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: AP
September 22, 2010
...On Friday, an Indian court will finally issue its ruling in the 60-year-old case and decide whether the site should be given to the Hindu community to build a gigantic temple to the god Rama or should be returned to the Muslim community so it can rebuild the 16th-century Babri Mosque.
Though there are no signs of a repeat of the communal violence that killed 2,000 people in nationwide rioting in 1992 and nearly 1,000 more in the state of Gujarat in 2002, India is worried.
Source: AP
September 22, 2010
One of Liberia's most infamous warlords on Wednesday launched his presidential campaign, a race sure to be overshadowed by his reputation for gruesome acts and a government commission's quest to try him for crimes against humanity.
The National Elections Commission said that Prince Johnson's party, the National Union for Democratic Progress, met the constitutional requirements to compete in next year's poll in the West African nation.
Liberia is still tending its wounds
Source: AP
September 22, 2010
Vandals have damaged dozens of grave sites in a Dayton, Ohio, cemetery, including the gravesites for the Wright brothers and poet Paul Laurence Dunbar.
Police say an American flag and an aviation flag were taken from the Wright brothers site, and its flagpole was broken. A flag honoring Dunbar was taken down and burned.
Workers found 62 sites vandalized Monday morning; damage is estimated at $25,000. The private Woodland Cemetery was founded in 1841 and also includes th
Source: CNN
September 22, 2010
The cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that sparked protests worldwide four years ago will be republished in a new book soon.
Staffers at Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten said the cartoons will be in a book created by cultural editor Flemming Rose and will be titled "The Tyranny of Silence."
The cartoons were published in September 2006 and sparked worldwide protests after the reprinting of the caricatures in other publications.....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 22, 2010
Plants picked up to 150 years ago by Victorian collectors could hold the key to understanding climate change, according to a new study.
Recent studies using fresh specimens have shown that plants flower six days earlier for every 1C (1.8F) of global warming.
Now ecologists from the University of East Anglia and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew have shown that pressed flowers back up the data....
Source: AOL News
September 21, 2010
(Sept. 21) -- UFOs have monitored and possibly tampered with American nuclear weapons, according to a group of former Air Force officers who will make their claims public next week at a Washington, D.C., news conference.
"While most of the incidents apparently involved mere surveillance, in a few cases, a significant number of nuclear missiles suddenly and simultaneously malfunctioned, just as USAF security policemen reported seeing disc-shaped craft hovering nearby," says
Source: Vancouver Sun
September 21, 2010
Nearly 70 years after a famous Second World War incident in which a Canadian ship rammed and sank a German submarine in the Mediterranean Sea, the only survivor of the doomed U-boat and perhaps the last living sailor from HMCS Ville de Quebec have rediscovered each other via the Internet -- two former enemies now forging a poignant, long-distance friendship via e-mail.
The remarkable reunion came about after a California newspaper published a story last November featuring the wartim
Source: Statesville Record & Landmark
September 21, 2010
Before the Friends of Fort Dobbs Board started soliciting others for donations toward the $2.6 million fort reconstruction project, the group wanted to show its own dedication.
On Tuesday, the 14-member board presented North Carolina Historic Sites Director Keith Hardison with a check for $500,000 at its annual membership meeting at the Fort Dobbs Historic Site.
“We are thrilled,” said board chairman Ralph Bentley. “Every board member has pledged. This is a great start.
Source: WWAY 3
September 20, 2010
Three hundred years on the ocean floor can be pretty rough on a body. The Underwater Archaeology Branch (UAB) of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources (www.ncculture.com) will dedicate its fall dive to treating some large bodies of iron in the Atlantic Ocean. Researchers, from Sept. 22-Oct. 29, will be on wreck site of the likely Queen Anne’s Revenge (QAR) (www.qaronline.com), Blackbeard’s flagship, which sank in
Source: National Geographic
September 14, 2010
Apparently laid to rest more than 10,000 years ago in a fiery ritual, one of the oldest skeletons in the Americas has been retrieved from an undersea cave along Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, researchers say.
Dating to a time when the now lush region was a near desert, the "Young Man of Chan Hol" may help uncover how the first Americans arrived—and who they were.
