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: Hampton Roads Pilot
January 3, 2011
Just about every corner of Virginia has historic significance - whether it's a site of a famous battle or the former residence of a groundbreaking musician.
So it shouldn't come as a surprise that 12 new state historic highway markers have been approved, including ones in Norfolk and Virginia Beach, by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.
"Markers are a great way to bring people together and make them more aware of the history in their community," de
Source: BBC
January 3, 2011
Humankind's oldest known ancestor probably lived in fear of several large sabretooth cats that roamed the same ancient lakeside habitat in Africa.
Palaeontologists have identified two new sabretooth species among fossils unearthed at Toros Menalla in Chad.
In 2001, a team unearthed remains of a seven million-year-old human-like creature - or hominid - known as "Toumai" at the central African site.
Its discoverers argue that Toumai is the oldest ho
Source: BBC
January 4, 2011
A US man of Cuban origin has been sentenced to 15 years in jail for hijacking a plane from New York to Cuba in 1968.
Luis Armando Pena Soltren, 67, boarded the Puerto Rico-bound plane with a pistol and a knife.
He forced the pilots to divert the plane, carrying 103 passengers and crew, to Havana.
Pena Soltren returned to the US from Cuba in 2009 reportedly to see his family. He pleaded guilty last March.
He was charged with conspiracy to commit
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 4, 2011
A veteran of Republican presidential administrations, including those of Ronald Reagan and George W Bush, has been found dead in a dump in Delaware.
The body of John Wheeler III, who also helped lead efforts to build the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall in Washington, was discovered on New Year's Eve as a rubbish truck emptied its contents at a landfill. His death has been ruled a homicide.
Wheeler, 66, retired from the military in 1971 and lived in Delaware state. He h
Source: CNN
January 4, 2011
A new tax on tourists to the Eternal City is causing controversy, with hotels expressing fears it could hurt their business and scare tourists away.
As of January 1, nonresidents of Rome must pay the extra charge when staying at a hotel or visiting any tourist site, such as a museum, that charges admission.
Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno introduced the tax law last year after the Italian government of Silvio Berlusconi cut funding to Italian cities, including Rome, as part
Source: CNN
January 4, 2011
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly appealed to President Barack Obama on Tuesday to release convicted spy Jonathan Pollard, promising Israel would never again spy on the United States in the way Pollard did.
The White House has received the letter and "will review it," White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said Tuesday.
Netanyahu agreed in December to formally request the release of Pollard, a former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst who was caught
Source: Entertainment Weekly
January 3, 2011
What is a word worth? According to Publishers Weekly, NewSouth Books’ upcoming edition of Mark Twain’s seminal novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn will remove all instances of the “n” word—I’ll give you a hint, it’s not nonesuch—present in the text and replace it with slave. The new book will also remove usage of the word Injun. The effort is spearheaded by Twain expert Alan Gribben, who says his PC-ified version is not an attempt to neuter the classic but rather to update it. “Race matters in
Source: Huffington Post
January 3, 2011
WASHINGTON -- The equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not protect against discrimination on the basis of gender or sexual orientation, according to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.In a newly published interview in the legal magazine California Lawyer, Scalia said that while the Constitution does not disallow the passage of legislation outlawing
Source: NYT
January 4, 2011
MOSCOW — A couple of months ago one of Russia’s elder statesmen set out on a paradoxical mission: to rehabilitate one of the most beloved figures in Russian history, Tolstoy.
This would have seemed unnecessary in 2010, a century after the author’s death. But last year Russians wrestled over Tolstoy much as they did when he was alive. Intellectuals accused the Russian Orthodox Church of blacklisting a national hero. The church accused Tolstoy of helping speed the rise of the Bolshev
Source: Discovery News
January 3, 2011
The tomb of King Tut’s wife, a buried pyramid, the Great Pyramid’s secret doors, and the final resting place of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony: these discoveries could await us in 2011, according to Dr. Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.
Hawass, one of the world's leading Egyptologists, gave an exclusive interview to Discovery News at an exhibition of images from ancient Egypt taken by photographer Sandro Vannini. Hawass’ many-years-long effort to solve the my
Source: The Independent (UK)
January 4, 2011
An isolated community near the Black Sea coast in a remote part of north-eastern Turkey has been found to speak a Greek dialect that is remarkably close to the extinct language of ancient Greece.
