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: AP
February 12, 2008
Conspiracy theorists take note: The myths surrounding one of America's oldest and most enduring national symbols are about to be debunked ... if you believe the government, that is.
The keepers of the Great Seal of the United States, the familiar emblem on the back of the $1 bill, want you to know what it is not. It is not a sign that Freemasons run the country, it has nothing to do with the occult, and it does not contain clues to a fabulous hidden treasure....
On Tues
Source: AFP
February 11, 2008
Immigration will drive the population of the United States sharply upward between now and 2050, and will push whites into a minority, projections by the Pew Research Center showed Monday.
"If current trends continue, the population of the United States will rise to 438 million in 2050, from 296 million in 2005," an increase of nearly 50 percent, the study by the Washington-based think-tank said.
More than 80 percent of the increase will be due to immigrants ar
Source: Independent (UK)
February 11, 2008
He was Pol Pot's trusted henchman, the brilliant mathematician who calmly fashioned an efficient apparatus of torture and death out of a Phnom Penh high school and who oversaw, during the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror, the interrogation and cudgelling to death of some 17,000 Cambodians.
In the West he has been called "Cambodia's Heinrich Himmler"; since Pol Pot himself and his lieutenant Ta Mok cheated justice by dying, he is the most vivid symbol of the Khmer Rouge left a
Source: BBC
February 11, 2008
The government of Nepal says that the closest airport to Mount Everest has been renamed to honour the first two men known to have climbed the mountain.
The minister of culture and tourism told the BBC that the cabinet had decided that Lukla airstrip will now be known as Tenzing Hillary Airport.
It commemorates the Nepalese Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay and the New Zealander, Sir Edmund Hillary.
They climbed the peak in 1953. Sir Edmund died last month in New Zeala
Source: LAT
February 11, 2008
Bouncing down an empty country road, past browning cotton fields lined with signs advertising church services and cheap guns, historian John A. Lupton hunches over a minivan's steering wheel and ignores his aching back.
He has been traveling for six days -- covering five states and more than 1,400 miles -- in a mentally exhilarating and physically exhausting pursuit of anything handwritten by Abraham Lincoln, as well as documents addressed to him: a frayed envelope the president ad
Source: AFP
February 1, 2008
HANOI (AFP) — Vietnam on Friday marked 40 years since the Tet Offensive with colourful military parades of its veterans and re-enactments of the surprise wave of urban assaults that marked a turning point in the war.
Communist Party leaders and military chiefs watched as former guerrillas and regular soldiers filed past Ho Chi Minh City's Reunification Palace, formerly the presidential palace of the US-backed Saigon regime ousted in 1975.
Youths in black Viet Cong pajamas with mode
Source: http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com
February 1, 2008
Memories of the epic 26-day-and-night battle for the Hue Citadel 40 years ago that helped convince the world that the American occupation of southern Viet Nam was doomed might have faded.
But not for Hoang Thuc Bao.
The much-decorated old soldier was there and this is his story.
It was at 4 pm sharp on the eve of the Lunar New Year on January 28,1968, when the force received their order to start their task: To liberate the Hue Citadel, he said.
Source: http://www.nj.com
February 10, 2008
Inside box 218 were the blogs of the 18th Century - pamphlets about war, democracy, monarchy, slavery and social customs authored by radicals and revolutionaries such as Thomas Paine.
In another box, an original broadside of the Treaty of Paris dated 1784. And in another, a stamp from the Stamp Act of 1765.
They are part of the 329,069 items at the Morristown National Historical Park, where a lack of display space has kept almost all of that collection in storage.
Source: Independent (UK)
February 9, 2008
A message in a bottle, which has floated on the waves of time for 90 years, has been found by French archaeologists.
The beer bottle contained a letter sent to an American soldier fighting in the First World War from his "Aunt Pete" in Oklahoma City. It was discovered by accident by archaeologists exploring a 6th and 7th century Merovingian settlement, at Messein in Lorraine.
The letter gives a jaunty, unthinkingly racist account of life in the US Midwest in J
Source: AP
February 9, 2008
PORTAGE, Ind. (AP) — A former U.S. Navy pinup girl whose curvy image graced the sides of American bombers during World War II has been honored for her role boosting soldiers' morale.
