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
November 4, 2009
Scientists have identified the most ancient fossil relative of the dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex.
The new addition to T. rex's clan is known from a 30cm-long skull uncovered during excavations in Gloucestershire in the 1900s.
The well-preserved fossil is held in London's Natural History Museum. A British-German team has now uncovered evidence linking it to what may be the most famous dinosaur family of all.
The dinosaur, named Proc
Source: BBC
November 2, 2009
A Chinese stamp pulled from circulation the day it was issued because it failed to show Taiwan as part of China has fetched a record price in Hong Kong.
The rare 1968 stamp was picked up at an auction by an unidentified buyer, for HK$3.68m (US$475,000, £290,000).
It features a worker holding a book filled with Mao Zedong's quotations and a red map of China in the background.
However, self-ruled Taiwan was left uncoloured. China sees the island as a renega
Source: BBC
November 4, 2009
The Egyptian mud-brick house of British archaeologist Howard Carter has been re-opened as a museum.
Carter was living in the house 87 years ago when he made his most famous discovery, the tomb of the pharaoh Tutankhamun.
He had been employed by collector Lord Carnarvon to search for the tomb of the then relatively unknown pharaoh.
Relatives of Carter and his patron were among the first visitors to the newly-renovated property.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 4, 2009
The sign hung at 12, rue Chabanais, in the days when the building housed the most prestigious of Paris's infamous bordellos, read 'Welcome to the Chabanais: The House of All Nations'.
The brothels closed down 60 years ago and nowadays the skinny eight-storey building on a tiny street near the Louvre houses an employment agency and a bunch of flats. But right across the road, at number 11, a gallery is keeping its memories alive.
Nicole Canet, who runs a gallery-boutiq
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 4, 2009
Leaked copies of two speeches Sarah Palin prepared for last year's US election night have revealed she planned to salute her husband Todd as the nation's "first ever Second Dude" in the event of victory.
In defeat, which she suffered with Senator John McCain at the hands of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, the Republican vice-presidential candidate wanted to tell Todd to "get ready for the Iron Dog snow machine race!".
A new book, Sarah from Alaska, det
Source: AP
November 4, 2009
The Vatican post office says it has issued its first Braille stamps to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Louis Braille, the French creator of the writing and reading system for the blind.
The stamps feature a portrait of Braille and his system's raised dots that spell out Braille, Vatican City State and the price.
Braille was born in France in 1809 and lost his sight at an early age. He then developed a reading and writing system based on patterns of rai
Source: Fox News
November 4, 2009
Thirty years after the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, some former hostages are trying to forget their 444 days in captivity, while others intend to memorialize the "dark day" with those who endured it firsthand.
L. Bruce Laingen, 87, was the U.S. charge d'affaires in Tehran — the highest ranking diplomat in the country — when the American embassy was overtaken by militants and radical Iranian students on Nov. 4, 1979, in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution. He
Source: The Christian Science Monitor
November 3, 2009
Radovan Karadzic broke a boycott on his Yugoslav war crimes trial today to ask for 10 more months for his defense against genocide charges in Bosnia."I would really be a criminal if I were to accept these conditions," the former Bosnian Serb president told Judge Kwon O-gon, who is considering appointing a stand-by council for him...
... Who was Radovan Karadzic, then?
Balkan historians and Sarajevo experts say Karadzic always had a thirst for fame. He was a
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 3, 2009
The infamous cocaine baron is said to have lit a bonfire using wads of US dollars at a mountain hideout while he was being hunted by authorities.
Sebastian Marroquin, who has changed his name from Juan Pablo Escobar, claimed his father burnt the notes when he realised his daughter Manuela was suffering from hypothermia.
They also used the fire, fuelled by $2 million in cash, to prepare food.
Escobar's son, who moved with his family to Argentina after his f
Source: Yahoo News
November 3, 2009
JOHANNESBURG – Dancers clad in animal skins opened a royal ceremony Tuesday, a nod to tradition for the forward-thinking kings, queens and chiefs who jetted in to Johannesburg from across Africa to launch an institute they hope will expand their roles on the continent
The two dozen leaders from Morocco to Swaziland describe their new Institute of African Royalty as part think-tank on democracy and development, part lobby group to polish their image. They say their model is anti-apar
Source: Yahoo News
November 3, 2009
BERLIN – Stroke by stroke, Gerhard Kriedner applied pink acrylic paint with a small brush on a 14-yard stretch of the Berlin Wall, recreating the mural he first painted months after the Berlin Wall came down on Nov. 9, 1989.
