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: Lynchburg News & Advance
May 21, 2010
The Museum of the Confederacy has raised $6 million of a needed $7.5 million in funding for a satellite location in Appomattox.
“We’re getting really close,” said Sam Craghead, a public relations specialist for the museum. “The groundbreaking is in the foreseeable future.”
Most of the funding has come from private individuals and grants. Craghead said that after a public fundraising effort begins soon, construction could start this year.
The museum’s expect
Source: KITV.com (HI)
May 22, 2010
The military kept the West Loch disaster of 1944 top secret for 16 years. For the first time Friday, the military publicly honored the scores of servicemen who were killed in the explosions.
Historians said servicemen were loading ships with munitions and supplies, preparing for an invasion on the Japanese-controlled Mariana Islands. Then the unthinkable happened.
“An explosion ripped through one of the ships. The explosions obliterated the vessel and encapsulated the r
Source: Inside Higher Ed
May 24, 2010
Months ago, Sandra Soto was asked by her dean to be the faculty speaker at the graduation convocation last week for the University of Arizona's College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Soto didn't know it at the time, but her commencement speech would closely follow the adoption of two new Arizona laws. One gives the police more authority to question anyone they believe may be in the United States illegally -- powers that critics say will lead to widespread ethnic profiling. The other bars eth
Source: AP
May 23, 2010
Her children are 21 and 16 years old, but they still cry through the night, tossing and turning in pain, sucking their thumbs for comfort.
Tran Thi Gai, who rarely gets any sleep herself, sings them a mournful lullaby. "Can you feel my love for you? Can you feel my sorrow for you? Please don't cry."
Gai's children — both with twisted limbs and confined to wheelchairs — were born in a village that was drenched with Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. She belie
Source: Science Daily
May 18, 2010
Azendohsaurus just shed its dinosaur affiliation. A careful new analysis of A. madagaskarensis -- this time based on the entire skull rather than on just teeth and jaws -- aligns this 230-million-year-old animal with a different and very early branch on the reptile evolutionary tree. Many aspects of Azendohsaurus are far more primitive than previously assumed, which in turn means that its plant-eating adaptations, similar to those found some early dinosaurs, were developed independently.
Source: Science Daily
May 17, 2010
One way that geologists try to decipher how cells functioned as far back as 3 billion years is by studying modern microbial mats, or gooey layers of nutrient-exchanging bacteria that grow mostly on moist surfaces and collect dirt and minerals that crystallize over time. Eventually, the bacteria turn to stone just beneath the crystallized material, thereby recording their history within the crystalline skeletons. Known as stromatolites, the layered rock formations are considered to be the oldest
Source: Sky News
May 23, 2010
The remains of one of the oldest members of the English royal family are thought to have been found in a cathedral in Germany.
They belong to Eadgyth, grand-daughter of Alfred the Great, who was born in 910 and died in 946 at the age of 36.
Eadgyth was also the sister of King Athelstan and therefore an important pawn in the politics games of the time.
She was married off strategically to Otto I, the Holy Roman Emperor in 929 with whom she lived in Saxony an
Source: BBC
May 23, 2010
A Scottish businessman has donated £1m to help fund the refurbishment of the National Museum of Scotland.
Former nuclear physicist Dr Walter Scott's donation to the museum Edinburgh's Chambers Street brings the total funds raised to more than £44m.
Another £2m is needed for the revamp, which will see the creation of 16 new galleries and education facilities.
Dr Scott's donation will fund the Discoveries gallery, which will be at the heart of the refurbis
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 23, 2010
The Swedish 'Treskilling Yellow' retained its title as the world's most expensive stamp when it change hands a private sale in Geneva.
The one-of-a-kind 1855 misprint was sold to a group of buyers who asked that their identities and the winning bid be kept confidential, said auctioneer David Feldman.
He declined to disclose whether the sale matched the record it previously set in 1996 of £1.59 million, but admitted it was "still worth more than any other single sta
Source: Fox News
May 23, 2010
Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul is feeling what it is like to be Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice presidential candidate said Sunday, comparing the media's preoccupation with Paul's recent statements about the 1964 Civil Rights Act to her own treatment in the press.
