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 3, 2010
Fidel Castro has addressed a rally for the first time since handing the Cuban presidency to his brother Raul in 2006.
In a speech at Havana University, Mr Castro warned of nuclear war arising from the dispute that has pitting the United States and Israel against Iran.
Some 10,000 people gathered to listen to the 84-year-old, who wore his trademark olive-green uniform.
His speech was the latest in a string of appearances since he re-emerged in July from secl
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: Daily News (Egypt)
September 7, 2010
Irish scientists have found fragments of Egyptian papyrus in the leather cover of an ancient book of psalms that was unearthed from a peat bog, Ireland's National Museum said on Monday.
The papyrus in the lining of the Egyptian-style leather cover of the 1,200-year-old manuscript, "potentially represents the first tangible connection between early Irish Christianity and the Middle Eastern Coptic Church", the Museum said.
"It is a finding that asks many qu
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
September 7, 2010
Turning over the soil in his back garden, David Murray spotted something glinting in the sunlight.
When he realised it was a dog tag from a Second World War German prisoner, he asked his landlord if he could dig a little deeper - literally.
In the following months, Mr Murray unearthed a treasure trove of wartime memorabilia. The 2,000 items include coins featuring Nazi emblems, dog tags, buttons from uniforms and even a live grenade that had to be destroyed by an RAF bomb dis
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 7, 2010
An amazing new set of pictures has brought the horror of the Blitz right up to date on its 70th anniversary.
n a merging of old and new imagery wartime destruction across Britain is shown in the exact spots as they exist today.
One picture shows a huge crater next to the Bank of England headquarters in London - perfectly blended with the background of the same location in 2010.
Well-dressed businessmen from seven decades ago are seen discussing the damage in the
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 7, 2010
The courage and sacrifice of those who fought off the Nazis to win the Battle of Britain was remembered today.
On the 70th anniversary of the day the first German bombs fell on London, 2,500 people packed into St Paul's Cathedral to remember the Blitz spirit.
The service remembered all those who contributed during the Battle of Britain with former pilots and other military personnel standing alongside firefighters, nurses and ambulance workers from the era.
Source: NYT
August 30, 2010
Orange County has been a national symbol of conservatism for more than 50 years: birthplace of President Richard M. Nixon and home to John Wayne, a bastion for the John Birch Society, a land of orange groves and affluence, the region of California where Republican presidential candidates could always count on a friendly audience.
But this iconic county of 3.1 million people passed something of a milestone in June. The percentage of registered Republican voters dropped to 43 percent,
Source: LA Times
August 30, 2010
The Bank of Mexico said Monday it would place in circulation a new 500-peso bill featuring the well-known faces of two of the country's best-known artists, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. In the bank's official video to promote the bill's anti-counterfeiting features (embedded above in Spanish), two figures resembling the celebrity couple stroll in costume around traditional and modern sites in Mexico.....
Source: Westmoreland Gazette (UK)
September 2, 2010
A METAL-detecting historian has made an exciting discovery of rare Roman coins at a South Lakeland caravan park.
John Harrison, 60, uncovered a hoard of 30 ancient Barbarous Radiates coins, thought to date back to 250AD, while walking with his metal detector at Holgates Caravan Park, near Arnside.
Experts described the find as ‘historically significant’.
Mr Harrison, from Carnforth, also found 10 bronze Roman trumpet brooches – dating back to between 75-15
Source: CNN.com
September 3, 2010
President Obama will award the Medal of Honor, the military's highest award for bravery, to Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Richard Etchberger for his valor in saving the lives of three wounded comrades at a then-secret base in Laos in 1968, the White House announced Friday.
After Etchberger saved his fellow airmen, he was shot and killed by enemy fighters.
His heroics were kept a secret for years because the United States wasn't supposed to have troops in Laos during the V
Source: Irish Central
September 2, 2010
Never before seen documents related to the hunger strikes in Belfast in 1981 have been kept secret until now.
The recently discovered documents, which were released by the Northern Ireland Office, revel how the English government dealt with the IRA hunger strike.
