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 News
August 12, 2010
Scientists have found Arctic rocks that may preserve the earliest remnants of Earth.
Over billions of years, much of the material that made up the early Earth was modified by processes such as melting and mixing.
But the Arctic rocks seem to contain chemical signatures that date from just after the Earth's violent origin.
If confirmed, the discovery challenges established theories about the formation of our planet.
The results of the study are
Source: AP
August 10, 2010
Six murals created for a Works Progress Administration project in the 1930s and 1940s at the University of Rhode Island and thought lost for decades have been rediscovered.
The murals, painted by artist Gino Conti of Providence, were found last month during a $1.5 million renovation of Edwards Hall funded by federal stimulus money. The school announced the find yesterday.
The colorful oil-on-canvas paintings were hung in the entryway of Edwards Hall, an auditorium. Ron
Source: The Province
August 11, 2010
To right historic wrongs done to the Chinese community, the federal government has given the University of B.C. $900,000 to help run a Chinese-Canadian history website.
Alice Wong, Parliamentary Secretary for Multiculturalism, made the announcement Monday at the University's library.
Wong said the government has apologized on behalf of all Canadians for the so-called "head tax" the country charged Chinese immigrants to enter Canada between 1885 and 192
Source: San Antonio Current
August 11, 2010
South Texas veterans have a new site to visit on August 14, the day that ended the War in the Pacific in 1945, bringing World War II to a close: a Texas Historical Commission Marker in Three Rivers commemorating the Rice Funeral Home as the site of the Felix Longoria incident.
In late 1944, Three Rivers’ resident Felix Longoria was drafted into the U.S. Army....Private Longoria, killed by an enemy sniper, was posthumously awarded a Bronze Service Star, a Purple Heart, a Good Conduct
Source: WaPo
August 11, 2010
In February 2005, Monika Stoy and her husband, Tim, sent letters to the mayors of more than 250 cities in the south of France, towns that ranged from the Mediterranean playground of St. Tropez to the tiny village of Urschenheim, in Alsace. As varied as the towns were, they had one thing in common: All had been liberated in the late summer and early fall of 1944 by members of the 3rd Infantry, the same division that the Stoys, both U.S. Army officers, were part of.
The letters weren'
Source: NYT
August 10, 2010
How thrilling the ride off the back of a jet and down that inflatable emergency slide must have been for Steven Slater, flight attendant — cold beer in his hand, wind in his hair, the seat of his JetBlue uniform gliding merrily toward the runway. Woo-hoo!
And yet, with his swift arrest at home later Monday, the whole caper has nothing on the infamous take-this-job-and-shove-it run of one William Cimillo. A Bronx bus driver fed up with the daily annoyances and nonsense of it all, Mr.
Source: NYT
August 10, 2010
COLMA, Calif. — Sixty-six years after riding a B-24J Liberator on a bombing mission over Berlin, John P. Bonnassiolle is finally home.
The plane carrying Sergeant Bonnassiolle, age 20, and nine other crewmen in April 1944 never returned, but on Tuesday his remains were buried in the family’s cemetery plot.
“We have closure,” said Andrew Kelley, 88, who, like his younger brother John, flew bombers in the war.
The remains of more than 72,000 Americans are sti
Source: NYT
August 11, 2010
As if things in Russia were not looking sufficiently apocalyptic already, with 100-degree temperatures and noxious fumes rolling in from burning peat bogs and forests, there is growing alarm here that fires in regions coated with fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster 24 years ago could now be emitting plumes of radioactive smoke.
Several fires have been documented in the contaminated areas of western Russia, including three heavily irradiated sites in the Bryansk region, the e
Source: NYT
August 10, 2010
TOKYO — Prime Minister Naoto Kan of Japan offered a renewed apology to South Korea on Tuesday for Japan’s brutal colonial rule, as part of a statement marking the 100th anniversary of his nation’s annexation of the Korean Peninsula in 1910.
Enlarge This Image
Everett Kennedy Brown/European Pressphoto Agency
Prime Minister Naoto Kan of Japan gave a policy speech in Tokyo after releasing a statement apologizing to South Korea for the damage caused by Japan’s colonial rul
Source: NYT
August 11, 2010
BERLIN — For 20 years, a graffiti-covered ruin of a former department store here has housed studios and workshops for artists who occupied it and saved it from demolition shortly after the Berlin Wall fell.
