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
Apr 27, 2010
The only man to admit shooting Malcolm X was freed on parole Tuesday, 45 years after he assassinated the civil rights leader. Thomas Hagan, the last man still serving time in the 1965 killing, was freed from a Manhattan prison where he spent two days a week under a work-release program, state Department of Correctional Services spokeswoman Linda Foglia said.
Hagan, 69, has said he was one of three gunmen who shot Malcolm X as he began a speech at Harlem's Audubon Ballroom on Feb. 21
Source: Newsweek
Apr 27, 2010
The iconic images of presidents–the ones printed on our money–are timeless. Or are they? Rather than staying the same, the members of America’s honorable legion look like a fine wine: better with age. They appear cleaner, sharper, and, well, nipped and tucked. The Bureau of Printing and Engraving, the federal agency that designs and prints new bills, claims that redesigns are undertaken solely to thwart counterfeiters. "If there are [cosmetic changes], it was completely unconscious," s
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 27, 2010
The second century Greek trading vessel lies on the sea bed off the coast of Cavtat.
Little remains of the wooden ship but its cargo of earthenware amphora - ceramic vases - still remain stacked row upon row.
The vases, which originally contained olive oil and wine, are still tightly packed into the cargo hold as they were centuries ago.
Its cargo - one of the best preserved from an ancient wreck - has great historical significance and has an estimated val
Source: Stuff (NZ)
Apr 27, 2010
The widow of the Raglan war veteran who captured a nazi flag during WWII is devastated at its theft from the local museum on Sunday afternoon.
Wyonne Wright's husband, Whitfeld, and his sherman tank crew from the NZ 18th Armoured Regiment claimed the flag from a building evacuated by the Germans in Italy in 1944.
The 66-year-old war relic was on its first ever display at Raglan and District's Museum exhibition entitled Raglan and the Anzac, celebrating the district's i
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 27, 2010
A shipwreck containing £5million worth of ancient treasures is being protected by a cage, creating a giant underwater safe, in Croatia.
The second century Greek trading vessel lies on the sea bed off the coast of Cavtat.
Little remains of the wooden ship but its cargo of earthenware amphora - ceramic vases - still remain stacked row upon row.
The vases, which originally contained olive oil and wine, are still tightly packed into the cargo hold as they were
Source: BBC News
Apr 27, 2010
Panamanian ex-leader Manuel Noriega has appeared before French prosecutors after his US extradition and will fight charges against him, his lawyers say.
Noriega will argue French courts do not have jurisdiction to try him as he is immune from prosecution and because the statute of limitations has expired.
He was convicted in France in his absence in 1999 for money laundering but will face a new trial.
He spent more than 20 years in jail in the US on drugs c
Source: BBC News
Apr 27, 2010
The famous Hollywood sign has been saved from being spoiled by property development by a last-minute donation from Playboy mogul Hugh Hefner.
The soft-porn magnate gave $900,000 (£580,000) to the fund which was set up to stop the site being developed.
The sign is owned by the city, but the property around it belongs to a group of Chicago-based investors.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger described the news as"the Hollywood ending we hoped for".
Governor Schwarzenegger said
Source: ANTARA News
Apr 26, 2010
A Mesolithic cave was discovered by the residents in Talang Kubangan Hamlet, South Dempo sub-district, North Sumatra.
The three-storey cave located on a hilly and deep a forest has two entrances and seven rooms and also showed some human footprints.
Due to natural causes of rock sedimentations, the cave`s rooms are narrowing and covering some of the cave`s ancient hand palm murals.
The local residents actually have acknowledged this cave for a long time kno
Source: NY Blueprint
Apr 26, 2010
Many times, we feel helpless and unsure of what to do to honor the memory of the Jews that perished in the Holocaust. So here is an opportunity that should be taken seriously – to help Israel find the rightful owners of over 55,000 unclaimed assets that were purchased by Jews before and during the Holocaust.
Over 80 years ago, after World War I, European Jews began investing in the dream of a Jewish homeland. They started buying real estate, opening bank accounts, buying stocks, an
Source: Discovery News
Apr 26, 2010
Some of the world's largest dinosaurs headed for the hills and evolved all-terrain bodies to support mountain living, suggests a new study in the journal Paleobiology.
These dinosaurs were titanosaurs, plant eaters that first emerged around 160 million years ago. One of the largest titanosaurs, Argentinosaurus, may have reached lengths of 100 feet.
