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
September 20, 2010
North Korea will hold its biggest political meeting in 30 years next week, state media said Tuesday, as observers watch for signs that the secretive regime's aging leader will appoint his son to succeed him.
Now 68, and reportedly in poor health two years after suffering a stroke, Kim Jong Il is believed to be setting in motion a plan to tap a son to take the Kim dynasty into a third generation by appointing his heir to top party posts at the Workers' Party convention.
Source: CNN
September 20, 2010
Don Rumsfeld's long-anticipated memoir will be released in January, and the former defense secretary isn't going to pull any punches, his publisher said Monday.
The upcoming book – "Known and Unknown" – will hit book stores January 25 and "is filled with previously undisclosed details and insights about the Bush administration, 9/11, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq," according to the book's publisher, Sentinel, a division of Penguin.
The book's
Source: CNN
September 20, 2010
The imam behind the proposed Islamic center and mosque near ground zero is largely avoiding New York City because of security concerns and is receiving protection from the New York Police Department, according to those close to the imam.
Morton, former dean of New York's Cathedral of St. John the Divine, said the imam was mostly avoiding New York, where he typically works, since returning from a State Department trip to the Middle East two weeks ago.
Rauf did not attend
Source: CNN
September 20, 2010
The Vatican Apostolic Library reopened its hallowed halls Monday following a three-year renovation, according to library officials.
Climate-controlled rooms for precious manuscripts, electronic microchips in books, and state-of-the-art security measures to prevent theft and loss are just a few of the changes made to the library, officials said.
Pictures released by the Vatican give the public a rare view of the library, which is open only to teachers, scholars and resea
Source: AOL News
September 20, 2010
...Using DNA tests, archaeologists believe they have identified at least two people of African descent buried at the site of the first European colony in the Americas, La Isabela, which was founded (and swiftly abandoned) by Columbus in the late 15th century.
La Isabela -- on the north coast of what is now the Dominican Republic -- was established by Columbus in 1493 on his second trip to the New World. His 17-ship armada dropped off 1,500 men (including Franciscan friars, farmers
Source: Salon
September 20, 2010
This week marks the publication of Jimmy Carter's private journal of his presidency, "White House Diary." The entries are often brief, but Carter does offer an interesting account of one of the most widely discussed moments of his doomed 1980 reelection effort: Ted Kennedy's apparent snub of him on the final night of the Democratic convention in New York, just after Carter had delivered his acceptance speech.
"Afterward," Carter writes in his diary, "Kennedy
Source: Huffington Post
September 17, 2010
Several weeks ago, in an interview with the Huffington Post, a senior Obama adviser tried out a new campaign-themed line in the hope of imparting the gravity of the situation to Democratic voters. Should Republicans take back Congress, he said, their policy agendas could be worse then those offered by George W. Bush.
On Friday, the White House hit the theme again. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, speaking at the daily briefing, accused some in the GOP of wanting to not just privatize S
Source: Reuters
September 13, 2010
Conservation experts almost gave up when they first saw the severely damaged wall paintings they had come to rescue in the ancient city of Petra.
Cloaked for centuries in grimy soot from bedouin camp fires, the blackened murals appeared beyond repair.
But three years of restoration revealed intricate and brightly-colored artwork, and some of the very few surviving examples of 2,000-year-old Hellenistic wall painting.
"It has actually been quite nerve-r
Source: Independent (UK)
September 17, 2010
In all the twists and tragedies spanning 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, few would think to look for a happy subplot in the world of archaeology. But consider the travails of 362 tiny clay tablets. Forged in southern Iraq 4,000-odd years ago, then crushed in the collapse of the twin towers, the tablets are now back in Iraq.
Decorated with cuneiform script – the oldest-known form of human writing – the tiny tablets were shipped in early 2001 from Dubai to the Port of Newark in New Jer
Source: The Guardian
September 17, 2010
UK scientist unearths 5,000-year-old rock art, including drawing of a mounted hunter, in Somaliland.
Striking prehistoric rock art created up to 5,000 years ago has been discovered at almost 100 sites in Somaliland on the Gulf of Aden in eastern Africa.
A local team headed by Dr Sada Mire – of the Institute of Archaeology at University College London (UCL) – made the finds which included a man on horseback, painted around 4,000 years ago – one of the earliest known depi
Source: LiveScience
September 10, 2010
Modern military wives typically don't ship out alongside their husbands, but the young wife of a British naval officer did just that during the Napoleonic Wars of the 19th century. Now a historian who tracked down 40 unpublished volumes of her diaries has gotten the go-ahead to write a book investigating her life.
