. He was 78 and lived in Washington.
The cause was complications from cancer, his son Andrei said.
Mr. Stites made a practice of seeking out unexplored historical byways. After publishing “The Women’s Liberation Movement in Russia: Fem
Source: BBC
March 12, 2010
A lawyer asked one of his clients if he could borrow £350,000 to retrieve a stolen painting, a trial has been told.
Roy Radcliffe, 60, told the High Court in Edinburgh that he was promised a 10% profit but he dismissed lawyer Marshall Ronald's proposal as ludicrous.
Mr Ronald, 53, is one of five men accused of demanding £4.25m for the safe return of a stolen Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece.
The Madonna of the Yarnwinder was taken from Drumlanrig Castle in 2
Source: BBC
March 12, 2010
Burglars have broken into the home of French Resistance heroine Andree Peel, it has emerged.
Mrs Peel, who died last week aged 105, helped save more than 100 Allied pilots and spent her final years in Long Ashton, near Bristol.
A police spokesman said Mrs Peel's house in the village was broken into some time after she died at her care home.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 12, 2010
A notorious Cypriot villain, known as "Al Capone", is suspected of ordering the theft of the corpse of the former president Tassos Papadopoulos.
Antonis Kitas is suspected of giving the order to snatch the body from his prison cell and had hoped to use it as a bargaining tool to secure his release.
Police are questioning Kitas, who is serving a double life sentence in Nicosia prison for multiple rape and murder, about the theft.
Mr Papadopoulos
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 13, 2010
Former Apollo astronauts have expressed dismay at President Barack Obama's decision to cancel the Nasa programme that was intended to return mankind to the Moon.
Eugene Cernan, the last man to set foot on the Moon, and Jim Lovell, commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission said they were disappointed by the decision to cancel Nasa's Constellation Moon programme.
Mr Lovell warned the decision would have "catastrophic consequences" for US space exploration.
Source: AP
March 13, 2010
Vandals sprayed anti-Semitic graffiti on Holocaust memorials at a former Nazi concentration camp in Poland, desecration that authorities discovered Saturday and are investigating.
Words including "Jude Raus" — German for "Jew Out" — and "Hitler Good!" in English, were found in red paint Saturday on a large monument at the former Plaszow camp near Krakow. A smaller memorial plaque was also painted with a swastika and "Jude Raus."
T
Source: AP
March 13, 2010
A federal appeals court has upheld the conviction of a reputed Ku Klux Klan member accused in the kidnapping of two black men who were abducted and killed in rural Mississippi in 1964.
In a two-to-one ruling, the panel of judges said the evidence in the case against James Ford Seale was sufficient for the jury conviction in the 2007 trial. Friday's decision came from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans.
The judge who dissented said too much time
Source: CNN
March 12, 2010
A New York judge Friday postponed a decision on a proposed $657 million settlement for people who became ill after working on the World Trade Center site after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The settlement, announced Thursday, would cover about 10,000 plaintiffs, said Marc Bern, one of the lawyers representing the workers.
The postponement appeared to take attorneys -- and Mayor Michael Bloomberg -- by surprise. Attorneys for both sides and the mayor earlier made statement
Source: CNN
March 13, 2010
Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was admitted to a hospital in Seoul, South Korea, on Saturday with a stomach virus, a doctor told CNN.
The state-run Yonhap news agency reported that Kissinger, 86, arrived in the South Korean capital Wednesday for a security forum and met with President Lee Myung-bak on Friday.
A special medical team did a check-up and MRI scan and took X-rays, but found nothing serious, staff sources at the hospital said.
Source: BBC
March 12, 2010
A tiny portrait of a Scottish naval officer who helped set the White House ablaze is estimated to fetch up to £15,000 at auction next month.
The miniature of Sir Pulteney Malcolm (1768-1838), from Dumfriesshire, measures just 10cm in height.
In August 1814 Sir Pulteney was third in command of a fleet which set fire to several public buildings in Washington, including the White House.
The miniature portrait has been in the Malcolm family since 1806.
Source: BBC
March 12, 2010
A new exhibition will showcase for the first time the art that Queen Victoria and Prince Albert collected and presented to each other.
The display at Buckingham Palace reveals the couple's enthusiasm for paintings, sculptures and jewellery.
The 400-piece royal collection is expected to "challenge attitudes towards the monarch," its curator said.
Victoria's most glamorous surviving dress, worn at a Buckingham Palace ball in 1851, is part of the e
Source: BBC
March 11, 2010
A court in Stockholm has ruled that a Swedish man can be extradited to Poland to face trial over the theft of a sign from the Auschwitz death camp.
Investigators accuse Anders Hogstrom, 34, of instigating the theft of the infamous Arbeit Macht Frei sign from the camp gates last December.
The sign was recovered shortly afterwards, cut into three pieces.
Mr Hogstrom, a former neo-Nazi leader, denies the claims and is likely to appeal, his lawyer said.