But palaeontologists Philip Mannion and Paul Upchurch at University College London found that inland and mountain-dwelling
Source: Discovery News
Apr 26, 2010
Even though it happened more than 20 years ago, the world's worst nuclear disaster is still a serious hazard.
President Viktor Yanukovych Monday warned that Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear plant remains an urgent threat due to lagging safety measures, on the 24th anniversary of the world's worst nuclear disaster.
The plant's fourth nuclear reactor still presents an active danger after work to replace an aging sarcophagus around the facility was delayed due to a shortage of
Source: Medieval News
Apr 26, 2010
The Irish government announced last month that the Walled Towns Initiative will receive €850,000 in funding this year. The news came as part of an announcment by John Gormley, Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government of over €11.5m to support built heritage projects in Ireland.
The Minister stated “This funding package underlines the continued commitment to the preservation and conservation of our rich built heritage by the State. Our built heritage is inextricabl
Source: Medieval News
Apr 26, 2010
Choral music from a unique medieval manuscript, some of which hasn’t been heard for hundreds of years, will be ringing out at The University of Nottingham when an internationally acclaimed vocal ensemble performs at the Lakeside Arts Centre.
The Binchois Consort will be performing a varied programme of choral music, including a selection of chants from the Wollaton Antiphonal, a huge 15th century illustrated medieval service book. They will demonstrate vividly in sound the rich lega
Source: NYT
Apr 26, 2010
As Pope Benedict XVI has come under scrutiny for his handling of sexual abuse cases, both his supporters and his critics have paid fresh attention to the way he responded to a sexual abuse scandal in Austria in the 1990s, one of the most damaging to confront the church in Europe.
Defenders of Benedict cite his role in dealing with Cardinal Hans Hermann Groër of Vienna as evidence that he moved assertively, if quietly, against abusers. They point to the fact that Cardinal Groër left
Source: 960 ABC Hobert
Apr 26, 2010
A recent archaeological dig on Tasmania's remote west coast promises to shed more light on one of Australia's most notorious penal outposts.
Although it only operated for eleven years before being closed in 1833, Sarah Island in Macquarie Harbour had a reputation as one of the British Empire's most hellish prisons.
Hemmed in by impenetrable wilderness, it housed the colony's hardest criminals, including the notorious cannibal Alexander Pearce.
A team of ten
Source: Eurekalert
Apr 26, 2010
High in the Mackenzie Mountains, scientists are finding a treasure trove of ancient hunting tools being revealed as warming temperatures melt patches of ice that have been in place for thousands of years.
Tom Andrews, an archaeologist with the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife and lead researcher on the International Polar Year Ice Patch Study, is amazed at the implements being discovered by researchers.
"We're just like children opening Chris
Source: Yahoo News
Apr 26, 2010
Was one of America's most revered popular historians fabricating his own material? That's the explosive charge now levied at Stephen Ambrose, author of numerous bestselling military and presidential histories. The author of "D-Day" and "Band of Brothers" died in 2002, but several authorities have recently questioned the writer's accounts of his research for "Supreme Commander," a massive two-volume biography of Dwight D. Eisenhower. At a minimum, Ambrose's critics s
Source: Discovery News
Apr 26, 2010
Italian archeologists have unearthed the remains of a 6th century BC Greek temple-like building that came with detailed assembly instructions just like an “IKEA do-it-yourself furniture pack."
The elaborate structure was discovered at Torre Satriano, near the southern city of Potenza, in Basilicata, a region where local people mingled with Greeks who settled along the southern coast and in Sicily from the 8th century B.C. onwards.
Much like the instruction booklet
Source: BBC
Apr 26, 2010
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has warned that Colombians caught up in the civil conflict there are in danger of being forgotten.
Fighting has shifted from densely populated areas to remote regions where the fate of tens of thousands of people is almost invisible, the ICRC says.
ICRC staff recorded 800 alleged human rights violations last year, including murder and sexual violence.
Left-wing rebel groups have fought the Colombian gove
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 26, 2010
George W Bush will admit his "flaws and mistakes" in a forthcoming memoir that will focus on 14 decisions made during his eight years in the White House.
According to Crown Publishing, Decision Points, will offer "gripping, never-before-heard detail" about key events such as the disputed 2000 election, the September 11 attacks and the launch of the war on Iraq.
Aided by a former White House speech-writer Chris Michel, Mr Bush also writes about his