Elizabeth "Betsey" Wynne accompanied her husband aboard his warship during a disastrous British assault on the Spanish Canary Islands. She spent the voyage home-
Source: National Trust for Historic Preservation
September 15, 2010
Quarters One, the U.S. government's second-largest house after the White House, is officially back in the Army's care. Repairs began this month on the 51-room mansion, located on an island in the Mississippi River between Davenport, Iowa, and Rock Island, Ill.
Built in 1871 on Rock Island Arsenal, the four-story Italianate house was designed by General Thomas Rodman.
Every Arsenal commander since Rodman resided in the Quarters until 2008, when Washington, D.C.-based Fed
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 20, 2010
Boston is planning to build a new museum on the site of the Tea Party, the Revolutionary event in which colonists protested against British tax by dumping three ship loads' worth of tea into the harbour.
All that currently marks the site of the 1773 protest in the Fort Point Channel is a commemorative plaque. But as the namesake Right-wing movement continues to grow in prominence and success, the Massachusetts city has announced plans to build a museum that would include restoring
Source: Illinois National Guard
September 16, 2010
A long-lost Civil War cannon has found its way back to the Illinois State Military Museum in Springfield after more than 30 years.
"I feel a sense of victory," said Lt. Col. Mark Whitlock, Director of the Illinois State Military Museum. "I feel that the cannon is an important piece of Illinois military history and it makes me feel good that we got it back."
The cannon was originally donated to the museum in 1865 by Lt. Col. Edward Kitchell, Regiment
Source: Washington Times
September 19, 2010
...Not much is left of the camp where thousands of French Gypsies were interned in this village in the Saumur wine region during World War II. Here, hungry children once crowded behind barbed wire, hoping Sunday strollers might toss them leftover food. Anyone caught trying to escape was locked in a filthy hole underground, a prison within a prison.
As today's France expels a wave of Romanian Gypsies seeking an escape from hardship back home, children of the camp's survivors have bee
Source: National Geographic
September 14, 2010
Apparently laid to rest more than 10,000 years ago in a fiery ritual, one of the oldest skeletons in the Americas has been retrieved from an undersea cave along Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, researchers say.
Dating to a time when the now lush region was a near desert, the "Young Man of Chan Hol" may help uncover how the first Americans arrived—and who they were.
About 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of Cancún, the cave system of Chan Hol—"little hole"
Source: Atlanta Business Chronicle
September 17, 2010
Georgia is gearing up for the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, expecting it to be the most significant heritage tourism opportunity in coming years.
The commemoration is being called “CW150” and will run from 2011 to 2015 to coincide with the war, which lasted from 1861 to 1865.
Over the next four years the state will spend close to $3 million promoting Civil War tourism, including roughly $726,000 this year.
Events are planned at Kennesaw Mountain Natio
Source: Yahoo News
September 17, 2010
SYDNEY (AFP) – An Australian study has uncovered signs that the country's ancient Aborigines may have been the world's first stargazers, pre-dating Stonehenge and Egypt's pyramids by thousands of years.
Professor Ray Norris said widespread and detailed knowledge of the stars had been passed down through the generations by Aborigines, whose history dates back tens of millennia, in traditional songs and stories.
"We know there's lots of stories about the sky: songs,
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
September 20, 2010
An ancient Egyptian queen who was been hailed for thousands of years as the perfect example of beauty may not have been such a looker after all, researchers have claimed.
The 3,300-year-old carved bust of Queen Nerfititi with her aquiline nose and high cheek bones has won her admiring fans around the world.
But a delicately carved face in the limestone core of the famous bust suggests the royal sculptor at the time may have smoothed creases around the mouth and fixed a
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 19, 2010
Britain’s “courageous resistance” to the “evil ideology” of Nazism was honoured by the Pope as he spoke to a crowd of more than 50,000 in Birmingham.
Benedict XVI said it was “deeply moving” to recall the sacrifices made by Britons during the Second World War and paid particular tribute to nearby Coventry, which was heavily bombed during the Battle of Britain 70 years ago.
Speaking at the Beatification Mass for Cardinal John Henry Newman in Cofton Park, near where the
