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: AP
August 13, 2009
The partial remains of an ancient toothed whale species that roamed the ocean 5 million years ago have been discovered on a California beach. Crews removing a 1,000-pound slab of sandstone off the Santa Cruz County beach Wednesday discovered the remains and called in paleontologists.
Frank Perry, a paleontologist with the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History, says the remains are an important piece of a puzzle that will help understand what life was like when meat-eating toothed wha
Source: Guardian (UK)
August 14, 2009
Yale University Press has decided against reprinting the Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in a book examining the controversy, after being advised by Islam and counterterrorism experts that doing so could incite violence.
As well as leaving out the 12 cartoons which provoked riots across the Islamic world in 2006, Yale also bowed to recommendations not to include any other illustrations of Muhammad, including a 19th century sketch by Gustave Doré of Muhammad in Hell from Dant
Source: Times (UK)
August 12, 2009
Families of the Americans killed in the Lockerbie bombing expressed outrage yesterday that the Scottish government could be on the verge of sending the convicted Libyan bomber home. However, relatives of the British dead, many of whom have long doubted the guilt of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, backed his release from jail in Scotland.
Jim Swire, whose 24-year-old daughter Flora was on Pan Am Flight 103, said: “I would be delighted if he went home to his family, as it is inhumane to
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 14, 2009
Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, a senior CIA officer who is currently in jail for corruption has told The New York Times how he oversaw the construction of three identical prisons from his base in Frankfurt where he ran the spy agency's main European supply base.
Mr Foggo rose to become number three in the CIA, but pleaded guilty to fraud last year and now is serving time in a Kentucky jail.
The detention centres he built for "high value" terrorist detainees wer
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 14, 2009
Lawyers for the 57-year-old, who is dying of prostate cancer, said he had taken the unexpected decision after his condition took a "significant turn for the worse".
He is expected to be freed next week on compassionate grounds, but relatives of the victims had expected his appeal to continue, even after his death.
They reacted to the latest news with dismay and immediately renewed their calls for a full public inquiry into the atrocity in which 270 people di
Source: NYT
August 13, 2009
The German police confirmed Thursday that a briefcase filled with documents discovered in Cairo belonged to the Nazi fugitive and concentration camp doctor Aribert Ferdinand Heim. The police could not confirm that he had died in Egypt in 1992 as witnesses there and in Germany said.
Experts working for the police in the German state of Baden-Württemberg found evidence showing that the bag and the papers inside it, including personal letters, financial documents and medical records, m
Source: Indian Country Today
August 12, 2009
Today Native Americans are awaiting the Parole decision for Leonard Peltier. Leonard’ was falsely convicted of killing two FBI Agents in 1975 at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Leonard Peltier (born September 12, 1944) was an American activist and member of the American Indian Movement (AIM) who was convicted and sentenced in 1977 to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment for the murder of two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents who were killed during a 1975 shootout on the Pine Ridge
Source: Palm Beach Post
August 13, 2009
A Fort Pierce museum dedicated to Navy SEAL history will receive the bullet-sprayed lifeboat where a sea captain captured by Somali pirates was held.
The National Navy UDT-SEAL Museum has thousands of items, including a Vietnam-era Huey helicopter. But the 20-foot lifeboat still battered and full of broken glass is a rare part of recent history. It is scheduled to arrive Friday.
U.S. Navy snipers shot and killed three of Capt. Richard Phillips's captors in April when hi
Source: Chron
August 12, 2009
Atlantic hurricanes have developed more frequently during the last decade than at any point in at least 1,000 years, a new analysis of historical storm activity suggests.
The new study, published today in Nature, attempts to reconstruct Atlantic hurricane activity back to the year 500. In doing so the authors found one era, a medieval period around the year 1000, when storm activity matched or exceeded recent hurricane seasons that included storms such as Katrina and Rita...
Source: Pew Research Center
August 12, 2009
When he took over the White House in January 2009, President Barack Obama quickly adopted much of the "faith-based initiative" put into place by his predecessor, President George W. Bush. The initiative was designed to expand the role of faith-based and community organizations in the delivery of social services.
