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: AP
January 29, 2010
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko once commanded such respect that hundreds of thousands of protesters poured into the streets of Kiev when he lost a fraudulent election.
But the former hero of the Orange Revolution could hardly have sunk any lower. In his bid for re-election this month, he drew just 5 percent of the vote. And now his posthumous honor for a nationalist leader - who was also, according to some, a Nazi collaborator - has led many to say Yushchenko has disgraced hi
Source: Pew Research Center
January 28, 2010
The public has consistently expressed strong interest in the health care debate, but relatively few Americans can correctly answer two key questions related to the Senate’s consideration of health care legislation.
In the latest installment of the Pew Research Center’s News IQ Quiz, just 32% know that the Senate passed its version of the legislation without a single Republican vote. And, in what proved to be the most difficult question on the quiz, only about a quarter (26%) knows t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 29, 2010
Tudor theatregoers enjoyed walnuts, peaches and figs and even the odd oyster, according to the most detailed ever study of a playhouse from the age.
A rich variety of seafood was on offer to peckish audience members, including crabs, cockles, mussels, periwinkles and whelks.
Sturgeon steaks were also popular with 16th century audiences enjoying plays by Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. The findings come from an archaeological surve
Source: BBC
January 29, 2010
The remains of 250 World War I soldiers, including several Scots, who were killed in the 1916 Battle of Fromelles have now been recovered.
They will be reburied with full military honours at a new cemetery close to the site in northern France.
Relatives of Private John Smith from Forfar said it was important to give the soldiers a proper burial.
Work to recover the British and Australian soldiers buried there by German forces, began in 2008.
Source: Global Times
January 29, 2010
Chinese scholars reported Wednesday that a large ancient tomb they unearthed earlier in Northwest Shaanxi Province belongs to a high-ranking general that was guarded by hundreds of nude pottery figurines.
The large tomb, located in Chang'an district of Xi'an, the capital city of ancient Western Han Dynasty (206BC-220AD), belongs to Zhang Anshi.
Zhang was credited with preserving stability along the western border in the Xinjiang region, China Business View reported Thur
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 29, 2010
Official guidelines have been issued to restaurants across China instructing them how to cook Mao Tse-tung’s favourite meal, an unctuous dish of pork.
According to stringent instructions from the government's food quality supervision and testing institute, true hong shao rou can only be made with the meat of rare pigs from Ningxiang county. Officials have designated the pig, which has been bred for nearly 1,000 years, as an "agricultural treasure".
The Xiaox
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 29, 2010
The house where Rudyard Kipling was born in India is to be turned into a museum, but the author will be written out of history, failing to get a mention anywhere in the building because of “political sensitivities”.
The foundation restoring the Mumbai house has shelved plans to use it to house a Kipling museum, fearing that commemorating the author of The White Man’s Burden and chronicler of the British Raj, will lead to a political furore.
The house, instead, is like
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 29, 2010
A defiant Tony Blair has mounted a vigorous defence of the invasion of Iraq, telling the Chilcot Inquiry he had no regrets over removing Saddam Hussein and would do the same again.
In his long-awaited appearance before the Iraq Inquiry, the former prime minister denied he had taken the country to war on the basis of a "lie" over Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
He suggested the world could now be faced with the threat of a nuclear
Source: Pew Research Center
January 28, 2010
The public has consistently expressed strong interest in the health care debate, but relatively few Americans can correctly answer two key questions related to the Senate's consideration of health care legislation.
In the latest installment of the Pew Research Center's News IQ Quiz, just 32% know that the Senate passed its version of the legislation without a single Republican vote. And, in what proved to be the most difficult question on the quiz, only about a quarter (26%) knows t
Source: Times Online (UK)
January 29, 2010
A poster collection looted from a Jewish family by the Nazis can stay on display in a Berlin museum and need not be returned to its original owners, a German court has ruled.
The ruling by the Berlin court of appeals stunned relatives of Hans Sachs, and came despite Germany's signature of the Washington Principles in 1998 agreeing to the restitution of art plundered by the Nazis.