At the height of the war, Aline Osborn's seductive photos were on the walls of thousands of GIs' bunks and her image was painted on the sides of bombers by love-struck soldiers.
Osborn, now 81, said she sometimes received 120 or so letters a day from soldiers who had her sexy pinups and wr
Source: http://www.int.iol.co.za
February 11, 2008
Traffic backed up on a main autobahn through Germany, the A2, on Sunday as bomb disposal experts gingerly tugged the detonator out of a World War 2 Allied bomb.
The recovery of the unexploded 500kg bomb from the soil of Hanover, northern Germany, had been planned weeks in advance, with 12 000 people ordered to leave their apartments nearby for part of the day.
Most went for walks or excursions.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 11, 2008
As many as 50,000 pilgrims are expected to descend on Lourdes on Monday as the Roman Catholic shrine celebrates its 150th anniversary.
It was in the town in the foothills of the Pyrénées on Feb 11, 1858, that 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous claimed to see the first of 18 apparitions of the Virgin Mary.
Despite initial scepticism, she was canonised in 1933. The tourist boom which has since accompanied the town's development has been staggering.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 11, 2008
The Domesday Book is available free online for the first time after the 900-year-old parchment papers were turned into a database that can be read on the internet.
The Domesday Book, the oldest and most famous public record in Britain, was based on the 1086 survey of England which covered 13,418 settlements south of the rivers Ribble and Tees.
Source: National Geographic News
February 6, 2008
A newly discovered mural is one of many in 12 of Afghanistan's famed Bamian caves that show evidence of an oil-based binder. The binder was used to dry paint and help it adhere to rocky surfaces.
The murals—and the remains of two giant, destroyed Buddhas—include the world's oldest known oil-based paint, predating European uses of the substance by at least a hundred years, scientists announced late last month.
Source: CNN
February 11, 2008
- A fire has destroyed Namdaemun, South Korea's oldest wooden structure and a national treasure, fire officials said Monday.
Police have arrested a 70-year-old man in connection with the fire, according to the South Korean Yonhap news agency.
The fire started around 9 p.m. Sunday and burned for hours.
More than a hundred firefighters poured water on the more-than-600-year-old structure, trying to save it.
Source: NYT
February 11, 2008
An eight-ton rock rested for generations at the bottom of the Ohio River, minding its own business as time and currents passed. It favored neither Ohio to the north nor Kentucky to the south. It just — was.
Occasionally, when water levels dropped, the boulder would break the surface long enough to receive the chiseled tattoos of mildly daring people seeking remembrance. But it stopped playing peek-a-boo nearly a century ago, leaving only ephemera in its wake, including a sepia photo
Source: NYT
February 11, 2008
The Army is accustomed to protecting classified information. But when it comes to the planning for the Iraq war, even an unclassified assessment can acquire the status of a state secret.
That is what happened to a detailed study of the planning for postwar Iraq prepared for the Army by the RAND Corporation, a federally financed center that conducts research for the military.
After 18 months of research, RAND submitted a report in the summer of 2005 called “Rebuilding Ir
Source: NYT
February 10, 2008
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — The pho bo, Vietnam’s traditional beef noodle soup, is tasty at the Pho Binh restaurant, but in truth no better than at other places here. The broth is hearty, the noodles are chewy, the small slices of beef tender even if the accompanying pieces of lime and chili pepper looked a bit tired. The price is right: 22,000 dong, or about $1.30.
But the pho bo, however filling, is not the reason to visit Pho Binh, or Peace Soup. Instead, the restaurant is an imp
Source: Bloomberg News
February 7, 2008
Russia's government has revealed details of 46,000 artworks missing after Nazi looting.
A new Internet database will help scholars, law enforcement agencies and the art market locate cultural treasures, said the government's Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography.
A Web site, http://www.lostart.ru , is in Russian with printed editions in English. Thirteen volumes have the 46,000 artworks from 13 museums, and another volume list
Source: Bloomberg News
February 8, 2008
Australia wants an accord with Papua New Guinea to safeguard the Kokoda Trail, the World War II battle site, after local villagers blocked part of the track to support the building of a gold and copper mine.
``Australia has the very strong view that the Kokoda Trail needs to be protected,'' Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said yesterday, adding he will make this point to his Papua New Guinean counterpart, Sam Abal, when they meet in Canberra next week. ``The Kokoda Trail for Australi