The building, known as Tacheles, is now protected as a historic site. The artists, meanwhile, without a lease for nearly two years, face eviction to make way for a lavish new development.
For Berlin, more is at stake than the age-old gentrification dilemma. The threa
Source: AP
August 10, 2010
A fire swept through a barrack at the former Nazi death camp of Majdanek, destroying more than half the building and possibly 10,000 shoes of Holocaust victims, officials said Tuesday.
The Majdanek museum said the fire in the barrack housing a camp kitchen was discovered shortly before midnight on Monday by a guard making his rounds. The cause of the fire is not yet known and authorities are investigating.
In Israel, the director of the Yad Vashem museum, Avner Shalev e
Source: CNet News
August 11, 2010
The National Cryptologic Museum holds a fantastic history of code and code-breaking machines, which we've striven to catch on film.
There's no doubt that the star of the museum is the Enigma, the German device used by the Nazis in World War II to encrypt their messages and which the Allies finally broke.
A Dutchman, Hugo A. Koch, conceived the idea of the Enigma in 1919. The first commercial model was produced in 1923.
"Impressed by Enigma's security,
Source: Bloomberg
August 10, 2010
Germany must face a lawsuit over bonds that defaulted under Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, a U.S. appeals court ruled, saying the nation isn’t immune from the claims and that American courts have jurisdiction to decide whether the bonds are enforceable.
World Holdings LLC, based in Tampa, Florida, claimed it owns a “significant number” of $208 million in bonds sold to U.S. purchasers following World War I and has been rebuffed when it sought repayment by the German government. The firm
Source: BBC News
August 11, 2010
A US museum is trying to raise funds to restore five dresses worn by Vivien Leigh in the 1939 Oscar-winning film Gone With The Wind.
The Harry Ransom Center in Texas has launched an appeal to raise $30,000 (£19,000) to exhibit the gowns to mark the movie's 75th anniversary in 2014.
"The costumes are in fragile condition and cannot currently be exhibited," the centre said in a statement.
It also hopes to loan the dresses to other museums around the
Source: BBC News
August 11, 2010
A linguistic mystery has arisen surrounding symbol-inscribed stones in Scotland that predate the formation of the country itself.
The stones are believed to have been carved by members of an ancient people known as the Picts, who thrived in what is now Scotland from the 4th to the 9th Centuries.
These symbols, researchers say, are probably "words" rather than images.
But their conclusions have raised criticism from some linguists.
The
Source: BBC News
August 11, 2010
The bodies of more than 50 people have been found in a lake by investigators searching for victims of the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
The discovery was made on the shores of Lake Perucac on the border between Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia.
It is part of an ongoing investigation by Bosnia's International Commission for Missing Persons.
Most of the bodies are believed to date from a massacre of Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) in the town of Visegrad.
More th
Source: BBC News
August 11, 2010
Russia is mounting extra patrols to fight wildfires in a region hit by nuclear fallout from Chernobyl, amid fears that radiation could spread.
Crews put out several fires in Bryansk, the emergencies ministry said, amid concern that wind or fire could whip up radioactive particles in the soil.
Officials say they are assessing the danger and there is no cause for panic.
Fires have swept western Russia for a week, though officials say many are now under contro
Source: BBC News
August 11, 2010
A commission set up to examine the last years of Sri Lanka's civil war has held its first sitting amid international claims that it lacks credibility.
Human rights groups say government troops as well as the defeated Tamil Tiger rebels may have committed war crimes before the war ended last year.
But they believe the panel, appointed by the Sri Lankan government, will fail to fully investigate their accusations.
Sri Lankan officials have dismissed calls for
Source: BBC
August 11, 2010
It may not come as a huge surprise that communist and anti-capitalist philosopher Karl Marx died a poor man.
But why did the German, who had seven children by his wife and died in north London, leave his meagre £250 (£23,000 today) to his youngest daughter Eleanor?
New online records are offering tantalising insights into the financial affairs of famous figures from the 19th and 20th Centuries.
Official summaries, or indexes, of more than six million wills
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
August 11, 2010
Generations of schoolboys searched through their change in the vain hope of finding one.
At last, a 1933 penny bearing the head of King George V has surfaced - on the eBay internet auction site.
Experts have always worked on the assumption that only seven such coins were minted and, if genuine, this one would be worth at least £80,000.
By yesterday, bidding had reached a little over £1,100 (plus £4.95 postage) while the owner, listed as Suzanne X, faile
