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
December 5, 2010
The alma mater of journalist Helen Thomas will not bestow an award that had been given in her name, making the decision after the 90-year-old scribe made more controversial comments about Jewish people.
Wayne State University, the Detroit, Michigan, institution that Thomas graduated from in 1942, said in a statement Friday that the school will no longer give out the Helen Thomas Spirit of Diversity in the Media Award.
Thomas abrupty retired earlier this year from her po
Source: CNN
December 3, 2010
A "suspect" discovery at Arlington National Cemetery has led to a criminal investigation into how eight sets of human remains ended up in a single grave at America's most famous military burial ground.
It is the first criminal investigation after a series of recent revelations of misplaced human remains at Arlington.
The cemetery was tipped off this fall about a possible problem involving urns found in a pile of dirt several years ago by a contractor working a
Source: NYT
December 5, 2010
LANDOVER, Md. — In defending their work, members of Congress love to repeat a quotation attributed to Otto von Bismarck: “If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made.”...
But a visit to a sausage factory here, about 10 miles from the Capitol, suggests that Bismarck and today’s politicians are mistaken. In many ways, that quotation is offensive to sausage makers; their process is better controlled and more predictable.
“I’m so insulted whe
Source: NYT
December 5, 2010
SAN ANTONIO — For 105 years, a private organization of women descended from Texas pioneers has been taking care of the Alamo with very little oversight by the state.
But in the last year members of the group, the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, have found themselves besieged and divided. Dissidents have accused the leaders of caring more about building a $36 million library and theater nearby than about preserving the site’s old church and priest’s quarters, the only buildings r
Source: BBC
December 3, 2010
Lisburn City Council are seeking families of fallen soldiers for a new plaque at the war memorial in the city.
In a newspaper advert the council said they are "compiling a list of those citizens of the city "not already recorded who fell in the First and Second World Wars, also those who fell in the Korean, Falklands, Gulf, Iraq and Afghnaistan Wars".
The names will be engraved on a plaque on the existing memorial on Castle Street.
Councillor
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 3, 2010
Norway's Supreme Court on Friday cancelled the sentencing for war crimes of a Bosnian-born man, saying the country's war crimes law could not be applied retroactively.
Mirsad Repak, 44 and a former member of the Croatian HOS military, has lived in Norway since 1993 and became a citizen in 2001.
He was sentenced in December 2008 to five years in jail for his 1992 crimes against Serbs and ordered to pay damages to his victims, but an appeals court reduced the sentence b
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 3, 2010
Charles Manson, the former cult leader, was among thousands of prisoners in California who have been found with mobile phones in their prison cells.
Manson, 76, who orchestrated a murderous spree by his followers four decades ago, was able to make phone calls and send text messages from behind bars.
After the phone was discovered under his mattress it was established that he had contacted people in California, New Jersey, Florida and Canada.
Manson is said
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 3, 2010
The US army said on Friday it had launched a criminal investigation after it found eight sets of cremated remains in the grave of an "unknown" soldier at Arlington National Cemetery.
The botched burial is the latest in a series of mishaps at the US military cemetery, which sees four million visitors a year and is the resting place of president John F. Kennedy, a dozen Supreme Court justices, other famous Americans and casualties of all US wars.
The Army Nati
Source: CNN
December 3, 2010
A near two-century-old copy of "The Star Spangled Banner" sold for $506,500 Friday at Christie's auction house in Manhattan.
The famed sheet music is one of 11 known first edition copies of Francis Scott Key's patriotic tune, said to have been written after he witnessed the British naval bombardment of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812.
The iconic manuscript was sold to a telephone bidder, who was not immediately named.
Key, then a young lawyer
Source: NYT
December 2, 2010
When the Oakland Museum of California was founded in 1969 as a “museum for the people,” there was no question about who would pay for it. The museum’s land was owned by the city, its building was operated by the city and its collection belonged to the city. Admission, now $12, was free.
But the fiscal crisis affecting governments across California is changing the way museums operate. The Oakland museum recently announced that it would seek to radically alter its relationship with Oa
Source: BBC
December 1, 2010
Peruvian foraging societies were already chewing coca leaves 8,000 years ago, archaeological evidence has shown.
