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: Telegraph (UK)
January 31, 2009
Belief in creationism is widespread in Britain, according to a new survey.
More than half of the public believe that the theory of evolution cannot explain the full complexity of life on Earth, and a "designer" must have lent a hand, the findings suggest.
And one in three believe that God created the world within the past 10,000 years.
Source: LAT
February 1, 2009
The economy was a shambles. Millions of Americans were out of work. Saying something drastic needed to be done, the newly elected president announced a massive economic stimulus package aimed at repairing the nation's sagging infrastructure and putting people back to work.
The first "emergency agency" established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt was the Civilian Conservation Corps, which eventually put 3 million men to work in the national park system.
By th
Source: Breitbart
February 2, 2009
The US firm which announced discovery of one of the greatest British warships ever lost at sea said Monday it was seeking "immediate" permission to begin recovering artifacts to prevent further damage from trawler fishing and erosion.
Florida-based Odyssey Marine Exploration said it discovered the final resting place of the HMS Victory last year in the English Channel and notified the British Ministry of Defense as soon as the team concluded it was the man-of-war which san
Source: Times (UK)
February 2, 2009
Early in Henry VIII’s reign the Venetian Ambassador described him as “the handsomest potentate I ever set eyes on, with an extremely fine calf to his leg . . . and a round face so very beautiful that it would become a pretty woman”.
Six wives, one Reformation and a lot of feasting later, Henry had become, by the time of his death in 1547, larger than life.
Just how large, and when, has long been a source of speculation, but research by the Royal Armouries in Leeds has
Source: Deutsche Welle
February 1, 2009
Doctors who studied the Iceman, a mummified Stone Age hunter found in Italy in 1991, announced this week that he was shot to death and may have been attacked not once, but twice in his final days.
Scientists previously thought that Oetzi, as the mummy was affectionately nicknamed, died of exposure. Now, they've concluded that he died shortly after being shot with a flint-tipped arrow.
"He only lived for a short time after the arrow impact," said Andreas Nerlic
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 1, 2009
The 13-inch high ornament with its distinctive pharaoh headdress was originally designed to hold the internal organs of the dead as part of the mummification process.
The canopic jar, complete with cover, was left outside in a garden in north Dorset until its owner decided to have it valued.
Experts discovered that the lid of the ornament was modelled on the face of the Egyptian god Imseti, wearing a black striped wig.
The jar was designed to hold the liver
Source: NYT
January 31, 2009
Ordered to bury 16 bodies in the dead of night in 1978, a wary young army officer did his best to remember the location, quietly counting the paces from the unmarked mass grave to the roadside.
He gathered from his fellow soldiers that they had just buried Afghanistan’s first president, Sardar Mohammad Daoud Khan, and his family. His assassination, during a Communist coup in those tumultuous days, precipitated three decades of war in Afghanistan, a succession of conflicts that are s
Source: NYT
January 31, 2009
At first glance it seems to be simply a numbers game: whether to try 5, 10 or more defendants for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people at the hands of the Khmer Rouge three decades ago.
But as a United Nations-backed tribunal prepares to hold its first trial hearing this month, the wrangle over numbers is reinforcing longstanding concerns about the tribunal’s fairness and independence.
The Cambodian government, critics say, is trying to limit the scope of the t
Source: Times (UK)
February 1, 2009
DIVERS believe they have found the remains of one of the greatest British sailing ships ever wrecked at sea.
HMS Victory, forerunner of Nelson’s flagship of the same name, was lost in a storm near the Channel Islands in 1744 with her crew of about 1,150, including an admiral.
The ship has long been sought by salvagers because of its cargo of 100 brass cannons, thought to be engraved with dolphins and the monogram of George II.
A Ministry of Defence spoke
Source: BBC
January 31, 2009
Iran has begun 10 days of celebrations to mark the 30th anniversary of the Islamic revolution that overthrew the US-backed former ruler, the Shah.
Speaking in the capital, Tehran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the revolution was "lively and alive".
