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: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 26, 2010
Six pieces ranging from an ancient Sumerian stone tablet to an AK-47 rifle bearing Saddam's image were handed over to Iraq at an embassy ceremony on Thursday.
"As Iraqis, we remain steadfast in our effort to return each and every one of these cultural treasures to their rightful home," Ambassador Samir Sumaida'ie said at the ceremony.
Baghdad's envoy said that the Iraqi National Museum lost around 15,000 items due to looting after Saddam's regime collapsed.
Source: Times Online (UK)
Feb 26, 2010
The banquets offered by high priests to appease the gods of Ancient Egypt may have been welcomed as a perk of the job but they also increased their chances of cardiovascular disease and early death, research suggests.
The priests, a powerful bureaucracy under the pharaohs, would place vast plates of roast fowl and copious quantities of wine and beer before a god’s statue in a rite repeated three times each day. Then the food was divided up among the priesthood and taken home from th
Source: WaPo
Feb 25, 2010
Jeanne M. Holm, 88, who opened doors for women in the military as the first female general in the Air Force and the first woman in any military branch to reach the rank of two-star general, died Feb. 15 of cardiovascular disease at Anne Arundel Medical Center. She lived in Edgewater.
From 1965 to 1975, Gen. Holm was the highest-ranking woman in the Air Force, which had been resistant to accepting women in its ranks. Women were not allowed to fly and, except for nurses, were not perm
Source: New York Times
Feb 25, 2010
So in 1991, when during construction of a General Services Administration office building in Lower Manhattan, graves were discovered 24 feet below ground, and when those remains led to the discovery of hundreds of other bodies in the same area, and when it was determined that these were black New Yorkers interred in what a 1755 map calls the “Negros Burial Ground,” the earth seemed to shake from more than just machinery. The evidence created a conceptual quake, transforming how New York history
Source: Devon Star (UK)
Feb 25, 2010
AN URN discovered excavation of a large Roman site in Cullompton used to contain human remains for burial.
The 2,000-year-old vessel, which is whole and unbroken, was dug up during construction work on the Millwood Homes site in the centre of the town.
It was x-rayed at Exeter Airport because it was too large for the machines at the city’s Royal Albert Memorial Museum.
Pictures showed it contains soil, dense material thought to be ash from the cremation an
Source: Discovery News
Feb 25, 2010
Visitors to Pompeii will be able to experience a live dig next month in the ancient Roman town that was buried in Mount Vesuvius' catastrophic eruption in 79 A.D.
The site of the open-door excavation is the so-called House of the Chaste Lovers, a building that came to light in 1987 but which has always been closed to the public.
Visitors will be allowed to enter several section of the 2,000-year-old house through suspended walkways, while other parts of the excavation
Source: BBC
Feb 25, 2010
They came to think of themselves as the forgotten army - the men who endured years of suffering in Japanese Prisoner of War Camps during World War II.
Yet many of the survivors, when they came back, never spoke of what they had seen and suffered. Now, one survivor of the camps has broken his 65-year silence.
Alistair Urquhart, then a 22-year-old Gordon Highlander from Aberdeen, became a prisoner of war without firing a shot. He, with hundreds
Source: BBC
Feb 25, 2010
The 30-year rule for publishing secret government papers is to be reduced to 20 years, the government has announced.
The measure - to be phased in over 10 years - falls short of the 15 years proposed by a government-commissioned review but was welcomed by campaigners.
Papers relating to senior royals will remain exempt from Freedom of Information Act requests and will be kept secret for the person's lifetime.
Ministers have dropped their objection to Cabi
Source: BBC
Feb 25, 2010
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has sentenced the former head of legal affairs at the Ministry of Defence to 25 years in prison.
Lieut-Col Eprem Setako was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity.
He was convicted of ordering the killing of at least 30 people at a military camp in 1994.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 25, 2010
French President Nicolas Sarkozy acknowledged on Thursday that France made mistakes during the 1994 Rwanda genocide, but stopped short of apologising during his landmark visit to the country Thursday.
Marking the first visit to Rwanda by a French president since the 1994 massacres, Mr Sarkozy spoke at a joint press conference with Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who has repeatedly accused Paris of aiding the genocide.
