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
October 1, 2010
The Tea Party is a thoroughly modern movement, organizing on Twitter and Facebook to become the most dynamic force of the midterm elections.
But when it comes to ideology, it has reached back to dusty bookshelves for long-dormant ideas.
It has resurrected once-obscure texts by dead writers — in some cases elevating them to best-seller status — to form a kind of Tea Party canon. Recommended by Tea Party icons like Ron Paul and Glenn Beck, the texts are being quoted every
Source: Science Daily
September 28, 2010
A new paper is set to re-ignite debate over the origins of so-called Homo floresiensis -- the 'hobbit' that some scientists have claimed as a new species of human.
The University of Western Australia's Emeritus Professor Charles Oxnard and his colleagues, in a paper in PLoS ONE have reconfirmed, on the post-cranial skeleton, their original finding on the skull that Homo floresiensis in fact bears the hallmarks of humans -- Homo sapiens -- affected by hypothyroid cretinism.
Source: Cosmos
September 30, 2010
Cranial features distinctive to Australian Aborigines are present in hundreds of skulls that have been uncovered in Central and South America, some dating back to over 11,000 years ago.
Evolutionary biologist Walter Neves of the University of São Paulo, whose findings are reported in a cover story in the latest issue of Cosmos magazine, has examined these skeletons and recovered others, and argues that there is now a mass of evidence indicating that at least two different population
Source: The Canadian Press
October 1, 2010
Atop an oak-shaded hill at Mount Hope Cemetery, an epitaph chiselled in Latin on Col. Nathaniel Rochester's headstone whispers on the wind: "If you seek his monument, look around you."
Mount Hope, America's oldest municipal park-garden graveyard, is a refuge not only for the departed. Curious souls still tramp through the 78-hectare arboretum by the tens of thousands each year, among them picnickers, bird watchers, joggers and history buffs.
In the Romantic er
Source: The Boston Globe
October 1, 2010
Historians at the President Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site in Plymouth Notch, Vt., which houses the president’s collection, are trumpeting the discovery of the tablecloth that was used during Silent Cal’s makeshift swearing-in ceremony in 1923.
Coolidge, who had served as the governor of Massachusetts from 1919 to 1921 before becoming vice president, was visiting his family at his childhood home in Plymouth Notch when he received the news of President Warren Harding’s death.
Source: BBC
October 1, 2010
Turkish nationalists have said Muslim prayers inside the ruins of a historic Christian cathedral in a move likely to cause friction with Armenians.
Hundreds of nationalists travelled to the ruins of the 11th Century cathedral at Ani in eastern Turkey to commemorate a Muslim victory there.
The action is being seen as a response to the reopening of another historic Armenian church last month in Turkey.
Ani, an uninhabited archaeological site, was once the cap
Source: BBC
September 30, 2010
North Korea has released video footage and a photograph which appear to show the heir apparent Kim Jong-un.
It is the world's first up-to-date glimpse of the young man who appears set to succeed his father, Kim Jong-il, in a gradual transfer of power.
He is pictured sitting in the front row in a group shot of senior leaders.
The TV footage shows him at this week's rare meeting of the ruling Workers' Party, where he was promoted to top political and military
Source: BBC
October 1, 2010
North and South Korea have agreed to hold another round of reunions of families split by the countries' war in the 1950s, officials say.
One hundred families from each side of the border will be allowed to meet their relatives from 30 October at a mountain resort in the North.
There are no communications across the border for ordinary citizens.
The meetings would be the first since the South accused the North of sinking one of its warships in March.
Source: BBC
October 1, 2010
A UN report into the killings of Hutu civilians in the Democratic Republic of Congo during the 1990s says they may constitute "crimes of genocide".
It accuses Rwandan, Ugandan and Burundian forces of participating in the attacks, and recommends that the international community seeks to prosecute those responsible.
The document's publication prompted angry denials from all the countries.
But the Congolese government said the report was credible an
Source: BBC
October 1, 2010
Work by a Scottish artist which has remained untouched in his Edinburgh house since he died in 1922 is set to be auctioned.
More than 52 pieces of artwork by John Campbell Mitchell are set to raise £30,000 when they go under the hammer at Bonhams in Edinburgh on 14 October.
