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: BBC
August 19, 2010
Previously unseen records shedding new light on life in Victorian workhouses have gone online for the first time.
They include thousands of untouched 19th Century letters, memos and reports between the Cardiff and Llanfyllin Poor Law Unions and the boards regulating workhouses in London.
The documents have been pieced together by volunteer groups, including several in Wales.
The 'Living the Poor Life' project was led by the National Archives.
E
Source: BBC
August 17, 2010
The Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin is showing paintings by the Ulster artist, Sir John Lavery, which include portraits of nearly all the senior British and Irish politicians from the period of Irish independence. BBC NI's Dublin correspondent Shane Harrison has been to have a look.
The Hugh Lane gallery, a centre for modern art in Dublin, is not far from the city's main tree-lined thoroughfare, O'Connell Street.
The gallery is now showing an exhibition that can only be des
Source: BBC
August 19, 2010
The 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain is being commemorated by a reading of one of Churchill's most famous speeches and a fly-past.
Winston Churchill's "so much owed by so many to so few" speech will be read at 1552 BST, precisely 70 years after he gave the address in Parliament.
The reading outside the Churchill War Rooms will be followed by a Spitfire and Hurricane fly-past over Whitehall.
The RAF defeat of the Luftwaffe is seen as a tur
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 20, 2010
US senators last night renewed their call for full independent probe into the decision to free the Lockerbie bomber.
Democratic Senators Robert Menendez, Frank Lautenberg, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand made their appeal in letters to Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond and Prime Minister David Cameron.
The Americans have alleged that Scottish authorities may have let Megrahi return to his native Libya because of pressure from energy giant BP, eager to safeguard
Source: Pew Research Center
August 19, 2010
A substantial and growing number of Americans say that Barack Obama is a Muslim, while the proportion saying he is a Christian has declined. More than a year and a half into his presidency, a plurality of the public says they do not know what religion Obama follows.
A new national survey by the Pew Research Center finds that nearly one-in-five Americans (18%) now say Obama is a Muslim, up from 11% in March 2009. Only about one-third of adults (34%) say Obama is a Christian, down sha
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 19, 2010
Libyan officials have said that the Lockerbie bomber is now expected to live for another two years with the help of treatment from regime's best doctors.
Col Mummar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, has decreed that Abedelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi, a former intelligence agent, must receive the same level of medical care as afforded to state leaders.
High level Libyan officials told The Daily Telegraph that Megrahi is expected to live for at least two years, despite his rel
Source: AP
August 19, 2010
The Egyptian antiquities department says a stolen Greek-era statue that was confiscated in Canada is on its way home.
Thursday's statement said the marble bust was seized by Canadian customs after it was illegally brought into the country.
The 5 inch (13 centimeter) tall figure will be handed over to the Egyptian embassy in Canada. There were no further details on the age and nature of the statue....
Source: CNN
August 17, 2010
With his head bowed and a barely detectable quiver in his voice, the baseball player known as the "Iron Horse" devastated the crowd at Yankee Stadium, not by hitting a home run, but by announcing that he was dying.
It was July 4, 1939, and Lou Gehrig, a first baseman for the New York Yankees, had reached the end of a storied career.
"Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got," said Gehrig, who during his career played 2,130
Source: CNN
August 18, 2010
Fossils from Australia show animal life on Earth began at least 650 million years ago, 70 million years earlier than previous estimates, Princeton University scientists report.
Princeton geosciences professor Adam Maloof and graduate student Catherine Rose came upon the fossils while researching a massive ice age, known as the “snowball effect,” that left much of the planet covered in ice 635 million years ago. Scientists had thought animal life could not have survived that ice age.
Source: Irish Examiner
August 19, 2010
THE Department of the Environment has launched an investigation into the complete destruction of two ancient ring-forts.
Senior archaeologists from its National Monuments section are liaising with gardaí in Co Cork as part of the probe.
It was launched following works on farmland in the village of Kilmurry near Macroom, Co Cork, on which the two recorded monuments were located.
