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: LiveScience
September 19, 2011
A century after the golden age of polar exploration, ordinary folks with some spending money and a taste for adventure — but who'd rather forego the frostbite, starvation and killer-whale attacks — can own a piece of the compelling story of humankind's fevered race to the Earth's poles.
Source: WaPo
September 19, 2011
MOUNT TAMBORA, Indonesia — Bold farmers in Indonesia routinely ignore orders to evacuate the slopes of live volcanoes, but those living on Tambora took no chances when history’s deadliest mountain rumbled ominously this month.Villagers like Hasanuddin Sanusi have heard since they were young how the mountain they call home once blew apart in the largest eruption ever recorded — an 1815 event widely forgotten outside their region — killing 90,000 people and blackening skies on the other side of the globe....The April 1815 eruption of Tambora left a crater 7 miles (11 kilometers) wide and half a mile (1 kilometer) deep, spewing an estimated 400 million tons of sulfuric gases into the atmosphere and leading to “the year without summer” in the U.S. and Europe....No one expects a repeat of 1815 just yet — it takes much more than 200 years for that type of huge pressure to build up again, said de Boer, who teaches at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.The present activity could be part of the birth of Tambora’s so-called child, he said, a process whereby magma still being pushed upward from the original massive blast forms a new volcano in its place.But that’s little consolation for those confronted with the mountain’s new burst of activity....
Source: NYT
September 17, 2011
DUBLIN — Even as it remains preoccupied with its struggling economy, Ireland is in the midst of a profound transformation, as rapid as it is revolutionary: it is recalibrating its relationship to the Roman Catholic Church, an institution that has permeated almost every aspect of life here for generations.This is still a country where abortion is against the law, where divorce became legal only in 1995, where the church runs more than 90 percent of the primary schools and where 87 percent of the population identifies itself as Catholic. But the awe, respect and fear the Vatican once commanded have given way to something new — rage, disgust and defiance — after a long series of horrific revelations about decades of abuse of children entrusted to the church’s care by a reverential populace.
Source: AP
September 17, 2011
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Visitors to Kansas City museums can easily find exhibits about Anglo, Native American and African-American contributions to the metro region.But there's been a major gap in documenting the history of Latino residents, even though it stretches back hundreds of years.Kansas City Museum officials have begun an effort to collect artifacts and documents from Latino history for its collections. The first important step was announced this week, when the museum received the entire 30-year archives of the Dos Mundos bilingual newspaper, according to The Kansas City Star (http://bit.ly/pUN0a7 )."We're incredibly honored to be identified as the repository of this material," said Christopher Leitch, director of the Kansas City Museum. "It's a real obligation. It's really humbling."...
Source: Dayton Daily News
September 18, 2011
1947: Hagerman v. Dayton — Ohio Supreme Court rules that local governments could not permit voluntary deduction of union dues from employees’ paychecks; declares municipal contracts improper delegation of governmental authority.Ferguson Act: Bans public employee strikes and provides for dismissal of strikers.1958: Voters reject right-to-work initiative, which would have prohibited adoption of union contracts that set union membership as condition of employment.1959: Legislature authorizes union dues checkoff for public employees, overturning that part of 1947 Hagerman ruling....
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
September 18, 2011
Calls to change the Constitution are suddenly everywhere, and they aren't limited to any political quarter. Rick Perry, the Texas governor and Republican presidential hopeful, has proposed repealing the 17th Amendment—the one permitting the direct election of U.S. senators—and some Tea Partyers have rallied around a proposal to let state legislatures overrule acts of Congress (the so-called Repeal Amendment).At the same time, many on the left support a constitutional amendment, if necessary, to undo the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United opinion, which grants corporations many of the same free-speech (and campaign-donation) rights that ordinary citizens have.Lawrence Lessig, the Harvard law professor best known for his work on intellectual property but more recently a good-government reformer, has sensed the ferment and seized the moment: This month he will play host, with Mark Meckler, a national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots, to a conference in Cambridge to discuss whether the time has come for a constitutional convention. Calling such a convention is a right given to Congress and the states under Article V of the Constitution but has never been exercised."Fifteen years ago, I didn't have the sense that the republic was prepared for this," Mr. Lessig says. "Now I do."...
Source: WaPo
September 15, 2011
Names of people enslaved in Virginia, pulled from some of the Virginia Historical Society ’s 8 million documents, have been compiled into Unknown No Longer, a searchable database now available to the public.The online tool includes more than 1,500 names found in letters, wills, court records and other sources. Each name is connected to a digital copy of the original document in which it was found. Society spokeswoman Jennifer Guild said the work of extracting the information began more than a year ago.“It is possible these names have never been seen before,” she said. “This is the first time we have published them.”The database can be searched by keywords such as name, occupation and plantation. “For instance, if all you knew was your great-great-great-grandmother was named Ann and she had been a slave in Virginia, that is enough to begin a search with this database,” Guild said. “Or, if all you have is a plantation name, you go to that name and you will find what we have on the slaves who lived there.”...
