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
May 12, 2009
More than 100 marks left by a lizard called Isochirotherium - also known as the hand-beast - 270 million years ago have been uncovered on an island.
Dr Neil Clark, who has previously found evidence of ancient reptiles and dinosaurs on Skye, made the finds along with amateur enthusiasts on Arran.
The komodo dragon-sized creature English name was inspired by its unusual hand-like prints.
Footprints were previously found on Arran, but the latest discoveries
Source: BBC
May 11, 2009
Movie stars Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio have helped pay towards the nursing home fees of the last Titanic survivor, the fund's chairman said.
The actors, along with director James Cameron, are thought to have donated $30,000 (£22,000) after being asked to help 97-year-old Millvina Dean.
Miss Dean from the New Forest was nine weeks old when the liner sank in 1912.
She is struggling with monthly bills of £3,000 and is in danger of losing her room at
Source: BBC
May 12, 2009
A museum in Wiltshire is aiming to raise £500,000 to pay for a high security gallery to exhibit rare Bronze Age artefacts discovered 200 years ago.
The Bush Barrow tomb, near Stonehenge, was excavated in 1808, and is considered to be one of Britain's most important Bronze Age burials.
The skeleton of a man was uncovered along with several items including a large "lozenge-shaped" piece of gold.
The items are locked in a bank vault - unseen by the
Source: BBC
May 12, 2009
Pope Benedict XVI is visiting sites in Jerusalem holy to Muslims, Jews and Christians on the second day of his visit to the Holy Land.
He visited the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, becoming the first pontiff to see the site, and then the Western Wall, one of Judaism's holiest places.
Later, he will pray where Christ is said to have eaten his last meal before crucifixion.
Source: BBC
May 12, 2009
A new John Lennon exhibition, due to open in New York later, will feature a paper bag containing the bloody clothes from the night he was shot dead.
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Annex display also features the piano from his apartment and handwritten lyrics.
His widow Yoko Ono, who has created the display, said the clothes were "hard to include" and she feared she "might be criticised as well" for including them.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
May 12, 2009
Survivors of a Nazi death camp were shot at and abused as they gathered to remember their liberation.
Masked neo-Nazi thugs screamed 'Heil Hitler!' and 'This way for the gas!' at ten elderly Italian men and women, who returned to the site of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.
The gang also fired air guns at a group of 15 French survivors, many dressed in the striped pyjama-style uniforms they wore as inmates. One suffered a head wound while another was inju
Source: BBC
May 12, 2009
For David Edwards, a veteran of the Berlin Airlift, there is one memory that sums up the contradictions faced by Allied forces struggling to supply a city they had recently tried to wipe off the map.
He and his unit had saved their sweet rations and were holding a Christmas party for local Berlin children. As he lifted a young boy onto a chair, he saw the boy only had one arm.
With a sickening flash he realised that only three years earlier the allies had bombed the v
Source: Washington Post
May 12, 2009
CHICAGO -- The man has been in the White House for only three months-and-change, but in the old neighborhood, his regular barber chair is on display like Churchill's top hat or Elvis's piano. The confirming autograph is right there in big looping letters, Barack Obama.
"He signed it. He sat in it. I'm pretty sure there's some of his DNA in it," barber Krs Golden was explaining when Betty Harris hurried into the Hyde Park Hair Salon and asked whether there were any Obama so
Source: Washington Post
May 12, 2009
BERLIN -- Two decades after they triumphantly tore down the infamous wall that divided their city, Berliners are having some regrets.
The Germans did such a thorough job of demolishing the hated barrier that visitors to the capital have a hard time finding any trace of it. For years, residents were eager to move beyond a painful chapter in Berlin's history and focused on building a new metropolis for a new century.
But as Germany prepares to celebrate the 20th anniversa
Source: AP
May 11, 2009
CLEVELAND – Deported by the United States, retired autoworker John Demjanjuk was carried in a wheelchair onto a jet that departed Monday evening for Germany, which wants to try him as an accessory to the murders of Jews and others at a Nazi death camp in World War II.
