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
August 26, 2010
Researchers in South Africa have revealed the earliest direct evidence of human-made arrows.
The scientists unearthed 64,000 year-old "stone points", which they say were probably arrow heads.
Closer inspection of the ancient weapons revealed remnants of blood and bone that provided clues about how they were used.
The team reports its findings in the journal Antiquity.
The arrow heads were excavated from layers of ancient sediment
Source: BBC
August 27, 2010
A draft UN report says crimes by the Rwandan army and allied rebels in Democratic Republic of Congo could be classified as genocide.
The report, seen by the BBC, details the investigation into the conflict in DR Congo from 1993 to 2003.
It says tens of thousands of ethnic Hutus, including women, children and the elderly, were killed by the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan army.
Rwanda's justice minister has dismissed the claims as "rubbish".
T
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 26, 2010
A planned statue of the colonial explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley in his home town should be scrapped because it wrongly romanticises his “racist” African adventures, a group of opponents have claimed in a letter to the Daily Telegraph.
Residents of Denbigh, North Wales have commissioned a bronze statue to celebrate the Victorian explorer’s legacy – but 60 academics, authors and campaigners have called for the plan to be abandoned.
But the campaigners claim his exped
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 27, 2010
Glenn Beck, the Right-wing broadcaster, has been accused of "hijacking" the legacy of Martin Luther King by staging a rally at the location of his "I have a dream speech".
Critics said Beck and his followers in the Tea Party were trying to "dishonour" King, the figurehead of America's civil rights and a hero to millions.
They ridiculed claims by the Fox News presenter that his purpose was to "reclaim the civil rights movement",
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 27, 2010
Tens of thousands of Kenyans gathered to celebrate the country’s president Mwai Kibaki signing into law a new constitution promised more than two decades ago.
The new US-style laws include a Bill of Rights and reforms to policies designed to address long-held grievances over land stolen by corrupt politicians.
Demands for the constitution stretch back to the end of one-party rule by former president Daniel Arap Moi at the beginning of the 1990s.
Two-thir
Source: AP
August 27, 2010
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il reportedly met top Chinese leaders on Friday in an apparent bid for Beijing's diplomatic and financial support for a succession plan involving his third and youngest son, who is said to be traveling with him.
Many North Korea watchers predict the son -- Kim Jong Un, believed to be in his 20s -- will be appointed to a key party position at a ruling Workers' Party meeting early next month -- the first such gathering in decades.
China, as
Source: AP
August 27, 2010
Sudan's president defied an international arrest warrant by visiting Kenya on Friday, causing an outcry from the International Criminal Court which fruitlessly pressured authorities here into arresting the man accused of masterminding the genocide in Darfur.
Rather than arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who was invited along with other regional leaders for the signing of Kenya's new constitution, officials here treated him with the dignity accorded a head of state. Wearing a
Source: Top News (UK)
August 26, 2010
Archaeologists have unearthed a Roman industrial estate in North Yorkshire which might once was used by the Roman Ninth Hispanic legion.
The site, which includes remains of a water-powered flour mill, clothes, food remains, pottery and graves, has been linked to a known imperial fort at Healam Bridge built by the Romans around 2,000 years ago.
The industrial area was comprised of a series of huge timber buildings, typically on the north side of a beck, which powered the
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 25, 2010
The Germans planned to invade Britain in 1940 by dressing up in British uniforms and making use of two stairways cut in the cliffs at Dover to creep along the beach, MI5 files disclose.
The invasion plans are revealed in a report by a member of a German intelligence unit called Sonderstab (Special Force) Hollmann.
It was led by Wilhelm Hollmann, described as 45 years old “but looks at least 50…a trifle stooped” with a “gold right incisor” tooth and “very little hair.”
Source: Fox News
August 27, 2010
Hurricane Devastated Political Futures as Well as New Orleans.
Five years ago, Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf region, killing nearly 2,000 and displacing more than 250,000 others from Louisiana to Florida. This week, in a series titled "Hurricane Katrina: Five Years After," FoxNews.com looks back on the costliest natural disaster ever to strike the United States.
