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: Yahoo News
September 24, 2009
LONDON – It's an unprecedented find that could revolutionize ideas about medieval England's Germanic rulers: An amateur treasure-hunter searching a farmer's field with a metal detector unearthed a huge collection of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver artifacts.
The discovery sent a thrill through Britain's archaeological community, which said Thursday that it offers new insight into the world of the Anglo-Saxons, who ruled England from the fifth century until the 1066 Norman invasion and w
Source: Politico, quoting a press release
September 24, 2009
A new C-SPAN poll of awareness and knowledge of the U.S. Supreme Court shows that nearly nine in ten American voters (88 percent) say the Court has an impact on their everyday lives -- but only half (49 percent) of respondents could name a specific case heard by the Court. The survey of 801 voters conducted for C-SPAN on Sept. 17 by Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates, LLC, also indicates the public supports major changes to the Court, most notably revisiting the concept of constitutionally-guar
Source: BBC
September 23, 2009
The UK's largest haul of Anglo-Saxon gold artefacts has been found in Staffordshire.
The items, which date from the 6th to 8th centuries, were discovered beneath a field on a farm in July.
The haul is much larger than the Sutton Hoo discovery in 1939 when 1.5kg of Anglo-Saxon gold was found near Woodbridge, Suffolk.
The Staffordshire coroner will decide later whether the hoard is to be classified as treasure. Related Links
Source: Fox News
September 24, 2009
Many would like to forget him but Germany will soon be seeing much more of Hitler - with a new AIDS awareness campaign depicting the Nazi leader having sex.
The confronting advertisement shows blurred clips of a couple having sex before the end reveals the man as Hitler.
The 'AIDS is a mass murderer' campaign will be shown on German TV and in movie theaters ahead of World Aids Day on December 1.
The agency that created the advertisement said there was no be
Source: Nicholas Thompson, in Wired
September 21, 2009
Valery Yarynich glances nervously over his shoulder. Clad in a brown leather jacket, the 72-year-old former Soviet colonel is hunkered in the back of the dimly lit Iron Gate restaurant in Washington, DC. It's March 2009—the Berlin Wall came down two decades ago—but the lean and fit Yarynich is as jumpy as an informant dodging the KGB. He begins to whisper, quietly but firmly.
"The Perimeter system is very, very nice," he says. "We remove unique responsibility from hig
Source: CNSNews.com
September 23, 2009
As a candidate for president, Barack Obama decried the financial toll that the Iraq war was taking on the economy, but Obama’s proposed spending on welfare through 2010 will eclipse Bush’s war spending by more than $260 billion.
“Because of the Bush-McCain policies, our debt has ballooned,” then-Sen. Barack Obama told a Charleston, W.V., crowd in March 2008. “This is creating problems in our fragile economy. And that kind of debt also places an unfair burden on our children and gran
Source: BBC
September 24, 2009
For 96 long minutes, Colonel Gaddafi spoke to UN delegates about Somali pirates, the death of JFK, jet lag and his conspiracy theories about swine flu. Call that a long speech? It's but a tiddler.
After an hour and a half of Mr Gaddafi speaking in person, it is not known how many of those listening logged on for more.
Four hours and 29 minutes is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest speech in front of the General Assembly, given in September 1960 by Fi
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 23, 2009
Authorities in St Petersburg have approved plans for the city's first skyscraper, a needle-shaped structure that will dwarf its 18th century low-rise skyline and imperil its UNESCO world heritage status.
Ignoring a public outcry and warnings from the United Nations cultural body, the authorities gave the green light to the so-called Okhta Centre on Tuesday.
At 1,322 feet, it will be taller than the Eiffel Tower in Paris and be visible from St Petersburg's historic cit
Source: BBC
September 24, 2009
A World War I train accident in which 10 soldiers from New Zealand were killed is to be remembered in a service in a Devon village.
The men died on 24 September 1917 when they mistakenly got off their train at Bere Ferrers thinking they had arrived at their destination of Exeter.
In fact the train had only stopped for signals and the men were hit by an express train on the other track. The service is the result of a request by the New Z
Source: BBC
September 23, 2009
China says it is going to lend some of its rare cultural artefacts to Taiwan for the first time since the civil war.
It will send about 40 pieces to Taipei's main museum for a joint exhibition on a Qing dynasty emperor, according to the Beijing News.
The whereabouts of China's artefacts have long been a contentious issue.
