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
December 22, 2010
Jorge Videla, a former Argentine dictator, was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday in the murder of 31 political prisoners who were killed after the 1976 coup that swept him into power....
Source: BBC News
December 22, 2010
A 1972 book which predicts what life would be like in 2010 has been reprinted after attracting a cult following, but how hard is it to tell the future?
Geoffrey Hoyle is often asked why he predicted everybody would be wearing jumpsuits by 2010. He envisioned a world where everybody worked a three-day week and had their electric cars delivered in tubes of liquid.
These colourful ideas from his 1972 children's book, 2010: Living in the Future, helped prompt a Facebook cam
Source: BBC News
December 22, 2010
Scientists say an entirely separate type of human identified from bones in Siberia co-existed and interbred with our own species.
The ancient humans have been dubbed Denisovans after the caves in Siberia where their remains were found.
There is also evidence that this group was widespread in Eurasia.
A study in Nature journal shows that Denisovans co-existed with Neanderthals and interbred with our species - perhaps around 50,000 years ago.
An
Source: CNN
December 22, 2010
The hometown of the man who inspired the legend of Santa Claus is a long way from the snow and arctic lights of the North Pole.
The land Saint Nicholas is originally from rarely sees snowflakes -- it is a village of palm trees and orange groves on the Mediterranean Sea in what is modern-day Turkey. Nicholas, patron saint of sailors and children, lived and died there nearly 18 centuries ago.
The legend of the 4th century bishop who gave gifts to the poor has spread since
Source: CNN
December 22, 2010
The Senate on Wednesday passed a compromise version of a bill to provide free medical treatment and compensation to first responders of the September 11 terrorist attack.
The bill passed on a voice vote on what is expected to be the final day of the lame-duck session of Congress. It now goes to the House, which also is expected to approve it and send it to President Barack Obama to be signed into law.
Jubilant Democrats hailed the last-minute approval as a triumph for f
Source: NYT
December 23, 2010
An international team of scientists has identified a previously shadowy human group known as the Denisovans as cousins to Neanderthals who lived in Asia from roughly 400,000 to 50,000 years ago and interbred with the ancestors of today’s inhabitants of New Guinea.
All the Denisovans have left behind are a broken finger bone and a wisdom tooth in a Siberian cave. But the scientists have succeeded in extracting the entire genome of the Denisovans from these scant remains. An analysis
Source: WaPo
December 21, 2010
CHARLESTON, S.C.- "Dixie," that emotionally freighted and much-debated anthem of the old Confederacy, starts soft when it's done right, barely above a whisper. But each sotto voce syllable of the opening verse, each feather-light scrape of the fiddle strings, could be heard without straining when the ladies in the hoop skirts and the men in the frock coats rose in reverence to celebrate the 150th anniversary of South Carolina's secession.
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Source: WaPo
December 21, 2010
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) is trying to quell the political storm kicked up over controversial comments he made about the struggle for civil rights in his state.
In a Weekly Standard magazine profile published Monday, Barbour said he didn't remember it "being that bad" and referred benignly to white groups called Citizens Councils, which were known to enforce segregationist policies throughout the South.
His office released a statement Tuesday morning
Source: BBC News
December 22, 2010
Not so long ago, most people did not possess a phone. Any phone. And remember when video recorders were a must-have? At a time of year when tech takes centre stage, take a trip down memory chip lane.
The season of goodwill is sandwiched, like it or not, by things: must-haves, latest crazes, always-wanteds, gadgets and treats and consumer goodies, first as gifts, then the sales.
Sorry for Go Figure's materialist turn, but it just happens that for 40 years, surveys have t
Source: BBC News
December 22, 2010
A 17th Century portrait by Spanish painter Diego Velazquez is back on show at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art years after it was wrongly identified as not being a genuine work.
The Met downgraded the painting of King Philip IV in 1973, determining it was likely done by an assistant or follower studying under the artist.
But experts reversed the decision after a year's worth of restoration.
The portrait can now be seen in the European Paintings galleri
Source: BBC News
December 22, 2010
Archaeologists in Spain have unearthed the remains of a possible family of 12 Neanderthals who were killed 49,000 years ago.
