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: WaPo
September 28, 2010
Martin Luther King Jr.: Preacher, civil rights icon, martyr -- and German luxury-car pitchman?
Well, yes. The modern champion of racial emancipation is one of the unlikely stars of a new ad for Mercedes Benz that uses some famous faces and evokes some historical moments, real and staged, on behalf of the automaker's most advanced, and most expensive, new model.
Grainy footage of King, arms raised in mid-oratory, appears briefly in the commercial followed by flashes of o
Source: BBC
September 28, 2010
A rare meeting of North Korea's ruling party has opened the way for Kim Jong-il to hand power to his youngest son.
The Workers' Party, which had not met for 30 years, convened hours after Kim Jong-un was appointed general - even though he has no military experience.
His father, who is thought to be in poor health, was re-elected as leader, state media reported.
North Korea's succession is being closely watched because of its nuclear programme and hostility
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 28, 2010
Peruvian President Alan Garcia has demanded that Yale University returns the archeological treasures its researchers "looted" from the country's Machu Picchu site in the early 1900s.
Peru says Yale took around 40,000 artefacts including pottery, jewellery and bones from the site in the Peruvian Andes.
The artefacts were sent out of Peru after a Yale alumnus, American explorer Hiram Bingham, rediscovered Machu Picchu in 1911.
The Andean country
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 28, 2010
Long-lost footage of Neil Armstrong descending the ladder of the Apollo 11 lunar module will be screened in public for the first time in Sydney next week, according to a prominent astronomer.
The video runs for a few minutes and is considered to be some of the best footage of the historic 1969 moonwalk, but the film was lost in archives for many years and was badly damaged when found, said John Sarkissian.
It depicts the first few minutes of Armstrong’s descent which
Source: CNN
September 26, 2010
Former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery on Tuesday.
Stevens, a decorated World War II pilot, will be buried with honors, family spokesman Elliott Bundy told CNN last month.
The ceremony will be open to the Stevens' family and friends....
Source: AFP
September 25, 2010
SYDNEY — The late nun who is soon to become Australia's first Catholic saint was briefly excommunicated by the church in part because she exposed a paedophile priest, a new documentary claims.
Mary MacKillop, who will be canonised by Pope Benedict XVI next month, is known as a tireless educator and founder of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart order of nuns which ventured into remote outback areas.
But a documentary to be screened on national broadcaster AB
Source: BBC News
September 28, 2010
Chemical tests on teeth from an ancient burial near Stonehenge indicate that the person in the grave grew up around the Mediterranean Sea.
The bones belong to a teenager who died 3,550 years ago and was buried with a distinctive amber necklace.
Continue reading the main story
The conclusions come from analysis of different forms of the elements oxygen and strontium in his tooth enamel.
Analysis on a previous skeleton found near Stonehenge showed that
Source: Yahoo News
September 24, 2010
VIENNA (Reuters) – Roman Catholic and Orthodox theologians reported promising progress Friday in talks on overcoming their Great Schism of 1054 and bringing the two largest denominations in Christianity back to full communion.
Experts meeting in Vienna this week agreed the two could eventually become "sister churches" that recognize the Roman pope as their titular head but retain many church structures, liturgy and customs that developed over the past millennium.
Source: Fox News
September 27, 2010
The USS Emmons served the United States proudly through World War II, right up until April 6, 1945, when it was attacked by five kamikaze pilots off the coast of Okinawa. One day later, the U.S. Navy sank the destroyer to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Japanese.
The bodies of 60 American sailors went down with the ship.
For 65 years, the Emmons lay peacefully on the ocean floor, guns raised skyward — until recently, when divers discovered that the ship h
Source: LA Times
September 27, 2010
Morris Sutton, a Tennessee factory-manager-turned-archaeologist, feels the wonder of hunting for fossils and Stone Age tools and uncovering a time when mankind was in its adolescence.
When Morris Sutton picks a chipped, ordinary-looking rock from the soil, he's the first to touch the stone tool since an ancestor of man used it nearly 2 million years ago.
