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: WaPo
August 17, 2010
Social activists and civil rights leaders, among them the Rev. Al Sharpton, are planning marches and demonstrations -- including the unveiling of a nearly four-story-tall original sculpture on the Mall -- on Aug. 28 to coincide with a rally organized by Fox News personality Glenn Beck.
Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally, with former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin among the scheduled speakers, will take place on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, 47 years to the day a
Source: Religion News Service
August 17, 2010
The scenario might have seemed unlikely: prominent Muslims and Jews from the United States, trekking across the Atlantic in mournful, spiritual solidarity to visit two Nazi concentration camps. Together.
The trip to Dachau and Auschwitz was meant to combat the rise in Holocaust denial that has popped up in various Muslim and non-Muslim circles around the world--and online--in recent years.
"The best way to convince someone about the truth of something is to let the
Source: LA Times
August 20, 2010
Who was Jean M. Barrie, the woman whose steamer trunk stored for decades in the basement of a Los Angeles apartment building contained the mummified remains of two babies?
That's the question investigators were mulling Thursday, two days after the babies — wrapped in newspapers from the 1930s — were discovered when the basement was being cleared out. As the county coroner began an autopsy on the bodies Thursday, Los Angeles Police Department detectives were left to sift through a cr
Source: Ria Novosti (RU)
August 18, 2010
Georges Freche, a historian who was mayor of the provincial French city for 27 years until 2004, has commissioned French sculptor Francois Cacheux to produce the works, which weigh from 850 to 1,000 kilograms and cost around 200,000 euros ($260,000).
The first five are well on the way to being installed on a square in the west of Montpellier. French socialist Jean Jaures, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, French leader Charles de Gaulle and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt
Source: Montreal Gazette
August 19, 2010
A debate still smoulders over one of the most ambitious, and disastrous, military endeavours in Canadian history that took place here 68 years ago today.
The Dieppe raid, to be marked here by Canadian and local French officials and some veterans with a series of wreath-laying events and an outdoor mass, is still viewed by some as a useless waste of lives.
But Antony Beevor, considered by some the most prominent military historian in the world, supports the argument that
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
August 20, 2010
Under the fire of Nazi guns and wading through a sea turning crimson with the blood of fallen colleagues, Bill Millin struggled towards the Normandy sands.
Waist deep in water, he led the commandos of the 1st Special Service Brigade on to the beach as they fought to their deaths on the most famous day of World War II.
Amid the clatter of battle and dreadful cries of the injured, Millin only just caught the five words that turned him into a hero. 'Give us "Highland Laddi
Source: WaPo
August 19, 2010
Okay, liberty lovers -- time for your summer-slowdown pop quiz:
True or false? The following sentence appears in the U.S. Constitution:
"No freeman shall be taken, imprisoned . . . or in any other way destroyed . . . except by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to none will we deny or delay, right or justice."
...False.
In 1215, scribes for King John of England wrote that declaration,
Source: NYT
August 19, 2010
The Moon is shrinking.
In making the announcement, scientists were quick to add that the Moon has not shrunk by much, that the shrinking may have occurred over a billion years, and that the Moon will not shrink out of view in the future.
“The kind of radius change and shrinking we’re describing here is so small that you would never notice it,” said Thomas R. Watters of the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, during
Source: NYT
August 14, 2010
...If there were a formula for becoming a folk hero — a secret recipe handed down from Robin Hood’s cap designer, and adapted for the social networking era — then Steven Slater, formerly an active employee of JetBlue Airlines, may as well have discovered it....
Cultural historians generally divide folk heroes loosely into several categories. One is reserved for acts of spectacular courage and skill, and includes Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III, who landed a US Airways jet on the H
Source: BBC News
August 18, 2010
The American Ballet Theatre company is to perform in Cuba later this year for the first time in 50 years.
Barack Obama's administration has given the troupe permission to dance at the Havana International Ballet Festival at the Karl Marx Theatre.
Its last Cuban performance was at the inaugural event in 1960.
While the general travel ban on US tourists remains, it is the latest sign of an easing of relations between the two former Cold War adversaries.
