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: BBC News
October 12, 2010
The earliest plants to have colonised land have been found in Argentina.
The discovery puts back by 10 million years the colonisation of land by plants, and suggests that a diversity of land plants had evolved by 472 million years ago.
The newly found plants are liverworts, very simple plants that lack stems or roots, scientists report in the journal the New Phytologist.
That confirms liverworts are likely to be the ancestors of all land plants.
Source: NYT
October 11, 2010
Few products are as synonymous with China as silk. And for a time, no name was as synonymous with quality silk as Jili. In 1851, when the first World Expo, then called the Great Exhibition, was held in London, Jili silk was displayed by a Chinese businessman. It won gold and silver prizes handed out by Queen Victoria. The silk was later presented to her as a birthday gift.
This year, the World Expo is being held 80 miles northeast of here, in Shanghai, but Jili silk is not up for an
Source: NYT
October 11, 2010
PARIS — French police officers on Monday arrested a Rwandan believed to be a leader of a movement involved in a recent terrorist campaign in the Kivu region of Congo in which thousands of civilians have been killed and raped.
Armed with an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the police detained the Rwandan, Callixte Mbarushimana, 47, shortly after dawn at his home in Paris, a court official said. He is wanted on charges of war crimes and crimes agains
Source: NYT
October 12, 2010
The birthplace of Simone de Beauvoir and Brigitte Bardot may look Scandinavian in employment statistics, but it remains Latin in attitude. French women appear to worry about being feminine, not feminist, and French men often display a form of gallantry predating the 1789 revolution. Indeed, the liberation of French women can seem almost accidental — a byproduct of a paternalist state that takes children under its republican wings from toddler age and an obsession with natality rooted in three de
Source: WaPo
October 11, 2010
MILAN - This venerable city, long known for savory saffron risotto and the leggy models of Fashion Week, is moving to establish itself as something else: a zero-tolerance zone for Gypsies.
Anti-Gypsy campaigns in neighboring France have sparked international criticism, with officials there in recent months deporting more than 1,000 ethnic Roma - a clannish people migrating west in large numbers from Eastern Europe. But with great bravado, Milan is taking the lead in responding to I
Source: WaPo
October 12, 2010
A Republican congressional candidate rejected criticism from a House GOP leader Monday, saying that he did nothing wrong by wearing a Nazi uniform while participating in World War II re-enactments.
Rich Iott said that he took part in the historical re-enactments to educate the public, and that he does not agree with the Nazis' views or their actions against Jews.
Asked whether it was wrong to wear a Nazi uniform, Iott said: "I don't see anything wrong about educat
Source: BBC
October 11, 2010
A leader of the Rwandan FDLR rebel group has been arrested in France on war crimes charges, the International Criminal Court says.
In a sealed warrant, Callixte Mbarushimana is accused of 11 counts of murder, rape and other crimes committed during the long conflict in DR Congo.
He last year told the BBC he denied any responsibility for war crimes and said FDLR fighters did not attack civilians.
FDLR fighters were recently accused of raping hundreds of peopl
Source: BBC
October 11, 2010
It was an "out of the attic" moment when the Antiques Roadshow came upon a painting by Northern Ireland artist Paul Henry.
"The Bog Road" had been in the owner's family since the 1930s. They bought the painting directly from the artist.
But they were in for a surprise when they brought it to the BBC roadshow in Bath earlier this year.
They found out that the painting they loved was worth a small fortune.
Now the Bog Road is
Source: BBC
October 11, 2010
The Victorian Society has released a list of what it says are the 10 most endangered buildings in England and Wales.
It follows a public appeal by the charity to find the most threatened Victorian and Edwardian buildings.
The buildings are in Leicestershire, Birmingham, Stoke-on-Trent, Sheffield, Grimsby, Liverpool, Manchester, London and Vale of Glamorgan.
Included is a former ice factory, an old fire station and a school.
This is the fourth y
Source: BBC
October 11, 2010
The Liverpool museum now has a policy to return human remains in their collection - following the Human Tissue Act 2004 - if they receive a formal and legitimate request from a government agency.
It has been a contentious issue, with some arguing the remains should be kept in museums for scientific research.
