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
Feb 22, 2010
Colonel Reb shall not rise again. That much is certain.
The University of Mississippi dumped the mascot — a caricature of a white plantation owner — in a 2003 effort to distance the school from Old South stereotypes. It's been without a mascot ever since. A vote Tuesday could change that.
Students will have only two choices in the online referendum: yes, replace the colonel with something else — perhaps a riverboat gambler or a colonial soldier — or no, remain the only
Source: CuttingEdgeNews
Feb 22, 2010
Professor Eske Willerslev and his PhD student Morten Rasmussen, from Centre of Excellence in GeoGenetics, The Natural History Museum at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, led the international team of scientists responsible for the findings. Willerslev and his team grabbed international attention last year when they reconstructed the complete mitochondrial genomes of a woolly mammoth and an ancient human.
However, the current discovery is the first time scientists have been able
Source: NYT
Feb 22, 2010
At a closed briefing in 2003, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee raised no objection to a C.I.A. plan to destroy videotapes of brutal interrogations, according to secret documents released Monday.
The senator, Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, also rejected a proposal to have his committee conduct its own assessment of the agency’s harsh interrogation methods, which included wall-slamming and waterboarding, the documents say.
But Mr. Roberts, through a s
Source: WaPo
Feb 22, 2010
"I am fool."
That self-assessment comes from Oh Kil-nam, a South Korean economist who moved to North Korea a quarter-century ago, dragging along his unhappy wife and two teenage daughters. He then defected to the West, leaving his family stranded in a country his wife had called "a living hell."...
His wife and daughters -- if alive -- are believed to be prisoners in Camp No. 15, one of several sprawling political prisons in the mountains of North Ko
Source: Catholic.org
Feb 22, 2010
In the area known as Ophel, between the City of David and the southern wall of the Temple Mount of Israel, archaeologists have uncovered parts of an ancient complex believed to correspond and date to the time of King Solomon´s Temple.
Located just outside the present-day walls of Jerusalem's Old City, next to the holy site known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, a 231-foot long, 20 foot-high section of ancient stone wall, believed to be the city wall
Source: Discovery News
Feb 22, 2010
U.S. authorities will return a beautifully painted 3,000-year-old coffin to Egypt, Egyptian Culture Minister Faruq Hosni said on Monday.
Decorated with colorful religious scenes, the ornamented coffin contains the remains of a man called Imesy.
Zahi Hawass, the secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) had said last year that the coffin likely belongs to pharaoh Ames of the 21st Dynasty, which ruled over Egypt from 1070-945 B.C.
The
Source: Discovery News
Feb 22, 2010
New research shows that Egyptian pharaoh King Tutankhamun had a rough life: he suffered from malaria and deformed feet, two of his children were stillborn, and he died at the age of 19. Scientific analysis suggests that despite his status as royalty, his life seemed cursed.
But was his death cursed as well, as many believe?
Stories circulated that anyone who dared disturb Tut’s resting place would face the terrible wrath of the mummy—and some believe that nearly two dozen p
Source: Fox News
Feb 22, 2010
Editor's note: Today marks the birthday of George Washington, our first nation's president. Every year on February 22, the vice president selects one senator to read Washington's farewell address aloud on the floor of the Senate. Illinois Democrat Sen. Roland Burris was chosen to read the address today.
President George Washington’s Farewell Address was not really an address. Nor was it really a true farewell. The message was printed in a Philadelphia newspaper on September 19, 1796
Source: Times Online (UK)
Feb 22, 2010
When the fearsome Baltic pirate Klaus Störtebeker was executed 600 years ago his headless body is said to have walked 12m (40ft) along the length of Hamburg quayside.
He had struck a deal with the elders of the port: any of his 70 men that he managed to pass in his post-decapitation walk should be spared. The quivering corpse passed 11 fellow pirates before the executioner put out a foot and tripped him up.
Little wonder, then, that the skull of Störtebeker has fascinat
Source: Fox News
Feb 22, 2010
This political season feels a "little bit" like 1994, former President Bill Clinton said Monday, comparing President Obama'a struggle to pass health care reforms to his own. But the former president declined to describe the Democratic Congress' efforts this past year as an "overreach."
