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
November 3, 2010
WASHINGTON — The would-be terrorists in Yemen made a sardonic choice when they sent two package bombs to Chicago last week: they addressed the parcels to two historical figures notorious in Middle Eastern lore for the persecution of Muslims.
One of the addressees, Diego Deza, was known for his cruelty in performing his duties as Grand Inquisitor during the Spanish Inquisition, succeeding the infamous Tomás de Torquemada in the job. Reynald Krak, to whom the second package was addres
Source: BBC
November 3, 2010
A French court has ordered the extradition of Rwandan rebel leader Callixte Mbarushimana to face trial at the International Criminal Court.
Mr Mbarushimana is accused of 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo last year.
His ethnic Hutu FDLR group is at the heart of years of conflict in eastern DR Congo, near Rwanda.
Arrested in France last month, he has previously denied war crimes charges.
Source: BBC
November 3, 2010
President Boris Tadic is to become the first Serbian leader to pay his respects to Croatian victims of a notorious 1991 massacre.
He will visit the town of Vukovar, which was captured after a three-month siege by the Serb-led Yugoslav army.
Mr Tadic will lay wreaths at a memorial commemorating the murder of 260 hospital patients.
He and Croatian President Ivo Josipovic will also go to a graveyard where 18 Serb villagers were killed by Croats.
C
Source: BBC
November 3, 2010
A detailed depiction of Henry VIII's so-called lost palace is expected to fetch up to £1.2m when it is auctioned.
Construction of Nonsuch Palace on the Surrey/London border began in 1538 on the 30th anniversary of the monarch's accession to the throne.
It stood on the site of Cuddington village, near Ewell before it fell into disrepair and disappeared in the 1690s.
A 1568 watercolour of the building painted by Joris Hoefnagel is to be auctioned at Christie'
Source: BBC
November 3, 2010
The flag of Norway is to be raised over Dumfries to mark the 70th anniversary of its special links with the nation.
The connection was made in World War II when the town played host to the exiled Norwegian army.
The relationship is celebrated annually in St Michael's Church where many of the servicemen worshipped.
Church elder, Richard Reade, said the local council had come on board to help recognise the added significance of this year's commemorations.
Source: BBC
October 29, 2010
Back in 1989, in the basement of a house in the Bolivian city of La Paz, a trunk containing dozens of metal drums of film negatives was found. Among the discoveries was Wara Wara, the only known surviving work from Bolivia's silent-film era.
About 28,000 films, almost half of them Bolivian, are gathering dust on the archives' shelves.
Some have not even been opened, let alone catalogued or restored, because of a lack of funding and the necessary skills....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 2, 2010
American Ballet Theatre dancers promised pirouettes – not politics – during the troupe's historic visit to Cuba this week, the first by the New York-based company since shortly after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution turned the island into a U.S. nemesis.
America's premier ballet company was in Havana to pay homage to Cuba's most famous ballerina, 89-year-old Alicia Alonso, who danced with the American Ballet Theatre in the 1940s and 50s before returning to her homeland to found Cuba's
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 3, 2010
Former President George W. Bush said being called a racist by rapper Kanye West was one of the worst moments of his eight years as President.
Mr Bush says criticism from some, including prominent rapper Kanye West, that his handling of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina showed he did not care about black people represented "an all-time low".
Mr Bush writes in his book, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, that his initial mistake on Katrina was failing to commun
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 4, 2010
DNA tests confirmed Romania's late communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was buried two decades ago in a Bucharest grave, forensic experts said on Wednesday, lifting lingering doubt over the ruler's burial place.
The family had threatened to sue the Romanian state if the remains – exhumed on July 21, some 20 years after their deaths – had not belonged to the Ceausescus.
Mr Dermengiu said in the case of Elena, there was not enough material available for a conclusive tes
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 3, 2010
The British Museum will exhibit a hoard of ancient Afghan gold jewellery after Kabul today (THURS) signs an agreement loaning the treasure to Britain.
The discovery of the Bactrian Hoard in a burial mound in northern Afghanistan is considered one of the greatest archaeological events of last century.
The collection of 21,000 pieces of finery buried by Afghanistan’s nomadic ancestors was feared looted from Kabul or melted down during the 1990s as the country endured ci
Source: AP
November 3, 2010
Viktor Chernomyrdin, who served as Russia's prime minister in the turbulent 1990s as the country was throwing off communism and developing as a market economy, died Wednesday. He was 72.
