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
Mar 7, 2010
"You want to see a living hobbit?" a guard at the cave whispered. "I can take you there but it will cost 500,000 rupiah ($55)."
Kornelis Jaman was referring to the dwarf cave-dwellers, whose skeletal remains were discovered in the cave. Scientists believe they went extinct 17,000 years ago, but villagers with an eye for profit insist the hobbits hung around until at least 300 years ago and their descendants are still living in nearby villages.
The di
Source: BBC
Mar 7, 2010
A number of artefacts discovered during work on an £87m road development in Dorset are to go on display.
The Weymouth Relief Road is being built to ease traffic between Dorchester and Weymouth and Portland, where Olympic sailing events will be held in 2012.
The site attracted much interest when archaeologists found an ancient burial pit on Ridgeway Hill last year.
Items including ancient bones, Iron Age pottery and shale jewellery will go on display at We
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Mar 7, 2010
A bid to change the face of America’s currency has come under fire from US historians and politicians.
Republican Congressman Patrick McHenry has introduced a new law to replace Ulysses S. Grant with Ronald Reagan on the $50 bill.
The change is designed to coincide with next year’s 100th anniversary of Reagan’s birth.But Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee, which will vote on the measure, complain they aren’t ready to replace t
Source: CNN
Mar 7, 2010
A narrowly passed committee measure that recommends the United States recognize the 1915 killings of ethnic Armenians in Ottoman Turkey as genocide will likely not get a full vote in the House of Representatives, according to a senior State Department official.
The official said Friday that the State Department has an understanding with House leadership on the issue, and, "We believe it will stop where it is."
The Obama administration had urged the House Forei
Source: BBC
Mar 7, 2010
Cannons which last saw action at the Battle of Trafalgar are fired on Tyneside to mark the 200th anniversary of Admiral Lord Collingwood's death.
The four huge guns are at the base of a statue of the Newcastle-born naval hero which stands in Tynemouth.
The cannons, which are no longer in working order, were fired on Sunday using pyrotechnics.
They were last used in battle on board Collingwood's vessel Royal Sovereign as it led British ships in 1805.
Source: BBC
Mar 7, 2010
The failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq damaged President George W Bush's reputation, his former strategist Karl Rove says.
In his memoir, Mr Rove writes that he felt he should have done more to reject claims that President Bush lied about the existence of Saddam's weapons.
He called his perceived failure one of the worst mistakes he made.
But he described the achievements of the Bush administration as "impressive, durable and signifi
Source: Fox News
Mar 7, 2010
The possibility that President Obama could send the self-professed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks to a military tribunal has earned him the highest insult from the left -- that he's another George W. Bush.
A full-page ad in Sunday's New York Times left no doubt as to how the American Civil Liberties Union feels about the possibility of the president reversing the decision to send Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his alleged co-conspirators to civilian court.
"What
Source: CNN
Mar 7, 2010
The post office gets a lot of criticism. Always has, always will.
But the United States Postal Service deserves a standing ovation for something that's going to happen this month: Bill Mauldin is getting his own postage stamp.
Mauldin died at age 81 in the early days of 2003. The end of his life had been rugged. He had been scalded in a bathtub, which led to terrible injuries and infections; Alzheimer's disease was inflicting its cruelties. Unable to care for himself af
Source: CNN
Mar 7, 2010
Two days before his official trip to Afghanistan, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a "big lie" intended to pave the way for the invasion of a war-torn nation, according to Iranian state media.
Ahmadinejad, known for his harsh rhetoric toward the West and Israel, said the attack on U.S. soil was a "scenario and a sophisticated intelligence measure," Iran's state-run Press TV reported Saturday.
T
Source: CNN
Mar 7, 2010
The Rev. Maurice Ouellet remembers the day vividly: March 7, 1965. As he walked out of church after serving Sunday Mass, he encountered silence. Then sirens.
Standing on the steps of St. Elizabeth's -- Selma, Alabama's "black" Catholic church -- the young white priest was about to witness one of the most iconic days of the civil rights era. It would come to be known as Bloody Sunday.