Speaking to Fox News in an exclusive interview, Clinton said he didn't think Democrats will lose control Congress this year, as they did after his failed effort to create a nationa
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 22, 2010
Caravaggio's bar brawling and hell-raising exploits were the result of lead poisoning from the paints he used, Italian researchers have claimed.
A team of anthropologists hope to prove their theory by carrying out DNA tests on bones which they believe are the remains of the Renaissance artist.
Caravaggio was renowned for his hot temper, heavy drinking and violent temperament and was forced to go on the run in 1606 after killing a man in a tavern brawl, a crime for which
Source: AP
Feb 22, 2010
An Israeli archaeologist said Monday that ancient fortifications recently excavated in Jerusalem date back 3,000 years to the time of King Solomon and support the biblical narrative about the era.
If the age of the wall is correct, the finding would be an indication that Jerusalem was home to a strong central government that had the resources and manpower needed to build massive fortifications in the 10th century B.C.
That's a key point of dispute among scholars, becaus
Source: Guardian (UK)
Feb 22, 2010
"Photo Evidence: Michelle Obama Keeps Socialist Books In The White House Library," blared the headline on conservative radio host Rob Port's blog following a tour of the presidential residence last week, after he spotted books including The American Socialist Movement 1897-1912 and The Social Basis of American Communism on the library's shelves.
Port ignited a storm, quickly drawing almost 300 comments to his post on the popular political blog SayAnythingBlog.com, and a ra
Source: Guardian (UK)
Feb 22, 2010
The Polish authorities have for the first time admitted their involvement in the CIA's secret programme for the rendition of high-level terrorist suspects from Iraq and Afghanistan, it emerged today.
After years of stonewalling, Warsaw's air control service confirmed that at least six CIA flights had landed at a disused military air base in northern Poland in 2003.
"It is time for the authorities to provide a full accounting of Poland's role in rendition," Ada
Source: News10Now (Newton, NY)
Feb 22, 2010
Newtown Battlefield State Park in Chemung County is on the list of parks and historic sites across the state facing possible closure because of budget crisis.
The park is part of the site of the battle of Newtown from the American Revolution. It hosts re-enactment events and offers visitors an opportunity to learn about local history, an opportunity that would be missed by the community....
Source: CNN
Feb 22, 2010
Folklore says that George Washington was known for never telling a lie.
But as the United States marks its first president's birthday, a new poll indicates that 74 percent of the public thinks the father of our country did lie to the public while he served as president. It's an indication that Americans think the government has been broken for a very, very long time.
The CNN/Opinion Corporation survey was released Monday on the 278th anniversary of Washington's birth.
Source: Guardian(UK)
Feb 21, 2010
The discovery of the bones of tiny primitive people on an Indonesian island six years ago stunned scientists. Now, further research suggests that the little apemen, not Homo erectus, were the first to leave Africa and colonise other parts of the world, reports Robin McKie.
It remains one of the greatest human fossil discoveries of all time. The bones of a race of tiny primitive people, who used stone tools to hunt pony-sized elephants and battle huge Komodo dragons, were discovered
Source: NYT
Feb 21, 2010
Probably few of the millions slumping in front of the flat-screen this week, skipping the gym to watch their bodily betters perform hair-raising feats of athletic prowess in the Vancouver slush, are aware that in the first half of the 20th century, the modern Olympics also included arts competitions.
The dream of uniting sport and art, as they were once paired in the original Greek Olympiads, was in fact central to the mission of Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the godfather of the Games
Source: NYT
Feb 21, 2010
The French National Library has bought itself a belated valentine in the form of manuscript pages by the hand of the world’s most famous lover, Giacomo Casanova, Reuters reported. The 3,700-page purchase includes Casanova’s memoir, “L’Histoire de Ma Vie” (“The Story of My Life”), below, which was thought to have been destroyed at the end of World War II; it was discovered in boxes that had been transferred to a bank safe in Leipzig, Germany, in 1945 a few days before Allied bombing raids...
Source: Artdaily.org
Feb 21, 2010
A replica of the sacred center of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire, will begin construction this year outside Mexico City, the directors of the project said.
Notable among the 21 buildings that will make up the replica of Tenochtitlan, a city founded in the 14th century and one of the biggest of its day, will be the pyramids of Coacalco, Cihuacoatl, Chicomecoatl and Xochiquetzal, the Temple of the Sun and courts for the pre-Columbian ball game that played a central rol
