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)
Jan 28, 2010
Another Vietnam War shell has exploded - this time, in a schoolyard.
No one was injured when the artillery shell exploded in a school playing field on Wednesday, shattering windows and terrifying hundreds of students.
Unexploded ordnance and mines have killed more than 42,000 people and wounded some 62,000 since the Vietnam War ended in 1975.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 28, 2010
Watch Tony Blair's long-awaited appearance before the Iraq Inquiry into the 2003 invasion of Iraq here live from 10am GMT on Friday 29 January 2010.
Telegraph.co.uk will be streaming the former prime minister's appearance live from the Iraq Inquiry in London.
Viewers will also be able to vote throughout the hearing on whether they think the former PM is telling the truth or not using our on screen 'lie detector'.
The video will also have live rolling hea
Source: AP
Jan 28, 2010
Helicopters are struggling to bring out Machu Picchu tourists stranded by mudslides, yet new arrivals are swelling the numbers of those hunkered down in villages near the Inca citadel, complaining of a lack of food, water and accommodations.
Conditions are deteriorating for the 1,500 travelers still stranded four days after slides cut a railway that is the only route to and from the hard-to-reach area atop an Andean mountain ridge. Officials had talked of having the rail route resto
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 28, 2010
A collection of speeches by Benito Mussolini has become an unlikely and controversial hit on the internet.
Since the application was launched on Jan 21, it has been downloaded about 1,000 times a day Photo: AP
The speeches, the last of which was delivered in 1938 when Italy introduced laws which discriminated against Jews, are the second-most downloaded application on the Italian version of Apple's iTunes website.
The popularity of the application, called iMussol
Source: Guardian (UK)
Jan 28, 2010
Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today's president
George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.
The Guardian has obtained confir
Source: SoMdNews.com
Jan 27, 2010
From a British invasion to a recruitment camp for African-American Civil War troops, the sleepy little hamlet that is present-day Benedict has seen its share of action.
The county's cultural resource study of Benedict highlights the importance it played in both local and national history and recommends ways to ensure that the town receives recognition during the state's 200th anniversary celebration of the War of 1812.
Completed in the fall, the 234-page study will be u
Source: Irish Times
Jan 27, 2010
DUBLIN’S NORTHSIDE is revealing its own Viking past with the first evidence of 11th-century Dubliners choosing to settle on the north shore of the Liffey emerging in the past week.
Clear signs of a late-11th century – ie Viking – house have been found at a site in the Smithfield area owned by the Office of Public Works (OPW). Excavation works, commissioned and funded by the OPW, have been under way at Hammond Lane, off Church Street, since last year.
Some 17th- and 18th
Source: Science Daily
Jan 27, 2010
The paper, by Professor João Zilhão and colleagues, builds on his earlier research which proposed that, south of the Cantabro-Pyrenean mountain chain, Neanderthals survived for several millennia after being replaced or assimilated by anatomically modern humans everywhere else in Europe.
Although the reality of this 'Ebro Frontier' pattern has gained wide acceptance since it was first proposed by Professor Zilhão some twenty years ago, two important aspects of the model have remained
Source: Science Daily
Jan 27, 2010
Homo floresiensis, a pygmy-sized small-brained hominin popularly known as 'the Hobbit' was discovered five years ago, but controversy continues over whether the small brain is actually due to a pathological condition. How can its tiny brain size be explained?
The commonly held assumption that as primates evolved, their brains always tended to get bigger has been challenged by a team of scientists at Cambridge and Durham. Their work helps solve the mystery of whether Homo floresiens
Source: AP
Jan 27, 2010
Howard Zinn, an author, teacher and political activist whose leftist "A People's History of the United States" became a million-selling alternative to mainstream texts and a favorite of such celebrities as Bruce Springsteen and Ben Affleck, died Wednesday. He was 87.
Zinn died of a heart attack in Santa Monica, Calif., daughter Myla Kabat-Zinn said. The historian was a resident of Auburndale, Mass.