Mr Sachs took 40 years to build one of the world's largest collections of rare posters onl
Source: Inside Higher Ed
January 29, 2010
In November, Gov. Haley Barbour proposed merging Mississippi's three historically black universities, infuriating supporters of the institutions and black leaders in the state. But many weren't that surprised -- and they talked about the proposal as part of a larger pattern of the state's white establishment either ignoring or actively undercutting institutions on which black students rely....
But on Wednesday, The Jackson Clarion-Ledger revealed that the governor wasn't the only on
Source: AP
January 29, 2010
It was bad enough that President Obama lost his filibuster-proof margin in the U.S. Senate to a Republican. Now it turns out he also lost it to a relative.
Genealogists said Friday the Democratic president and the newly elected Massachusetts senator, Scott Brown, are 10th cousins.
The New England Historic Genealogical Society said Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, and Brown's mother, Judith Ann Rugg, both descend from Richard Singletary of Haverhill, Mass.
Source: Fox News
January 28, 2010
A parent complaint has prompted the Culpeper County school system to pull a version of Anne Frank's diary off library shelves.
The county's director of instruction Jim Allen says the book pulled is "The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition."
Allen says the parent complained because the version contains sexual references. The school system will use an alternative version of the diary that does not contain such references.
Source: AP
January 29, 2010
Bruce Davis, a member of Charles Manson's murderous cult who participated in two killings, was recommended for parole on Thursday after nearly four decades in prison.
The decision by a two-member Board of Prison Terms panel came after the 26th parole hearing for Davis, Department of Corrections spokeswoman Terry Thornton said.
It was just the first step in a parole process that also requires approval by the governor and other parole board members. The process could take
Source: AP
January 29, 2010
Retired Air Force Lt. Colonel Lee A. Archer, a Tuskegee Airman considered to be the only black ace pilot who also broke racial barriers as an executive at a major U.S. company and founder of a venture capital firm, died Wednesday in New York City. He was 90.
His son, Roy Archer, said his father died at Cornell University Medical Center in Manhattan. A cause of death was not immediately determined.
Archer was acknowledged to have shot down four planes, and he and another
Source: CNN
January 29, 2010
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he fully believed his pre-war claim that Iraq was capable of launching chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes.
Blair said Friday that concern over Iraq's ambitions to develop weapons of mass destruction had been the main factor behind Britain's decision to back the war.
But he admitted Washington and London had different views, with the U.S. favoring regime change to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime.
Source: CNN
January 29, 2010
The White House is considering moving the site of the September 11 attack trial from Manhattan if the U.S. Justice Department sees fit, senior administration officials confirmed Friday.
The turnabout comes after New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other politicians expressed great concern over the costs and disruption of holding the September 11 trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four accomplices at a courthouse near ground zero in Lower Manhattan.
White House offici
Source: BBC News
January 29, 2010
Some of the ashes of Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi are to be scattered at sea off South Africa's coast on Saturday.
Gandhi's grand-daughter, Ela Gandhi, told the BBC that a family friend had kept the ashes for decades. They were handed over to the family last year.
After Gandhi was assassinated 62 years ago, his ashes were distributed among family, friends and followers.
Ashes are customarily scattered over a body of water shortly after crematio
Source: BBC News
January 29, 2010
In 1945, in the heat of war, a young John Pistone helped himself to a book. Now he is giving it back.
To be fair, Mr Pistone, a private in George Patton's army, never thought of his act as theft. He just needed proof he was there.
"I thought who the hell's going to believe I was in Berchtesgaden?" he said. "I'm going to need some proof."
As the Americans raced across southern Germany in the spring of 1945, Mr Pistone recalled, the soldie
Source: BBC News
January 29, 2010
You no longer have to eye his hairline to determine a man's age. There's a new way to figure out just how old he is: take a look at his beltline....
A survey from department store Debenhams (illustrated below) suggests that a man's waistband rises and falls throughout his life. Trousers bottom out at the age of 16 with below-the-hip styles and peak at 57, just seven inches below the armpit.
Fashion history shows this seesaw isn't such a new thing - waistlines have been
