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: WSJ
October 23, 2009
Nejma Beard sleeps on the second floor of a small brown-shingled cottage where she can hear the ocean and watch deer feeding in the wild brush. Half of the grass on the rambling property grows wild, as it does in her native Kenya; a long rickety staircase descends to the sea.
Sitting here it is easy to forget that this six-acre property, the easternmost oceanfront plot on Long Island, sits alongside multi-million dollar Hamptons estates with their manicured lawns, tennis courts and
Source: Guardian (UK)
October 23, 2009
The first email
In late 1971 Ray Tomlinson, an engineer working on a time-sharing system called Tenex, combined two programs named Cpynet and SNDMSG in order to send the first ever network email. It had been possible to send email from one user to another on a single computer for nearly 10 years but Tomlinson was the first to use the primitive Arpanet to send text from one computer to another.
While the same principles are used to send emails across the world tod
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 23, 2009
A number of valuable ecclesiastical treasures given to the former head of the Church of England have been found dumped in a river.
A haul of 32 artefacts, including gifts from Pope Paul VI and crucifixes once owned by the Queen, have been recovered from the River Wear in Durham.
They had been in the possession of Michael Ramsey, the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury, who spent part of his retirement in the northern city where he served as bishop.
One theory is
Source: LA Times
October 23, 2009
Reporting from London - The parishioners at St. Savior's come from various backgrounds: Afro-Caribbean countries, Eastern European nations, Britain itself. But it may be that all roads are leading them to Rome.
The East London church is Anglican in name but Roman Catholic in spirit and worship, with the "smells and bells" of traditional Roman Catholic liturgy. Father David Waller sticks to the Vatican's line on doctrines such as transubstantiation -- the transformation of
Source: Dominican Today
October 21, 2009
SANTO DOMINGO.- Thousands of artifacts from colonial era shipwrecks now lying on the ocean floor have been stolen from the Dominican coasts for the lack investments to recover them, said a marine archaeologist yesterday.
Pedro Borrel said the country’s submerged cultural patrimony is being sacked and thousands of pieces have been taken from ships which have sank in Dominican territorial waters.
The Archaeology advisor to the Cultural Patrimony Office said the underwater
Source: Bloomberg.com
October 22, 2009
The British Museum, which is facing demands from Iran to lend an ancient artifact, will send a member of staff to the country to discuss details of a loan.
In an Oct. 12 letter, the museum’s director Neil MacGregor wrote to Hamid Baqaei -- vice president in charge of Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization -- that the museum hoped to lend Iran the Cyrus Cylinder once details had been worked out, British Museum Head of Press Hannah Boulton said today.
Source: BBC
October 23, 2009
The wreck of a British naval submarine lost for more than 90 years has been found in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Estonia.
HMS E18 - with its complement of three officers and 28 ratings - went out on patrol in May 1916 and was never seen again.
The submarine was one of a handful sent to the Baltic during World War I by Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, to disrupt German shipments of iron ore from Sweden and support the Russian navy.
E1
Source: Politico
October 23, 2009
It was a place where nervous freshmen learned about the past half-century in the Senate, where historic legislative deals were cut, where personal friendships were made and where his dogs roamed freely.
Outside the office now, a handful of staffers come and go. The placard out front that once bore his name is gone; the only sign that he was there is the seal of the commonwealth of Massachusetts that still hangs on the tall wooden door.
Room 317 in the Russell Senate Of
Source: NYT
October 22, 2009
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. brought his 11-year-old granddaughter, Finnegan, with him for his three-day trip through Eastern Europe and gave her some first-hand lessons in modern diplomacy and Cold War history.
Finnegan and her mother, Kathleen Biden, the wife of the vice president’s son, Hunter, have spent much of the last couple days touring museums, memorials and historic sites in Warsaw, Bucharest and now Prague. They have also been at some of the vice president’s offici
Source: NYT
October 22, 2009
BUCHAREST, Romania — Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. used a visit to Romania on Thursday to hail Eastern Europe on all that has been accomplished in the 20 years since the Iron Curtain fell and to challenge the countries of the region to serve as models for other emerging democracies.
