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: AFP
September 20, 2007
A prosecutor in Bolzano, northern Italy seized wine bottle labels on Wednesday bearing a portrait of Hitler and other Nazis from a winery near the Austrian border, the company said.
The 20 labels from the "Der Fuehrer" line show Hitler raising the Nazi salute and his generals, including Hermann Goering, the Reich's economic minister, Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Gestapo, and Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy.
The black and white labels are imprinted with the m
Source: Fox News
September 19, 2007
Two reptile-like animals living 290 million years ago are the oldest creatures to have their footprints positively identified after a fortuitous discovery allowed scientists to match fossils to preserved trackways.
Fossils of Diadectes absitus and Orobates pabsti were recently found in the Tambach Formation in central Germany.
Nearby and in the same sediment layer, scientists found well-preserved footprints made by creatures that plodded through the region's soft sedime
Source: BBC
September 19, 2007
Volunteers are helping archaeologists search for signs of a medieval castle thought to be under a village car park.
Researchers believe the castle once stood at the site in Maenclochog at the foot of Pembrokeshire's Preseli Hills.
Villagers are working with professional archaeologists for two weeks in a bid to find out more about the land.
A topographical survey of the site last year suggested the site was probably that of the castle and possibly an earlier Iron
Source: BBC
September 20, 2007
London Mayor Ken Livingstone has said he would like to see a statue of Indian nationalist leader Mahatma Gandhi in Parliament Square.
Speaking to BBC London 94.9, he said India was part of British history and Gandhi's achievement must be enshrined.
Gandhi was a political and spiritual leader who led India to freedom from British rule in 1947.
Former South African leader Nelson Mandela's statue was unveiled in Parliament Square last month.
Mr Livingst
Source: US Department of Defense website
September 18, 2007
The nation has stood in awe of the U.S. Air Force’s “bravery and endurance,” dating from the Berlin Airlift during the Cold War’s outset, through two wars in Asia and to today’s global conflict, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said today.
During a ceremony in the Pentagon courtyard, Gates, a former airman, spoke to hundreds who gathered to celebrate the U.S. Air Force’s 60-year anniversary. Currently, the Air Force boasts a 700,000-strong force with roughly 25,000 members deployed
Source: Long profile of Romney in the NYT
September 19, 2007
Mitt Romney walked onto the Olympic stage in 1999 a rich businessman still smarting from losing his first bid for public office. He walked off, three years later, a star-polished candidate who would be elected governor of Massachusetts in a matter of months. This was the place of his emergence and his transition.
In rescuing the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games, which had been tarnished by scandal, Mr. Romney learned the ways of Washington and the hurly-burly of politics, mastered t
Source: NYT
September 20, 2007
Several weeks ago, according to the owner of an upstate New York auction company, he and his staff were combing through the belongings of an elderly man about to enter a nursing home. The house was just outside Palmyra, the birthplace of the Mormon religion, and amid the attic clutter, at the bottom of a box of books, was the treasure: a 177-year-old first-edition copy of the Book of Mormon.
At an auction held yesterday in nearby Geneva, an undisclosed bidder from the East Coast pai
Source: Australian
September 20, 2007
PAUL Keating has attacked former US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan's memory of recent history after he failed to recognise the former Labor prime minister's role in modernising the Australian economy.
Mr Keating said yesterday Dr Greenspan's record showed he had legitimate claims to being a substantial US central banker.
"But if his book is any guide, especially as it relates to Australia, those claims do not extend to him being a noteworthy economic histo
Source: BBC
September 19, 2007
A team of scientists working in Georgia has unearthed the remains of four human-like creatures dating to 1.8 million years ago.
In the journal Nature, the researchers outline details of the partial skeletons uncovered in a Medieval town.
The bones reveal a mixture of primitive and advanced features, team leader David Lordkipanidze explained.
These early hominids may have been among the first to leave Africa to colonise the rest of the world.
Di
Source: BBC
September 19, 2007
A "treasure trove" of 18th Century domestic waste has been unearthed at a town's park.
Fragments of wine bottles, pottery, clay pipes and buttons have been recovered by archaeologists at The Parade in Fort William in Lochaber.
Evidence houses were burned down to give government troops a line of fire against attacking Jacobites has also been found.
