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: St. Louis Today
October 5, 2009
An Illinois man pleaded guilty Monday to a federal felony and admitted illegally digging up and selling prehistoric artifacts for years.
Leslie Jones, of Creal Springs, pleaded guilty to the unauthorized excavation, removal or damage of archaeological resources in federal court in Benton. As part of the plea, Jones admitted digging up and selling pottery fragments and other artifacts from the Cypress Creek National Wildlife Refuge from 2004-2007. The refuge is located in southern Il
Source: WSJ
October 8, 2009
A big question hangs over American politics: Could next year be 1994 all over again?
That was the year a bitter debate over health care led to a disastrous congressional election for Democrats, in which they lost 54 House and 10 Senate seats and ceded control of both chambers to the Republicans.
Things have started to look similar under Democratic President Barack Obama. His poll ratings slipped through the summer months, his party was damaged by a bruising health-care
Source: Inside Higher Ed
October 7, 2009
An anti-evolution group is getting ready to unveil a new tactic -- with college students as the target.
Living Waters, an evangelical group that argues for the literal truth of the Bible, is planning to distribute 175,000 copies of The Origin of Species on university campuses next month, just in time for the 150th anniversary of its publication. But these won't be ordinary copies. They will feature a "special introduction" to Darwin's classic.
Materials being
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
October 7, 2009
An Israeli mayor has caused uproar with plans for his town to become the first to twin with a German town which housed a Nazi death camp.
Rosh Ha-Ayin, a middle-class dormitory town about 15 miles from Tel Aviv with a population of 40,000, has twinned with the infamous Bavarian town of Dachau, home of the first Nazi concentration camp about 12 miles from Munich.
More than 200,000 people from 30 countries were imprisoned at Dachau, a third of them Jews. Nearly 60,000 w
Source: BBC
October 7, 2009
Taiwan's main museum has refused to exhibit two Chinese sculptures owned by late French designer Yves St Laurent.
Beijing has demanded the return of the sculptures, and the director of the Taipei National Palace Museum said she could not display looted objects.
China says the two Qing dynasty bronzes were seized illegally in 1860 by invading French and British forces.
The decision comes on the week Taiwan and China hold their first joint exhibition of rel
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 7, 2009
The ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru and Japan's vanishing merchant houses in Kyoto are among the most endangered world heritage sites, according to a New York-based preservation group.
The World Monuments Fund on has released its biannual watch list of global architectural treasures at risk from urban development, tourism, neglect and bad planning.
The 2010 list comprises 93 sites in 47 countries, including ancient structures but also 15 that were built in the 20th cent
Source: CNN
October 7, 2009
Al Capone's legend of bootlegging, gangland slayings and tax evasion lives on more than 60 years after the Chicago gangster's death. Now comes a footnote that is a sign of the times: foreclosure.
A Wisconsin lodge that may have been one of Capone's old hideouts goes on the auction block this week with a starting bid of $2.6 million.
The two-story stone lodge, tucked away on 407 acres in Couderay, Wisconsin, was owned by the Capone family in the 1920s. It will be auctio
Source: CBCNews.ca
October 6, 2009
The Nobel Prize is one of the world's most coveted awards, carrying international prestige, a hefty cash award and, at times in its history, considerable controversy.
Named after Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, the prizes have been awarded nearly every year since 1901. (There were breaks during each of the two world wars.)
The Nobel Foundation administers the honours, which were first established in Nobel's will. Prizes are handed out in physics, chemist
Source: The National Security Archive
October 6, 2009
Washington, DC, October 6, 2009 - On the 33rd anniversary of the bombing of Cubana flight 455, the National Security Archive today posted recently obtained CIA records on Luis Posada Carriles, his ties to "the Company" and role as an informant on other violent exile groups. The documents provide extensive details on a collaboration between Cuban-American militant Jorge Mas Canosa, who rose to become the most powerful leader of the hardline exile community in Miami, and Posada--codename
Source: Pew Research Center Publications
October 2, 2009
The press is coming under considerable fire these days. News organizations are facing a crippling financial crisis and public views of the accuracy of news stories have fallen to their lowest level in more than two decades, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.
