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: Sofia News Agency (Bulgaria)
October 6, 2010
A German and a Bulgarian army officer have been sentenced to four years in jail for stealing a vintage World War II tank and attempting to thieve another.
Sliven Military Court decided on Wednesday to send for four years in jail Thomas Gmainer, 36, and the Bulgarian army officer Aleksey Petrov from the Yambol Military Unit.
The other defendant, 67-year old German national Matheus Mayer, was delivered a three-year suspended sentence with five years on probation.
Source: AP
October 6, 2010
The war in Afghanistan enters its 10th year Thursday with key players hedging their bets, uncertain whether the Obama administration is prepared to stay for the long haul, move quickly to exit an increasingly unpopular conflict, or something in between.
Fearing that his Western allies may in the end abandon him, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has started to prepare his nation for a withdrawal of international forces by shoring up relations with neighboring Pakistan and reaching out t
Source: BBC News
October 5, 2010
Researchers have identified a language new to science in a remote region of India.
Known as Koro, it appears to be distinct from other languages in the family to which it belongs; but it is also under threat.
The tragedy of dying languages
Koro was discovered by a team of linguists on an expedition to Arunachal Pradesh, in north-eastern India.
The team was part of National Geographic's "Enduring Voices" project on threatened indigenou
Source: BBC News
October 5, 2010
The first dinosaur-like creatures emerged up to nine million years earlier than previously thought.
That is the conclusion of a study on footprints found in 250 million-year-old rocks from Poland.
Writing in a Royal Society journal, a team has named the creature that made them Prorotodactylus.
The prints are small - measuring a few centimetres in length - which suggests the earliest dinosaur-like animals were about the size of domestic cats.
Th
Source: LA Times
October 6, 2010
Reporting from Washington —
Nearly 69 years after President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered Japanese Americans to internment camps, President Obama signed legislation Tuesday awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to Japanese American World War II veterans.
A handful of Japanese American veterans and lawmakers joined Obama in the Oval Office, where he signed the legislation awarding the medal to the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the 100th Infantry Battalion, both known for th
Source: NYT
October 5, 2010
n 1986, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal made an unprecedented secret deal with Justice William J. Brennan Jr., who had by then served on the Supreme Court for 30 years and was its leading liberal voice.
“I basically would sneak up to his chambers at 7 o’clock in the morning and interview him and go through papers,” the reporter, Stephen Wermiel, said last week. Over the next four years, Mr. Wermiel conducted 60 hours of interviews....
The idea behind their arrang
Source: UPI
October 3, 2010
A vandal defaced a remote rock wall containing ancient petroglyphs in Arizona which had stood unaltered for at least 1,000 years, a local archaeologist said.
The preserved cultural record in Keyhole Sink in northern Arizona's Kaibab National Forest contained etchings depicting people, animals and a blazing sun -- an archaeological treasure which was defaced when someone painted "ACE" on top of the glyphs in sloppy, dripping lettering, The Arizona Republic reported Sunday.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 5, 2010
Marilyn Monroe wrote of her devastation at discovering that Arthur Miller had written in his diary that she was an embarrassment to him, new archives have disclosed.
The actress recorded her anguish in a poem in which she appeared to call the playwright a “peaceful monster” after finding the entry during their 1956 summer stay in England.
Miller complained in his diary that he was “disappointed” with the world’s most adored sex symbol and sometimes felt embarrassed by h
Source: NewsInEnglish.no
September 24, 2010
Archaeologists think they have found two more Viking ships buried in Vestfold County south of Oslo. The biggest may be 25 metres long, larger than any found so far.
Road construction near the old Viking trading center at Kaupang has led to the discovery of two large ship silhouettes on ground radar pictures. The pictures have been made possible through a venture involving the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (Norsk institutt for kulturminneforskning, NIKU) and the
Source: NewsInEnglish.no
October 1, 2010
The most well-preserved pottery from the Stone Age ever found in Norway has turned up in an unspoiled dwelling site not far from Kristiansand. The find is considered an archaeological sensation.
The discovery of a “sealed” Stone Age house site from 3500 BC has stirred great excitement among archaeologists from Norway’s Museum of Cultural History at the University in Oslo. The settlement site at Hamresanden, close to Kristiansand’s airport at Kjevik in Southern Norway, looks like it
Source: Yahoo News
October 4, 2010
NEW YORK - Since the remains of a wooden ship were unearthed at the World Trade Center construction site in mid-July, a horde of researchers has been putting the vessel under the microscope - sometimes literally - in a quest to piece together the true story of the resurrected ship, and save it from decay.
