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)
September 16, 2010
Mexico is celebrating 200 years of independence as authorities attempt to stem the wave of violent crime gripping the country.
On its 200th birthday, the Central American nation wanted its citizens - and the world - to forget its vicious drug war and remember the country's epic history, music, whimsical folk art and continuing crusade for wider prosperity and democracy....
Source: National Parks Traveler
September 16, 2010
A Hollywood writer would love this plot…but it's true. The "largest, most advanced aircraft of its day," modified for a secret research mission, takes off for a flight over the desert. Painted on its nose are the words, "Cosmic Ray Research." The plane ends up at the bottom of one of the largest man-made lakes in the world, Lake Mead, where the wreck becomes a prized find for underwater archeologists.
The plane was a B-29 Superfortress, one of the last built near
Source: Fox News
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 -- a site made famous in the final scene in the film, "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade."
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 exampl
Source: AP
September 15, 2010
Egypt's antiquities chief says archaeologists have unearthed a 2,800-year-old burial chamber that boasts brightly painted astrological scenes at a site believed to house the tombs of ancient Egyptian nobles.
Zahi Hawass says in a Wednesday statement the chamber belonged to a priest named Karakhamun, whose tomb was first discovered in the 19th century but soon after disappeared under the desert sands. He says an Egyptian-American team stumbled on the burial chamber while doing restor
Source: Spiegel Online
September 16, 2010
Until his death in 2005, Simon Wiesenthal was the world's best-known Nazi hunter. But a new biography finds fault with the way he pursued his quarry and asks whether his "soaring ego" and "tendency to fantasize" actually got in the way of his mission.
The Austrian police were searching for Adolf Eichmann. He was rumored to be hiding in a house at Fischerndorf 8 in the central Alpine village of Altaussee.
But the officers accidentally knocked on the w
Source: Daily Show (UK)
September 16, 2010
France has responded furiously to European Union criticism which linked its treatment of gipsies to the Nazi era.
President Nicolas Sarkozy’s office chose strong diplomatic language to denounce European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding’s claim that France had broken EU law and should face legal action.
Up to 1,000 Roma gypsies have been deported from France in recent weeks, mostly to Romania and Bulgaria. Critics say the expulsions are racially motivated....
Source: Fox News
September 15, 2010
A handful of Roman Catholic convents are contradicting the decades-long slide in the number of women choosing to devote their lives to the sisterhood. And at least two of them are doing it by sticking to tradition, including the wearing of habits.
The number of nuns in the U.S. has dropped dramatically over the last several decades as more women in religious life approach retirement
and are not replaced with younger sisters.
But the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecil
Source: NYT
September 14, 2010
The photograph accompanying this article is one of the best ever taken on a soccer field. The game is over, there is a winner and a loser. Indeed, this image is a symbol of the World Cup, the ultimate prize in soccer, passing from one of these men to the other.
But can you see joy and despair? Or do you see in their touch, their smiles, their eyes something that means so much more than who won
Source: NYT
September 15, 2010
Its discovery was nearly as strange as its disappearance.
For more than a month, the whereabouts of “Portrait of a Girl,” a painting by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot of a young girl with a lace collar, a teal skirt and mournful eyes, has been shrouded in intrigue....
Then, on Sunday, the artwork suddenly materialized — under the arm of a Fifth Avenue doorman, who took it to a police station house on the Upper East Side.
The doorman, Franklin Puentes, told the
Source: NYT
September 15, 2010
The latest controversy over Mr. Obama’s identity involves — once again — Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, who this week accused Mr. Obama, whose father was a Kenyan economist and spoke out against the occupying force in his country, of exhibiting “Kenyan, anticolonial behavior.” Mr. Gingrich was shorthanding an essay in Forbes by the conservative theorist Dinesh D’Souza, who, in exploring Mr. Obama’s attitudes toward business, settled on the theory that Mr. Obama was taking directions fr
Source: Hurriyet (Turkey)
September 16, 2010
Ancient bodies believed to be 8,500 years old have been unearthed at a burial mound in the Akçalar area of the Marmara province of Bursa.
The five bodies, reportedly belonging to two adults and three children aged between 3 and 5, were found at the Aktopraklık mound.
