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: NC Register
November 18, 2010
SOCORRO, N.M. (CNS) — The adobe churches that are a scenic fixture of New Mexico’s landscape are crumbling from the inside out.
Father Andrew Pavlak knows this all too well. As the only priest assigned to a parish that encompasses most of Socorro County, his responsibilities include not only his main church, the 400-year-old San Miguel, but another nine churches, including seven made of adobe.
One of them, Sagrada Familia, (Holy Family) in the community of Lemitar, had
Source: AP
November 19, 2010
WASHINGTON – The Senate has approved almost $4.6 billion to settle long-standing claims brought by American Indians and black farmers against the government.
The money has been held up for months in the Senate as Democrats and Republicans squabbled over how to pay for it. The two class action lawsuits were filed over a decade ago.
The settlements include almost $1.2 billion for black farmers who say they suffered discrimination at the hands of the Agriculture Department
Source: NYT
November 19, 2010
WASHINGTON — The Senate on Friday approved $4.55 billion to settle longstanding charges that the federal government had denied or underpaid aid to black farmers and mismanaged trust funds for American Indians.
The bill sets aside $1.15 billion to resolve racial bias claims brought by black farmers against the Agriculture Department and $3.4 billion to pay claims stemming from the Department of the Interior’s handling of American Indian trust funds.
The Senate appr
Source: Guardian (UK)
November 19, 2010
The £27m project to build a new visitor centre at Stonehenge and make other much-needed improvements to the world heritage site received a boost last night when the Heritage Lottery Fund said it would contribute £10m. Visitors have long expressed disappointment and sometimes astonishment at the state of facilities at the iconic monument in Wiltshire.
English Heritage announced plans last year to build a new visitor centre, including a cafe and education facilities, a mile and a half
Source: CNN.com
November 17, 2010
London, England (CNN) -- Archaeologists have uncovered an ancient Roman landscape beneath a park in west London, with a Roman road, evidence of a settlement, and unusual burials among the finds.
They say the discovery -- at the site of a planned luxury hotel near the edge of the River Thames -- gives valuable and rare insight into the daily life of what was then an agricultural village.
Dating back nearly 2,000 years, the village would have supplied the ancient Roman ci
Source: AFP
November 18, 2010
NUREMBERG, Germany — The actual dock where Hermann Goering and other top Nazis sat in the Nuremberg trials features in a new exhibit opening this weekend in the same courthouse, exactly 65 years on.
The exhibit, due to be inaugurated on Sunday by Russia's foreign minister and senior US, British, French and German officials, is aimed at meeting growing interest in the ground-breaking trials in Germany and around the world.
It is located in the attic one storey above the
Source: NYT
November 22, 2010
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has played up Cathleen P. Black’s record of business success in nominating her to be the next schools chancellor. He has, perhaps wisely, omitted one asset Ms. Black brings to the job: a drool-inducing collection of homes in which to hold killer end-of-school-year parties. Ms. Black owns a Park Avenue penthouse with a gourmet kitchen, a five-bedroom Connecticut colonial and a Southampton weekend getaway.
It was not that long ago that the chancellor’s title
Source: NYT
November 23, 2010
Over the last four years, the streets of New York City have undergone a transformation: More than 250 miles of traffic lanes dedicated for bicycles have been created, and several laws intended to promote cycling have been passed.
The efforts by the Bloomberg administration have placed the city at the forefront of a national trend to make bicycling viable and safe even in the most urban of settings. Yet over the last year, a backlash has taken hold....
New York has a lon
Source: BBC
November 22, 2010
A rare Chinese calligraphy scroll has fetched 308m yuan (£29m; $46m) - the second-highest amount paid for an artwork at auction in China, the state-run Xinhua news agency says.
The scroll on silk with four lines of characters is a copy of ancient Chinese calligrapher Wang Xizhi's work.
Officials at the China Guardian auction in Beijing did not reveal any details of the buyer.
In June, another calligraphy scroll was purchased for 437m yuan.
Th
Source: BBC
November 22, 2010
Parts of handheld guns have been found at a North Yorkshire battlefield which saw one of the bloodiest conflicts of the War of the Roses.
A metal detectorist unearthed the fragments of the guns, thought to date back to the 15th Century, at the site in Towton, near Tadcaster.
The find contradicts the idea that guns were only used in that period of history to attack castles.
Experts say it sheds light on the use of guns by troops in medieval battles....
