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)
May 24, 2010
Scientists have developed a system that could shed light on whether dinosaurs were cold or warm-blooded.
California Institute of Technology (Caltech) researchers unveiled what they said was the first method for direct measurement of the body temperatures of large extinct vertebrates using analyses of isotopes in animals' bones, teeth, and eggshells.
The findings were published in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Source: AP
May 25, 2010
A Swedish university has invited an artist who angered Muslims by caricaturing the Prophet Muhammad to finish a lecture that was disrupted by violent protests.
Officials say Lars Vilks has agreed to return to Uppsala University in the fall to complete his lecture about the limits of freedom of expression in art.
Angry protesters interrupted the lecture May 11 when Vilks showed a film about Islam and homosexuality.
Source: AP
May 25, 2010
The son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi says the Lockerbie bomber released from a British prison on compassionate grounds is alive but very sick.
Saif al-Islam Gadhafi said following a speech in London on Tuesday that Abdel Baset al-Megrahi has "very serious health troubles."
Al-Megrahi, who has prostate cancer, is the only man convicted in the 1988 bombing of the Pan Am flight over Scotland, which killed 270 people. He was freed from a Scottish prison in Aug
Source: AP
May 25, 2010
As a young lawyer working for Justice Thurgood Marshall, Elena Kagan repeatedly expressed her concern that a conservative Supreme Court was looking for ways to cut back on the rights of women, criminal defendants and prisoners.
Documents from Kagan's year with Marshall show a law clerk who was frequently assessing the politics of the institution. Her memos to the justice are on file in Marshall's papers at the Library of Congress.
Kagan's time with Marshall, the groundb
Source: CNN
May 24, 2010
Christopher "Dudus" Coke, who controls the impoverished West Kingston enclaves now blockaded by gang members, is likened by experts to both Robin Hood and Pablo Escobar.
But comparisons to the hero of Sherwood Forest and the one-time Colombian kingpin are not mutually exclusive.
Coke, 41, rules via a combination of violence, corruption and philanthropy, experts say, and the unrest in the Jamaican capital this week is a result of competing interests: those who
Source: Reuters
May 25, 2010
A plan to attack Hitler's bunker in 1943 and a 1944 plot involving an assassin who had gained the trust of the Nazi leadership were both cancelled on Stalin's orders, General Anatoly Kulikov told a historical conference in Moscow.
"A plan to assassinate Hitler in his bunker was developed, but Stalin suddenly cancelled it in 1943 over fears that after Hitler's death his associates would conclude a separate peace treaty with Britain and the United States," Russia's RIA news
Source: AFP
May 19, 2010
A US judge on Tuesday ordered the deportation of former Nazi concentration camp guard Anton Geiser to Austria.
Geiser, 85, immigrated from Austria to the United States in 1956 and became a naturalized US citizen six years later, according to a statement from the Justice Department.
"As a Nazi concentration camp guard during World War II, Anton Geiser must be held to account for his role in the persecution of countless men, women and children," Assistant Attorn
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
May 24, 2010
The last time Raymond Atkinson was here, he was nearly killed by a German dive-bomber while his unit almost finished off a certain Erwin Rommel and caused the enemy such jitters that they unnerved Hitler himself.
In the course of just one day, Raymond and his comrades were involved in a bloody, chaotic battle which is often overlooked because of the enormity of the event which followed it - Dunkirk.
But yesterday, the 94-year- old great-grandfather from Dewsbury, Yorksh
Source: NYT
May 25, 2010
The United States on Tuesday will unveil the newly restored Hôtel de Talleyrand, the historic Parisian palace on the Place de la Concorde that once served as the headquarters of the Marshall Plan, the postwar American reconstruction plan for Western Europe.
The restoration took nine years and cost about $5 million, financed by more than 100 donors from both sides of the Atlantic and absorbing the efforts of about 150 French artisans.
In 1947 the building’s owners, the R
Source: ANA (Greece)
May 25, 2010
A 24-year-old deacon of the Sidirokastro Metropolis has been arrested by Thessaloniki police for attempting to sell to a 43-year-old Swiss collector items he claimed were relics of Saints, police announced on Monday.
The deacon was arrested on Saturday after the Swiss collector was found at Thessaloniki's Macedonia airport with human bones in his luggage as he was preparing to fly to Germany.