“Their arms were tied behind their backs, indicating that they may have been killed or sacrificed,” said Associate Professor Necmi Karul, head of the prehistory department at Istanbul University’s
Source: BBC News
September 15, 2010
A tank which fought with Nottinghamshire's Sherwood Rangers in one of the biggest battles of the Second World War has been restored.
The 30-tonne Sherman tank named Robin Hood was used during 1944's Operation Market Garden.
It will go on display at the Dutch National Liberation Museum for the battle's 66th anniversary in September.
Seven Sherwood Rangers veterans, all over 80, plan to travel to the Netherlands to see the tank.
Martin Kerry from the Sherwoo
Source: Slate
September 16, 2010
Last month, former Republican National Committee chairman Kenneth Mehlman came out of the closet, saying he'd taken 43 years to get comfortable with this part of himself. "Encouraging adults who love each other and who want to make a lifelong commitment to each other to get married" is consistent with GOP policy, he added. In a better world, conservatives would see the light, beg for forgiveness, and declare that gay-baiting was no longer a legitimate strategy for either party. But the
Source: WaPo
September 16, 2010
The woman cradled Lanier W. Phillips's head in her arm as if he were a baby, gently feeding the shipwrecked sailor hot soup she had brewed to help save his life. "Swallow," she said gently. "Swallow."
Phillips could scarcely believe what was happening: a white woman caring for a black man as if he were her son. Back home in Georgia, he thought, she could have been run out of town, and he could easily have been lynched.
But Phillips wasn't in Georgia
Source: Fox News
September 15, 2010
"This is the place where I wish I had grown up cause this is my heritage," said Wilson Moran, as he walked through the national wildlife refuge that was once his parents' neighborhood.
Moran wants the federal government to give back land it seized from his parents just before he was born in 1942. They were part of Harris Neck, a small community founded by former slaves, making their livings by harvesting shellfish from Georgia's coastal wetlands.
"This wa
Source: WCTI 12
September 15, 2010
A newly discovered map has opened up a mystery about the Battle of New Bern Historical Site. It's the best map of the battlefield anyone at the Historical Society has ever seen. It shows previously unknown brick buildings and two locations where Confederate soldiers were buried.
The Historical Society never knew about one of the burial sites. It's not clear if the remains of any soldiers are still there. Union forces buried the Confederates after the battle.
NewsChannel
Source: LiveScience
September 13, 2010
Lead poisoning isn't just a problem for post-industrial city kids — the children of samurai suffered from it too, a new study suggests. An analysis of bones of children who lived as many as 400 years ago showed sky-high lead levels, which scientists now think came from their mothers' makeup.
During the Edo period, from 1603 to 1867, Japan was ruled by a series of shoguns. Below the shogun, a few hundred feudal lords presided over the country's agricultural domains, each from within
Source: Guardian (UK)
September 15, 2010
The murderous reputation of one of Britain's best-known Roman towns has been raised by the discovery of a child's hastily buried skeleton under a barrack room floor.
Archaeologists at Vindolanda fort near Hadrian's Wall are preparing for a repeat of a celebrated coroner's inquest in the 1930s that concluded two other corpses unearthed near the site were "victims of murder by persons unknown shortly before 367AD".
The latest discovery at the frontier settlement
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 15, 2010
Revealing sketches and drawings of life in the trenches have been discovered in a First World War soldier's diary after lying hidden
for 90 years.
Lieutenant Kenneth Wootton's diary give an astonishing insight into the horror of major WWI battles and includes ink drawings of tanks and battle movements.
Lt Wootton, who was awarded the MC for conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty, kept a diary for most of the war - from 1915 until 1917, when he was sent home
Source: King5.com
September 14, 2010
The dilapidated factory that helped make Seattle a high-tech town is being demolished after 75 years, a casualty of time, technology and tails that grew too tall.
Boeing Co.'s Plant 2, a sprawling but long outdated building between Boeing Field and south Seattle's Duwamish River, gave birth to some of the world's most significant aircraft. It was the site of Seattle's biggest disappearing act and a home to "Rosie the Riveter," women who built thousands of World War II plan
