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: National Parks Traveler
August 28, 2010
To demolish, or not demolish. That is the question being pondered by officials at Gettysburg National Military Park over their empty Cyclorama building.
Originally, park officials were planning to tear down the structure, which became somewhat obsolete after the Cyclorama painting -- an elaborate depiction of Pickett's Charge up Cemetery Ridge -- was moved to the park's new visitor center. But then a federal court ordered the park to consider other alternatives for the building, whi
Source: Discovery News
August 30, 2010
Island species from the past were usually stranger and smaller than close relatives on continental landmasses.
Transylvania was Count Dracula's mythical home, but in reality, this historical region of Romania during the Late Cretaceous was home to a strange predatory dinosaur, according to paleontologists who studied its fossilized bones.
Named Balour bondoc, meaning "stocky dragon," the meat-eating dinosaur lived from around 72 to 65 million years ago. Its sk
Source: Discovery News
August 26, 2010
The skis and instruments of a physicist who accompanied Captain Scott to Antarctica are being sold by the scientist's Canadian grandson.
The skis and scientific instruments of a physicist who accompanied Captain Scott on his ill-fated trip to the Antarctic will be sold in London next month, Christie's auctioneers said Wednesday.
Canadian scientist Charles Seymour Wright was part of the support team that set off with Captain Robert Falcon Scott in 1910, although he turne
Source: BBC
August 28, 2010
Rwanda has threatened to withdraw co-operation with the UN if a draft report criticising its army is published.
Kigali said it would reconsider its contributions to UN peacekeeping missions, dismissing claims in the UN report as "insane".
The document accuses Rwanda's Tutsi-led army of killing Hutus in Democratic Republic of Congo in the 1990s - acts it says may amount to genocide.
Extremist Hutus killed an estimated 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda durin
Source: BBC
August 30, 2010
Hundreds of ancient sites have been discovered by aerial surveys, thanks to a dry start to the summer, English Heritage has said.
The surveys show marks made when crops growing over buried features develop at a different rate from those nearby.
The newly-discovered Roman and prehistoric settlements include a site near Bradford Abbas, Dorset.
The Roman camp was revealed in June after three sides became visible in sun-parched fields of barley....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 30, 2010
A priceless painting by the 16th century Italian artist Titian was damaged after sprinklers were used to put out a fire that broke out adjacent to a church in Venice.
The work, David and Goliath, was soaked with water after fire fighters extinguished a blaze in a building next to the Santa Maria della Salute church.
The head of Venice’s museums, art critic and television celebrity Vittorio Sgarbi, ordered the 1544 masterpiece to be taken down so that the extent of the
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 30, 2010
France’s state rail operator, SNCF, has pledged to open its wartime archives to the state of California to prove it has “nothing to hide” over transporting French Jews to Nazi death camps.
The pledge came a week after California passed legislation making full disclosure on involvement in taking people to work, concentration, prisoner of war, or extermination camps between January 1942 and December 1944 a requirement for bidding to build a high-speed railway in the state.
Source: AP
August 30, 2010
Thousands of people streamed back to this historic southern city Monday where new levees hastily built from clay and stone held back floodwaters that have inundated much of Pakistan.
Thousands who fled the waters that inundated neighboring towns complained about the shortage of food and water as they camped in a vast Muslim graveyard on a hill near Thatta city.
Thatta, which is about 75 miles (125 kilometers) southeast of the major coastal city of Karachi, contains seve
Source: CNN
August 28, 2010
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s niece is slated to speak Saturday at a controversial rally by radio talk show host Glenn Beck scheduled to take place in the same location as her uncle's "I Have a Dream" speech.
Saturday is also the 47th anniversary of the speech the civil rights leader delivered in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
Beck, a hero to many conservative voters across the country, says that the mission of the rally is to honor American troops and t
Source: AFP
August 29, 2010
LONDON (AFP) – Britain carried out assassinations during the Cold War, novelist and former secret agent John le Carre told The Sunday Telegraph newspaper.
