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: Yahoo News
October 2, 2010
LONDON (AFP) – Britain has recognised druidry as an official religion for the first time, thousands of years after the Celtic pagan faith emerged in Europe, the country's charity commission said Saturday.
The Druid Network, an organisation representing the religion in Britain, was granted charitable status in a decision that not only gives it tax breaks but also lets the religion take its place alongside more mainstream beliefs.
"This has been a long hard struggle,
Source: Yahoo News
September 21, 2010
It is instantly recognizable as a sign of peace, but what is the symbolism behind the peace sign?
The olive branch came from ancient Greece, the dove from the Bible … but where did that circle with the chicken-footprint come from?
Rewind back to 1958 when London textile designer, Gerald Holtom, wanted to create a symbol for marchers to carry on banners and signs at a "Ban the Bomb" march planned by the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War (DAC). The eve
Source: LiveScience
September 29, 2010
Rediscovered letters and postcards highlight the fierce competition among scientists who discovered DNA's famous double-helix structure and unraveled the genetic code.
Francis Crick and James D. Watson shared a 1962 Nobel Prize with Maurice Wilkins for their work on revealing the structure of the DNA molecule that encodes instructions for the development and function of living beings. But formerly lost letters kept by Crick add more color to the well-known rivalries between Wilkins
Source: AFP
April 1, 2010
Under a mild autumn sun, workers bustle about like bees at a Roman bath complex sprawling over a green plain in western Turkey in what looks like a regular excavation site.
But the fate awaiting the impressive ancient spa of Allianoi is dark: the workers here are tasked with burying the site and not digging it out to reveal its secrets.
Much to the consternation of archaeologists and civic bodies, the Turkish government has said it will go ahead with flooding the valley
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: MSNBC
October 4, 2010
32-foot-long timber structure was two-masted trade vessel, researchers say.
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.
Three of the experts most intimately involved with the 18th-century mystery ship — Michael Pappalardo,
Source: AP
October 4, 2010
...Mount Hope, America's oldest municipal park-garden graveyard, is a refuge not only for the departed. Curious souls still tramp through the 196-acre arboretum by the tens of thousands each year, among them picnickers, bird watchers, joggers and history buffs.
In the Romantic era of Wordsworth and Beethoven, the Victorian vogue of mourning embraced a love of nature and artistry. So-called "rural cemeteries" a few miles out of town were a sublime departure from the austere
Source: Washington Post
October 4, 2010
in 2006, at the height of the housing bubble, Montgomery County paid $1 million to buy a two-story colonial in North Bethesda with a log cabin jutting out on one side. The house had been on the market only a couple of months, but county officials felt compelled to act quickly: This might be their only chance to save the real Uncle Tom's cabin - the former home of Josiah Henson, the model for the title character in Harriet Beecher Stowe's seminal antislavery novel.
Since 2006, state
Source: BBC
October 3, 2010
Germany has been celebrating the 20th anniversary of its reunification.
Chancellor Angela Merkel led the official celebrations, hosted by the northern city of Bremen and attended by tens of thousands of people.
Capitalist West and communist East Germany merged on 3 October 1990, nearly a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall which divided them.
Sunday is also the day Germany makes the last payment on debt stemming from reparations imposed after World War I
Source: BBC
October 4, 2010
Nottinghamshire Police are trying to trace the owner of a bag containing a number of documents and letters dating back to 1919.
The blue and yellow Nike bag was found at a bus stop outside the Ashfield District Council offices on the afternoon of 29 September.
Inside the bag was a tin containing a number of letters, Army payslips and a driver's licence from 1927.
The items are in the name of Bernard Webster from Ashbourne, Derbyshire....
Source: BBC
October 4, 2010
Winston Churchill has become the first prime minister to enter the album chart with a record marking the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain.
Reach For The Skies, by the RAF's Central Band, featuring Churchill's rousing World War II speeches set to music, was a new entry at four.
But the highest new entry was Mark Ronson's Record Collection at two, with The Script leading the rundown.
Tinie Tempah topped the singles chart with Written In The Stars.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 4, 2010
Geert Wilders, the anti-Islam politician, told a Dutch court that he stood by his opinions that the Koran is a "fascist book" and Islam is as dangerous as Nazism, as he went on trial for inciting racial hatred.
The flamboyant, peroxide blond MP, who holds the balance of power in the Netherlands after coming third in recent national elections on an anti-Muslim platform, told judges that he had no regrets over the comments.
Mr Wilders is being prosecuted for de
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 4, 2010
For 70 years the Parisian apartment had been left uninhabited, under lock and key, the rent faithfully paid but no hint of what was inside.
Behind the door, under a thick layer of dusk lay a treasure trove of turn-of-the-century objects including a painting by the 19th century Italian artist Giovanni Boldini.
The woman who owned the flat had left for the south of France before the Second World War and never returned.
But when she died recently aged 91, ex
Source: Fox News
October 4, 2010
Hurry fast, flower children, you may not have much time before a psychedelic 1960s Volkswagen minibus becomes just another relic of the Age of Aquarius.
The Volkswagen -- smothered in psychedelic graffiti and dubbed “The Peace Mobile” -- is parked on the front lawn of the Kaplan-Allen home in The Palisades, a northwest neighborhood in Washington, D.C. Now the vehicle has stirred controversy after receiving critical fire from the local government’s Department of Public Works.
Source: CNN
October 4, 2010
The Supreme Court has rejected efforts by some families of 9/11 victims to ensure material from the fallen World Trade Towers is treated respectfully because it could contain ashes of those who perished in the terrorist attacks.
The justices opened their new term Monday, issuing orders in several thousands cases that had piled up over their three-month summer recess.
Among the cases was a lawsuit against New York City officials who were responsible for transporting an
Source: The Atlantic
October 4, 2010
...Research published on September 20 in Environmental Health Perspectives concludes that the potentially hazardous chemical can enter the human body via multiple routes and is far harder for our bodies to metabolize than previously believed. The new study examined both mice and rhesus monkeys, the latter selected because they are good predictors of how the human body absorbs this type of chemical. Eighteen hours after exposure, the monkeys' blood still contained active BPA—a finding that sugges
Source: HNN Staff
October 3, 2010
Many media outlets have noted that John C. Cutler, the doctor who led the U.S. Public Health Service syphilis experiment on Guatemalan inmates and later participated in the Tuskegee experiment, defended Tuskegee well into the 1990s, most famously for a 1993 PBS Nova documentary entitled
Source: The Root
October 2, 2010
[Linda Villarosa directs the journalism program at City College in New York and is a regular contributor to The Root.]
On Friday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius apologized for a diabolical human experiment conducted in Central America 64 years ago and engineered by the U.S. government. From 1946 to 1948, scientists deliberately infected Guatemalan research subjects with syphilis to study how well penicillin worked.
Source: Food Consumer
October 3, 2010
(This is a revised version with more information on the diseases added)
U.S. officials apologized on Friday for unethical medical studies that a federal doctor conducted 64 years ago among prisoners, soldiers and mental patients in Guatemala. The studies were conducted without the consent of the “participants.”
The studies, performed between 1946 and 1948, were meant to determine if use of penicillin right after sex would be effective in preventing sexually transmitted dise
Source: CNN.com
October 1, 2010
The Tuskegee syphilis experiment of the 20th century is often cited as the most famous example of unethical medical research. Now, evidence has emerged that it overlapped with a shorter study, also sponsored by U.S. government health agencies, in which human subjects were unknowingly being harmed by participating in an experiment.
Research from Wellesley College professor Susan Reverby has uncovered evidence of an experiment in Guatemala that infected people with sexually transmitte