The sirens were coming from the Edmund Pettus Bridge, only a few miles away
Source: Times Online (UK)
Mar 7, 2010
Neville Chamberlain read and annotated Hitler’s Mein Kampf in its original German before he embarked on his policy of appeasement, says a new biography.
The former prime minister, who acquired a 1933 copy of the book, highlighted sections that he thought revealing of the German dictator’s mindset, and even added exclamation marks alongside some passages.
Chamberlain was struck by sections that underlined Hitler’s anti-Semitism, his faith in Aryan superiority and his sen
Source: The Press and Journal (UK)
Mar 6, 2010
Experts believe they have discovered another Iron Age power centre in Moray.
Yesterday National Museums of Scotland curator Dr Fraser Hunter said investigations at a field at Burghead have possibly revealed “a high-status site”.
The archaeologist said the remains of four Iron Age roundhouses could lie buried beneath the soil.
He said: “In combination with the finds that have been discovered at the site, it suggests that this is one of the more important are
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 6, 2010
A new book has claimed that Robin Hood was not as selfless as he is often depicted, suggesting he stole from the rich and lent money to the poor as an early kind of loan shark.
By stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, Robin Hood gained legendary status as a selfless re-distributor of wealth.
But a new book claims that the outlaw of Sherwood Forest was in fact something of a loan shark, who operated a sophisticated lending scheme for those short of cash.
Source: AP
Mar 6, 2010
A historic metal forge that made ashtrays for the ill-fated German airship the Hindenburg and did custom work for Walt Disney has been destroyed by a fire.
Saturday's fire at the Wendell August Forge workshop and gift shop is believed to have started in the workshop, where lacquer was sprayed on bronze pieces such as awards and trophies, spokeswoman Danielle Elderkin said. All employees and customers escaped unharmed.
The Wendell August Forge had been in business in Gro
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 6, 2010
Lufthansa, the German airline, was left embarrassed after a competition to name a new aeroplane was rigged by Russians who nominated "Stalingrad," the site of one of Nazi Germany's worst defeats.
Lufthansa launched the online poll last month in order to find a name for one of a batch of new Airbus A380s it will start using soon. It offered the person who dreamt up the winning name the "glittering prospect" of acquiring one million air miles, enough to fly round
Source: AP
Mar 6, 2010
The current partisan divide is as stark and nasty as any in recent history and on almost every issue — from health care to energy independence to reviving the economy — there's little or no effort to find common ground.
But fierce political battle is also a tradition ingrained in American history. If today's hostile environment is particularly intense, it's downright genteel compared to many battles of the past.
The Civil War, when anti- and pro-slavery forces split the
Source: BBC
Mar 6, 2010
A Gothic inscription recently discovered hidden behind a monument at Salisbury Cathedral is now thought to date from the 15th Century.
The text was found in January when experts moved the Henry Hyde monument from the south aisle wall to clean it.
Archaeologist Tim Tatton-Brown said: "The basic questions of what exactly the words are and why it was written on the cathedral wall remain unanswered.
Source: CNN
Mar 6, 2010
Karl Rove, often described as President George W. Bush's brain, defended the former president in a new book against claims that he lied to the American public in order to invade Iraq in 2003.
Rove, a long-time political advisor who joined Bush in the White House after the 2000 campaign, said the U.S. wouldn't have gone to war with Iraq if the administration knew that weapons of mass destruction wouldn't be found.
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, Rove argued, may have destro
Source: AOL News
Mar 6, 2010
For more than 66 years, Ruth Garmong has thought daily of her beloved Bill, the high school sweetheart she wed just before he left for World War II and died in a plane crash in Burma.
Garmong, now 85, was pregnant when Staff Sgt. William C. Fetterman perished in 1943. She remarried and had two more children, but her late second husband, with whom she shared most of her life, "always knew he was second choice."
Because of a second tragedy, though, Garmong was n
Source: AP
Mar 5, 2010
Wisconsin is known historically as a hotbed of social reforms, yet cracking down on drunken drivers has never been high on policymakers' to-do list....
Big breweries once dominated the state and ties to the beer industry remain stout, giving way to a belief that hard drinking is as much a part of the Wisconsin culture as the Green Bay Packers and cheese. That's created a blind spot of sorts for the socially conscious state: drunken driving....
Much of Wisconsin's love o