But a new study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life finds that Obama's faith-based in
Source: PR-Inside.com
August 13, 2009
Since his death in 1945, the grave of Blind Willie Johnson, one of the greatest bottleneck-slide guitarists of all time, has been unmarked. Now, thanks to 18 months of research and a dozen visits to the Blanchette Cemetery in Beaumont, Texas by Austinite Jack Ortman, the final resting place of this influential Texas musician will get the recognition it deserves.
Johnson’s music has always been revered by his fellow musicians. His songs have been covered by Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton
Source: Blackanthem Military News
August 10, 2009
The ancient Assyrian City of Ashur faces
imminent threats. Recent construction of a dam on the Tigris River is causing large sections of the
City to be swept away, while other precious artifacts are being looted from one of three World
Heritage sites in Iraq. The United States Embassy, with the assistance of the American military,
and officials from Iraq's Board of Antiquities organized the first international assessment of the
site since 2003. The Embassy's most senior diplomat in the regi
Source: BBC
August 12, 2009
An art collector claims he has uncovered a rare portrait of the Bronte sisters painted by one of Britain's most famous Victorian artists.
James Gorin von Grozny, from Devon, paid £150 for the work which he believes was painted by Sir Edwin Landseer in 1838.
But art experts say Landseer would have had no call to paint the sisters who were not famous at that date.
The only known portrait of the sisters was painted by their brother, Branwell.
Source: BBC
August 12, 2009
Eight medals awarded to the last British survivor of World War I have gone on show in Cornwall.
Harry Patch, who died in Somerset last month at the age of 111, fought with the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry.
Mr Patch said upon his death he wanted his medals to go on permanent display at the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry Regimental Museum in Bodmin.
The medals, which included the British War Medal, the Allied Victory Medal and two French Legion d'Ho
Source: CNSNews.com
August 12, 2009
Militia groups with gripes against the government are regrouping across the country and could grow rapidly, according to an organization that tracks such trends.
The stress of a poor economy and a liberal administration led by a black president are among the causes for the recent rise, the report from the Southern Poverty Law Center says. Conspiracy theories about a secret Mexican plan to reclaim the Southwest are also growing amid the public debate about illegal immigration.
Source: theguardian.co.uk
August 12, 2009
The disappearance of the Russian-crewed Arctic Sea, which last made radio contact in the Dover straits, has raised fears of the first significant case of piracy in Europe in living memory. According to some experts, piracy originated more than 2,000 years ago when sea robbers threatened the trading routes of ancient Greece, but in recent times it has been largely been confined to developing countries. The International Chamber of Commerce's (ICC) live piracy map illustrates how the Gulf of Aden
Source: SFGate
August 13, 2009
A dirt-encrusted button, some shards of terra cotta and the buried remnants of a mysterious rock circle were fresh treasures unearthed in the Presidio last week by archaeologists probing the ground at El Polin Springs, where soldiers of the Spanish-American War once slaked their thirst.
The scientists' high-tech tools and their sweaty digging - plus siftings from a jury-rigged wire screen - had uncovered new evidence that the meadow could once have held the homes - or perhaps the ra
Source: NYT
August 13, 2009
In March 2003, two C.I.A. officials surprised Kyle D. Foggo, then the chief of the agency’s main European supply base, with an unusual request. They wanted his help building secret prisons to hold some of the world’s most threatening terrorists.
Foggo went on to oversee construction of three detention centers, each built to house about a half-dozen detainees, according to former intelligence officials and others briefed on the matter. One jail was on a busy street in Bucharest, Roma
Source: NYT
August 13, 2009
This is a city conspicuously unfriendly to pedestrians. Six-lane ring highways cut through old neighborhoods, making places that are rather close as the crow flies very far apart if you walk, since you’ve often got to navigate long cloverleaf intersections and widely spaced overpasses simply to cross the street.
And that’s one of the things, in a city far more oriented toward the car than shoe leather, that makes the recent opening of a big pedestrian-only network of streets in the
Source: NYT
August 12, 2009
France has a long tradition of drawing on colonial troops to help fight in its wars. As long ago as end of the 18th century, Napoleon used troops from the French colonies in his Egypt campaign.
More recently, soldiers from countries like Senegal, Morocco, Mali, Algeria and Cambodia have fought under the Tricolore, either during the two world wars or in subsequent campaigns in places like Indochina and Algeria.
But in the wake of France’s painful postwar decolonization,
