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)
August 30, 2010
A dragon-like dinosaur with vast claws terrorised Europe 80 million years ago, a study has found.
The creature was a powerfully-built meat-eating dinosaur with scythe-like claws for ripping its prey apart. It used its lower limbs to disembowel its victims.
Experts have named the seven-foot long dinosaur, which was discovered in Romania, Balaur bondoc, which means ''stocky dragon''.
Other fossils found in the same region include cow-sized relatives of gian
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 31, 2010
...But now researchers believe they will be able to raise the Titanic - digitally - after amazing High Definition images were beamed back from its final resting place.
Images originally designed to give scientists an insight into how long it takes for wrecks to disintegrate are to be turned into a 3D map of the wreckage.
It will mean people could one day be able to take a 3D tour of the shipwreck.
Using state-of-the art HD robotic cameras and sonar, scient
Source: AP
August 30, 2010
Israeli archaeologists believe thousands of ancient shards of flint found scattered around a fire pit in a cave near Tel Aviv might be the world's oldest known disposable knives.
Dating to the Stone Age, the tiny knives are believed to be at least 200,000 years old. A Tel Aviv University excavation team found the tools around a fireplace littered with charred animal bones.
Archaeologist Ran Barkai said he believes Stone Age hunter-gatherers used the rough, round-shaped
Source: AP
August 30, 2010
Venezuelan authorities exhumed the remains of Simon Bolivar's sisters Monday, seeking genetic clues to help them investigate President Hugo Chavez's theory that the South American independence hero may have been murdered.
Scientists and forensic experts extracted DNA samples from the bones of Juana and Maria Antonia Bolivar — the only siblings of the man known in Venezuela as "El Libertador" — after authorities opened their tombs inside a cathedral in downtown Caracas, Vic
Source: CNN
August 31, 2010
President Obama telephoned former President George W. Bush from Air Force One in advance of Tuesday night's prime time speech regarding the end of the combat mission in Iraq - but the White House isn't saying what the two men discussed.
Obama called his predecessor while flying to Fort Bliss to meet with military personnel Tuesday morning ahead of his Oval Office address. The two spoke for several minutes according to Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton. There were no details about t
Source: CNN
August 31, 2010
Almost 7½ years ago, President George W. Bush launched a blistering "shock and awe" invasion of Iraq.
The goal: eliminate a perceived threat of weapons of mass destruction while replacing a hostile, tyrannical regime with a friendly democracy in the heart of the Middle East.
At 5 p.m. ET Tuesday -- at a cost of more than 4,400 U.S. military personnel killed and 30,000 wounded -- America's combat mission in Iraq will officially draw to a close.
The
Source: The Telegraph
August 31, 2010
As Captain John Webster’s Jeep approached a small German town in 1945, he ordered his driver to turn down an unmade track. The officer had glimpsed some white buildings which, he recalls, “just didn’t look right”.
Capt Webster, senior liaison officer with Lowland Brigade HQ of the 15th Scottish Division, had been sent to find an armoured column that had failed to make contact with his unit in the British advance into north Germany in April 1945.
He told his driver to pr
Source: The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
August 30, 2010
Crafted from steel and carved in a never-ending circle, a monument to be built by world-renowned architect Daniel Libeskind will be the first Canadian tribute to the MS St. Louis, a ship carrying Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany that the Canadian government turned away in 1939.
The ship’s journey is a black mark for Canada, because a third of its 900 occupants later died in Nazi concentration camps. A lack of public awareness about the incident led the Canadian Jewish Congress to h
Source: Kiev Post
August 31, 2010
The percentage of Russians approving of the signing in August 1939 of the treaty of non-aggression between the USSR and the Nazi Germany (the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact) has noticeably dropped from 40% to 33% in the past five years, sociologists from the Levada-Center told Interfax on Monday.
Forty-six percent respondents are unaware about the pact's existence at all (37% in 2005), according to the findings of a nationwide poll conducted on August 20-23. The document is condemned by 5
Source: Earth Times
August 25, 2010
The remains of 5,600 Wehrmacht soldiers and ethnic Germans who died on Czech territory during and shortly after World War II now have a final resting place there.