A police investigation turned up approximately 200 bones in a silver r
Source: BBC News
May 24, 2010
A Welsh academic has revealed how he discovered a Middle East settlement buried under sand for about 125 years.
Dr Andrew Petersen first became aware of a possible settlement after finding masonry and pottery at Ras Al-Sharig in Qatar.
He thought something might be there after reading sources naming a town called Rubayqa.
"But we certainly weren't prepared for the scale of the find," said the expert from the University of Wales, Lampeter.
Source: BBC News
May 25, 2010
Authorities in Greece have arrested a Swiss man and a Greek Orthodox deacon suspected of trafficking hundreds of bones to be sold as religious relics.
The Swiss man was detained at Thessaloniki airport when 197 bones and three skulls were found in his luggage.
He said he had received them from the deacon, who was found to be holding hundreds more bones when he was held north-east of Thessaloniki.
The bones were apparently destined for a Russian Orthodox pri
Source: BBC News
May 25, 2010
The family of the fugitive ex-Bosnian Serb army chief, Ratko Mladic, is seeking to have him declared officially dead, according to Serbian media.
If approved, the declaration would allow Mladic's wife to collect a state pension and sell his property.
Mladic is wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on war crimes charges in connection with the 1992-95 Bosnia war.
Mladic - on the run since 1995 - faces charges including genoci
Source: BBC News
May 25, 2010
The house made famous by the 1970s Amityville Horror film has gone on sale in Long Island, New York, with a price tag of $1.15m (£800,000).
The five-bedroom house at 108 Ocean Avenue, Amityville, gained notoriety through the film based on the story of the Lutz family, who moved in in 1975.
They say they soon discovered that the house was haunted.
Six members of the same family had been shot and killed as they slept in the house several months earlier.
Source: BBC News
May 25, 2010
The Pac-Man game Google put on its home page gobbled up almost five million hours of work time, suggests a study.
The playable version of the classic video game was put on Google's front page on 21 May to celebrate 30 years since the launch of Pac-Man in Japan.
The search giant reworked the game so the layout was arranged around letters forming its name.
The Pac-Man game proved so popular that Google has now made it permanently available on its own page.
Source: FOX News
May 24, 2010
Simkins Residence Hall is the last all-male dormitory at the University of Texas. Tucked into a quiet corner of campus along Waller Creek, it was the first men's dorm with air conditioning.
It is notable for another reason as well: Simkins is named for a UT law professor who was a leader of the Ku Klux Klan.
William Stewart Simkins, who taught at the School of Law for 30 years until his death in 1929, organized the Klan in Florida after the Civil War along with his brot
Source: Inside Higher Ed
May 25, 2010
What if key elements of science policy are based on patterns of discovery that no longer exist?
That's the question behind a paper (abstract available here) released Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The paper -- by Benjamin Jones, associate professor of management at Northwestern University -- argues that science has changed in key ways. Specifically, it argues that the age at which researchers are able to make breakthroughs has advanced, and that scientists are p
Source: Salon.com
May 24, 2010
The Israeli president on Monday categorically denied a report that he offered nuclear warheads to South Africa in 1975, when he was defense minister.
The report published Sunday by British newspaper The Guardian is based on an American academic's research and claims to cite secret minutes of Shimon Peres' meeting with senior South African officials discussing the issue.
Peres said Israel has never negotiated the transfer of nuclear weapons to South Africa.
Source: CBS Atlanta
May 24, 2010
Catherine Ariemma teaches U.S history at Lumpkin County High School. She allowed students to wear Ku Klux Klan outfits for a final school project.
"I don't apologize for the project. I do apologize that someone felt threatened. I teach about United States history. I teach about the good, the bad, and the ugly," said Ariemma.
Ariemma was in tears she she talked about the incident upsetting other students.
Lumpkin County High School senior Cody Rid
Source: NYT
May 24, 2010
Seeking to demonstrate improved relations between the world’s two main Orthodox Christian churches, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople has begun a 10-day visit to Russia, praising the country’s loyalty to its Byzantine heritage.
“You not only preserved, but multiplied your amazing culture, at the center of which is the Christian faith,” he told a gathering of young people behind St. Basil’s Cathedral near Red Square on Monday.
Although he also recalled
