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: BBC
Nov 18, 2009
Hardening of the arteries has been found in Egyptian mummies - suggesting that the risk factors for heart disease may be ancient, researchers say.
A team of US and Egyptian scientists carried out medical scans on 22 mummies from Cairo's Museum of Antiquities.
They found evidence of hardened arteries in three of them and possible heart disease in three more.
All the mummies were of high socio-economic status and would have had a rich diet.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 18, 2009
Intense public anger at cheating bankers is nothing new, this macabre souvenir created to mark the hanging of the 'Bernard Madoff of the 19th century' shows.
The reworked George III penny was fashioned as a memento to the hanging of Henry Fauntleroy, who forged cheques at his bank Marsh, Sibbald & Co for more than a decade before he was found out and it collapsed with enormous debts.
Showing sentiments have changed little over the best part of two centuries, one s
Source: Fox News
Nov 18, 2009
White House aides were exultant after the president walked part of the Great Wall alone in a choreographed moment for photographers and "the shot" they had planned turned out perfectly.
President Barack Obama absorbed history's expanse Wednesday from atop the Great Wall of China, a manmade wonder of such enormity that Obama found himself putting daily life in perspective.
A must-see for presidents from President Richard Nixon on, the Great Wall was one of Obam
Source: AP
Nov 18, 2009
The U.S. attended a meeting of the International Criminal Court's management board for the first time Wednesday in a sign it has stopped shunning the world's only permanent war crimes tribunal.
The U.S. has not ratified the court's founding treaty, the Rome Statute, partly because of fears the court could become a forum for politically motivated prosecutions of U.S. troops.
He told The Associated Press his presence is a sign the Obama administration wants to "re-en
Source: The Times (UK)
Nov 18, 2009
British investigators are hopeful that a body recovered from the eastern Bekaa Valley could be the remains of Alec Collett, a British journalist who was kidnapped and executed by a Palestinian group in 1986 during Lebanon’s civil war, the Times of London reported.
A military and forensic team led by the British embassy in Beirut is excavating an area near the village of Aitta al-Fuqar in the southern Bekaa Valley. The site was the location in the 1980s of a base belonging to Fatah –
Source: AP
Nov 18, 2009
A 114-year-old woman believed to be the oldest native-born American and the third-oldest person in the world has died at a New York nursing home.
Olivia Patricia Thomas died Monday in the St. Francis Home of Williamsville, near Buffalo. She had lived there since 2004. She's being remembered as a dedicated gardener who loved to travel the world.
The Gerontology Research Group tracks supercentenarians and says Thomas was the oldest person born in the United States. She wa
Source: CNN
Nov 18, 2009
When Robert Byrd came to Congress from West Virginia, a postage stamp cost 3 cents and kids were clamoring for a new toy called Mr. Potato Head.
On Wednesday, almost 57 years later, Byrd became the longest-serving member of Congress in history.
Two days before he turns 92, the eloquent legislator known for his encyclopedic knowledge of Senate rules and history surpasses Carl T. Hayden, the Arizona Democrat who served a total of 20,773 days in the U.S. House and Senate.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 17, 2009
According to a new study of clay pots and ceramic tablets discovered almost 70 years ago in Harappa, now in Pakistan, the people of the Indus Valley had a detailed system of commodity value, weights and measures.
Dr Bryan Wells, a researcher based at India's Institute of Mathematical Sciences, told The Daily Telegraph he had begun work on his thesis ten years ago when he first saw photographs of the clay pots with markings which appeared to be in proportion to their relative size.
Source: The New York Observer
Nov 17, 2009
New York Times Washington correspondent Jodi Kantor has secured a stunning seven-figure book deal this week with Little, Brown to write a volume on the Obamas.
The deal was the result of a heated citywide auction, and was brokered by independent lit agent Elyse Cheney. It comes on the heels of the 34-year-old reporter’s New York Times Magazine cover story on the Obamas’ marriage, which argued that “the Obamas mix politics and romance in a way that no first couple quite have before.”
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 17, 2009
Bill Millin, now 86, tried to raise the morale of incoming troops with his tunes, as shells exploded overhead and machinegun fire raked Sword Beach.
The picture of the 21-year-old commando became one of the enduring images of the landings which paved the way to Hitler's defeat in the Second World War.
Now he is to be immortalised in a life-sized statue by the people of Colleville Montgomery, which he helped to liberate in 1944.
