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 9, 2010
For almost a decade, the annual commemoration of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has been seen as a day of national unity and sober remembrance. This year, contentious issues of religious freedom and national identity threaten to color the ninth anniversary of those tragic events.
Controversies over calls to burn the Koran and an ongoing debate over a proposed mosque and Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero in New York are drawing particular attention as the anniversar
Source: AP
September 9, 2010
The number of people dying on the nation's roads has fallen to its lowest level in six decades, helped by a combination of seat belts, safer cars and tougher enforcement of drunken driving laws.
The Transportation Department said late Wednesday that traffic deaths fell 9.7 percent in 2009 to 33,808, the lowest number since 1950. In 2008, an estimated 37,423 people died on the highways....
Year-to-year declines in highway deaths have occurred in previous economic downtur
Source: CBC News
September 7, 2010
An Inuit family says a box that was hidden for over 80 years in the Arctic contains documents linked to the doomed Franklin Expedition.
Over the weekend, the Porter family in Gjoa Haven, Nunavut, dug up the small box with the help of an archeologist.
The exact contents of the unopened, sand-filled box will not be known until the Canadian Conservation Institute carefully examines it, which should take about three weeks.
The box was buried years ago by George
Source: Kent Online
September 7, 2010
Archaeologists have made exciting discoveries at a site just outside Faversham where a late Roman burial ground has been found.
The 4th century sarcophagus is built from chalk blocks and Kentish ragstone with a terracotta lid covering the grave slot.
Its alignment shows it is a Christian burial.
The discovery has been made in pasture land at Syndale Park, an area which has attracted attention from as early as the 18th century....
Source: AP
September 8, 2010
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met with Rwanda's president Wednesday after he threatened to withdraw thousands of Rwandan peacekeepers if the United Nations publishes a report accusing Rwanda's army of possible genocide in the 1990s.
The joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur is commanded by a Rwandan, Lt. Gen. Patrick Nyamvumba, and Rwanda has more than 3,200 troops and 86 police in the nearly 22,000-strong force.
U.N. officials and diplomats have
Source: AP
September 8, 2010
A Romanian Gypsy leader on Wednesday compared French President Nicolas Sarkozy to Romania's pro-Nazi wartime leader, following the expulsion of hundreds of Gypsies from France.
Speaking during an annual Gypsy feast held on a hill at the foots of the Carpathian Mountains, Iulian Radulescu told the Associated Press that Gypsies -- also known as Roma -- are being unfairly expelled from France.
France has sent back about 1,000 Gypsies to Romania and Bulgaria in recent weeks
Source: AP
September 8, 2010
The senior Sinn Fein politician in Northern Ireland's government acknowledged Wednesday that he did meet a Catholic priest responsible for a 1972 triple car bombing that killed nine civilians but insisted they never discussed the IRA attack.
A British government-sanctioned report last month into the Claudy bombing found that police, government and church leaders conspired to shield the priest, James Chesney, from prosecution amid fears that his arrest would deepen community division
Source: Foreign Policy
September 7, 2010
RussiaLesson plan: Buddy Stalin Subject matter: It can't be easy to put a positive spin on Stalin, under whose leadership more than 20 million Russians lost their lives. But that's what's being attempted in Russia today. Encouraged by wilderness enthusiast and former KGB agent Vladimir Putin, the country's curriculum is engaging in
Source: AP
September 7, 2010
Iraqi officials displayed hundreds of recovered artifacts Tuesday that were among the country's looted heritage and span the ages from a 4,400-year-old statue of a Sumerian king to a chrome-plated AK-47 bearing the image of Saddam Hussein.
The 542 pieces are among the most recent artifacts recovered from a heartbreaking frenzy of looting at Iraqi museums and archaeological sites after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and in earlier years of war and upheaval. The thefts swept a stunning ar
Source: AP
September 7, 2010
Today, it's a sprawl of luxury vacation homes where Egypt's wealthy play on the white beaches of the Mediterranean coast. But 2,000 years ago, this was a thriving Greco-Roman port city, boasting villas of merchants grown rich on the wheat and olive trade.