Published in 1980 with little promotion and a first printing o
Source: U.S. News & World Report
Jan 27, 2010
When President Barack Obama asked New York Sen. Hillary Clinton to join his cabinet as secretary of state, the move was widely praised. Clinton, his principal rival for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, added a measure of gravitas to his team of advisers and would, it was suggested, help unite the president's party at a time the Republicans appeared to be on the verge of complete collapse.
At the time, comparisons were made to Abraham Lincoln. Historian Doris Kearns Goodw
Source: BBC
Jan 27, 2010
Meet Sinosauropteryx, a very spiky little dinosaur.
A team of scientists from China and the UK has now revealed that the bristles of this 125 million-year-old dinosaur were in fact ginger-coloured feathers.
The researchers say that the diminutive carnivore had a "Mohican" of feathers running along its head and back. It also had a striped tail.
The team revealed details of the dinosaur's coloured feathers in an article published on Nature's websi
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 27, 2010
Failed presidential candidate John Edwards considered leaving his cancer-stricken wife and went to extraordinary lengths to cover-up a reckless affair that led to him fathering a child with his mistress, according to a new book.
The forthcoming publication of The Politician by Andrew Young, Mr Edwards's long serving assistant, had already forced the Democratic Party's vice-presidential candidate in 2004 to admit paternity of a two-year-old girl born to Rielle Hunter, who had worked
Source: Fox News
Jan 27, 2010
Personal information for 250,000 Clinton administration staff and White House visitors sent to the National Archives was compromised after a computer hard drive containing confidential material disappeared nearly a year ago, RollCall.com reported Wednesday.
The National Archives and Record Administration sent letters to former White House staff members and visitors during the Clinton era, informing them of the data breach and warning that highly sensitive information, like Social Se
Source: CNN
Jan 27, 2010
Ivan Martynushkin is a rare surviving witness to the horrors of the Holocaust, and only one of a handful still living who liberated the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.
But the 86-year-old remembers the events of January 27, 1945 with great clarity. As the former lieutenant in the Soviet army told me about the atrocities he witnessed, it was clear how precious his memories were.
"We saw emaciated, tortured, impoverished people," he recalled. "Those were the people
Source: BBC News
Jan 27, 2010
Events are taking place at Auschwitz to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp, as the world marks Holocaust Memorial Day.
Auschwitz survivors and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are among those gathering in Poland, where the camp was built under German occupation.
In Berlin, Israeli President Shimon Peres urged Germany and other countries to pursue Holocaust perpetrators.
More than a million people were murdered
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 27, 2010
Pope John Paul II regularly whipped himself with a trouser belt that he kept in his wardrobe and signed a secret document saying that would resign if he became incurably ill, a book published today reveals.
The book also described how, as a bishop in Poland, the future pontiff would often sleep on a bare floor as an act of self-denial and asceticism.Msgr Oder, who like the former Pope is Polish, also revealed in the new book that John Paul had decid
Source: UCL
Jan 26, 2010
Part of an ancient Roman law code previously thought to have been lost forever has been discovered by researchers at UCL's Department of History. Simon Corcoran and Benet Salway made the breakthrough after piecing together 17 fragments of previously incomprehensible parchment. The fragments were being studied at UCL as part of the Arts & Humanities Research Council-funded "Projet Volterra" – a ten year study of Roman law in its full social, legal and political context.
Source: New York Times
Jan 26, 2010
When the remains of hundreds of colonial-era Africans were uncovered during a building excavation in Lower Manhattan in 1991, one coffin in particular stood out. Nailed into its wooden lid were iron tacks, 51 of which formed an enigmatic, heart-shaped design.
The pattern was soon identified as the sankofa — a symbol printed on funereal garments in West Africa — and it captured the imagination of scholars, preservationists and designers. Ultimately, it was embraced by many African-Am
Source: National Trust for Historic Preservation
Jan 26, 2010
A group of Pennsylvanians who have been fighting for four years to save a c. 1910 bridge won a victory this month, when the National Park Service placed the Chandler Mill Bridge on the National Register of Historic Places.
The 16-foot-wide span, located in Kennett Township, is slated to be replaced with a new, two-lane bridge. But the National Register listing means that Chester County's plans to demolish the Chandler Mill Bridge must go through a review process, in accordance with