Palin said that Paul is seeing firsthand how "gotcha" politics work after the libertarian-leaning Republican spent days on defense spelling out his support for the Civil Rights Act and the government
Source: AP
May 23, 2010
Archeologists have unearthed 57 ancient Egyptian tombs, most of which hold an ornately painted wooden sarcophagus with a mummy inside, Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities said Sunday.
The oldest tombs date back to around 2750 B.C. during the period of Egypt's first and second dynasties, the council said in a statement. Twelve of the tombs belong the 18th dynasty which ruled Egypt during the second millennium B.C.
The discovery throws new light on Egypt's ancient reli
Source: CNN
May 21, 2010
Funny and flip. Confident at times, nervous at others. An earnest student and a meticulous lawyer. Newly released documents of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's not-so-distant past reveal a determined, often blunt-speaking woman with an occasionally silly side.
The examination of thousands of pages of documents from Kagan's years in college and from her various professional posts in academia and government are part of a ritual every high court nominee endures, as every aspect of t
Source: The Independent
May 21, 2010
A team of archaeologists who uncovered a 1,400 year old pyramid in Peru say that the finding is particularly unusual. The flat-topped pyramid, which was built by the Moche culture, was used for the living rather than just for the dead, and contains a wealth of artefacts, murals and human remains.
The pyramid was discovered at Huaca Colorada, which translates as ‘coloured hill’. Excavation leader Professor Edward Swenson, of the University of Toronto, describes how he suspected that
Source: BBC
May 21, 2010
A skeleton discovered at Stirling Castle may have been an English knight who died in the 14th Century.
Sir John de Stricheley died in 1341, when the English held the castle.
An investigation into the skeleton by forensic anthropologist Professor Sue Black and her team from the University of Dundee was featured on BBC Two's History Cold Case series on Thursday.
The battle-scared knight probably died from an arrow wound inflicted by the Scots.
Source: BBC
May 21, 2010
A cartoonist whose work inspired an internet campaign inviting people to draw images of the Prophet Muhammad has apologised for her role in the row.
Writing on her blog, Molly Norris said her satirical cartoon was "hijacked" and that the campaign was "offensive to Muslims".
Other people set up a page on the social networking site Facebook backing an Everybody Draw Muhammad Day.
It sparked outrage in Pakistan, where a court ordered Fac
Source: BBC
May 21, 2010
French police are hunting the burglar or burglars who made off with paintings by Picasso, Matisse and other great artists from a Paris museum.
Officials have admitted the Museum of Modern Art's alarm system had not been fully functioning for several weeks.
One masked intruder was spotted by security cameras, climbing into the museum through a broken side window, having cut through a gate padlock.
The paintings are estimated to be worth just under 100m eu
Source: BBC
May 21, 2010
Hundreds of people have protested in Cannes against a film about Algeria's struggle for independence against France.
The film, Hors la Loi by French-Algerian director Rachid Bouchareb, opens at Cannes on Friday.
The demonstrators, who included right-wing politicians and French veterans, claim it is biased against France.
Algeria gained independence from France after a brutal eight-year war that ended in 1962.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 21, 2010
A cross honouring America's war dead that was stolen from a federal park in the Mojave Desert has been mysteriously replaced or returned.
A maintenance worker spotted the cross on Sunrise Rock, the same place a 7-foot (2.13-meter) metal cross had stood for decades, said Linda Slater, spokeswoman for the Mojave National Preserve.
The cross apparently was put up during the night, but it was unclear whether it was the original or a replica, Slater said.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 21, 2010
A series of security blunders allowed a lone masked raider to carry out the £100 million "biggest art theft in history" at a Paris art gallery in just 15 minutes.
Yesterday it was disclosed that the multi-million pound alarm system at the Museum of Modern Art had been broken for three months.
The guards were alleged to have been "dozing" while on duty and the outside CCTV cameras were so badly positioned they only covered the roof.
The
Source: AP
May 21, 2010
When presidential hopeful Victoire Ingabire, a Hutu, returned to Rwanda after a long absence she immediately visited a memorial to Tutsis killed in the 1994 genocide and asked why Hutus who also died weren't remembered. She then told Hutu prisoners she would get them out of chains.
For these actions, the 41-year-old Ingabire was arrested, charged with genocide ideology and could be sentenced to more than two decades in prison if convicted.
It's been 16 years since 800,0
