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 24, 2010
Bugler, sound the charge! Folks in southern Ohio are mounting a counterattack against a congressional proposal to replace native son Ulysses S. Grant with Ronald Reagan on the $50 bill.
Politicians have passed resolutions, businesses have put up signs, letter-writing campaigns have begun, and, of course, a Facebook page has been created for the cause of leaving Grant's image just as it is on the currency. A bill pending in the U.S. House seeks to replace Grant with Reagan, the late
Source: BBC
Apr 24, 2010
Air, Army and Sea Cadets from London have marked the 150th anniversary of the cadet movement with a St George's Day parade in Whitehall.
More than 200 cadets took part in the parade, which was followed by a ceremony at The Cenotaph.
The Cadet Corps was formed in 1860 to increase the UK's fighting force after heavy losses in the Crimean War.
They have since evolved into voluntary organisations, offering young people opportunities to develop themselves.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 24, 2010
A major Paris exhibition featuring forgeries and copies of works by Picasso, Matisse and other 20th century masters has been condemned by the artists' heirs as "vampire" plagiarism that will encourage counterfeiting.
"Second Hand" aims to "explore an issue inherent to the history of art: the copy as the basis of artistic apprenticeship and as a constant of artistic creation", according to the museum of modern art in Paris.
The show offers
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 24, 2010
Dinosaurs were wiped out by sudden drop in temperatures, not by comet striking the planet, scientists claimed.
British researchers claim that a sudden plummeting in the sea temperature of 16F (9C) more than 137 million years ago was the first step towards their eventual road to extinction.
While studying fossils and minerals from the Arctic Svalbard, Norway, they concluded the sudden change in the Atlantic Gulf Stream during the Cretaceous period would almost certainl
Source: NYT
Apr 23, 2010
When I think back on Poland’s period of mourning after the plane crash that claimed the lives of the country’s president and 95 other people, what stands out are flickering votive candles by the thousands and murmured prayers in unison from as many mouths; the priests sprinkling holy water on the president’s coffin; and the high pointed hats of bishops that seemed to tower above the crowds at every event.
And from the Saturday of the crash until last Sunday, eight days later, when P
Source: Medieval News
Apr 23, 2010
A battle between Anglo-Saxons and Vikings will be at the centre of this year’s Birmingham St George’s Day festivities on Saturday 24 April in Chamberlain Square.
The free event organised by Birmingham City Council and Birmingham St George’s Day Association will host an exciting mix of new and traditional activities in the city centre.
New for 2010 is the creation of an Anglo-Saxon village in Chamberlain Square where history re-enactors ‘Regia Anglorum’ will recreate an
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 23, 2010
A far-Right politician whose support for Holocaust deniers and 10 children have earned her the nickname “Reich Mother” is poised to take her Freedom Party to second place in Austria’s presidential race on Sunday.
Campaigning on an anti-immigrant, anti-Islam, anti-feminist ticket, Barbara Rosenkranz, 51, is poised to pave the way for her party to return to its glory days a decade ago under Jörg Haider, the popular and charismatic leader who died in a car crash in 2008.
Source: AP
Apr 23, 2010
Aside from his name and accent, Jean-Damascene Bizimana blends in almost perfectly in small-town Alabama. He has a house on a corner lot, an SUV, a Polo shirt, a job and a mortgage.
Bizimana has a past, though, one that stretches all the way to equatorial Africa and the worst mass killing in a generation.
Now a U.S. citizen, Bizimana was the United Nations ambassador from his native Rwanda and spoke for its regime in the Security Council during the ethnic violence that
Source: Science Daily
Apr 23, 2010
Catalan researchers have discovered in the rubbish dump of Can Mata in the Vallès-Penedès basin (Catalonia) a new species of Pliopithecus primate, considered an extinct family of primitive Catarrhini primates (or "Old World monkeys"). The fragments of jaw and molars found in this large site demonstrate that Pliopithecus canmatensis belongs to this group, which includes the first Catarrhini that dispersed from Africa to Eurasia.
Named Pliopithecus canmatensis, in honour of
Source: BBC
Apr 23, 2010
Lovers of literature have been meeting in the cafe at the Hotel Castelar in the centre of the Argentine capital for decades.
It was, from the 1930s to the 1960s, at the heart of the city's literary life. Great writers of the Spanish-speaking world, among them Federico Garcia Lorca, Pablo Neruda and Julio Cortazar, visited here.