On Thursday, three of the experts most intimately involved with the 18th-century mystery ship - Michael Pappalardo, an archeologist, Norman Brouwer, a maritime historian, and Nicho
Source: Fox News
October 4, 2010
Archaeologists seeking ancient pirate booty are heading back to sea off North Carolina's coast -- a continuing effort to recover artifacts from the wreck believed to be Blackbeard's flagship.
The boat, called Queen Anne's Revenge, is believed to have sank in 1718 near Beaufort, N.C. Archaeologists in the state aim to save a dozen cannons -- up to 8 feet long and as much as a ton in weight -- and the ship's 1,800-pound anchors by preventing the process that corrodes iron in saltwater
Source: Salon
October 5, 2010
The FBI looked into rumors that Jack Kemp, then a long-serving Republican member of Congress, was gay as a potential source of concern during a 1989 background check. The agency finally concluded that the chatter -- which haunted, and hindered, Kemp's attempts to advance in national politics for years -- was unsubstantiated.
Kemp, who died in May 2009, started his professional life as a quarterback in the National Football League and the old American Football League before throwing
Source: BBC
October 4, 2010
The bones of a Stone Age woman are to be returned to a museum in Bacup, Lancashire, after a summer on show at Llandudno.
Conwy council's museum service said it was disappointed as it had hoped they could keep the remains.
Blodwen, as the 5,500 year-old skeleton is known, was found by men quarrying on the Little Orme in 1891.
The skeleton was taken back to Lancashire, and put on show there....
Source: BBC
October 1, 2010
US testing that infected hundreds of Guatemalans with gonorrhoea and syphilis more than 60 years ago was a "crime against humanity", Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom has said.
President Barack Obama has apologised for the medical tests, in which mentally ill patients and prisoners were infected without their consent.
Mr Obama told Mr Colom the 1940s-era experiments ran contrary to American values, Guatemala said.
The US has promised an investigat
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 5, 2010
Kim Jong-un, the heir to the North Korean regime, has reportedly undergone plastic surgery so that he more closely resembles his grandfather, the deeply respected Kim Il-sung.
The speculation began in South Korea after the release last week of the first official photographs of the 27-year-old son of Kim Jong-il.
The images show a chubby, nervous looking young man sitting in the front row of a packed auditorium as he was named vice chairman of the Central Military Commi
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 5, 2010
A convicted Nazi war criminal serving a life sentence for the massacre of hundreds of civilians outside Rome during the Second World War has been allowed out on shopping trips, sparking anger in Italy.
Erich Priebke, 97, a former captain in the SS, is serving the sentence under house arrest near Rome for his part in the murder of 335 Jews, partisans and prisoners of war in March 1944 at the Ardeatine Caves, on the outskirts of the city. He was extradited to Italy in 1995 after bein
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 5, 2010
Moscow's new acting mayor is pushing to remove a giant statue of Peter the Great from the heart of the capital, as part of an unravelling of his sacked predecessor's legacy.
The statue, a work by sculptor Zurab Tsereteli, a nearly 328ft high edifice in central Moscow, was vehemently opposed when the Moscow government, headed by Yury Luzhkov, erected it in 1997.
The statue, which sits on the tip of a Moscow river island less than a mile from the Kremlin, pictures Peter t
Source: AOL News
October 5, 2010
The discovery in 2002 of a limestone burial box with the Hebrew inscription "James son of Joseph brother of Jesus" electrified the world of archaeology. If genuine, the burial box, or ossuary, would be the only archaeological artifact yet found with a possible direct link to Jesus of Nazareth.
Amid international fanfare, the ossuary went on display at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum and swiftly spawned numerous articles, scholarly studies, several documentary movies and at
Source: AP
October 5, 2010
The head of Rome's Jewish community joined the Vatican newspaper and others Tuesday in sharply rebuking Premier Silvio Berlusconi for a joke about Jews, money and the Holocaust which was caught on videotape.
The joke was one of several controversial comments Berlusconi made while chatting with fans outside his residence on his 74th birthday last week. His comments were captured on video and broadcast this weekend on the website of the left-leaning La Repubblica newspaper.