The documents, which were released under the Freedom of Information Act, show how the Margaret Thatcher's government was determined to present a strong face in public while trying to come to an arrangement with
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 6, 2010
A pocket book which was passed between injured soliders to record their poems and messages by a First World War nurse has emerged after 92 years.
The unknown nurse kept the book on her uniform while she worked in auxiliary hospitals in England throughout the conflict.
As she built up a bed-side relationship with the soldiers she treated, the unnamed nurse asked them to write their thoughts down in the little book....
Sapper J Gray, of the Royal Engineers,
Source: Daily News & Economic Review (Turkey)
September 1, 2010
Controversy over plans to bury an ancient city in western Turkey with sand ahead of a new dam project was overshadowed Wednesday by revelations from Turkey’s environment minister that the site did not, in fact, exist.
“There is no such place as Allianoi. It is just a hot spring that was recently restored called ‘Paşa Ilıcası,’” said Minister Veysel Eroğlu in response to a reporter’s question about the controversial plans to bury the ancient city,
Source: KDRV.com
September 1, 2010
NEAR WOLF CREEK, Ore. - A nearly $50-million project to add hill-climbing lanes for trucks on Interstate 5 north of Grants Pass has archeologists looking for traces of the historic Applegate Trail.
Volunteers and professionals are scouring the hills and canyons between Grants Pass and Wolf Creek mapping the 160-year old route. More than a 150 years of road building has all but wiped out much of the pioneer route....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 6, 2010
The mayor of the German city of Dresden has flown into London under pressure from fellow politicians to try to get a planned memorial to Second World War bomber crews scrapped.
Helma Orosz, 57, is officially in Britain to open an exhibition on the bombing of London, her city and that of its twin, Coventry, during the war.
She is under pressure however to get the memorial, which is to recognise the courage of RAF bomber crews, scrapped....
Source: WaPo
September 3, 2010
To the untrained eye, all evidence here in the heart of the Amazon signals virgin forest, untouched by man for time immemorial - from the ubiquitous fruit palms to the cry of howler monkeys, from the air thick with mosquitoes to the unruly tangle of jungle vines.
Archaeologists, many of them Americans, say the opposite is true: This patch of forest, and many others across the Amazon, was instead home to an advanced, even spectacular civilization that managed the forest and enriched
Source: AP
September 7, 2010
Already in distinctive company as an American president, George W. Bush seeks to join an even more select group: president and top-selling author.
Since The New York Times began its weekly lists of best-sellers in 1942, only six of the 13 men who have served as the nation's chief executive have placed a book at the top spot for nonfiction, none while president.
Two of them, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Barack Obama, did it before they were in the Oval Office. Two others, Ji
Source: AFP
September 3, 2010
Judaism is making a comeback in Germany 65 years after the Holocaust, thanks largely to immigration from the ex-Soviet Union, as shown by the ordination in Leipzig this week of two rabbis.
The ordination as Orthodox rabbis of the men originally from Uzbekistan and Lithuania was Germany's second since 1945, underscoring the growth of the eastern city's Jewish community that 20 years ago numbered only 30.
More than 300 German and foreign Jewish leaders attended the ceremo
Source: Independent (UK)
September 6, 2010
Amid the splendour of the 12th-century temple at Angkor Wat, they stand and stare like silent sentinels, sensuous rather than erotic, carved with elegance and care. But exactly who are these 1,786 mysterious women and why, more than a century after Cambodia's famed Hindu temple was rediscovered byWestern archaeologists, did it take the efforts of an amateur researcher from Florida to push experts into trying to resolve the puzzle?
Though Kent Davis had lived in South-east Asia durin
Source: NYT
September 6, 2010
In the 1940s, when E. B. White, the author and columnist for The New Yorker, looked out of his back windows onto the private Turtle Bay Gardens along East 48th Street in Manhattan, an old but picturesque willow tree commanded his view.
He draped the tree in metaphor and imbued it with immortality by writing about it in the concluding lines of his 1949 book, “Here Is New York.”...
But now, the tree is gone. In 2009, the thoroughly bald and rotted tree was chopped down to
