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: NYT
June 4, 2011
WASHINGTON — America’s tormented relationship with Pakistan has long had the subtlety of a professional wrestling match. So when frayed relations turned openly hostile in recent weeks, it was hardly a surprise to see Pakistani officials flirt publicly with China, America’s biggest rival in Asia.
Source: NYT
June 4, 2011
THE Smith Corona typewriter went for $22,003. The hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses fetched $20,025. The 20 personal journals were a steal at $40,676.
Source: NYT
June 4, 2011
Six decades of Chicago live inside the retirement-home apartment of the photographer Lee Balterman. Filed in cabinets, hung on walls and stacked precariously on most every available surface are thousands of Chicago moments captured on film.
Source: NYT
June 4, 2011
As former Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich’s rhetorical self-immolation painfully commenced last week under government cross-examination, it dawned on me that he, like so many of our public miscreants, is an attorney.
Source: BBC
June 3, 2011
Key historical documents from India, including an illustrated history of Kashmir, have been sold in the UK.
The Kashmir manuscript contains nine paintings, including that of the famous Maharajah Ranjit Singh, and sold for £11,700 ($19,000) at auction.
Other items included original paintings, miniatures on ivory, historical documents and statues.
A portrait of Maharajah Rajinder Singh of Patalia - an honorary general in the British army - was also for sale....
Source: BBC
June 3, 2011
A bottle of nearly 200-year-old champagne has been sold for 30,000 euros ($43,900; £26,700) at an auction in Finland - in what is believed to be a new world record.
The Veuve Clicquot bubbly was bought by an anonymous bidder from Singapore, auctioneers in Mariehamn said.
The same buyer paid 24,000 euros for another bottle of champagne, which was made by the now defunct Juglar house.
They were found in a shipwreck at the bottom of the Baltic Sea last year.
In all, more than 140 bottles were discovered by divers, and the
Source: BBC
June 4, 2011
Tens of thousands of people have attended a candlelight vigil in Hong Kong to mark the 22nd anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown in Beijing.
Hundreds of people were killed in the Chinese capital as soldiers and tanks moved to clear Tiananmen Square of pro-democracy demonstrators in 1989.
This year's anniversary comes as China continues a crackdown on dissent, arresting dozens of activists.
Public discussion of the Tiananmen killings remains taboo in China.
Organisers of the Hong Kong vigil said 150,000 flooded into Vi
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 4, 2011
The first ever Westerner to be admitted to the closed world of Japan's geisha hostesses has left after being accused of bringing the movement into disrepute.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 3, 2011
The turning point came as Ratko Mladic put aside his evident physical frailty to taunt victims of the Bosnian war in the public gallery and to regain the pugnacity and arrogance of the notorious "butcher of Srebrenica".
Source: LA Times
June 3, 2011
Elmer G. "Geronimo" Pratt, a former Los Angeles Black Panther Party leader whose 1972 murder conviction was overturned after he spent 27 years in prison for a crime he said he did not commit, has died. He was 63. Pratt, whose case became for many a symbol of racial injustices during the turbulent 1960s, died Thursday at his home in a small village in Tanzania, said his sister Virginia. The cause was not given.
Source: NYT
June 1, 2011
“Who the hell is Diane Nash?”That was Attorney General Robert Kennedy, barking a disparaging greeting over the phone to one of his deputies, John Seigenthaler.
Source: NYT
June 2, 2011
At a recent dedication ceremony for a Peoples Temple memorial in Oakland, Kathy Barbour, a survivor of the 1978 massacre, knelt on the lawn of Evergreen Cemetery to look at photos of the victims of Jonestown.As nearly 200 people milled around her, Ms. Barbour, a quiet woman with white hair, peered nervously toward the path leading to the cemetery gates. “I was expecting the gauntlet,” she said.
Source: BBC News
June 2, 2011
Pictures of Marilyn Monroe which the public have never before are on show at the Washington Square Hotel in New York.The star, who would have just turned 85 years old, was photographed by Murray Garrett in the late 1940s....
Source: PRI
May 31, 2011
On a warm spring morning about 50 miles north of Berlin, Union troops and their Confederate rivals prepare for battle. They are camped out for the weekend at a Wild West theme park in Templin.About 60 people, mostly Germans, are dressed head to toe in 1860s-period clothing. Women wear hoop skirts. The men are in handmade uniforms with lots of colorful piping and brass buttons. A few young soldiers swing their bayonets.
"I'm a simple soldier, a private," said Tobias Melchurs.
Source: NYT
June 1, 2011
WASHINGTON — Sixty-six years after she survived the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, Renee Firestone is still trying to find out what became of an insurance policy that she suspects her father, who died in the Holocaust, took out from an Italian insurer before the war.
Source: AP
May 27, 2011
Archaeologists recovered the first anchor from what's believed to be the wreck of the pirate Blackbeard's flagship off the North Carolina coast Friday, a move that might change plans about how to save the rest of the almost 300-year-old artifacts from the central part of the ship.
Source: Reuters
May 30, 2011
A cold snap in Greenland in the 12th century may help explain why Viking settlers vanished from the island, scientists said on Monday.
The report, reconstructing temperatures by examining lake sediment cores in west Greenland dating back 5,600 years, also indicated that earlier, pre-historic settlers also had to contend with vicious swings in climate on icy Greenland.
Researchers have scant written or archaeological records to figure out why Viking settlers abandoned colonies on the western side of the island in the
Source: AP
May 27, 2011
The shipping label said the mailed package contained replicas of Peruvian ceramics.
Source: Nature
May 31, 2011
A Roman ship found with a lead pipe piercing its hull has mystified archaeologists. Italian researchers now suggest that the pipe was part of an ingenious pumping system, designed to feed on-board fish tanks with a continuous supply of oxygenated water.
Source: Discovery News
May 31, 2011
A team of Egyptian and European archaeologists has unearthed a unique colossal statue of King Amenhotep III at his funerary temple on the west bank of the Nile near Luxor, according to a statement released on Tuesday by Egypt's ministry of state for antiquities.Finely carved in alabaster, a stone hewn in the quarries of Hatnub in Middle Egypt, the sculpture shows King Amenhotep III seated, wearing the Nemes headdress (a striped headcloth that pharaohs put on), a pleated kilt and a royal beard.