Kriedner and 90 artists from around the world have gathered again to repaint their original creations on the concrete slabs, bringing new life to images that have been eroded by the elements over the last two decades, on the longest remaining length of the wall
Source: Rasmussen Reports
November 3, 2009
Voters for the first time are blaming President Obama nearly as much as President Bush for the country’s continuing economic problems.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 49% still blame the economic situation on the recession that began under Bush. But 45% now say the nation’s economic problems are caused more by Obama’s policies.
Source: Irish Examiner
November 4, 2009
THE skeletal remains of more than a thousand people have been recovered from what experts believe was one of the country’s largest medieval cemeteries.
The ancient bones have produced evidence of several suspected murders and one case of leprosy – an extremely rare occurrence in medieval times.
Osteoarchaeologist Carmelita Troy, of Headland Archaeology in Cork, said yesterday she has studied the ancient remains of nearly 1,300 individuals – adult males and females along
Source: LA Times
November 1, 2009
Reporting from Berlin and Zirndorf, Germany, - Martina Metzler peers at the piles of paper strips spread across four desks in her office. Seeing two jagged edges that match, her eyes light up and she tapes them together.
"Another join, another small success," she says with a wry smile -- even though at least two-thirds of the sheet is still missing.
Metzler, 45, is a "puzzler," one of a team of eight government workers that has attempted for the las
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 3, 2009
An enormous new statue of a young Mao Tse-tung has shocked China by portraying him with a long mane of windswept hair.
The statue, which has emerged from scaffolding in the central city of Changsha, will eventually stand more than 100ft tall.
The new statue, however, is both seated and of a young Mao, aged 32, when he composed a poem about Changsha.
On the Chinese internet, opinion was divided. Some web users praised the "far-sightedness" of th
Source: The National Security Archive
November 3, 2009
The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library has just released new evidence on United States collusion in the late 1963 coup d’etat in South Vietnam that ended in the assassination of Saigon leader Ngo Dinh Diem. This is a crucial new piece of the puzzle, for the release includes actual tape recordings of White House meetings several months earlier when President Kennedy initially considered requests from South Vietnamese generals for U.S. backing in a coup attempt. The tapes reflect both Kennedy’s
Source: Yahoo News
November 1, 2009
BATTLE GROUND, Ind. (AP) - Tippecanoe County officials want to create a computer-assisted map of a historic battlefield that could yield clues about archaeological remnants buried there.
The Tippecanoe County Historical Association plans to use a device to measure anomalies in the earth's magnetic field to find underground objects. It also might use ground-penetrating radar to find items if funding can be found.
Archaeologist Colby Bartlett says it would be the first p
Source: Inside Higher Ed
November 3, 2009
The University of Mississippi has altered its fight song to discourage a chant of "the South will rise again," based on the old version. With many fans continuing that chant -- which many find offensive -- Chancellor Dan Jones said Monday that either the chant stops, or he'll bar the song from being played at football games, the Associated Press reported. "The University of Mississippi is a warm and welcoming place. So many have worked hard to make sure our image moves forward, an
Source: Examiner.com
November 2, 2009
The USS New York Battleship took a tour around New York City this morning and went under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, paused at the World Trade Center site, then up and back the Upper West Side before docking in Midtown Manhattan. The USS New York is an Landing Platform Deck (LPD 21) and is a "mobility triad uniquely adaptable to a variety of modern day combat situations," according to the USS New York.org website.
The USS New York completed a five-day voyage from Norfol
Source: Pew Research Center
November 2, 2009
Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, most of the publics of former Iron Curtain countries look back approvingly at the collapse of communism. Both east and west Germans express positive opinions about reunification. But the enthusiasm about these changes has waned.
The Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project surveyed nearly 15,000 people in the U.S. and 13 European nations: Britain, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Russi
