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
January 27, 2010
Meet Sinosauropteryx, a very spiky little dinosaur.
A team of scientists from China and the UK has now revealed that the bristles of this 125 million-year-old dinosaur were in fact ginger-coloured feathers.
The researchers say that the diminutive carnivore had a "Mohican" of feathers running along its head and back. It also had a striped tail.
The team revealed details of the dinosaur's coloured feathers in an article published on Nature's websi
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 27, 2010
Failed presidential candidate John Edwards considered leaving his cancer-stricken wife and went to extraordinary lengths to cover-up a reckless affair that led to him fathering a child with his mistress, according to a new book.
The forthcoming publication of The Politician by Andrew Young, Mr Edwards's long serving assistant, had already forced the Democratic Party's vice-presidential candidate in 2004 to admit paternity of a two-year-old girl born to Rielle Hunter, who had worked
Source: Fox News
January 27, 2010
Personal information for 250,000 Clinton administration staff and White House visitors sent to the National Archives was compromised after a computer hard drive containing confidential material disappeared nearly a year ago, RollCall.com reported Wednesday.
The National Archives and Record Administration sent letters to former White House staff members and visitors during the Clinton era, informing them of the data breach and warning that highly sensitive information, like Social Se
Source: National Trust for Historic Preservation
January 26, 2010
A group of Pennsylvanians who have been fighting for four years to save a c. 1910 bridge won a victory this month, when the National Park Service placed the Chandler Mill Bridge on the National Register of Historic Places.
The 16-foot-wide span, located in Kennett Township, is slated to be replaced with a new, two-lane bridge. But the National Register listing means that Chester County's plans to demolish the Chandler Mill Bridge must go through a review process, in accordance with
Source: CNN
January 27, 2010
Ivan Martynushkin is a rare surviving witness to the horrors of the Holocaust, and only one of a handful still living who liberated the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.
But the 86-year-old remembers the events of January 27, 1945 with great clarity. As the former lieutenant in the Soviet army told me about the atrocities he witnessed, it was clear how precious his memories were.
"We saw emaciated, tortured, impoverished people," he recalled. "Those were the people
Source: National Trust for Historic Preservation
January 22, 2010
On Dec. 23, 2009, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed legislature reducing the state parks budget by $8.6 million. In the face of these cuts, last week the Arizona State Parks Board voted to close 13 of its 27 state parks by June.
"It's a seismic change to our department," says Renée Bahl, executive director of the Arizona State Parks Board. "Basically, we'll have zero dollars at the end of this year."
By the end of March, seven of Arizona's eight sta
Source: BBC News
January 27, 2010
Events are taking place at Auschwitz to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp, as the world marks Holocaust Memorial Day.
Auschwitz survivors and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are among those gathering in Poland, where the camp was built under German occupation.
In Berlin, Israeli President Shimon Peres urged Germany and other countries to pursue Holocaust perpetrators.
More than a million people were murdered
Source: AFP
January 26, 2010
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu honoured Holocaust victims at a war memorial in the Polish capital, on the eve of the 65th anniversary of the Auschwitz death camp's liberation.
The Israeli leader bowed his head in front of the imposing grey marble "Umschlagplatz" memorial in the centre of Warsaw, laying a wreath draped in a banner in the blue and white colours of the Israeli flag.
It was from the infamous "Umschlagplatz" site that in 1942 W
Source: BBC
January 26, 2010
For 30 years Stephen De Mowbray has maintained a self-imposed silence on a career that once took him to the heart of one of British intelligence's most controversial episodes.
In 1979 he quit his job with the Secret Service because he believed officials had failed to take seriously the claim that British intelligence had been further penetrated by its enemy - the Soviet Union's KGB.
A number of spies had been discovered in the 1960s but De Mowbray believed there were m
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 26, 2010
A 90-year-old Second World War veteran grabbed a woman carer around the neck after being asked to leave a nursing home room while his wife of 63 years was being changed, a court heard.
Dennis Woodward refused to step outside the room while three assistants tended to his 88-year-old Dutch born wife Hiltje, it was alleged.