Markings on the bones show the unmistakeable signs of cannibal activity, say the researchers, with the group having probably been killed by their peers.
The remains were found in a cave in the Asturias region of Northern Spain. Details of the find appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Although the highly fragmente
Source: BBC
December 20, 2010
On the left hand side of Cazalla cemetery the graves are arranged neatly in a wall, Spanish style.
But across the path from the engraved headstones and flower arrangements, a very different kind of grave has been discovered. The vast pit now being excavated is a burial site from Spain's civil war.
In August 1936, dozens of Republican supporters - and anyone suspected of it - were shot and flung there.
Now uncovered, their bones lie sprawled as they landed
Source: The Boston Globe
December 18, 2010
The ever-shifting sands of Cape Cod have parted to reveal a new mystery: a 50-foot-long shipwreck unearthed by erosion in shallow waters just off North Beach Island in Chatham, town and state officials said.
The wreck was spotted Nov. 29 by an airplane pilot as he and an aerial photographer flew along the coast.
At low tide, the wreckage, which appears to be made of wood, sits in 8 to 10 feet of water, but it cannot be seen from the beach, officials said. The vessel, wh
Source: The Boston Globe
December 20, 2010
Though climate change seems a particularly modern predicament — one that generates alarm about the fate of the planet and how people and businesses will adapt — scientists are finding evidence that climate fluctuations influenced cultural changes among inhabitants of prehistoric New England.
Research is revealing the interconnected relationship between environmental shifts and changes in prehistoric people’s tools and settlement patterns. At the end of a cold period came the end of
Source: AP
December 17, 2010
The three bone fragments turned up on a deserted South Pacific island that lay along the course Amelia Earhart was following when she vanished. Nearby were several tantalizing artifacts: some old makeup, some glass bottles and shells that had been cut open.
Now scientists at the University of Oklahoma hope to extract DNA from the tiny bone chips in tests that could prove Earhart died as a castaway after failing in her 1937 quest to become the first woman to fly around the world
Source: Discovery News
December 13, 2010
The bones of a Roman man, who was stabbed to death and left to rot with the rubbish, have revealed gruesome details of what appears to be a gladiator combat, according to British researchers who have examined the skeletal remains.
Unearthed in January only 12 inches under the grass the Yorkshire Museum’s gardens, in York, England, the bones show that the man, most likely a disgraced gladiator, met a violent and bloody death.
Analysis by experts from York Osteoarchaeolog
Source: Discovery News
December 20, 2010
The beak was like nature's Swiss Army knife because it provided many tools in one unit.
The emergence of the beak on dinosaurs was "an evolutionary innovation," according to a new study that found this seemingly simple trait is like nature's Swiss Army knife because it functions as many tools in one.
Over time, many dinosaurs replaced their toothy grins with beaks to aid their transition to plant eating, according to the new study that is published in the lat
Source: Fox News
December 21, 2010
Starting from a watch dial, Mexican researchers are following a number of clues to find a purported treasure from Spain, while also hoping to find a survivor of that story that goes back to the 1930s exile of Spanish Republicans to Mexico.
The 7-centimeter (2 3/4-inch) watch dial was found Nov. 20 by divers from the underwater archaeology division of Mexico's National Anthropology and History Institute, at the bottom of a lake in the crater of Nevado de Toluca volcano, at 4,200 mete
Source: BBC
December 21, 2010
The remains of an Anglo-Saxon settlement have been discovered at a surface mine in Northumberland.
Buildings and artefacts dating from the 6th to 8th centuries have been uncovered at Shotton Surface Mine, on the Blagdon Estate, near Cramlington.
The site had been investigated by archaeologists before the start of open-cast mining work.
Experts said the find had provided "the first direct evidence" of Anglo-Saxon settlement in that part of the coun
Source: CNN
December 21, 2010
The Ides of March was indeed a portentous day for the Confederate gunboat Peedee and its the 90-man crew, which heaved three artillery pieces overboard and torched the doomed vessel in the waning weeks of the Civil War.
The C.S.S. Peedee, built inland between Florence and Marion, South Carolina, was unable to reach the Atlantic Ocean because Union forces had taken coastal Georgetown. The crew scuttled the wooden Peedee on March 15, 1865, leaving its remains in the Pee Dee River.