In a speech at the restored Central University Library, where a raging fire set during Romania’s 1989 revolution destroyed 500,000 books, Mr. Biden paid tribute to “freedom’s young defenders” who w
Source: WSJ
October 23, 2009
TOKYO -- U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates cautioned Japan this week against letting a fact-finding mission into decades-old secret nuclear-weapons agreements affect relations between the two countries, according to an official familiar with the matter.
In a meeting with Japanese Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa on Wednesday, Mr. Gates said Japan also should avoid letting the probe hurt the U.S.'s antinuclear-proliferation efforts, the official said. Mr. Kitazawa said the governm
Source: WSJ
October 23, 2009
The feathered creature called archaeopteryx, easily the world's most famous fossil remains, had been considered the first bird since Charles Darwin's day. When researchers put its celebrity bones under the microscope recently, though, they discovered that this icon of evolution might not have been a bird at all.
An examination of its bone cells revealed for the first time that the 150-million-year-old creature had the slow growth rate of a dinosaur, not a bird, an international rese
Source: Pew Research Center
October 22, 2009
The belief that the press should keep political leaders from doing things that should not be done often depends on who those political leaders are, or more specifically, which party controls the White House. Currently, in the midst of the Obama administration, two-thirds of Republicans (65%) support the so-called "watchdog role" for the press, compared with 55% of Democrats. But last year, while Bush was still in office, only 44% of Republicans felt it was good that press criticism kee
Source: Fox News
October 21, 2009
Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Wednesday that the Bush administration had developed a new strategy on the war in Afghanistan before leaving office -- a strategy that he said "bears a striking resemblance" to the one announced by President Obama in March.
In a speech to the Center for Security Policy, Cheney said the Bush administration handed Obama's transition team a policy review of the Afghan war conducted last fall to meet the new challenges posed by the Taliba
Source: The WashingtonPost
October 21, 2009
His first article in the Washington Blade was a front-page scoop, but Lou Chibbaro Jr. didn't claim credit. He wrote under a pseudonym, Lou Romano, because those were the days when being associated with a gay newspaper could ruin a reputation.
More than 30 years later, as Chibbaro chronicles momentous changes in the gay community, the press credentials hanging around his neck bear his name and a photo of his smiling face. The notes and files he has accumulated have become part of th
Source: The Hill/OpEdNews.com
October 20, 2009
An irritated House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) on Tuesday fired back at Republicans who have charged President Barack Obama with jeopardizing U.S. troops by deliberating over whether to send additional forces to Afghanistan.
Hoyer tore into Republicans — including House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) — for criticizing Obama’s approach to a war Hoyer said Republicans “abandoned.”
“My Republican colleagues, of course, abandoned their focus on Afghanistan
Source: NYT
October 21, 2009
He grew up playing in the narrow, crowded streets of Manhattan’s Chinatown. He has lived and worked there for all his 61 years. But as Wee Wong walks the neighborhood these days, he cannot understand half the Chinese conversations he hears.
Cantonese, a dialect from southern China that has dominated the Chinatowns of North America for decades, is being rapidly swept aside by Mandarin, the national language of China and the lingua franca of most of the latest Chinese immigrants.
Source: The Daily Tell
October 21, 2009
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has donated $10 million to the Smithsonian Institution, which will go towards the construction of the new African-American History and Culture Museum, set to open on the National Mall in Washington D.C. by late 2015...
... The founding director of the museum, Lonnie G. Bunch III, said "[w]e are so pleased that the Gates Foundation has joined donors from across the country who have built a groundswell of support for this museum. We recognize
Source: The Providence Journal
October 20, 2009
PROVIDENCE — Since he first trudged through the woods to found Providence, Roger Williams has been variously called an American statesman, a canny trader and a champion of religious freedom.
Julianne Jennings, a Native American, would like to add a few more labels to the list.
Indian fighter.
Slave trader.
“We have to stop the lying,” says Jennings, 48, an author and adjunct professor of anthropology at Rhode Island College.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 22, 2009
He is one of the world’s most feted critics of communism, but the Czech-born novelist Milan Kundera is now facing a battle to save his reputation after he was accused of denouncing a Western spy to the secret police during his student days.
Documents unearthed by Czech academics purport to show that in 1950 Mr Kundera, the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, told the Communist authorities where they could find Miroslav Dvoracek, a dissident who had fled Czechoslovakia but s