The cafe has now been chosen with 14 others, all connected with what is considered the richest period in Argentine literature, for a new city
Source: BBC
Apr 23, 2010
A US watchmaker said he hid funds in a Swiss bank account because of "survival behaviour" learned from the Holocaust.
The 65 year-old watchmaker, Jack Barouh, argued his secretive behaviour was motivated by his fear as a Jew of persecution and sudden loss.
He is just one of many US citizens being tried for tax evasion who held secret accounts at the Swiss bank, UBS.
The bank last year admitted to the US government it had hundreds of such account
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 23, 2010
A condemned murderer will become only the third person to be executed by firing squad in the United States in more than three decades.
State court Judge Robin Reese signed the warrant Friday morning for Ronnie Lee Gardner, who killed a man during a failed escape 25 years ago.
Under state law, Gardner, 49, was given the choice of being killed by lethal injection or shot by a five-man team of executioners firing from a set of matched rifles, a rarely used relic that har
Source: PR-Inside.com
Apr 23, 2010
A 106-year-old Dutch singer
has settled a lawsuit against a German filmma ker who accused him of performing for Nazi guards at a concentration camp during World War II.
Johannes Heesters filed suit against German author and documentarian Vo lker Kuehn in a Berlin state court in 2008 after the filmmaker went publi c with claims the singer performed for SS troops at Dachau concentration camp in 1941....
Source: Discovery News
Apr 23, 2010
A sudden change in the Atlantic Gulf Stream, which new research has linked to the mass extinction of dinosaurs, may happen again, many scientists fear.
The shift could be abrupt, and climate experts advise that we must continue to monitor the present warning signs, such as influxes of fresh water into the North Atlantic, and slowdowns of the Atlantic Gulf Stream.
A popular theory concerning the extinction of dinosaurs is that a sudden, external event, such as an aster
Source: Discovery News
Apr 23, 2010
Before the invention of the wheel and writing, a prehistoric civilization in northern Mesopotamia engaged in trade, processed copper and developed the first social classes based on power and wealth.
Evidence of the civilization that formed the basis of urban life in the entire Middle East lies beneath three large mounds about three miles from the modern town of Raqqa in Syria, according to U.S. and Syrian archaeologists.
The mounds, the tallest standing some 50 feet hi
Source: Reuters
Apr 23, 2010
While much of New York has tried to return to normal since September 11, 2001, the search for victims of the World Trade Center attacks goes on every day.
In what some see as necessary and others see as excessive, anthropologists and forensics experts are sifting yet again through rubble for remnants of the nearly 3,000 people killed when two hijacked jetliners crashed into the twin towers.
With buildings slowly being erected where the towers stood, the latest effort to
Source: ABC
Apr 23, 2010
A New South Wales archaeological team is heading to Turkey next month to carry out the first large-scale mapping of the underwater area off Gallipoli.
The team is also hoping to find military relics like the remains of small boats, ammunition and what is left of battlefield jetties.
NSW state maritime archaeologist and team leader Tim Smith says it is important the items are comprehensively documented.
Source: Reuters
Apr 23, 2010
A French-funded archaeology team is working on the first excavations in Iraq's northern Kurdish areas after seven years of conflict, the latest effort to save the country's treasures from ruin.
Iraq, which the ancient Greeks called Mesopotamia or 'land between the rivers' because of the Tigris and Euphrates that flow through it, is regarded by archaeologists as a cradle of civilization.
But historic sites have been neglected and damaged by decades of war, sanctions and
Source: Boston Globe
Apr 23, 2010
Dassault Systèmes and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, said they are joining forces to apply the power of "experiential 3D," or three-dimensional, technology to archeology.
Dassault Systèmes is a French company specializing in 3D and product lifecycle management software. Its 3DVIA brand division, which focuses on "virtual reality platforms," has offices in Concord.
A digital initiative called the Giza Archives Project is housed at the MFA. The pro
Source: AP
Apr 23, 2010
There may be some marital tension in the home of Orlando Figes, a celebrated author and Russian scholar embroiled in a scandal involving vicious reviews posted on Amazon's website.
The anonymous reviews attacked books written by Figes' rivals, and last week his wife, law professor Stephanie Palmer, said she was responsible. But now Figes admits he actually wrote the nasty putdowns, which built up his reputation at other authors' expense.
Figes specifically apologized to