Ring-forts are oval or circular fortified settlements or farmsteads that were built mo
Source: TampaBay.com
August 17, 2010
Wake up and good morning. You don't usually see a reference to Adolf Hitler in a blog about Florida business, so this is an unusual posting. It seems a Tampa company called World Holdings LLC that says it owns a "significant number" of $208 million in bonds sold to U.S. purchasers following World War I. The company was rebuffed when it sought repayment by the German government, so in a lawsuit originally filed in Miami, World Holdings seeks "hundreds of millions of dollars."
Source: AP
August 17, 2010
For 193 years the Ohio Clock has stood watch over the U.S. Senate, a subject of rumor, curiosity and misinformation.
Was it made in Ohio? Did senators stash whiskey inside it?
Now the elegant clock is making its first journey beyond the Capitol. That may not answer the questions, but it will give the clock a long-needed renovation, inside and out, Senate officials say.
The 11-foot-tall piece is a Capitol landmark. Countless press conferences are held there
Source: AP
August 16, 2010
A trial date has been set on a bid to block a Walmart Supercenter near an endangered Civil War battlefield in northern Virginia....
Source: Public Opinion Online
August 12, 2010
The U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee has approved a resolution that would revise the boundaries of the Gettysburg National Military Park.
New boundaries would include the Gettysburg Train Station and land along Plum Run in Cumberland Township.
The Department of Interior is to acquire publicly owned property within the area by buying from willing sellers only, if efforts to acquire that property without cost have been exhausted. The government cannot ex
Source: BBC News
August 18, 2010
A 4,000-year-old skeleton, known as the Queen of the Inch, is to be re-interred in the tiny island of Inchmarnock in the Firth of Clyde.
The grave was found by a farmer in the 1950s as he ploughed a field.
Preserved in an ancient cist, the remains included a necklace and dagger.
Despite being examined by archaeologists and reburied in the 1960s, the skeleton was recently exhumed and studied using modern research techniques.
Scientists have sinc
Source: Bucks Free Press
August 18, 2010
ARCHAEOLOGISTS investigating a mass burial of 97 infants were 'horrified' to find what they believe to be the skeleton of a dismembered child.
Chiltern Archaeologists suspect the site in Hambleden could have been a Roman brothel – where unwanted babies were systematically killed.
Dr Jill Eyers, who lives in Lane End, said the group has discovered cut marks on the bones of one of the babies.
She added: “These were knife marks and would represent a dismember
Source: Guardian (UK)
August 17, 2010
Excavations near the antique city of Vindunum (now Le Mans) have revealed a vast religious site dating from the first to the third centuries AD with remarkably well-preserved offerings.
Sometimes archaeology requires imagination. And you need it to conjure up the vast complex of temples that stood nearly 2,000 years ago on this flat two-hectare strip of land, in what is now Neuville-sur-Sarthe, 4km to the north of Le Mans.
"I have been an archaeologist for 30 years
Source: Yahoo News
August 19, 2010
MOSCOW – Russia remembered two unlikely national heroes Thursday — a pair of skinny street mutts who moved the Soviet Union into the lead of the space race when they became the first living creatures to circle the Earth and come back alive.
The Aug. 19, 1960 mission by Belka and Strelka was a key step in preparations for the flight of Yuri Gagarin, who became the first human in space about a year later.
It showcased the Soviet lead in space exploration and turned the tw
Source: NYT
August 18, 2010
[Charles A. Stevenson, a lecturer at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, is the author of “Warriors and Politicians: U.S. Civil-Military Relations Under Stress.”]
EARLIER this month the White House recommended that the Senate rehabilitate John D. Lavelle, an Air Force general who in 1972 was removed from his command in Vietnam and demoted to major general after he ordered unauthorized air strikes and created a system to falsely report them.
Source: NPR
August 18, 2010
They call it the mystery ship: a wooden vessel that may have sailed the Hudson River and the East Coast, transporting goods between the flourishing Colonies. Its remains were found last month in the ruins of the World Trade Center in New York City. They've since been moved to a science lab in Maryland, where each day brings new discoveries.
The first thing that hits you when you lean toward the enormous tanks filled with water, where scientists use small brushes to clean the timbers