On Thursday a group of French
Source: Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star (VA
Nov 17, 2009
A key piece of the Chancellorsville Battlefield associated with Confederate Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson's 1863 flank attack is the next acquisition target of a Civil War preservation group.
The Civil War Preservation Trust yesterday announced a $2.1 million campaign to buy 85 acres, known as the Wagner Tract, along State Route 3 east of Wilderness Church.
The property includes 2,000 feet of frontage on the north shoulder of historic Orange Plank Road and l
Source: Russia-ic
Nov 17, 2009
Building of a shopping mall was planned to be launched in November under Pushkinskaya Square. Instead of that archeological excavations were started and brought out lots of finds.
“We unearthed a most interesting construction of the epoch of Peter the First” – the chief archeologist of Moscow professor Alexander Veksler says. Thus, for example, we found a wooden water conduit, water wells, coins, and variety of household items”.
Source: NYT
Nov 17, 2009
PRAGUE — It was a revolution that began with a lie.
Vaclav Havel, the dissident who led the Velvet Revolution that overthrew Communism in Czechoslovakia, once declared that “truth and love must triumph over lies and hatred.” Yet the revolution — its name a reference to the clenched fist in the velvet glove — was set off by a false rumor that remains a mystery 20 years later.
On Tuesday, thousands of Czechs marched through the streets here, to the sound of wailing sirens
Source: Guardian (UK)
Nov 17, 2009
Anthony Edwards wasn't perturbed when he first saw the hole. Given its position in the Regent House Combination Room in Cambridge's Old Schools, where for three centuries all the business of the university was conducted, it must, he assumed, have been dug to deal with a bout of woodworm, a plumbing problem, or something worthy of archaeological investigation.
It was a month later, as the professor walked down Kings Parade and spotted two friends with "faces like thunder",
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education
Nov 17, 2009
Time traveling is coming to an Internet browser near you.
A new Web site called Memento Web will allow anyone curious about what the Internet used to look like to plug in a date and then browse the World Wide Web as it was on that day.
The site is already live with limited use. Users can enter a URL and the date on which they wish to see a version of the page the URL once called up.
That doesn't mean they'll get exactly what they were looking for. For examp
Source: BBC
Nov 17, 2009
When the famous Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov died in 1977, he made it clear in his will that a manuscript he was working on should not be published.
In fact he instructed his wife Vera to burn the unfinished work.
Vera didn't destroy the work or publish it.
It was kept safely locked away in the vaults of a bank in Switzerland. Now, more than 30 years after his death, Nabokov's son Dmitri has sparked controversy by agreeing to
Source: BBC
Nov 17, 2009
Police in Germany have arrested two Rwandan militia leaders on suspicion of crimes committed in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Ignace Murwanashyaka, the leader of the FDLR rebel group, and his aide Straton Musoni were held on suspicion of crimes against humanity and war crimes.
FDLR leaders fled to DR Congo after the Rwanda genocide in which some 800,000 people - mostly ethnic Tutsis - died.
The FDLR's presence in DR Congo has been at the h
Source: AP
Nov 17, 2009
A letter President Abraham Lincoln wrote to a boy whose friends didn't believe he had met the commander in chief is being sold in Philadelphia.
Lincoln sent the letter from the White House to 8-year-old George Patten two weeks after his March 1861 inauguration.
The youngster had been mocked by classmates for saying he'd met the 16th president with his father, a journalist. His teacher wrote Lincoln to uncover the truth.
Source: CNN
Nov 17, 2009
The Senate is about to embark on what could be the showdown of the year as top Democrats work to push through sweeping health care legislation.
The legislative chamber, however, is no stranger to history-changing debate. Lawmakers need to look no further than their predecessors to see how it's done.
In 1991, Congress voted for the use of military force towards Iraq after the Saddam Hussein-led country went to war with Kuwait.
The action was the first time C
Source: Huffington Post
Nov 17, 2009
Orders to prevent sales of T-shirts showing Obama dressed like communist revolutionary Mao Zedong are in force during the president's visit -- and Chinese officials mean it, as a CNN reporter found out.
Correspondent Emily Chang reported that she went searching for Oba-Mao souvenirs at Shanghai's Yatai Xinyang market. Finding none, she pulled out a T-shirt she bought before the ban was imposed to record a report in the market.
Security guards pounced, telling her she di