Demjanjuk, 89, arrived in an ambulance at Cleveland Burke Lakefront Airport after spending several hours with U.S. immigration officials at a downtown federal building. Airport commissioner Khalid Bahhur confirmed Demj
Source: 60 Minutes
May 10, 2009
Sometimes history is shaped by unknown people who operate in the shadowy world of espionage. And this story of war, deception and murder has a plot worthy of a John le Carre novel.
Thirty-five years ago, the armies of Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack against the state of Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year. Militarily, it ended in a stalemate, but in practical terms the war changed the map and the politics of the Middle East.
At the cent
Source: The Daily Beast
May 11, 2009
Under heavy scrutiny after a scandal over the reinstatement of four Holocaust denier priests, Pope Benedict struck a conciliatory tone in his first speech in Israel, emphasizing the importance of memorializing the Jewish people's suffering. "Tragically, the Jewish people have experienced the terrible circumstances of ideologies that deny the fundamental dignity of every human person," the Pope said after arriving in Israel. "I will have the opportunity to honor the memory of the s
Source: Reuters
May 7, 2009
BETHANY BEYOND THE JORDAN (Reuters) – When Pope Benedict stops to pray at a pool of still green water here on Sunday, his visit will bolster the case that Jesus was baptized at this spot on the east bank of the Jordan River.
The exact location is unclear and a rival spot across the narrow muddy river has long claimed to be the place where John the Baptist and Jesus met for the cleansing ritual.
But for over a decade now, Jordanian experts have unearthed ruins of ancient
Source: LiveScience
May 11, 2009
The oldest known human hair belonged to a 9,000-year-old mummy disinterred from an ancient Chilean cemetery.
Until now: a recent discovery pushes the record back some 200,000 years. (And the newly discovered strands received a rather less dignified burial.)
While excavating in Gladysvale Cave, near Johannesburg, South Africa, a team of researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand discovered an ancient brown-hyena latrine. Upon inspection, hyena coprolites - fossilized dung - ap
Source: The Hindu
May 10, 2009
Clear evidence of the existence of prehistoric humans in Thanjavur region (India) has been identified in the archaeological excavations undertaken by Tamil University. The excavations carried out in the past two weeks on the Tamil University campus revealed clinching evidence on the existence of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic cultures in stratified contexts.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 9, 2009
Based on secret KGB documents, it names Engelbert Broda, an Austrian physicist and secret communist sympathiser, as a mole who worked at Britain's Cavendish nuclear laboratory.
Codenamed "Eric" by his Russian handlers, he is believed to have passed thousands of pages of top secret documents about British and American atomic research to Moscow, and was regarded as one of the Soviet Union's most valuable moles. He demanded no payment for his services, and would meet his han
Source: Times (UK)
May 10, 2009
More than 25 of the CIA's war-on-terror prisoners were subjected to sleep deprivation for as long as 11 days at a time during the administration of former president George Bush, according to The Los Angeles Times.
At one stage during the war on terror, the Central Intelligence Agency was allowed to keep prisoners awake for as long as 11 days, the Times reported, citing memoranda made public by the Justice department last month.
The limit was later reduced to just over
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
May 11, 2009
The last surviving MP from the Second World War has died aged 93.
Ernest Millington, who was also a bomber pilot in the war, was in the House of Commons for Winston Churchill's VE Day speech on May 8, 1945, after winning a by-election the previous month.
He died at his home in France on Saturday. A member of the Left-wing Common Wealth Party, he was MP for Chelmsford between 1945 and 1950 and, when elected, became the youngest MP in Parliament.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
May 11, 2009
Pope Benedict used his first speech in Israel to remember the six million Jews killed by the Nazis and try to heal fresh wounds over his reinstatement of a bishop who denied the Holocaust.
The pontiff also called for he establishment of an independent Palestinian homeland - putting him at odds with the new Israeli government.
'Tragically, the Jewish people have experienced the terrible circumstances of ideologies that deny the fundamental dignity of every human person,'
Source: Deutsche Welle
May 9, 2009
Even as it worked to reduce the size of the military, Russia celebrated its victory in World War II with a parade in Red Square that featured 10,000 soldiers, and a display of the latest military hardware. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev honored the veterans in a speech and said that the nation is ready to repel aggression.
"We are sure that any aggression against our citizens will be given a worthy reply," Medvedev said. "The victory over Fascism is a great example