The ancient city, known as Leukaspis or Antiphrae, was hidden for centuries after it was nearly wiped out by a fourth century tsunami that devastated the region.
More recently, it was nearly buried under the modern res
Source: Live Science
September 7, 2010
Three recently discovered shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea could give archaeologists new insights into the transition between medieval and modern shipbuilding.
The remains of the three craft — all dating from between 1450 and 1600 — were found in the straits between Turkey and the Greek island of Rhodes. One ship appears to be a large English merchant ship, while the other two are smaller — perhaps a patrol craft from Rhodes and a small trading boat that could have been Turkish,
Source: BBC
September 7, 2010
A service at St Paul's marked the 70th anniversary of the start of the raids.
Thousands of people across the UK were killed and injured in the raids by German forces in 1940 and 1941.
Blitz, the German word for "lightning", was applied by the British press to the tempest of heavy and frequent bombing raids carried out over Britain.
This concentrated direct bombing on industrial targets and civilian centres, with heavy raids on London....
Source: BBC
September 4, 2010
An Argentine court has reopened an investigation into crimes against humanity in Spain during the rule of Gen Francisco Franco.
The appeals court overturned a previous ruling that blocked a suit brought by Argentine relatives of two Spaniards killed under Franco.
It said they had a right to know if the case was being investigated.
Crimes committed under Franco and during the 1936-39 civil war are covered by an amnesty law in Spain.
The Arge
Source: AP
September 7, 2010
The White House says President Obama will mark the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks at the Pentagon.
Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs says Vice President Joe Biden will travel to New York for Saturday's anniversary. First Lady Michelle Obama will join former first lady Laura Bush in Pennsylvania for ceremonies marking the crash of United Flight 93....
Source: AP
September 7, 2010
Germany's intelligence service has turned over thousands of files on top Nazi Adolf Eichmann's whereabouts after World War II to a journalist who sued for them. But with so many passages blacked out and pages missing, she's taking the matter back to court.
An attorney for freelance reporter Gabriele Weber said Tuesday he was confident that she would win greater access eventually, even though Chancellor Angela Merkel's office has argued that some Eichmann files should stay secret.
Source: AP
September 7, 2010
A wooden pole used to suspend suspects by their arms. A baton used to beat prisoners on the soles of their feet. Cables used to give electric shocks.
All are displayed at an exhibit ahead of a referendum on changes to the constitution that was crafted in the wake of Turkey's 1980 military coup, which was marked by torture and other abuses.
On Sept. 12, the coup's 30th anniversary, Turks will vote on a package of 26 reforms that the government says will strengthen democr
Source: AP
September 7, 2010
The Vatican newspaper says Christians around the world are protesting a plan by an American minister to burn the Koran on the Sept. 11 anniversary.
Pastor Terry Jones of the small, evangelical Dove World Outreach Center has said he will go ahead with plans to burn copies of Islam's holy book to protest the Sept. 11 attacks, despite a warning from the top U.S. general in Afghanistan that U.S. troops would be endangered as a result....
Source: AP
September 7, 2010
Fidel Castro criticized Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for what he called his anti-Semitic attitudes and questioned his own actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 during interviews with an American journalist he summoned to Havana to discuss fears of global nuclear war.
Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic, blogged on the magazine's website Tuesday that he was on vacation last month when the head of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington — w
Source: CNN
September 7, 2010
Mark David Chapman, John Lennon's killer, was denied parole for the sixth time Tuesday, according to the New York State Division of Parole.
A three-member panel of parole board commissioners conducted a video conference interview with Chapman from their offices in Rochester.
Chapman's latest request for freedom comes just months short of the 30th anniversary of the death of the former member of the Beatles....
Source: National Geographic News
August 31, 2010
Cannibalism helped meet protein needs, keep rivals in line, study suggests.
For some European cavemen, human meat wasn't a ritual delicacy or a food of last resort but an everyday meal, according to a new study of fossil bones found in Spain.
And, it seems, everyone in the area was doing it, making the discovery "the oldest example of cultural cannibalism known to date," the study says.
The 800,000-year-old butchered bones from the cave, called Gr