Source: BBC News
August 20, 2010
Scientists working in Chernobyl have found a way to predict which species there are likely to be most severely damaged by radioactive contamination.
The secret to a species' vulnerability, they say, lies in its DNA.
This discovery could reveal which species are most likely to decline or even become extinct in response to other types of environmental stress.
The researchers published their findings in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology.
Profess
Source: BBC News
August 20, 2010
The UK government has urged Libya not to celebrate the first anniversary of the release of the Lockerbie bomber.
Scottish ministers released Abdelbasset Ali al-Megrahi, who has cancer, citing medical advice that three months was a "reasonable" life expectancy estimate.
He got a hero's welcome in Tripoli and the Foreign Office said similar scenes would be deeply insensitive to families of the 270 people killed in 1988.
The Scottish government said
Source: Politico
August 19, 2010
The recent call by Senate Republicans to hold hearings on revising the 14th Amendment seemed to introduce a new wrinkle in the polarizing debate over illegal immigration.
Or did it?
In the mid-1990s, House Judiciary Committee panels held two separate hearings on birthright citizenship, the policy protected under the 14th Amendment that automatically grants citizenship to people born in the United States.
What's striking is that the hearings on GOP-sponsored
Source: Reuters
August 19, 2010
Archeologists have uncovered more than 500-year-old remains of about 50 Aztec children, some of them stuffed into ceramic jars for burial, during excavations for a new subway line in Mexico City.
The team from Mexico's National Institute for Anthropology and History also found the foundations of Aztec homes, hundreds of small figurines, and pots and plates dating from 1100 to 1500 AD, on the eve of the Spanish conquest, along the 15-mile (24-km) subway line, due to open in 2012 in s
Source: The Northern Echo
August 19, 2010
UNITED in death, they have lain together under the earth undisturbed for more than 350 years, victims of the Civil War that tore England apart.
Now, centuries after they were buried and forgotten, their story has finally come to light – and given a new insight into the months-long siege of York in 1644.
For, although they were once part of Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentary army, they did not die in battle, but instead succumbed to disease that was rife among the besieging
Source: Daily News & Analysis
August 19, 2010
Archaeologists have discovered a large group of ancient stone statues at the worship site of Guizai Mountain near Hunan province.
According to People's Daily Online, these statues are a lot more in number and a lot older than the Qin Terracotta Warriors found in the depths of the Nanling Mountains located in Dao County of Yongzhou City.
Tang Zhongyong, director of the Dao County Administrative Office, said that the Guizai Mountain site is a large ancient worship site. T
Source: Daily Press
August 19, 2010
Two of the nation's foremost underwater archaeologists began work in the river off Yorktown Beach Wednesday morning, surveying the previously undetected wreck of a ship that may have been scuttled by the British during the Revolution.
Brought in by the Department of Historic Resources' Threatened Sites Program, the team includes Williamsburg-based John D. Broadwater — who recovered the historic turret of the USS Monitor in 2002 — and North Carolina-based Gordon Watts — who discovere
Source: USA Today
August 19, 2010
When the 9/11 museum opens in two years, its most poignant items will include two $2 bills, some cellphone bills, a 1993 "Welcome Back to the World Trade Center" mug and the contents of a woman's pocketbook.
All have been donated to the museum, which is asking families of those killed in the 2001 attacks for photos, personal items or mementos — things to show posterity that at the start of the 21st century there were people with achievements, passions and dreams that terro
Source: LA Times
August 19, 2010
Central Park is almost synonymous with New York. But historians have long wondered whether the city's signature park was originally conceived the way it looks today. Were the ornate colorful tiles underneath the Bethesda Terrace a vision of the original designers? What about elegant black lamps that dot the park?
Now historians might finally have some clues about the park's design.
Illustrations for features of Central Park and other public places in New York have resu
Source: BBC
August 18, 2010
A funeral has been held for a Palestinian said to have been involved in the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre in which 11 Israeli athletes died.
The ceremony for Amin al-Hindi was held in Ramallah, with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and senior Palestinian leaders present. He was buried in Gaza.
Mr Hindi, who died aged 70 in Jordan on Tuesday, led the General Intelligence Service under the late Yasser Arafat.
In the 1970s, he was a security officer in the