Hurricane Katrina flooded a city five years ago and took with it lives, property and dignit
Source: CNN
August 27, 2010
Japan, one of the few industrialized countries with the death penalty, showed one of its execution chambers to the media for the first time Friday.
Reporters were shown the death chamber at the Tokyo Detention Facility, one of seven used across the country, according to a report in the Mainichi Daily News.
The unprecedented media access was ordered by Justice Minister Keiko Chiba, who after witnessing the deaths of two condemned prisoners last month, said she wanted to
Source: BBC News
August 27, 2010
A Catholic school in Australia has apologised to parents after teachers awarded a costume prize to a child dressed as Adolf Hitler.
The class of nine- and 10-year-olds had been asked to dress up as famous people at the school in Western Australia.
Teachers declared the winner to be a boy who dressed as the Nazi leader, who was wearing an outfit featuring the swastika.
The principal said in hindsight the school would have done it differently.
Th
Source: AP
August 26, 2010
LURGAN, Northern Ireland – Bursts of laughter. Young men playing ping pong. Battles of the bands.
In a Northern Ireland determined to put conflict behind it, the Links teen center bridges the divide between Catholic and Protestant teens in this struggling town, giving them something to do, an alternative to streets that offer a toxic mix of drugs and violence. It's working, but like the peace process itself, it is under strain amid looming budget cuts.
"We're just
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 5, 2010
An early piano believed to have been played by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has surfaced in Germany and could be worth millions of pounds.
Public broadcaster SWR said the instrument was built in 1775 and acquired in the 1980s by piano manufacturer Martin Becker in the southern German city of Baden-Baden from an antiques dealer in Strasbourg, eastern France....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 26, 2010
Archaeological remains dating back to the last Ice Age have been found during work to upgrade a major road, the Highways Agency said.
The remains, along with Iron Age and Roman settlements, were uncovered during work to upgrade the A46 between Newark and Widmerpool in Nottinghamshire.
The Highways Agency said the finds included ancient flint tools and flint knapping debris dating back to about 11,000 BC - around the end of the last Ice Age when Stone Age hunter-gathers
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 25, 2010
A beautiful and refined Russian ballerina working as a Nazi spy helped to turn the course of the first major conflict of the Second World War, newly released files from MI5 disclose.
Marina Lie – who also used the names Marina Goubonina, Marie Alexevna, and Luise Lohmann – stole plans that helped turn the campaign in Norway against the Allies just as they were about to claim victory.
The defeat led to the resignation of Neville Chamberlain and his replacement as prime
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 26, 2010
The boffins of Bletchley cut their teeth on the Telegraph crossword, says Sinclair McKay.
"We were very good at crosswords," says one of the veteran codebreakers of Bletchley Park, ''and also anything to do with anagrams. And of course Scrabble.”
When I wrote my book The Secret Life of Bletchley Park I interviewed brilliant men and women – mathematicians, linguists, debutantes – who had smashed the German Enigma codes in the Second World War. I found that the
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
August 22, 2010
A few months ago, one of our nation's most famous landmarks was deteriorating badly. Independence Hall had a roof leak and needed numerous expensive repairs. The city's historical commission met in April with the National Park Service to determine a course of action and on June 9, the park service announced that $4.4 million would be provided for a restoration of Independence Hall. The funding came from the stimulus bill.
A few short blocks from Independence Hall there is another ic
Source: LA Times
August 26, 2010
Go back, through a universe of chalk dust and repeating bells, to a classroom outfitted with a line of squat stoves, a long table stacked with dry goods, a row of teenage girls mixing dough in dented bowls, writing down the equation of a good pie in notebooks tracked by ink and flour. It was 1980, and my freshman high school class was taking home economics, learning how to make a pot of stew, set a proper dinner table, bake and frost a cake, as the last months of the Carter administration clicke
Source: Washington Post
August 26, 2010
...Last week, in the midst of a summer-long archaeological dig, experts using surface-penetrating radar found what are believed to be remnants of two cabins that once made up the small slave village that served L'Hermitage.
And the National Park Service says the find adds another page to the story of the mysterious plantation, whose tropical-influenced main house still stands, an unlikely witness near the banks of the Monocacy, more than 200 years after it was built.
