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: BBC
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
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 21, 2010
The FBI improperly opened investigations into Greenpeace and other animal rights and anti-war groups after the September 11 attacks of 2001, the US government has admitted.
A US Department of Justice review found that FBI agents also put names of some Greenpeace members on terrorist watch lists based on evidence that turned out to be "factually weak".
The review concluded that the FBI did not deliberately target the groups, as many civil liberties advocates h
Source: CNN
September 21, 2010
In the exclusive club of former presidents, not often does one declare his superiority to another. Former President Jimmy Carter appeared to do just that on Monday.
Carter is far from the only former president to fill humanitarian or charitable roles after their term in office. Former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush joined together in the wake of January's devastating earthquake in Haiti to form the Bush Clinton Haiti Fund. George H.W. Bush teamed up with Clinton in 2005
Source: Vancouver Sun (Canada)
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: AP
September 19, 2010
On the day Paris was liberated from the Nazis in 1944, a young American soldier nabbed a souvenir of epic proportions: He took home the French flag that hung from the Arc de Triomphe, a symbol of the end of four years of struggle and shame.
Six and a half decades later, the aging veteran has given the flag back to the city of Paris.
Officials from Paris City Hall took possession of the 12-meter (13-yard) tricolor flag Saturday in a ceremony in southern France, a step in
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 21, 2010
One of the most dramatic episodes in the Old Testament, the parting of the Red Sea, may actually have happened, new research has shown.
A new computer modelling study suggests a powerful wind could have divided the waters just as depicted in the Book of Exodus.
The likely location of the ''miracle'' was not the Red Sea as such, but a nearby spot in the Nile Delta region.
In the biblical account, Moses and the fleeing Israelites are trapped between the Phara
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 21, 2010
Jacques Chirac, the former French president, will stand trial for embezzlement in a Paris court early next year, his lawyer said on Tuesday.
The 77-year-old, whose presidency of France ran from 1995 until 2007, could face a ten-year prison sentence and 150,000-euro (£130,000) fine if found guilty. He will be the first modern French leader to face a corruption trial.
Mr Chirac faces charges of abuse of public funds while he was mayor of Paris. It is alleged that he paid
Source: cnn
September 21, 2010
Leonard Skinner, the gym teacher who inspired the name of the legendary southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, has died.
The band announced his death on its website, saying Skinner died in his sleep early Monday morning. He was 77.
"Coach Skinner had such a profound impact on our youth that ultimately led us to naming the band, which you know as Lynyrd Skynyrd, after him," wrote Gary Rossington, guitarist and a founding member of the band.
"Looki
Source: BBC News
September 20, 2010
Scientists have uncovered mechanisms that allow plants to thrive in highly radioactive environments like Chernobyl.
They analysed seeds from soybean and flax grown near the site of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor which exploded in 1986.
The team says that plants may have an innate ability to cope with radioactivity.
The study appears in the Environmental Science and Technology journal.
One of the researchers speculates that such mechanisms could
Source: bbc News
September 21, 2010
A book detailing the first 40 years of the UK's foreign intelligence service has been published.
Author Professor Keith Jeffery was given access to the archives at MI6, which has the official title of the Secret Intelligence Service.
Prof Jeffery said that in researching MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949 he was allowed to view all files.
He said his only restriction was not to name some traitorous agents.
Among the c
Source: BBC News
September 21, 2010
British Holocaust denier David Irving has arrived in Poland to lead a tour of sites from the Nazi occupation.
Confirming his arrival by phone, he said he could give no details of his plans for security reasons.
His tour brochure offers a visit to the former Wolf's Lair site where "German army traitors" tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944.
A Polish group is trying to sue Irving for Holocaust denial, based on one of his books published recentl
Source: Time.com
September 16, 2010
Of the 10-12 million Roma living in Europe, Spain has the second biggest community, estimated at 970,000, or about 2% of the total population. And the country spends almost €36 million annually bringing them into the fold. In Spain, only 5% of gypsies live in makeshift camps, and about half of Roma are homeowners. Just about all Gypsies in Spain have access to health care, and while no recent figures exist, at least 75% are believed to have some sort of steady income....
But can the
Source: NYT
September 20, 2010
The music on “Silver and Ash,” a new album from the songwriter Clare Burson, started with silence. There was the silence that descended in 1941, when letters from her maternal great-grandparents, German Jews who had fled to Latvia, abruptly stopped arriving in Memphis, where Ms. Burson’s grandmother settled in 1938. Then there was the second silence: the silence in Ms. Burson’s family about the first silence.
Ms. Burson, now a 34-year-old songwriter who lives in Cobble Hill, Brookl
Source: AFP
September 18, 2010
Opponents of a Canadian gold mine project in a Romanian village on Saturday called on the Romanian culture ministry to save a threatened ancient site in the area.
Alburnus Maior says it represents hundreds of locals opposed to the open-cast gold mine project by Rosia Montana Gold Corporation (RMGC), the daughter company of Canadian firm Gabriel Resources -- which holds 80 percent of RMGC.
RMGC recently sent a request to the Romanian culture ministry for a new archaeolog
Source: Discovery News
September 19, 2020
An anonymous Italian artist is being dubbed the 'Master of Denim' for his portrayal of the peasant class in the now-famous fabric.
Workaday staple and fashion favorite, blue jeans have conquered the planet. But were they born in the textile mills of New Hampshire, on France's southern coast or the looms of north Italy?
Art historians believe they have found a piece of the centuries-old puzzle in the work of a newly discovered 17th-century north Italian artist, dubbed th
Source: Discovery News
September 20, 2010
Physical traces of ethnic cleansing that took place in the early 800s suggest the massacre was an inside job.
Crushed leg bones, battered skulls and other mutilated human remains are likely all that's left of a Native American population destroyed by genocide that took place circa 800 A.D., suggests a new study.
The paper, accepted for publication in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, describes the single largest deposit to date of mutilated and processed human
Source: BBC
September 20, 2010
The US recession lasted 18 months and was the most prolonged since World War II, a report has concluded.
The National Bureau of Economic Research said the recovery began in June 2009, with recession having begun in 2007.
Its views carry weight in the US, even though there is usually a lag before it reaches a position, said BBC World Service economics editor Andrew Walker.
The organisation's figures take in data beyond simply GDP....
Source: BBC
September 20, 2010
Scientists have uncovered mechanisms that allow plants to thrive in highly radioactive environments like Chernobyl.
They analysed seeds from soybean and flax grown near the site of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor which was hit by a series of explosions in 1986.
The team says that plants may have an innate ability to cope with radioactivity.
The study appears in the Environmental Science and Technology journal.
One of the researchers speculates t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 20, 2010
Boston is planning to build a new museum on the site of the Tea Party, the Revolutionary event in which colonists protested against British tax by dumping three ship loads' worth of tea into the harbour.
All that currently marks the site of the 1773 protest in the Fort Point Channel is a commemorative plaque. But as the namesake Right-wing movement continues to grow in prominence and success, the Massachusetts city has announced plans to build a museum that would include restoring
Source: Fox News
September 20, 2010
The cancer-stricken Lockerbie bomber can get out of bed and walk, although he is a very sick man, the father of a victim reportedly said after visiting him in Libya.
Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi invited Jim Swire, whose 23-year-old daughter Flora was killed in the 1988 bombing, to visit him and the two men spent an hour together in a hospital ward in Tripoli on Tuesday, Agence France-Presse news agency reported late Sunday.
Swire, who is British, is convinced Al-Megrahi is inn