Source: NYT
September 18, 2011
It was eerie 40 years after the deadly riot at Attica state prison to hear the voice of the late Gov. Nelson Rockefeller of New York employing his breathless signature adjective — “fabulous!” He was speaking back then to President Richard Nixon and attributing “a fabulous job” to the state troopers hours after they took the prison in a barrage by rooftop riflemen who killed 10 hostages along with 29 inmates. The president is heard complimenting the governor for “the courage you showed,” their voices resounding from newly available White House tape recordings.A state investigation commission has long since quashed the celebration, establishing how reckless the governor was to allow troopers, some with shotguns, fire down through thick clouds of tear gas at the innocent and guilty alike massed in the prison yard. Despite what the Rockefeller administration insisted, inmates did not slash the hostages’ throats; they were killed by state gunfire.Establishing the truth of that frenzied morning helped ease a painful experience for some. I am still troubled that the day before the raid, I foolishly stoked hope while talking to hostage families waiting outside the prison walls....
Source: NYT
September 19, 2011
LONDON — The plan seems eminently reasonable: field a soccer team to represent Britain at next year’s Olympics, which after all are being held here, the home of the modern game.But there are several problems. For one thing, there is no such thing as a British soccer team. Instead, in a country where devotion to sports is fueled by ferocious regional and political rivalries, there are instead individual teams representing Britain’s fractious, proud and fiercely competitive constituent nations — namely England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland....Modern soccer began here in 1863. Through the influence of Britain’s far-flung empire, it spread to become the world’s most popular sport.But Britain has not played men’s soccer in the Olympics in more than half a century, since the 1960 Rome Games, or even tried to qualify since the early 1970s. The British women have never entered a team since the Olympic tournament for women began in 1996.While the International Olympic committee recognizes Britain as a combined team in all sports, FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, recognizes England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as separate teams. And there lies the heart of the controversy....
Source: Hollywood Reporter
September 13, 2011
For weeks, ABC News has been teasing an exclusive attached to the tome Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy, which features previously unreleased audio recordings from early 1964 of Onassis talking frankly about her time in the White House.The two-hour special anchored by Diane Sawyer and airing Tuesday at 9 p.m. will include extensive audio and an interview with Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of Onassis and John F. Kennedy....The Kennedy book also was something of a bargaining chip in the Kennedy family’s efforts to quash the History channel miniseries The Kennedys. History channel is part of AETN, which is owned by a consortium including Disney, NBC Universal and Hearst. Disney/ABC Television Group chief Anne Sweeney sits on the AETN board. And last January, sources told The Hollywood Reporter that Caroline Kennedy personally lobbied Sweeney to kill the miniseries and that Kennedy's cooperation with the book, including writing the introduction and promoting it on ABC, was part of those conversations.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
September 15, 2011
Peru’s Nazca Lines, the mysterious geoglyphs etched into the desert centuries ago by indigenous groups, are world famous – and now thousands of similar patterns have been found in the Middle East.Satellite and aerial photography has revealed mysterious stone ‘wheels’ that are more numerous and older than the Nazca Lines in countries such as Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.The structures are thought to date back 2,000 years, but why they were built is baffling archaeologists and historians.In Jordan alone we've got stone-built structures that are far more numerous than the Nazca Lines, far more extensive in the area that they cover, and far older,’ David Kennedy, a professor of classics and ancient history at the University of Western Australia, told Live Science....
Source: Steve Aftergood's Secrecy News
September 16, 2011
The National Reconnaissance Office, the agency that develops and operates U.S. intelligence satellites, is observing the 50th anniversary of its establishment in 1961 with a burst of declassification activity.Tomorrow, September 17, the newly declassified KH-9 HEXAGON satellite will go on public display -- for one day only -- in the parking lot of the Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air and Space Museum.The KH-9 HEXAGON was a photographic reconnaissance satellite that was first launched in 1971 and ceased operation in the mid-1980s. At sixty feet long and ten feet in diameter, it is said to be the largest intelligence satellite ever launched by the U.S.
Source: CBS
September 15, 2011
They stretch from Syria to Saudi Arabia, can be seen from the air but not the ground, and are virtually unknown to the public.
They are the Middle East's own version of the Nazca Lines -- ancient "geolyphs," or drawings, that span deserts in southern Peru -- and now, thanks to new satellite-mapping technologies, and an aerial photography program in Jordan, researchers are discovering more of them than ever before. They number well into the thousands.
Referred to by archaeologists as "wheels," these stone structures have a wide variety of designs, with a common one being a circle with spokes radiating inside. Researchers believe that they date back to antiquity, at least 2,000 years ago. They are often found on lava fields and range from 82 feet to 230 feet (25 meters to 70 meters) across.
Kennedy's new research, which will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science, reveals that these wheels form part of a variety of stone landscapes.
Source: BBC
September 15, 2011
They were young idealistic high school students who were unaware of what horrors they were about to face: imprisonment, torture and, in some cases, death.
Thirty-five years ago, one of most notorious episodes of abuse committed during military rule in Argentina took place - the abduction of 10 students by security forces in the city of La Plata near Buenos Aires.