The French president, who did not occupy a key post
Source: Fox News
Feb 25, 2010
President Obama and Arizona Sen. John McCain revisited their 2008 presidential race in a testy exchange Thursday at the White House-hosted health care summit in which the president told his vanquished Republican challenger to get over his loss.
At the end of extended remarks by McCain about the contentious process that brought 38 of 535 lawmakers to the presidential guest quarters at Blair House to discuss the stalled health care overhaul, McCain noted that both men campaigned in 2
Source: AP
Feb 25, 2010
A former Ku Klux Klansman convicted in the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers has sued the FBI, claiming the government used a mafia hit man to pistol-whip and intimidate witnesses for information in the case.
Edgar Ray Killen, an 85-year-old former saw mill operator and one-time Baptist preacher, was convicted in 2005 of manslaughter based in part on testimony from a mistrial 40 years ago in Mississippi.
The lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court seeks milli
Source: AP
Feb 25, 2010
An American pilot who dismissed initial reports of what turned out to be the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor has died at age 96.
Kermit Tyler was the Army Air Forces' first lieutenant on temporary duty at Ft. Shafter's radar information center in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941, when two privates reporting seeing an unusually large blip on their radar screen, indicating a large number of aircraft about 132 miles away and fast approaching.
Many questioned his decision for years,
Source: CNN
Feb 25, 2010
Former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney met Thursday - the first time they two had seen each other since the inauguration of President Barack Obama over a year ago, officials for the two men tell CNN.
Bush and Cheney met Thursday afternoon for about an hour over coffee at Cheney's residence outside Washington, a spokesman for the former vice president tells CNN.
The former president is in town for a reunion breakfast of the Bush Cheney Alu
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Feb 25, 2010
A long-lost letter by René Descartes has come to light at Haverford College, where it had lain buried in the archives for more than a century, and the discovery could revolutionize our view of one of the 17th-century French philosopher's major works.
The find, made last month by a Dutch researcher, Erik-Jan Bos of Utrecht University, prompted Mr. Bos to quote another great thinker.
"Eureka," he said he yelled on opening a digital image of the letter that Haver
Source: MSNBC
Feb 25, 2010
A renegade former member of Germany's World War Two navy, who thwarted plans to wreck the French port of Bordeaux by retreating Nazi forces, has died at the age of 91, officials said.
Heinz Stahlschmidt was serving as a petty officer in the Kriegsmarine when he was ordered to help prepare the destruction of the southwestern city's port facilities as the Germans pulled out ahead of advancing allied troops.
Instead, he set off an explosion in the bunker holding detonators
Source: NYT
Feb 25, 2010
Nicolas Sarkozy flew to Rwanda on Thursday for a brief visit — the first by a French president since the 1994 genocide here, seeking to improve the fraught relations between the countries.
“We want to turn the page,” Mr. Sarkozy said during a three-hour stay, during which he met with the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame.
Mr. Kagame also acknowledged that “Rwanda and France have had a difficult past. We’re here today to found a new partnership.”...
France once
Source: WaPo
Feb 25, 2010
Facing high unemployment and a difficult economy, most Americans think the United States will have a smaller role in the world economy in the coming years, and many believe that while the 20th century may have been the "American Century," the 21st century will belong to China....
"China's on the rise," said Wayne Nunnery, 56, a retired U.S. Air Force employee from Bexar, Tex., who was one of 1,004 randomly selected adults polled. "I don't worry about a Chine
Source: BBC News
Feb 25, 2010
The iTunes online store sold its 10 billionth track this week, with Black Eyed Peas' I Gotta Feeling officially the site's most downloaded track.
Their single Boom Boom Pow is the third biggest seller with Lady Gaga taking the number two slot with Poker Face.
Gaga's Just Dance and Bad Romance also feature in the top 25 most downloaded songs, according to Billboard.
The person who bought the 10 billionth track won a $10,000 (£6,500) iTunes gift card.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Feb 24, 2010
A sikh fighter pilot's life was saved by the padding in his turban after he was forced to ditch his plane in a WWII dogfight.
Squadron Leader Mohinder Singh Pujji, one of only a handful of Indian ace flyers in the RAF, crashed into the English Channel after his plane was shot down in a mid-air skirmish.
Advised to plant his stricken Hurricane in the sea because he was unable to swim, the 22-year-old nose-dived into the water.
Rescuers boarded boats to help
