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: CNN
April 10, 2011
Reports that surfaced last week about the remains of a "gay caveman" found in the Czech Republic have prompted scientists to take on an unlikely foe -- an overhyped news media that may be overblowing the archaeological find.
Hawks joined a chorus of fellow paleoanthropologists, archaeologists and other bone experts who carefully dissected media reports about the dig, which began to increase after first appearing in British and Czech newspapers.
The reports ste
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 10, 2011
The Vatican has warned against ticket scams and unscrupulous hoteliers as Catholic pilgrims begin the countdown to the beatification of Pope John Paul II in Rome on May 1.
At least one million pilgrims are expected to begin arriving as early as Easter to mark the beatification, the final step before the "blessed" is officially declared a saint.
The Vatican has released a detailed schedule of events for the beatification and warned against people selling coun
Source: NYT
April 9, 2011
The Republican Party’s presidential-nominating process has always been run by elites. Oh, the voters have their brief moments of triumph, hoisting up an unelectable right-winger (i.e., Pat Buchanan) or an uncontrollable moderate (John McCain, the circa-2000 version). But the establishment always wins. Meeting in their K Street offices and communicating through organs like George Will’s column and National Review, the main financers and organizers settle upon a useful frontman, a reliable vessel
Source: NYT
April 9, 2011
Few would argue that she was a good choice. But as you watched the almost giddy reception that greeted the departure of the New York City schools chancellor, Cathleen P. Black, last week — “She wasn’t in the class for the full semester so it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to give her a grade,” said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers — it was hard not to wonder whether the debate over school reform has reached a point where debate is no longer possible.
Source: NYT
April 9, 2011
FORT SUMTER NATIONAL MONUMENT, S.C. — If the period leading to the outbreak of the Civil War was a confusing patch in American history, the threat of a government shutdown threw the spirited preparations for a commemoration of the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter 150 years later into almost as much chaos.
“It’s been complete confusion,” said Gary Alexander, one of the 90 National Park Service employees working on the commemoration.
Because the budget impasse threatene
Source: NYT
April 9, 2011
When Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Chicago-based Nation of Islam, staunchly defended Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi recently, he seized headlines for an organization that has made little news in recent years.
In an often-fiery speech on March 31 at Mosque Maryam, the group’s South Side headquarters, Mr. Farrakhan recalled the decades of friendship and millions of dollars Colonel Qaddafi had lent the Nation of Islam over the years.
“What kind of brother would I be if a man ha
Source: BBC
April 9, 2011
Archaeologists having started digging up a pub beer garden in search of a legendary Victorian circus elephant.
The Tregaron Elephant has long had its place in local folklore, and is thought to have been buried behind the town's Talbot Hotel after dying on tour.
The small-scale excavation started on Saturday morning and the hunt for clues about the animal's final resting place will continue until next Thursday.
About 10 people from the University of Wales Tr
Source: BBC
April 9, 2011
A sailor who helped rescue passengers from the Titanic is the subject of a renewed campaign in his home town.
Records show Fifth Officer Harold Lowe was in the only lifeboat that went back to the sinking ship to rescue people from freezing waters in April 1912.
He was hailed a hero on his return to Barmouth, Gwynedd where it is hoped a plaque will be mounted next year.
Mr Lowe's grandson, John Lowe, 68, is to attend a meeting to discuss hopes for a memorial
Source: BBC
April 9, 2011
Relatives of victims of the Lockerbie bombing have asked their lawyers to request a meeting with Libyan defector Moussa Koussa.
He is thought to have been a senior figure in the Libyan intelligence service when Pan Am flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie in 1988.
Last week the former Libyan foreign minister arrived in the UK.
Mr Koussa said he was "no longer willing" to work for Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi.
Scottish police invest
Source: BBC
April 9, 2011
On the 100th anniversary of The Book of Khalid, the first English-language novel written by an Arab, the work seems remarkably relevant to the popular uprisings sweeping the Middle East today.
The Book of Khalid was written by Ameen Rihani, a respected Arab-American intellectual who was born in Lebanon in 1876.
It is the story of two Lebanese friends who migrate to New York.
The hero, Khalid, begins his new life peddling religious trinkets.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 8, 2011
Much myth surrounds the notorious fraternities and secret societies of Ivy league universities, such as Yale's Skull and Bones, but what are the facts behind the fiction?