The site was a parade ground for a fort, which is now a ruin.
Source: http://www.post-trib.com
September 19, 2007
An Illinois-based group named for a local historian thinks it has found the remains of a ship that once carried escaping slaves to freedom before it was destroyed by slave hunters on the shore of Lake Michigan in Ogden Dunes.
Roger Barski, an underwater photographer and ex-Hollywood lighting technician, presented the findings of the Briggs Project to a spellbound audience of two dozen history buffs at a meeting of the Portage Community Historical Society on Tuesday night.
Source: International Herald Tribune
September 17, 2007
Sun Yat-sen, the medical doctor who brought down China's last imperial dynasty in 1911, has become the flavor of the year in Hong Kong.
A "Sun Yat-sen Historical Trail" through the trendy district of Soho has recently been refurbished. It takes walkers close to the Sun Yat-sen Museum that opened in December 2006. And at a nearby old mansion, the Museum of Medical Sciences is holding an exhibition on "The Medical and Social Landscape during Dr. Sun Yat-sen's Formative
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
September 19, 2007
If you’ve ever ended an e-mail message or an instant message with an emoticon, now might be a good time to pause and reflect on the work of Scott E. Fahlman. After all, it will be 25 years ago tomorrow that Mr. Fahlman, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, invented the digital smiley face.
After a colleague joked about a contaminated elevator on an electronic bulletin board, Mr. Fahlman had his eureka moment: He recommended that future quipsters mark their
Source: AP
September 19, 2007
Internet decisions aren't always made at Internet speeds.
The Internet's key oversight agency has approved a plan to phase out the domain name for Yugoslavia, four years after the country dissolved following civil war. It'll take two or three more years for ".yu" users to fully transition to ".rs" for Serbia and ".me" for Montenegro.
Source: International Herald Tribune
September 19, 2007
The police in Cambodia arrested on Wednesday the highest ranking surviving leader of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime to face charges in the deaths of 1.7 million people from 1975 to 1979.
The leader, Nuon Chea, 82, was the chief ideologue of the movement and "Brother No. 2" to Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge chieftain who died in 1998.
He was arrested at his home in the northeastern town of Pailin, which has become a sort of retirement haven for Khmer Rouge cadre, and
Source: AP
September 18, 2007
Remains believed to be of an American soldier killed in Cambodia decades ago during the Vietnam War were flown Monday to the U.S. for forensic analysis.
After a brief ceremony at Phnom Penh International Airport, a U.S. military transport plane left with the coffin holding the remains for a military laboratory in Hawaii, where tests to determine identification are to be conducted.
According to a statement from the U.S. Embassy, 55 Americans are still unaccounted for in
Source: BBC
September 19, 2007
One of the country's leading teaching hospitals is celebrating 250 years since it was founded.
The Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, east London, was set up to offer health care to the East End's underprivileged population.
It was founded in a tavern by seven friends "with but a shilling in the bank", according to hospital lore.
It officially opened its doors on 20 September 1757 thanks to £18,000 worth of charitable donations.
Source: BBC
September 19, 2007
A group of WWII veterans will be reunited with the world's last remaining Wellington Bomber aircraft to have seen active service.
Surviving members of the RAF Wellington crew will gather at Brooklands Museum in Weybridge, Surrey, to see the restored plane on Wednesday.
The plane was unearthed by a team searching for the Loch Ness monster in Scotland in 1985.
Source: AP
September 17, 2007
It is Iran's version of "Schindler's List," a miniseries that tells the tale of an Iranian diplomat in Paris who helps Jews escape the Holocaust — and viewers across the country are riveted.
That's surprising enough in a country where hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has questioned whether the Holocaust even took place. What's more surprising is that government media produced the series, and is airing it on state-run television.
The Holocaust is rarely
Source: NYT
September 19, 2007
Of the estimated 7,000 languages spoken in the world today, linguists say, nearly half are in danger of extinction and likely to disappear in this century. In fact, one falls out of use about every two weeks.
Some languages vanish in an instant, at the death of the sole surviving speaker. Others are lost gradually in bilingual cultures, as indigenous tongues are overwhelmed by the dominant language at school, in the marketplace and on television.
New research, reported
