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: CNN
Apr 26, 2010
Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir won the country's controversial but historic presidential election with roughly two-thirds of the vote, the National Election Commission said Monday.
The elections were the first in 24 years in the oil-rich African nation, which has been riven by fighting in Darfur and a civil war between north and south.
Al-Bashir, a former military officer who took power in a bloodless coup in 1989, has been indicted over allegations of war crimes by t
Source: CNN
Apr 26, 2010
To most people, the literary debate over who wrote the works of William Shakespeare would appear to be much ado about nothing. After all, the play's the thing, right? What does it matter who wrote it?
To James Shapiro, however, it matters a great deal.
The Columbia University professor and Shakespeare scholar spent 15 years working on his 2005 book, "A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599." The work exhaustively details a key year in the Bard's caree
Source: CNN
Apr 26, 2010
Former President George W. Bush's highly anticipated memoir will hit bookshelves exactly one week after November's midterm elections, Crown Publishers announced Monday.
The book, titled "Decision Points," will focus on 14 "critical and historic" decisions the former president has made throughout his life and in the White House, said Tina Constable, the Vice President of Crown Publishers – a division of Random House.
Bush has made few public appearanc
Source: CNN
Apr 26, 2010
Sen. Joe Lieberman said Monday that losing the 2006 Democratic primary was one of the most difficult moments of his political career. But the independent lawmaker quickly added that he thinks that loss and his subsequent decision to run for re-election without the support of the Democratic Party freed him up to be in a unique position in the current political environment.
After losing the Democratic primary to Ned Lamont, Lieberman ran in the general election as an independent, best
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 26, 2010
Fan letters written to Adolf Hitler during the Second World War were the subject of a new documentary in Germany last night.
'Dear Uncle Adolf' was the first documentary detailing the tens of thousands of surviving fan letters Hitler received while in power which were seized by the Soviets when they conquered Berlin in 1945.
For years these love notes, advice letters, gifts and health-tips lay undiscovered in Russian archives. Discovered in 2007, they formed the basis o
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 26, 2010
A Lotus has been grown from a 700-year-old seed which dates back to Korea's Goryeo Dynasty.
The plant has been grown in Haman County, South Gyeongsang Province, South Korea.
The flower has been grown from one of the 10 lotus seeds discovered during an excavation of an ancient castle last year.
Scientists at the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources, have confirmed two of the seeds to be as old as 650 years and 760 years, r
Source: BBC News
Apr 26, 2010
For 35 years, Josip Broz Tito held Yugoslavia together despite its mix of nationalities, languages and religions. After his death in 1980, simmering ethnic tensions resurfaced, eventually leading to the wars in the Balkan states. Former BBC correspondent Martin Bell returned to the region to examine Tito's legacy.
His power once held Yugoslavia together under the banner of brotherhood and unity. But now his memory divides it - or the many republics into which it has disintegrated.
Source: AP
Apr 25, 2010
A Colonial-era boundary dispute between two Vermont towns that were never exactly sure where one ended and the other began is finally going to be settled.
But it was old maps, not GPS or Google Earth, that ultimately found the common ground for the towns of St. George and neighboring Shelburne. The process has pointed up the art of trying to read the minds of the original surveyors and land granters to establish where the lines were drawn.
"It's a matter of 'let's
Source: NYT
Apr 25, 2010
On Oct. 31, 1984, two Sikh bodyguards gunned down Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in her garden. In the three harrowing days that followed, more than 3,000 Sikhs were killed by enraged mobs seeking to avenge her death.
Eighteen years later, 58 people, most of them Hindu pilgrims, died in an inferno on a train in Gujarat, in western India. The fire was blamed on Muslims, and within days 1,000 died in widespread riots.
These two spasms of horrific sectarian bloodletting have
Source: News.com.au (Australia)
Apr 25, 2010
FRED Collett is a true-blue Australian war hero but the Federal Government has turned its back on the 100-year-old World War II Digger in his moment of need.
Mr Collett escaped the clutches of the Germans in a rickety old wooden dinghy at the height of the war, dodging bombs at sea for three weeks to warn fellow soldiers of the enemy advance.