George H. W. Bush is perhaps the most famous alumni of The Order of Skull and Bones, Yale's oldest and most determinedly secretive society. Founded in 1832 following a dispute among Yale's debating societies, it has long been a source of speculation and intrigue due to its history of nurturing the elites of the da
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 8, 2011
Moussa Koussa, the Libyan defector, could be allowed to leave the country, William Hague has said.
The foreign secretary said Mr Koussa, who faces inquiries from the International Criminal Court and families of the victims of Libyan terrorists, would not be forced to return to Libya, adding: "There are quite a range of places that he could go to live."
Mr Hague's comments, in an interview with Sky News, came as relatives of the Lockerbie bombing victims accep
Source: CNN
April 9, 2011
Before the Civil War ended, re-enactments began.
Soldiers, freshly home from combat, recreated battle scenes to educate townspeople and honor fallen comrades.
For Gettysburg's 50th anniversary in 1913, more than 50,000 Confederate and Union veterans returned to Pennsylvania to celebrate America's reunification. The former foes, ages 61 to an alleged 112, re-enacted the gruesome clash to an awe-struck audience.
After the Civil War's centennial commemoration
Source: WaPo
April 6, 2011
Sixty-nine years ago on Saturday, American and Filipino prisoners of war on the Bataan Peninsula started marching at gunpoint. By the time the survivors arrived at a prison camp in the Philippines in spring of 1942, they had watched thousands of their comrades die along the 60 or more miles. What they suffered endures as a symbol of wartime cruelty. A few months ago, the grandson of one of the survivors traveled from Northern Virginia to Japan with an old photograph in his hand. It was a grainy
Source: Live Science
April 7, 2011
The bones of a soldier with leprosy who may have died in battle have been found in a medieval Italian cemetery, along with skeletons of men who survived blows to the head with battle-axes and maces.
Studying ancient leprosy, which is caused by a bacterial infection, may help scientists figure out how the infectious disease evolved.
The find also reveals the warlike ways of the semi-nomadic people who lived in the area between the sixth and eighth centuries, said study r
Source: ABC News (Australia)
April 6, 2011
The tiny village of Lake Bathurst, an hour north-east of Canberra, seems a very long way from the battlegrounds of World War Two.
But while war was raging in the Pacific, huge concrete structures were being built under the hills of Lake Bathurst, ready to store thousands of litres of fuel in the case that Australia's supplies were cut off by the Japanese.
The fuel stores were just one of 32 facilities which were set up all around Australia.
Today in Lake Ba
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 8, 2011
A prominent Italian historian has claimed that the Roman Empire collapsed because a "contagion of homosexuality and effeminacy" made it easy pickings for barbarian hordes, sparking a furious row.
Roberto De Mattei, 63, the deputy head of the country's National Research Council, claimed that the empire was fatally weakened after conquering Carthage, which he described as "a paradise for homosexuals".
The remarks prompted angry calls for his resignati
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 6, 2011
Archaeologists have unearthed the 5,000-year-old remains of what they believe may have been the world's oldest known gay caveman.
The male body – said to date back to between 2900-2500BC – was discovered buried in a way normally reserved only for women of the Corded Ware culture in the Copper Age.
The skeleton was found in a Prague suburb in the Czech Republic with its head pointing eastwards and surrounded by domestic jugs, rituals only previously seen in female grave
Source: AP
April 6, 2011
Human remains that could be 7,000 years old have been found by sewer construction workers on the southeast side of Des Moines.
The remains were discovered in January.
They were found near a site where scientists think people harvested, cooked and ate clams thousands of years ago.
State archaeologist John Doershuk (DOHR'-shuhk) told The Des Moines Register that it's "a rather unique site, not only in Iowa but in the Midwest."
The site'
Source: Baltic Times
April 6, 2011
VILNIUS - On March 30, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite signed a new law on education which includes teaching history and geography, as well as the subject called civic education (about the rights and duties of citizens in a democratic country), in the Lithuanian language in the Lithuanian state-financed Slavic minority schools. It provoked a hysterical reaction from Poland, which was supported by a mild echo from the Russian Foreign Ministry as well.
On March 30, Grybauskai