In his dim, cool cavern at the bottom of a 30-foot ladder, he feels the wonder of it, breathing in the loamy smell, p
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 28, 2010
A 250-year-old antique pistol taken from an Italian museum as a souvenir from the Second World War by a British solider has finally been returned, fulfilling the last request he made on his deathbed.
Stanley Parry, who died last year, had served with the Eighth Army and had been involved in the Allied push up through Italy having also seen combat in North Africa.
At the end of the Second World War while on his way back to Britain across the English Channel he noticed a
Source: Bloomberg
September 28, 2010
The suffering experienced by Holocaust survivors still leaves psychological scars but appears to have little effect on their cognitive functioning and physical health, according to a new international study.
Researchers from Israel and the Netherlands also found that Holocaust survivors living in Israel have better psychological health than those living in other countries, which suggests that living in Israel may serve as a protective factor.
"Six decades after the
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 28, 2010
London's Natural History Museum suffered like the rest of the city in the Blitz. Karolyn Shindler reports on the efforts to preserve its treasures.
Seventy years ago, German bombs devastated cities across England. In September, it was London that was the focus of destruction, threatening people, homes – and the great museums. That month, the Natural History Museum in South Kensington was struck on successive nights by incendiary and high-explosive bombs. Fire caused grave damage to
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 28, 2010
The First World War will officially end on Sunday, 92 years after the guns fell silent, when Germany pays off the last chunk of reparations imposed on it by the Allies.
The final payment of £59.5 million, writes off the crippling debt that was the price for one world war and laid the foundations for another.
Germany was forced to pay the reparations at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 as compensation to the war-ravaged nations of Belgium and France and to pay the Allies
Source: BBC News
September 28, 2010
Chemical tests on teeth from an ancient burial near Stonehenge indicate that the person in the grave grew up around the Mediterranean Sea.
The bones belong to a teenager who died 3,550 years ago and was buried with a distinctive amber necklace.
The conclusions come from analysis of different forms of the elements oxygen and strontium in his tooth enamel.
Analysis on a previous skeleton found near Stonehenge showed that that person was also a migrant to the
Source: LA Times
September 27, 2010
Morris Sutton, a Tennessee factory-manager-turned-archaeologist, feels the wonder of hunting for fossils and Stone Age tools and uncovering a time when mankind was in its adolescence.
Sutton, 47, an archaeologist, was a Memphis, Tenn., factory manager who grew tired of the flat horizon of commerce and manufacturing and of laying off fellow employees.
So he quit to pursue his hobby: hunting for fossils and Stone Age tools. He went back to college to study archaeology and
Source: Discovery News
September 27, 2010
Neanderthals may have gone out with a bang.
Neandertals didn't get dumped on prehistory's ash heap -- it got dumped on them. At least three volcanic eruptions about 40,000 years ago devastated Neandertals' western Asian and European homelands, spurring a rapid demise of these humanlike hominids, says a team led by archaeologist Liubov Golovanova of the ANO Laboratory of Prehistory in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Modern humans survived because they lived in Africa and on the
Source: BBC
September 27, 2010
A 250 year old pistol, which was taken from an Italian museum during World War II and kept on a wall in Flintshire for more than 60 years, has been returned to Florence.
The family of Stanley Parry, from Holywell, said it was one of his dying wishes to have the gun sent back.
He was given the silver pistol by another soldier, who was about to throw it into the sea....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 27, 2010
The former security chief of Radovan Karadzic, the alleged Bosnian war criminal, masqueraded as a psychiatrist at hospitals in Australia and Britain for several years and lied to the International War Crimes Tribunal about his qualifications.
Vitomir Zepinic, who was born in Sarajevo, trained in psychology in Serbia and went on to work for Karadzic during the Balkan conflict.
In 1992 he resigned and emigrated to Australia, where he claimed that his medical documents h
Source: AP
September 27, 2010
If portraits could talk, Jan Six might have much to say about his family.
The merchant, poet and civic leader, painted by Rembrandt in 1654, has watched his descendants make money, marry into Holland's best families, engage in infidelities and sometimes quarrel over their fabulous inheritance.
Now one of Rembrandt's most celebrated paintings is on public display until Nov. 29 at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum while the 58-room Six mansion undergoes renovations....