Source: BBC
November 22, 2010
The war crimes trial of Congolese former rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba has begun at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
The former vice-president of DR Congo denies murder, rape and pillage in the Central African Republic (CAR).
The ICC chief prosecutor says the trial will show that commanders are responsible for their troops' actions.
Mr Bemba - the most high-profile figure to be tried by the ICC since it began its work in 2002 - denies t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 22, 2010
One of the world's most-wanted Nazi suspects, Samuel Kunz, who was charged earlier this year with helping to kill 430,000 Jews in the Holocaust, has died, a Bonn court said on Monday.
Kunz, 89, who was charged in July with assisting in the murder of Jews at Belzec death camp near the Polish city of Lublin between 1942 and 1943, died on Nov 18, the court in the city of Bonn said.
Kunz, who was also accused of shooting dead 10 Jews, had been number three on the Simon Wi
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 22, 2010
Benedict XVI has said he could become the first Pope to voluntarily resign in more than 700 years should he become physically or mentally incapacitated.
In a book of interviews, the 83-year Pontiff challenged centuries of Catholic Church tradition by saying that he would not hesitate to relinquish his post if no longer felt "physically, psychologically and spiritually" up to the job.
The papacy has traditionally been seen as a job for life, with pontiffs expe
Source: CNN
November 22, 2010
Israeli archaeologists have discovered an ancient Roman bathhouse that was probably used by the soldiers who destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced Monday.
The surprise discovery includes the mark of Rome's Tenth Legion -- as well as the paw print of a dog.
The animal probably belonged to one of the soldiers, excavation director Ofer Sion said....
Source: NYT
November 21, 2010
Stephen C. Quinn has spent 34 years as a wildlife artist and curator for the American Museum of Natural History, and has led field expeditions to places as wild and varied as The Galapagos Islands, Antarctica, Egypt and the Bering Sea. But Mr. Quinn believes his greatest adventure lies ahead of him in the footsteps of another noted naturalist.
On Sunday, Mr. Quinn is to depart on a three-week journey that will take him to the Virunga Mountains, a volcanic range straddling the border
Source: NYT
November 22, 2010
Lee Lorch follows the financial travails of Stuyvesant Town from his apartment on the brick-lined streets of Toronto’s distillery district.
And though he did not attend a recent meeting of 1,200 tenants, such a session was a familiar occasion for Dr. Lorch, who was instrumental in another tenant-led effort, 60 years ago, to desegregate Stuyvesant Town, the vast apartment complex on the East Side of Manhattan that was recently taken over by its lenders.
He was a leader a
Source: Inside Higher Ed
November 22, 2010
Alan Garcia, president of Peru, announced on Friday that Yale University has committed to return a collection of artifacts from Machu Picchu in early 2011 -- possibly ending years of negotiations and legal threats over the pieces, which were taken by a Yale team that excavated the area a century ago. Peru has long disputed Yale's assertions that the artifacts were taken legally. While some of Peru's past statements about Yale have criticized the university, Friday's announcement contained some p
Source: NYT
November 21, 2010
LONDON — A girl meets a prince. The prince needs a wife. The glass slipper fits: she is young, dewy, inexperienced, eager — swept up and blinded by the romance of it all. He proposes within months. Their wedding is watched by 750 million people worldwide and features at least five clergymen, 3,500 guests and one spectacularly frothy pearl-encrusted wedding dress whose 25-foot train has to be stuffed into the bridal carriage, where it threatens to suffocate the bride.
That was 30 yea
Source: NYT
November 21, 2010
If United Nations peacekeepers from Nepal are going to be blamed for bringing cholera to Haiti, it’s important to remember that the blame game for pandemics eventually involves everyone.
For example, cholera has laid waste to New York City several times. The first time, in 1832, New Yorkers blamed Canada, since it had worked its way slowly down from Montreal. The last time, in 1866, they blamed the Irish, some of whom were sneaking ashore from quarantined ships.
In thi
Source: NYT
November 21, 2010
WASHINGTON — To Walter B. Slocombe, there was something hauntingly familiar about the political sinkhole President Obama found himself in last week.
As a Pentagon official in the 1970s, Mr. Slocombe was part of President Jimmy Carter’s team pushing the Senate to ratify an arms control treaty with Moscow. Skeptical of the Kremlin, worried about the impact on American security and sensing weakness in the White House, Republicans blocked the treaty.
More than 30 years lat