No cause of death has been released, but Chernomyrdin had grown thin in recent years and was reported to have been ill.
Chernomyrdin helped see Russia through some difficult times, including the economic devastation that followed the Soviet collapse and the war in Chechnya, and was much
Source: CNN
November 3, 2010
Protection from the Sahara's howling dust storms may have helped the Sphinx maintain its steady gaze over the millennia.
Newly discovered walls on the Giza plateau were part of an enclosure to protect the Sphinx from wind-borne sand, Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities says.
According to some texts, the walls were built by King Thutmose IV (1400-1390 BCE) because of a dream he had during a hunting trip, the council's secretary general, Zahi Hawass, said Tuesday....
Source: WV Daily
November 2, 2010
Since Abby Aldrich Rockefeller acquired it in 1935, an 18th century watercolor has stymied scholars, historians and art enthusiasts who hoped to identify its artist. Now, more than 200 years after placing brush to paper, John Rose has been identified as the painter.
Rose’s identity might never have been known if not for the digging of librarian Susan P. Shames. Shames, a decorative arts librarian for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, used primary documents and existing scholarsh
Source: Yahoo News
October 29, 2010
BERLIN (Reuters Life!) – Six and a half decades after the Holocaust, the first Jewish publisher of children's books in Germany will issue its inaugural title on Monday.
Filmmaker and author Myriam Halberstam, a German-American Jew, said she set up "Ariella Books" in May 2010 because there was a lack of children's books on Judaism in Germany.
"A Horse for Hanukkah" -- a humorous story about a horse who wreaks havoc on a family's celebrations during Ha
Source: The Atlantic
November 2, 2010
Voting has seen its share of technological change since the founding of our Republic. From paper ballots filled out by hand to the Votomatic to the latest in touchscreen computerized voting, the practice of democracy has long been carried out through the technology of the day.
For your 2010 election day viewing pleasure, here's a gallery of the various devices that we've used to cast our ballots. Thanks go to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, which maintains spe
Source: Politico
November 3, 2010
President Obama takes his last question of the presser: Will he be willing to change his leadership style? "Folks didn't have any complaints about my leadership style when I was running around Iowa for a year," Obama says....
Noting that Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton have had similar experiences, Obama jokes, "That's not something that I'm recommending to future American presidents, that they take a shellacking like I did last night."...
Source: The Daily Beast
November 1, 2010
On Sunday night, just two days before the Democrats were to be on the receiving end of what George W. Bush once called a midterm “thumpin’,” Bush was at Game Four of the World Series in Arlington. It felt like some prelapsarian time before Hurricane Katrina and 20-percent approval ratings. Perched on a motorized cart, Bush and his father drove in from the outfield like America’s relief pitchers, called in to get the country out of a jam. When W. hurled the first pitch, the crowd went nuts.
Source: Fox News
November 1, 2010
Researchers are preparing to excavate the bones of some ancient animals found near Snowmass Village.
Crews from the Denver Museum of Nature & Science plan to start removing the bones Tuesday under an agreement reached with local officials.
A bulldozer operator discovered some rib bones while working on a construction project at Ziegler Reservoir last month. Since then, the museum said that at least one woolly mammoth and at least three mastodons have been found. Sev
Source: Hampton Roads
November 1, 2010
It’s a typical day at the Hatteras Histories and Mysteries Museum in Buxton, N.C., and Scott Dawson is buzzing around glass cases full of centuries-old arrowheads and broken pottery. Puzzled visitors listen as he explains for the gazillionth time the difference between fact and speculation. • He speaks with certainty in a voice tinged with more than a hint of frustration. • “Anybody who researches it knows that the colony came down here,” he says, confidently dismissing competing theories on Ame
Source: BBC
November 2, 2010
Serbian police are searching three locations for the war-crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic, official sources say.
They are searching two locations in the capital Belgrade as well as a tourism centre in Arandjelova, a village in central Serbia.
Gen Mladic is accused by international prosecutors of genocide while leading Bosnian Serb forces in 1992-95.
Serbia is under pressure to bring Gen Mladic to justice as part of its efforts to enter the European Union.