As few as 5,000 people speak the dialect but linguists believe that it is the closest, living language to ancient Greek and could provide an unprecedented insight into the language of Socrates and Plato and how it evolved.
The community lives in a cluster of villages near the
Source: Anatolian News Agency
January 3, 2011
Burial chambers of Urartian King Argishti and his family in the western wing of the ancient castle in the eastern province of Van was opened for the first time.
The Anatolia news agency took photographs and video of the burial chambers which were closed to visitors.
Centered around the Lake Van in the eastern Turkey, the Urartian Kingdom ruled from the mid 9th century BC till its defeat by Media in the early 6th century BC. The most splendid monuments of the Urart
Source: National Parks Traveler
January 4, 2011
This year the U.S. Postal Service will issue stamps commemorating the 150th anniversary of two important Civil War events, the beginning of the war and the first great land battle. National parks preserve the sites of both of these events.
The Confederacy was launched soon after South Carolina seceded from the Union in December 1860, and the Civil War got underway four month later. At 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861, Confederate batteries opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor,
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
January 3, 2011
The eldest son of Hitler‘s deputy Martin Bormann has been accused of sexually abusing a young boy when he was a priest 50 years ago.
Martin Bormann Jr., 80, who has struggled to come to terms with the murderous past of his father all his life, is said to be 'destroyed' by the allegations.
A 63-year-old man said his mistreatment at the hands of Bormann took place in the early 60s when he was a Catholic priest teaching at the Hearts of Jesus monastery in the Austrian city
Source: BBC News
January 4, 2011
Officials in western Austria say exhumations are to take place at a psychiatric hospital thought to contain the remains of Nazi victims.
The remains of 220 people are buried at a cemetery in Hall in Tyrol province and the hospital believes many died as part of the Nazi euthanasia programme.
A planned construction project has been halted to allow a full investigation.
Thousands of people with physical or mental disabilities were killed by the Nazis who saw t
Source: NYT
January 1, 2011
The Brooklyn Museum is preparing to return about 4,500 pre-Columbian artifacts taken from Costa Rica roughly a century ago.
Costa Rica had made no claim to the objects, which were exported in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Minor C. Keith, a railroad magnate and a founder of the United Fruit Company. And there were none of the conflicts, legal threats or philosophical debates that sometimes accompany arguments between museums and countries that claim ownership of antiquiti
Source: Spiegel Online
January 3, 2011
Hitler salutes in the street and firing practice in the forest: Neo-Nazis have taken over an entire village in Germany, and authorities appear to have given up efforts to combat the problem. The place has come to symbolize the far right's growing influence in parts of the former communist east.
Horst and Birgit Lohmeyer have been working on their life's dream for six years, renovating a house in the woods near Jamel, a tiny village near Wismar in the far northeastern German state of
Source: The Nation
December 16, 2010
"The suffering of southerners was created in colonial times," says Peter Lam, a retired teacher in his 70s from Malakal, a trading town in Sudan where north meets south on the banks of the Nile River. As Sudan's second independence approaches, we are discussing the first, and what has gone wrong.
Lam tells me that Britain's colonial neglect of the south meant that when it came to negotiations for independence, southern "native chiefs" were conned by the sophistic
Source: Guardian (UK)
January 3, 2011
For centuries Spain's senior aristocrats, the grandees, ruled in feudal glory but a recent split in their governing body reveals they can no longer run even themselves.
A faction of grandees and nobles have walked out of the Deputation of the Grandees, the body that has represented them for the past two centuries, as tempers fray over changes to the rules governing the way titles are handed down.
"There is a split. Some of the oldest families are involved," sa
Source: Guardian (UK)
December 30, 2010
A man who donated a kidney to his dying twin brother 56 years ago in the world's first successful organ transplant has died in the United States.
Ronald Lee Herrick died, aged 79, on Monday in the Augusta Rehabilitation Centre, a hospital in Maine, New England, following complications from heart surgery in October, his widow, Cynthia, said.
Herrick donated a kidney to his identical twin, Richard, in a pioneering operation on 23 December 1954....