When the defeated Nationalists retreated to Taiwan at the end the civil war, they took many treasures with them, and Beijing wants them
Source: BBC
September 24, 2009
Ertugrul Osman - the would-be sultan known in Turkey as the "last Ottoman" - has died in Istanbul at the age of 97.
Osman would have been sultan of the Ottoman Empire had Turkey's modern republic not been created in the 1920s.
As the last surviving grandson of Sultan Abdul-Hamid II, he would have been known as his Imperial Highness Prince Shehzade Ertugrul Osman Effendi.
Born in Istanbul in 1912, Osman spent most of his years living modestly in
Source: AP
September 23, 2009
A Swedish TV program to be aired Wednesday claims that top Vatican officials knew that an ultraconservative British bishop was a Holocaust-denier when his excommunication was lifted in January.
The program, which was obtained by The Associated Press prior to broadcast, could add new fuel to the controversy over Bishop Richard Williamson.
Jews and Catholics worldwide were outraged after Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunication of Williamson, along with three other u
Source: Media Matters (liberal media watchdog)
September 23, 2009
In a chapter in his new book purporting to explain to"idiots" what"our Founding Fathers really intended," Glenn Beck praises an obsolete provision of the U.S. Constitution that prohibited Congress from outlawing the slave trade before 1808 and capped taxes on the slave trade at $10 per slave. In his explanation of the provision, Beck does not mention slavery, saying instead that the provision means that the Founders apparently"felt like there was a value to being able to live here" and lamenting
Source: Times Digest
September 23, 2009
The Serbian war crimes court acquitted two former policemen of collaborating in the killing of three Albanian-American brothers in 1999. The officers were accused of torture while handing over the brothers — Illy, Mehmet and Agron Bytyqi — to a Serbian police unit that shot and killed them.
Source: Taegan Goddard newsletter
September 23, 2009
After predictions by Charlie Cook and others that President Obama's falling approval rate could mean a tough midterm election for Democrats, Thomas Holbrook looked at whether approval rates were good indicators of elections 14 months out.
His conclusion: "Taken together, these data show that presidential approval 14 months prior to midterm elections has some predictive capacity, though there is enough error in the predictions that you shouldn't bet the farm. Approval among ind
Source: George Stephanopoulos blog
September 22, 2009
It’s not uncommon in Washington for a book or an article to become the must-read of the moment for every player in town. (You may recall Atul Gawande's New Yorker article last Spring looking at the health care system in McAllen, Texas that was required reading for everyone at the White House and up on Capitol Hill as the health care debate was kicking into high gear. )
With President Obama expressing skepticism about a further troop buildup in Afghanistan and his commander on the g
Source: Taegan Goddard newsletter
September 23, 2009
If you're wondering why Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld comes out unscathed in Matt Latimer's just released tell-all, Speech-less, his old Bush White House boss explains in the Wall Street Journal that it's because he's currently working for Rumsfeld as a ghost writer on his memoirs.
Writes William McGurn: "Not that Mr. Rumsfeld need fear. If this book is any guide, an employer will read how stupid Matt really thought he was only after he's no longer being paid."
Source: History Today
September 21, 2009
A survey published last week by the German magazine Stern revealed that one in seven Germans wanted the Berlin Wall back. Of the country’s 82 million inhabitants, 15% were in favour of the wall because they believed that they were better off during the 28 years that Germany was divided by the Berlin Wall.
The survey was carried out by the Forsa institute, two months ahead of the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9th, 1989. Between September 9th and 10t
Source: National Geographic News
September 18, 2009
In an "unexpected" discovery, a rattle-wielding elite male has been found buried among powerful priestesses of the pre-Inca Moche society in Peru, archaeologists announced Monday.
Surrounded by early "smoke machines" as well as human and llama bones, the body was among several buried inside a unique double-chambered tomb that dates back to A.D. 850, said archaeologist Luis Jaime Castillo Butters, of the Catholic University of Peru in Lima.
The tomb
Source: Reuters
September 22, 2009
Archaeologists in the ancient city of Troy in Turkey have found the remains of a man and a woman believed to have died in 1,200 B.C., the time of the legendary war chronicled by Homer, a leading German professor said on Tuesday.
Ernst Pernicka, a University of Tubingen professor of archaeometry who is leading excavations on the site in northwestern Turkey, said the bodies were found near a defense line within the city built in the late Bronze age.
The discovery could ad