After protesting he stood up and grabbed one of the carers, Sandra Allen, so tightly around the neck that she found it hard to breath, Bournemouth ma
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 26, 2010
Nelson Mandela's ex-wife Winnie is threatening legal action against the makers of a biographical film about her starring Jennifer Hudson.
The film is likely to detail the fraud, kidnapping and murder controversies that have surrounded the anti-apartheid leader's former wife.
Mrs Madikizela-Mandela, as she has been known since her divorce from Mr Mandela in 1996, is one of South Africa's most controversial and divisive figures.She is revered
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 27, 2010
Pope John Paul II regularly whipped himself with a trouser belt that he kept in his wardrobe and signed a secret document saying that would resign if he became incurably ill, a book published today reveals.
The book also described how, as a bishop in Poland, the future pontiff would often sleep on a bare floor as an act of self-denial and asceticism.Msgr Oder, who like the former Pope is Polish, also revealed in the new book that John Paul had decid
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 26, 2010
Tony Blair and his ministers went to war in Iraq despite repeated warnings from senior Government advisers that they had “no leg to stand on” legally.
During evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry into the war against Saddam, it emerged that Foreign Office lawyers were “unanimous” in their view that going to war without a United Nations mandate would be a “crime of aggression” likely to damage Britain’s standing in the world.
Sir Michael Wood, chief legal adviser at the Fore
Source: Fox News
January 26, 2010
A bipartisan group of six senators urged Attorney General Eric Holder on Tuesday to pull the plug on his decision to send suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks to federal court, marking the second day in a row that senators from both sides of the aisle have accused the Obama administration of treating terror suspects like common criminals.
The senators on Tuesday urged the Department of Justice to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other alleged Sept. 11 conspirators in military commissions
Source: AP
January 26, 2010
Pope John Paul II decided to forgive his would-be assassin while he was in the ambulance on his way to the hospital moments after being shot in St. Peter's Square, according to a new book by the Polish prelate spearheading his sainthood case.
The revelation is contained in one of the many previously unpublished speeches and memos drafted by John Paul that are contained in the book, including two documents in which he outlined the criteria for which he would resign if he became incap
Source: AP
January 26, 2010
Esther Bejarano says music helped keep her alive as a Jewish prisoner in Auschwitz and in the years that followed.
Now, 65 years after the liberation of the Nazi death camp, the 85-year-old has teamed up with a hip-hop band to spread her anti-racism message to German youth.
The daughter of a Jewish cantor from Saarbruecken in western Germany, Bejarano grew up in a musical home studying piano until the Nazis came to power and tore her family apart. Bejarano was deported
Source: AP
January 26, 2010
Madame Tussauds' in New York has unveiled a wax figure of Michelle Obama in a one-shouldered white gown inspired by the one she wore to the inaugural ball.
The first lady's likeness joined a wax tuxedo-clad President Barack Obama on Tuesday. His figure was unveiled at the museum last year.
In about two weeks, the Obama wax figures will exchange their formal wear for everyday wear.
Source: Guardian (UK)
January 26, 2010
Adolf Hitler was aided in his rise to power by western bankers who appreciated his tough line on communist agitators and worker power, Oliver Stone told reporters in Bangkok yesterday.
Following on from the comments he made to TV critics in Pasadena earlier this month about his upcoming 10-hour TV documentary on The Secret History of the United States, the film-maker said the German dictator had seduced the nation's military industrial complex with his ambitious promises.
Source: NBC
January 26, 2010
Former first lady Laura Bush has a new title to add to her resume. She's the newest member of the advisory board for the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
The board is working to raise money for the yet-to-be-built museum.
Congress has pledged to provide half of the museum's $500 million cost, if private fundraising covers the rest. Various other celebrities have been helping to raise private funds for the museum, including Oprah Winfrey and Qui
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 25, 2010
A pair of British amateur archaeologists believe they have found the hidden source of a Roman aqueduct 1,900 years after it was inaugurated by the Emperor Trajan.
The underground spring lies behind a concealed door beneath an abandoned 13th century church on the shores of Lake Bracciano, 35 miles north of Rome.
Exploration of the site has shown that water
percolating through volcanic bedrock was collected in underground grottoes and chambers and fed into a subterranea