Dr Fleming said he thought most people would find it "outrageous" if someone from the UK was refused the remains of a family member or ancestor by another
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 11, 2010
The Australian government has placed a ban on businesses using the name of the country's first saint in an attempt to prevent them cashing in on the late Catholic nun's growing celebrity.
The move, which will dismay scores of small businesses that had been hoping to capitalise on an influx of Catholic pilgrims, comes as Mary Mackillop-mania takes hold across Australia in the lead up to her canonisation by the Pope this weekend.
Julia Gillard, the prime minister, annou
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 11, 2010
Traces of a previously unknown Bronze Age civilisation have been discovered in the peaks of Russia's Caucasus Mountains thanks to aerial photographs taken 40 years ago, researchers said on Monday.
The sites are spread over about 100 kilometres (60 miles) between the Kuban river in the west and the city of Nalchik in the east.
The decorations and forms of bronze items found in the area indicate the civilisation is linked to the Kuban civilisation, which was discovered
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 11, 2010
The remains of the Italian woman who was the model for Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa were dug up 30 years ago and now lie in a municipal rubbish tip, an Italian expert has claimed.
Lisa Gherardini died in Florence in 1542 and was buried in the grounds of Sant'Orsola convent.
Over the centuries the Franciscan convent was used as a tobacco factory and a university teaching facility but in the 1980s a redevelopment was launched to convert it into a barracks for Italy's t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 11, 2010
A dusty old painting stored behind a family sofa could be a Michelangelo worth up to $300 million (£190 million) and potentially one of the art finds of the century, according to an expert.
The unfinished painting of Jesus and Mary has long been in the family of US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Martin Kober, who lives in Buffalo, New York.
He and his relatives nicknamed it "The Mike" because of a family legend that it had been painted by the Renaissance artis
Source: AP
October 11, 2010
Joan Sutherland's radiant soprano stretched effortlessly over more than three octaves, with a purity of tone that made her one of the most celebrated opera singers of all time.
Acclaimed "La Stupenda," — "the Stupendous One" — during a career spanning more than four decades, Sutherland was known in the opera world as an "anti-diva" diva whose warm vibrant sound and subtle coloring helped revitalize the school of early 19th-century Italian opera known as
Source: AP
October 11, 2010
A new museum is bringing the lessons of the Holocaust and its grim cousins to new generations of Mexicans — and reminding them the intolerance that feeds genocide can even grow close to home.
The five-story glass and concrete building inaugurated Monday beside Mexico's Foreign Relations Department takes visitors through chilling displays on the Nazi Holocaust and how it was seen from Mexico, then continues through other horrors, including the slaughters of Armenians, Tutsis and Suda
Source: AP
October 11, 2010
Abandoned mines in Romania leach waters contaminated by heavy metals into rivers. A Hungarian chemical plant produces more than 100,000 tons of toxic substances a year. Soil in eastern Slovakia is contaminated with cancer-producing PCBs.
The flood of toxic sludge in Hungary is but one of the ecological horrors that lurk in Eastern Europe 20 years after the collapse of the Iron Curtain, serving as a reminder that the region is dotted with disasters waiting to happen.
Muc
Source: Fox News
October 11, 2010
An award-winning cartoonist is seeing red after editors at The Washington Post and other newspapers pulled a "very tame" cartoon that alluded to the Prophet Muhammad.
The cartoon, which was originally submitted in August and had been scheduled to appear in newspapers nationwide on Oct. 3, depicts a lively, seek-and-find-esque park scene complete with a giraffe, a skateboarder, a cyclist, frolicking children and a large hippopotamus. An accompanying caption reads: "Pic
Source: CNN
October 11, 2010
After nearly 40 years without any major upkeep, the World War I Memorial on the National Mall is finally getting some attention, with renovations financed by federal economic stimulus money.
It has become a race to complete the project because of the failing health of Frank Buckles, the 109-year-old former U.S. Army corporal who is the last surviving American veteran of World War I.
The monument is temporarily closed to the public as work begins, but through a safety fe
Source: AP
October 6, 2010
Jewish groups expressed outrage Wednesday that a former Nazi SS captain convicted for his role in the massacre of 335 civilians in Italy has been allowed to leave house arrest for such everyday activities as shopping or going to church.
Erich Priebke's lawyer announced this week that an Italian court granted the 97-year-old German permission last year to leave the Rome apartment where he is serving a life sentence to take care of the "indispensable needs for his life."