The place is the town of Cheb, known in German as Eger, in the Sudetenland region near the Bavarian border. The new war cemetery, the largest and last burial site for German war dead on Czech territory, will be officially opened on September 11, some 65 years after the war.Hundreds of plain granite cro
Source: S.F. Chronicle
August 27, 2010
Scientists are studying sonar images of a shipwreck loaded with 3.5 million gallons of crude oil in the holds of a tanker that lies 4 miles off the scenic Central California coast like a rusting time bomb.
The American tanker Montebello was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine Dec. 23, 1941, only 16 days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and sank in 900 feet of water. The Montebello has lain on the bottom ever since.Japanese submarine attacks on ships o
Source: L.A. Times
August 30, 2010
The Bank of Mexico said Monday it would place in circulation a new 500-peso bill featuring the well-known faces of two of the country's best-known artists, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. In the bank's official video to promote the bill's anti-counterfeiting features, two figures resembling the celebrity couple stroll in costume around traditional and modern sites in Mexico.
The previous face on the 500-peso bill was Ignacio Zaragoza, hero of the Battle of Puebla. Milenio reports that
Source: U.S. News
August 30, 2010
For many, the name Chappaquiddick conjures images of a drunken Sen. Edward Kennedy hitting on Mary Jo Kopechne in his Oldsmobile, losing control, and plunging into the water of Poucha Pond on Chappaquiddick Island, adjacent to Martha's Vineyard where President Obama was vacationing. Kopechne, a family friend, drowned; and Teddy fumbled for excuses about what happened.
Now, a year after Kennedy died, his lifelong biographer Burton Hersh, armed with fresh interviews with Kennedy's mis
Source: AFP
August 31, 2010
Fish frying will become legal in Gloucester and people will be allowed to beat carpets in Blackpool under government plans announced Tuesday to let local councils scrap outdated byelaws.
Local Government Minister Grant Shapps outlined the proposals as part of a strategy to hand power back to councils and communities.
The reforms will mean that councils can create new byelaws or get rid of old ones without seeking permission from Whitehall.Under the
Source: Irish Central
August 28, 2010
If the Nazi invasion of Britain had been successful, Ireland would have been invaded, it has been revealed.
Details of the Irish invasion were recently released by the National Archives in Britain.
The just-published MI5 file shows that Ireland was definitely targeted for a Nazi landing if the German Air Force, the Luftwaffe, had won the Battle of Britain.The plan, which would have involved the main landing of German shock troops at Dover, was calle
Source: AsiaOne News
August 29, 2010
France's state rail company will give US authorities details of its role in deporting Jews to Nazi death camps in support of its bid to build a high-speed railway in California, its chairman said Sunday.
"Twenty years ago we opened all our archives... we are going to open all that to the Americans," said the chairman of the SNCF national railway company, Guillaume Pepy, on Europe 1 radio.The SNCF is making a joint bid with major French cons
Source: The Telegraph
August 31, 2010
The problem became so severe that British aircraft were ordered to try to avoid travelling over the sea because too many being drowned, it has emerged.
Amid the 70th anniversary commemorations this summer it can be disclosed that at least 200 pilots died “needlessly” in 1940 after bailing out over water.
Once they hit the water there was very little chance of survival with only the occasional flier being picked up by a passing destroyer or fishing boat.
The
Source: CNN
August 30, 2010
A building at a Georgia university was evacuated Monday morning after some Civil War relics stored there were found to be possibly dangerous, officials said.
Officials at Kennesaw State University in suburban Atlanta called an all-clear around 1 p.m., about an hour and a half after they evacuated the school's Social Sciences Building and its surrounding area.
The relics included two cannonballs that were located in a display case within a room that was accessible only w
Source: CNN
August 30, 2010
In a rare interview, Fidel Castro gives new details about his health four years ago when emergency surgery forced him out of power, saying he didn't think he would make it and still has difficulty walking.
The 84-year-old did not, however, provide any details about what illnesses he suffered from.
Cuban state TV read aloud a letter from Castro on July 31, 2006, announcing he was handing power to his younger brother Raul Castro. He disappeared from public view amid repea
Source: Deutsche Welle
August 28, 2010
A plan existed to bring the 1968 Olympic Games to Berlin, which was divided by then East and West Germany, a sports historian said Saturday. But the Allies, along with the West German government, would not allow it.
Christopher Young, who also heads German studies at the University of Cambridge, told the online edition of daily newspaper Der Tagesspiegel that the idea was the brainchild of eventual Chancellor Willy Brandt.
"It was somewhat of a crazy idea of (the t