Nonetheless, most Americans continue to support the so-called "watchdog role" for the press. In fact, the percentage of Americans saying that press criticism of political leaders keeps them "from do
Source: Rasmussen Reports
October 5, 2009
Fifty-five percent (55%) of likely voters say the nation’s current economic problems are due to the recession which began under President George W. Bush, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
Thirty-seven percent (37%) say the current economic problems are caused by the policies President Obama has put in place since taking office. These findings have remained relatively stable since May.
Eighty-seven percent (87%) of Democratic voters bla
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 5, 2009
An historian has claimed to have discovered the real identity of Jack the Ripper, and believes the notorious Whitechapel murderer was also responsible for killing two more women.
Mei Trow used modern police forensic techniques, including psychological and geographical profiling, to identify Robert Mann, a morgue attendant, as the killer.
His theory, the result of two years intensive research, is explored in a Discovery Channel documentary, Jack the Ripper: Killer Reve
Source: Time
October 8, 2009
... In May, the Pew Hispanic Center released a study of first-, second- and third-generation Hispanics in the U.S. — a look at how the Latin-American population has grown and assimilated over the past three decades. As recently as 1980, just 9% of U.S. kids under 18 were Hispanic, compared with 22% today. Only about a tenth of that population are first-generation Latin Americans — meaning they were born outside the U.S. More than half (52%) are second generation — born in the U.S. to at least on
Source: The Daily Beast
October 5, 2009
The tyrannosaurid family just keeps growing. Following the surprise discovery last month of a human-sized Tyrannosaurus ancestor, paleontologists have unearthed yet another T. rex cousin from the Gobi desert. Previously unknown to scientists, Alioramus altai had eight horns, a long snout, and a sleek physique: "Instead of [its] big bad boy... relatives, this one is more like a ballerina," said American Museum of Natural History’s Stephen Brusatte. Alioramus had two horns above each eye
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education
October 7, 2009
For one of today's winners of the Nobel Prize in Medicine, Elizabeth H. Blackburn of the University of California at San Francisco, the news isn't her first exposure to widespread public attention.
Back in 2004, during the Bush administration, Ms. Blackburn was one of two scientists dismissed from the President's Council on Bioethics, after they dissented from the panel by arguing that the federal government should not bar scientists from creating cloned embryos as a source of stem
Source: boston.com
October 5, 2009
BOSTON—Massachusetts, which boasts a history of abolitionism, is considering legislation to determine how much the state and local institutions profited from the African slave trade.
A bill before the legislature would require some of Massachusetts oldest banking, financial and insurance companies to look deep into their history -- and the histories of subsidiaries and predecessor companies -- to uncover links to the slave trade, as a condition of doing business with the state.
Source: BBC
October 6, 2009
Robert Thomas handed over the two books, both 400 years old, to the German ambassador during a ceremony at the US national archives in Washington.
The texts were taken from a salt mine in western Germany, where they were being kept safe during allied bombing.
The 83-year-old former soldier said they were in a similar condition to when he had discovered them.
Source: Yahoo News
October 6, 2009
BALTIMORE – For Edgar Allan Poe, 2009 has been a better year than 1849. After dozens of events in several cities to mark the 200th anniversary of his birth, he's about to get the grand funeral that a writer of his stature should have received when he died.
One hundred sixty years ago, the beleaguered, impoverished Poe was found, delirious and in distress outside a Baltimore tavern. He was never coherent enough to explain what had befallen him since leaving Richmond, Va., a week earl
Source: Toronto Star
October 5, 2009
JERUSALEM – Unknown vandals damaged an ancient ruin in the Israeli desert recognized by the United Nations as a World Heritage site, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority said Monday.
One official called the damage to Avdat, an ancient Nabatean city dating back to the third century B.C., "irreversible."
The vandals sprayed black and yellow graffiti, destroyed signs, tipped over ancient stone pillars and destroyed a 1,700-year-old marble altar, spokesman Omri
Source: AFP
October 6, 2009
TYRE, Lebanon — Japanese archaeologists discovered a cave containing frescoed Roman tombs in southern Lebanon's ancient coastal city of Tyre on Monday, an official overseeing the excavation said.
The three-metre by 12-metre (10-foot by 39-foot) cave contains six tombs from a Roman family, archaeologist Nader Siqlawi of the Directorate General of Antiquities told AFP.
"The walls at the entrance are decorated with frescoes of plants, animals and colourful birds, and