About 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of Cancún, the cave system of Chan Hol—"little hole&
Source: Latin American Herald Tribune
September 22, 2010
A team of Peruvian archaeologists have discovered two ceremonial temples more than 4,000 years old in Peru’s northern jungle, which makes them the most ancient in the country and identifies them with the Bracamoros culture, the daily El Comercio said on Saturday.
On both sites were found 14 burial vaults that typically contain the skeletons of newborns and adolescents placed there as offerings at different times in the course of the 800 years these buildings were in use, the newspap
Source: Science Now
September 22, 2010
The Vikings, the famed Scandinavian warriors, started raiding Ireland in 795 and plundered it for decades, before establishing two Irish outposts, according to the Annals of Ulster, a 15th century account of medieval Ireland. One outpost, Dúbh Linn, became Dublin, the other, Linn Duchaill, was lost in time. Perhaps until now. A team of archaeologists announced on Friday that it has found the lost Viking settlement near the village of Annagassan, 70 kilometers north of Dublin. "We are unbeli
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 21, 2010
t was always thought the Titanic sank because its crew were sailing too fast and failed to see the iceberg before it was too late.
But now it has been revealed they spotted it well in advance but still steamed straight into it because of a basic steering blunder.
According to a new book, the ship had plenty of time to miss the iceberg but the helmsman panicked and turned the wrong way.
By the time the catastrophic error was corrected it was too late and the
Source: CNN.com
September 22, 2010
The frigid waters of the North Atlantic aren't among the most prominent cruise destinations, but that may change as the world remembers one of the worst maritime disasters in history.
At least two cruises are planned in the spring of 2012 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, with both touting special activities, lectures and memorials to commemorate the tragic voyage.
Organizers insist it's a learning opportunity and a way to remember th
Source: BBC News
September 22, 2010
Naomi Campbell, the supermodel, has said she was "used as a scapegoat" at the war crimes trials of the former Liberian president Charles Taylor.
Campbell, 40, told the court in The Hague last month that she had been given a pouch of "dirty stones" by two men hours after she met Mr Taylor.
She denied knowing that they were from the former leader of Liberia.
In an interview with Sky News to mark 25 years in the fashion business she said: "W
Source: BBC News
September 22, 2010
Switzerland's parliament has voted a new minister into the government, giving the cabinet a majority of women for the first time.
The election of Simonetta Sommaruga, 50, a Social Democrat, is a historic step in a country where women only got to vote on a national level in 1971.
Ms Sommaruga becomes the fourth female in the seven-member Federal Council.
One of the other posts in the Federal Council will be filled by another vote later in the day.
Source: BBC News
September 21, 2010
Workers building a substation in California have discovered 1,500 bone fragments from about 1.4 million years ago.
The fossil haul includes remains from an ancestor of the sabre-toothed tiger, large ground sloths, deer, horses, camels and numerous small rodents.
Plant matter found at the site in the arid San Timoteo Canyon, 85 miles (137km) south-east of Los Angeles, showed it was once much greener.
The bones will go on display next year.
The f
Source: WaPo
September 21, 2010
The anonymous call came in the middle of the night, from a phone booth near Madison, Wis. "Hey, pig!'' a male voice warned. "There's a bomb in the math research building.''
It was 1970, the height of student demonstrations against the Vietnam War. The pig, in the vernacular of the times, was a police dispatcher. And the bomb was real, a novel device that exploded minutes later on the University of Wisconsin campus, causing massive damage and killing a researcher who was th
Source: NYT
September 21, 2010
LONDON — After she died earlier this month, a frail 89-year-old alone in a flat in the British seaside town of Torquay, Eileen Nearne, her body undiscovered for several days, was listed by local officials as a candidate for what is known in Britain as a council burial, or what in the past was called a pauper’s grave.
But after the police looked through her possessions, including a Croix de Guerre medal awarded to her by the French government after World War II, the obscurity Ms. Nea
Source: NYT
September 21, 2010
Huguette M. Clark always had a place in the society pages, but rarely, if ever, was she the headliner. She was listed as a guest of this engagement dinner and that party. Her charitable contributions were noted, not celebrated.
Now, at age 104, Ms. Clark has continued her life in the shadows, shunning her multimillion-dollar homes and spending the past two decades in hospitals. Her visitors have primarily been limited to her medical staff and to Wallace Bock, her lawyer, and Irving