On 16 and 17 September 1976, masked men raided their homes under cover of darkness, taking them away to clandestine detention centres in what became known as the "Night of the Pencils".
Six were never seen again.
The murdered victims, aged 16 to 18, were Francisco Lopez, Horacio Ungaro, Maria Clara Ciocchini, Claudio de Acha, Daniel Racero and Maria Claudia Falconer, whose face became one of the best known images to keep the students' memory alive.
The abuse the students suffered became one of the emblematic events of the dictatorship that ruled Argentina between 1976 to 1983.
Their story was told in a 1986 film directed by Hector Olivera, called The Night of the Pencils, regarded as a powerful depiction of events....
Source: BBC
September 13, 2011
US researchers who exposed hundreds of Guatemalans to sexually transmitted diseases committed "unconscionable basic violations of ethics", a US health commission has found.Some 1,300 were infected with syphilis, gonorrhoea and other STDs without their knowledge in the 1940s.Many of the same researchers had earlier sought consent from prisoners in a US study. Of these, some 1,300 prisoners, psychiatric patients and sex workers were deliberately infected with syphilis, gonorrhoea or another sexually transmitted disease, chancroid.Only about 700 received some sort of treatment.In previous tests by many of the same researchers on prisoners in Terra Haute, Indiana, those participants were asked for their consent....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 15, 2011
Egypt's prime minister triggered angry consternation in Israel on Thursday after declaring that the historic Camp David accords underpinning peace between the two countries were "not a sacred thing". Dramatically heightening tensions during an increasingly volatile time in Israel's relations with the Arab world, Essam Sharaf's suggestions that the 32-year treaty could be revised prompted disbelief in the Jewish state. Coming just days after an angry mob stormed the Israeli embassy in Cairo, Israeli officials said they were staggered more by the timing of Mr Sharaf's comments than their actual content. "Less than a week ago, we had the problem with the embassy," an Israeli official said. "I don't think a responsible prime minister should say things like that."Reeling from a noxious diplomatic row with Turkey and fearing that an expected Palestinian bid for statehood at the UN next week will heighten its growing sense of isolation.
Source: Newser
September 15, 2011
(Newser) – Dinosaurs just got a little more colorful. A batch of prehistoric feathers found in western Canada from about 70 million years ago suggests that feathers on dinosaurs and early birds were more diverse and complex than thought, reports the Los Angeles Times. "Instead of scaly animals portrayed as usually drab creatures, we have solid evidence for a fluffy colored past," Mark Norell of the American Museum of Natural History in New York tells the AP....
Source: ArtDaily.org
September 13, 2011
ANCHORAGE (REUTERS).- Four decorated clay disks have been discovered at a prehistoric site in alaska, apparently the first artifacts of their type discovered in the state, the University of alaska Museum of the North said.The disks were found during a summer expedition in Noatak National Preserve, at a site where archeologists have for decades been studying lakefront pit dwellings that date back 1,000 years, officials at the Fairbanks museum said.The disks are etched, and two of them have holes in the center.They were discovered when a team from the museum and the National Park Service traveled to the site in northwestern alaska to make records of previously discovered prehistoric petroglyphs on boulders....
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
September 4, 2011
The case of Jack the Ripper has long captivated amateur true-crime enthusiasts. Now scholars too have become enthralled by him, but why?Under the slayer's sway ourselves, Fred J. Abbate, a philosopher, and I, a literary critic, wanted to find out. We took popular interest in Jack the Ripper to be a given. Buffs are everywhere, populating groups like the Whitechapel Society and Internet sites like the JTR Forums and Casebook: Jack the Ripper. Yet work on the case had long been dominated by these so-called Ripperologists, with academic involvement lagging behind. Despite some scholarly work going back 25 years, only in the past 10 (with two dissertations listed in the MLA Bibliography in the past three) has an academic literature begun to accumulate as the cultural turn in the humanities intersected with a widespread interest in true crime. Jack the Ripper is arguably the first publicly recognized "serial killer" (though the term was not coined until the 1970s), and the Whitechapel murders—as the Ripper case is decorously known—may be the first modern true-crime narrative.
Source: Cornwall Free News
September 14, 2011
CFN - Seventy years after its destruction by Nazi troops, a memorial statue honoring President Woodrow Wilson will be rededicated on Oct. 5 in Prague, Czech Republic, the American Friends of the Czech Republic (AFoCR) announced today.The Wilson Monument commemorates the role that the former U.S. president played in helping the Czech people achieve independence in 1918, and it will stand as an enduring symbol of the historic friendship between the United States and the Czech Republic.“Many Americans, including the millions who are of Czech descent, are unaware of the aid and support President Wilson gave to the Czech people in their struggle for freedom,” said AFoCR Director Robert Doubek, who is Project Director for the Wilson Monument. “But the Czech people never forgot which country and which president did so much so secure their independence as a free nation. The rededicated Woodrow Wilson Monument honors a historic friendship that has stood the test of time.”...