Despite the almost ritualistic chants of "Death to America!" and "Death to Israel!", on Saturday there was no longer the fervour of those early days of the revolution, our correspondent sa
Source: IHT
January 29, 2009
A long-awaited reconciliation plan for Northern Ireland provoked a wave of anger across the province - and in the House of Commons in London - with a provision for payments of about $16,800 to families of all of the 3,700 people killed during 30 years of sectarian violence, including paramilitaries killed by their own bombs.
A news conference accompanying the release of the plan in Belfast, Northern Ireland's capital, became the stage for an eruption of the anger and grief still bur
Source: AP
January 31, 2009
To mark the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth on Feb. 12, the long-lost positive transparency of this photograph (above) goes on display beginning tomorrow at the George Eastman House museum of photography in Rochester.
It was sent there for repair in December 2006 by a Midwestern collector of Lincoln materials who didn't realize
Source: AP
February 1, 2009
KIEV, Ukraine – The Holocaust has a landscape engraved in the mind's eye: barbed-wire fences, gas chambers, furnaces.
Less known is the "Holocaust by Bullets," in which over 2 million Jews were gunned down in towns and villages across Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Their part in the Nazis' Final Solution has been under-researched, their bodies left unidentified in unmarked mass graves.
"Shoah," French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann's documentary, stands as
Source: Telegraph(UK)
February 1, 2009
Pope Benedict XVI has promoted a pastor who said Hurricane Katrina was divine punishment for sin in New Orleans.
The Vatican announced the Rev. Gerhard Maria Wagner, 54, had been chosen as auxiliary bishop in Linz, the capital of Upper Austria province.
Wagner caused a stir in 2005 when he was quoted as saying he was convinced that the death and destruction of Hurricane Katrina was "divine retribution" for tolerance of homosexuals and laid-back sexual attitu
Source: BBC
January 31, 2009
From the late 19th Century up to the 1970s, an estimated 150,000 native children in Canada were seized from their parents and sent far away to state-funded, church-run schools to learn how to think, speak and act like white people. The country is still coming to terms with the disastrous results.
In the coming months, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission will start touring the country to heal the scars of the residential schools system, a policy that resulted in thousands of death
Source: Foxnews
February 1, 2009
Florida deep-sea explorers who found $500 million in sunken treasure two years ago say they have discovered another prized shipwreck: A legendary British man-of-war that sank in the English Channel 264 years ago.
Odyssey Marine Exploration hasn't found any gold this time, but it's looking for an even bigger jackpot. The company's research indicates the HMS Victory was carrying 4 tons of gold coins that could be worth considerably more than the treasure that Odyssey raised from a sun
Source: Telegraph(UK)
January 31, 2009
Thieves stole a lump of fossilised dinosaur dung from the Natural History Museum in London, it has been revealed.
When staff at the Natural History Museum noticed that one of their exhibits had disappeared, it seemed reminiscent of the 1970s comedy film One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing.
The thieves, however, must have been disappointed when they realised that what they had smuggled out was not a valuable piece of dinosaur skeleton but a piece of 65-million-year-old fos
Source: New Orleans Times Picyune
January 31, 2009
In a city known for taking its time, a major new building seems to be leaping to life at the corner of Magazine Street and Higgins Drive.
It's the latest addition to the National World War II Museum: the Victory Theater and Stage Door Canteen, they call it, housing a 250-seat high-tech movie theater, along with a stage for live shows, a restaurant, a dance floor and a bar.
At 71,000 square feet, the complex nearly doubles the size of the museum and makes it the city's
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
January 31, 2009
Gordon Brown provoked ridicule last night after bizarrely comparing himself to the celebrated Italian artist Titian.
In a baffling remark that will do little to allay fears within his party about his grip on the economic crisis, the Prime Minister cited the Renaissance artist in defence of his performance.
'This is the first financial crisis of the global age,' he said at the World Economic Forum in Davos. 'And there is no clear map that has been set out from past expe
Source: International Herald Tribune
February 1, 2009
Ordered to bury 16 bodies in the dead of night in 1978, a wary young army officer did his best to remember the location, quietly counting the paces from the unmarked mass grave to the roadside.
He gathered from his fellow soldiers that they had just buried Afghanistan's first president, Sardar Mohammad Daoud Khan, and his family. His assassination, during a Communist coup in those tumultuous days, precipitated three decades of war in Afghanistan, a succession of conflicts that are s