Two generations of the family have since occupied the house in the west of the city where he had his studio.
Mitchell was born in Argyll in 1862 but spent most of his life in Edinburgh.
Source: BBC
September 30, 2010
The fossil of a giant penguin that lived 36 million years ago has been discovered in Peru.
Scientists say the find shows that key features of the plumage were present quite early on in penguin evolution.
The team told Science magazine that the animal's feathers were brown and grey, distinct from the black "tuxedo" look of modern penguins.
It was about 1.5m (5ft) tall and nearly twice as heavy as an Emperor Penguin, the largest living species.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 1, 2010
At least 10 people were killed in Abuja on Friday when two car bombs blew up during celebrations for Nigeria's 50th independence anniversary.
The unprecedented attack in the capital was carried out by The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, the main militant group in the country's oil-rich southern delta. The group had threatened to attack the festivities and warned people to stay away.
While Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, is oil rich most peopl
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 1, 2010
A scholar's son used online aliases to harass and discredit his father's detractors in a heated academic debate over the origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a New York court has found.
Raphael Golb, a 50-year-old Manhattan property lawyer, was convicted on Thursday of 30 counts against him, including identity theft, forgery and harassment. He was acquitted of one count of criminal impersonation.
Prosecutors said Golb used fake e-mail accounts and wrote blog posts under as
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 1, 2010
Druidry has been recognised as an official religion in Britain for the first time, thousands of years after its adherents first worshipped in the country.
The Druid Network has been given charitable status by the Charity Commission for England and Wales, the quango that decides what counts as a genuine faith as well as regulating fundraising bodies.
It guarantees the modern group, set up in 2003, valuable tax breaks but also grants the ancient religion equal status to
Source: CNN
October 1, 2010
Blood letting, tobacco smoke blown into the lungs, rum rubs and even the sight of Australia were some of the treatments used – with varying degrees of success – by surgeons of Britain’s Royal Navy to treat patients from the late 1700s to the late 1800s, government records released Friday show.
Britain’s National Archives has cataloged and made available to the public journals and diaries from surgeons who served on ships and in shore installations from 1793 to 1880. The archive repr
Source: CNN
September 30, 2010
Now, a major exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, entitled "The Legend of Khubilai Khan: Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty," is bringing that world to life with exhibits including lavish costumes, stunning paintings and priceless jewels.
The Yuan period, which began in 1215 with the birth of Khubilai, grandson of feared Mongolian warlord Genghis, is one of the most famous in history.
Few people know what Khubilai's world was really like, however.
Source: Reuters
October 1, 2010
The United States apologized on Friday for an experiment conducted in the 1940s in which U.S. government researchers deliberately infected Guatemalan prison inmates, women and mental patients with syphilis.
In the experiment, aimed at testing the then-new drug penicillin, inmates were infected by prostitutes and later treated with the antibiotic.
"The sexually transmitted disease inoculation study conducted from 1946-1948 in Guatemala was clearly unethical," S
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
September 30, 2010
Appearances can deceive, local historian Tim McCown said.
What looks like a brick second-story addition to the William Smith House -- where the first armed opposition to British rule by colonists was planned -- actually is a wooden frame covered with shingles, he said. That 20th-century upper floor is one of the things that so far has kept the building off state and federal registers of historic structures.
The modern renovations, which include porches and a summer kitc
Source: Science News
September 30, 2010
Excavations in Papua New Guinea’s western highlands have turned up the oldest well-documented evidence of people in Sahul, a land mass that once joined the island to Australia.
Stone tools and plant remains indicate that, as early as 49,000 years ago, people lived 2,000 meters, or 1.2 miles, above sea level in Papua New Guinea’s Ivane Valley, say archaeologist Glenn Summerhayes of the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, and his colleagues.
By at least 50,000 ye
Source: DPA
September 30, 2010
A collection of 16 watercolours attributed to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler sold for 104,800 pounds ($164,800) at an auction in Britain Thursday, and were snapped up by buyers from emerging economies.
Richard Westwood-Brookes of Mullock's Auctioneers in Shropshire, northwest of London, said it was an 'interesting trend' that the works had been bought exclusively by overseas buyers from China, India and Russia.
'This shows that it has nothing to do with an obsession with the