But 69 years after his daring escape from a PoW camp in Greece to the island of Crete in April 1941, the Federal Government has t
Source: BBC News
Apr 25, 2010
The first thing visitors notice about the sertao, Brazil's dry outback, is the heat: it seems enough to keep anyone focused on where their next drink's coming from.
But local cowboys have a different concern: the sertao's spiny vegetation. Known as caatinga, it is decent fodder for cows and goats, but ferociously inhospitable to human clothes and skin.
So, while many in the region are inseparable from their parasols, cowboys can be found dressed head-to-toe in protectiv
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 25, 2010
Alan Sillitoe, the novelist, has died at the age of 82, his family said.
The Nottingham-born writer, whose novels marked him out as one of the Angry Young Men of British fiction who emerged in the 1950s, died at Charing Cross Hospital in London.
His son David said he hoped his father would be remembered for his contribution to literature. Both are regarded as classic examples of kitchen sink dramas reflecting the reality of life in Britain a
Source: AP
Apr 25, 2010
Hundreds of Iranians have marked the 30th anniversary of a failed U.S. military operation to rescue American hostages held in Tehran.
The 1980 rescue attempt — called Operation Eagle Claw — turned into a major embarassment for Washington when a U.S. helicopter collided with a transport plane at a desert landing spot during a sandstorm. Eight American servicemen were killed.
Hundreds of Iranians, many of them members of the paramilitary Basij volunteers, prayed and gave
Source: The State
Apr 24, 2010
People bivouacked at Fort Jackson before the U.S. Army took over the property.
Long before.
The most extensive archaeological dig ever at the fort has uncovered evidence of human camps up to 9,000 years old.
The dig site and some of the more impressive artifacts uncovered will be on display to the public today.
The findings aren't stunning - artifacts from that period are common throughout the state. But until recent years, archaeologists beli
Source: The Albany Project
Apr 24, 2010
This promises to be a bizarre political year, with GOP candidates not only running to the far right, but veering way off track. Earlier this week, Republican Senate candidate Sue Lowden of Nevada grabbed the crazy baton from Rep. Michele Bachman when she suggested that people should barter and haggle with their doctors for health care, rather than rely on insurance. But what she said is nothing compared to what the newly minted challenger to Congressman John Hall said in her candidacy's openi
Source: LA Times
Apr 24, 2010
The Purepecha people of Mexico built a large empire in what is now the western state of Michoacan, beating back the Aztecs at a shared border and resisting Spanish colonization until European diseases ravaged the society. Unique among Mesoamerican peoples in many ways -- their language is said to be most related to Quechua, in far-off Peru -- the Purepecha were skilled in crafting copper and pottery but left few clues otherwise about their history and culture.
Recent work by archeo
Source: BBC
Apr 24, 2010
The keys to the H-block cells of Northern Ireland's most notorious prison, the Maze, were up for auction in Dublin on Friday.
The prison housed both republican and loyalist prisoners during the Northern Ireland Troubles.
It was known as Long Kesh and was home to the famous H-Blocks where ten men died in the 1981 republican hunger strikes where they fought with the Government to be recognised as political prisoners.
The jail was closed in 2000 after the e
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 24, 2010
Hollywood is mixing ancient and modern, adapting classic tales of warriors and monsters with the latest technology to help audiences escape the reality of recession and war.
Loosely based on the Greek myth of Perseus, the re-make of the 1981 hit Clash of the Titans topped box offices in America for two weeks after its recent release.
But its first screenings were delayed while it was converted into the 3D format that audiences now seem to like.
Source: CNN
Apr 24, 2010
President Barack Obama on Saturday strongly deplored the massacres of Armenians in the final days of the Ottoman Empire, but again avoided using the controversial term "genocide" to describe it.
In a statement commemorating Armenian Remembrance Day, Obama solemnly labeled the massacres and death marches as "one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century."
Tackling an issue fraught with political landmines, Obama referred to the event as "the Me
Source: CNN
Apr 24, 2010
Paul Schaefer, a former Nazi who fled Germany in 1961 and founded a cult-like commune in Chile, died Saturday in a prison hospital.
He was 88.
Schaefer was serving a 20-year sentence at the national penitentiary in Santiago for sexually abusing children at the notorious commune known as Colonia Dignidad (The Dignity Colony).
The commune in southern Chile, also called Villa Baviera, was created as a place to safeguard Germanic traditions. Under Schaefer's ru