Ruins beneath house floors in the northwestern Peru showed evidence of chewed coca and calcium-rich rocks.
Such rocks would have been burned to create lime, chewed with coca to release more of its active chemicals.
Writing in the journal Antiquity, an international team said the discovery pushed back the first known coca use by at least 3,000 yea
Source: BBC
December 2, 2010
After a series of wall collapses at Italy's ancient city of Pompeii, a team from UN cultural organisation Unesco has arrived to examine the site.
One wall gave way on Tuesday and two more the next day, three weeks after the House of Gladiators crumbled.
Officials blamed Wednesday's wall collapses on heavy rain but Unesco says concerns have been raised about Pompeii's state of preservation.
The UN team will assess the World Heritage site for further problems
Source: BBC
December 1, 2010
The former president of the Central African Republic, Jean-Bedel Bokassa, has been formally rehabilitated by presidential decree.
President Francois Bozize published the decree as part of the country's 50th anniversary of independence, returning Bokassa "all his rights".
Bokassa was overthrown in 1979 after 14 years in power and died in 1996.
He was variously accused of being a cannibal and feeding opponents to lions and crocodiles in his personal
Source: BBC
December 2, 2010
Archaeologists have recovered remains from at least eight people after initial excavation at a Neolithic tomb site in Orkney discovered in October.
A narrow, stone-lined passageway leads to five chambers, two of which have been part-excavated so far.
Fragments of skull and hipbone have been unearthed, some carefully placed in gaps in the stones, suggesting the 5,000-year-old site is undisturbed.
The bones point to a range of ages at death including a child
Source: BBC
December 2, 2010
The man who invented the neutron bomb, Samuel Cohen, has died in California, at the age of 89.
The neutron bomb was a small tactical nuclear weapon, which produced lethal tiny particles to kill enemy soldiers while leaving buildings largely undamaged.
Mr Cohen called it "the most sane weapon ever devised".
It was developed in the US in the 80s, but was soon condemned for making nuclear warfare more likely.
Only a small number of ne
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 2, 2010
A full-size Noah's Ark is to be built in Kentucky, as part of a £100m creationism amusement park.
The planned complex is also expected to feature a walled city, a replica of the Tower of Babel and a recreation of a first-century Middle Eastern village.
There will also be a 500-capacity theatre, an aviary, and a "journey through biblical history" section.
The park is expected to open in 2014 and draw 1.6 million visitors a year....
Source: CNN
December 2, 2010
A 19th-century artwork by French artist Edgar Degas will be returned to France nearly four decades after it was stolen, officials said Thursday.
The painting, "Blanchisseuses souffrant des dent" ("Laundry Women with Toothache,") was taken in 1973 from the Malraux Museum in Le Havre, in Normandy, France, according to a statement from the US District Attorney in Eastern New York.
It had been on loan from the French government, which considers the paint
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 30, 2010
An American art historian claims to have discovered the original model created by Michelangelo for one of his greatest works – the 'Pieta' statue in St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican.
The terracotta model, which is about 12 inches tall and dates from the late 1400s, was found in a mouldy box in an antiques shop by an Italian art collector.
After subjecting it to extensive analysis, Roy Doliner believes it is the long-lost model for Michelangelo's Pieta, the huge marbl
Source: BBC
November 30, 2010
Scotland's oldest Highland bagpipe chanter has been donated to National Museums Scotland after it was taken to Canada 205 years ago.
The instrument had belonged to composer Iain Dall MacKay, who was born at Talladale on Loch Maree in 1656 and trained as a piper on Skye.
His grandson John Roy MacKay took the chanter with him to Nova Scotia when he emigrated from Scotland in 1805.
It has been put on display at Glasgow's National Piping Centre.
Gr
Source: NY Daily News
December 2, 2010
A painting by Edgar Degas stolen more than three decades ago from a museum in Normandy is finally going home to France, Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch said Thursday.
The masterpiece came to the attention of law enforcement officials last month when it surfaced in Sotheby's catalog of Impressionist & Modern Day Art and was immediately pulled from the auction block....