The espionage writer worked for Britain's domestic and external intelligence agencies during the 1950s and 1960s."Certainly we did very bad things. We did a lot of direct action. Assassinations, at arm's length. Although I was never involved," said the 79-year-old, whose real name is Davi
Source: New York Times
August 28, 2010
JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. — The American economy could experience painfully slow growth and stubbornly high unemployment for a decade or longer as a result of the 2007 collapse of the housing market and the economic turmoil that followed, according to an authority on the history of financial crises.That finding, contained in a new paper by Carmen M. Reinhart, an economist at the University of Maryland, generated considerable debate during an annual policy symposium here, organized
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 30, 2010
Mary Shelley, the British author of Frankenstein, has had the 213th anniversary of her birth celebrated by a spooky Google Doodle.
The search engine’s multi-coloured logo has been replaced with an image of a darkened room, with a series of four ghostly portraits on the wall and a shadowy figure looming through an open door in place of the letters in Google’s name.
Hovering the mouse over the image brings up the words “Mary Shelley’s 213th birthday”, and clicking on the
Source: BBC News
August 29, 2010
US President Barack Obama has paid tribute to the people of New Orleans, five years to the day after Hurricane Katrina destroyed large parts of the city.
His administration would stand by them and continue rebuilding "until the job is done", Mr Obama said.
Katrina was a natural disaster but also a man-made one, he said, which saw a "shameful breakdown" of government.
More than 1,800 people died when Katrina hit the Gulf coast in 2005.
Source: BBC News
August 27, 2010
The dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago by at least two meteorite impacts, rather than a single strike, a new study suggests.
Previously, scientists had identified a huge impact crater in the Gulf of Mexico as the event that spelled doom for the dinosaurs.
Now evidence for a second impact in Ukraine has been uncovered.
This raises the possibility that the Earth may have been bombarded by a whole shower of meteorites.
The new findings
Source: BBC News
August 30, 2010
Hundreds of ancient sites have been discovered by aerial surveys, thanks to a dry start to the summer, English Heritage has said.
The surveys show marks made when crops growing over buried features develop at a different rate from those nearby.
The newly-discovered Roman and prehistoric settlements include a site near Bradford Abbas, Dorset.
The Roman camp was revealed in June after three sides became visible in rain-parched fields of barley.
T
Source: BBC
August 26, 2010
As the US prepares to withdraw its last combat troops from Iraq, international cultural experts are warning that the country is "bleeding antiquities" and that artefacts representing the world's cradle of civilisation are still in peril.
Precise figures are hard to establish because much of Iraq's art and antiques remains undocumented. In 2003 an estimated 15,000 artefacts were stolen from the Iraqi National Museum and only about a third have been returned.
B
Source: National Geographic News
August 27, 2010
Notes on the back of a 400-year-old letter have revealed a previously unknown language once spoken by indigenous peoples of northern Peru, an archaeologist says.
Penned by an unknown Spanish author and lost for four centuries, the battered piece of paper was pulled from the ruins of an ancient Spanish colonial church in 2008.
But a team of scientists and linguists has only recently revealed the importance of the words written on the flip side of the letter.
Source: Press Connects
August 26, 2010
The 18 gravesites in the Thomas Cemetery are now being excavated by archaeologists from Binghamton University.
The oldest grave in the cemetery along Route 12A, according to tombstone dates, is 1842; the most recent is dated 1917, Versaggi said.
The developer of a Price Chopper grocery next door to the cemetery engaged the services of BU's Public Archaeology and the Thomas J. Shea Funeral Home Inc. to oversee exhumation of the bodies and eventual reburial.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 27, 2010
An Australian school has apologised after a child dressed as Adolf Hitler won a costume parade.
The boy was judged best dressed among his class of nine and 10-years-olds by the principal and other teachers in a book week contest, with the costume which featured the swastika.
The unnamed Perth Catholic school sent a letter of apology to parents after a number of complaints that commending an outfit of the Nazi dictator was inappropriate.
Meanwhile a US Hi
Source: BBC
August 27, 2010
Police in Japan have arrested the daughter and granddaughter of a centenarian believed to be Tokyo's oldest man whose mummified remains were found last month.
The pair are suspected of fraudulently receiving the dead man's pension.
Records said he was 111 years old, it is thought he had probably been dead for 30 years....
