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)
Nov 15, 2009
China has angrily rejected calls by the US and the EU to release the prominent intellectual dissident Liu Xiaobo.
Mr Liu is facing up to 15 years in jail for organising a pro-democracy petition and writing essays critical of the ruling Communist Party.
The case of the 53-year-old former literature professor, who is accused of "inciting subversion of state power", is now attracting a growing international outcry from governments and civil rights groups campai
Source: NYT
Nov 15, 2009
For all the trillions of dollars lavished on it, for all the talk about confronting new security threats, for all the exhortations to reinvent government, America’s defense establishment, as John Farmer reminds us in “The Ground Truth,” continued to fight the cold war more than a decade after it had ended. Preoccupied with building a costly missile defense system to counter a spurious menace from Russia and with maintaining “full spectrum dominance” over the rest of the globe, most Bush administ
Source: Atlanta Journal
Nov 15, 2009
Jeff Gardner delicately scrapes away a century of red clay and scoops a child's bones into a casket.
The archaeologist has spent the past two months carefully sifting through dirt, trying to preserve the remains of generations of Clayton County families.
Gardner thought he was looking for 270 historic African American graves buried behind Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
He found more than 340 – and is still digging.
Gardner and his cr
Source: Fox News 40 Sacramento
Nov 15, 2009
VALLEJO - A huge cannon at a Vallejo's Sunrise Memorial Cemetary...taken by thieves. It was part of a memorial dedicated to veterans, but cops think thieves stole it for the scrap metal.
Francisco Lopez is a Veteran and a Historian. He says these metal thieves are only thinking about making money and not respecting our cemetaries. "These are unique treasures that are not available anywhere and they are relics of these soldiers times."
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 15, 2009
Explorers are planning to recover a rare batch of whisky lost during explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated voyage to the South Pole a century ago.
Two crates of the now extinct “Rare Old” brand of McKinlay and Co whisky have been buried in the Antarctic ice since Shackleton was forced to abandon his polar mission in 1909.
But Whyte & Mackay, the whisky giant that owns McKinlay and Co, has asked a team of New Zealand explorers heading out on a January expedition
Source: NYT
Nov 15, 2009
SANA, Yemen — It has been almost 800 years since Saleh Qaid Othaim’s house in the heart of the Old City was built from hand-cut stones and traditional alabaster decorations.
Yet on a recent morning, Mr. Othaim watched contentedly as a group of men renovated the place using exactly the same ancient methods and materials. Workers mixed the moist chocolate-brown masonry known as teen while a master builder supervised, a dagger hanging from his belt. There was no scaffolding, no helmets
Source: NYT
Nov 15, 2009
Since 1992, Prof. David Protess at the Medill school at Northwestern University has worked with undergraduate journalism students to investigate cases in which prosecutors appear to have taken aim at the wrong people. That might be about to happen again, only this time the students themselves would be the targets.
In one of the most recent cases, students working with the effort, which became the Medill Innocence Project in 1999, uncovered evidence that suggested Anthony McKinney ha
Source: The Boston Globe
Nov 15, 2009
The latest restoration of USS Constitution is undoing historically incorrect changes, bringing the ship ever closer to its 1812 splendor.
The only living veteran of the War of 1812” -- as USS Constitution Commander William Bullard described the old warship when he turned over his post this summer -- is having a makeover. Actually, “Old Ironsides” has gone through many looks since its launch 212 years ago. Some, such as the two-story barnlike structure built on its upper deck in 1882
Source: BBC
Nov 15, 2009
A statue honouring the late Victoria Cross holder and former Welsh Rugby Union president Sir Tasker Watkins has been unveiled by his daughter.
The 9ft (2.7m) bronze sculpture takes pride of place on the walkway leading into the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.
Lady Mair Griffith-Williams performed the ceremony in front of a distinguished audience.
Sir Tasker, whose wartime bravery earned him the Victoria Cross at the age of 25 in 1944, died two years ago.
Source: BBC
Nov 15, 2009
A 300-year-old document which led to one of the most infamous episodes in Scottish history is to go on display.
The signed order for the Massacre of Glencoe will form the centrepiece of an exhibition to mark the end of the Year of Homecoming.
It will be among nine cultural treasures which will be displayed in the National Library of Scotland from this week.
Thirty eight members of the MacDonald clan were killed in the massacre.
Source: BBC
Nov 15, 2009
The head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Pavle, has died in Belgrade, the Church has announced.
The patriarch, 95, became leader of the Church in 1990. He was admitted to the city's military hospital two years ago.
Though he reportedly suffered from heart and lung conditions, the Church did not specify the cause of death. After the fall of communism and rise of Serb nationalism, the Church regained a leading role during his ru
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 15, 2009
The family of the actor Denholm Elliott is auctioning an archive of his memorabilia including a book of Shakespeare’s plays sent to him at a prisoner of war camp in Germany during the Second World War.
Elliott first developed an interest in acting while an RAF prisoner of war when he read and re-read the book sent to the camp in Selesia by the Red Cross.
He staged amateur dramatics and on his release he pursued an acting career in London before making his film debut i
Source: Fox News
Nov 15, 2009
The mayor who oversaw rescue efforts in the wake of the attacks on lower Manhattan tells 'Fox News Sunday' the president is only granting the 'wish' of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad at the expense of the American people and that the conspirators should be tried in a military tribunal.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani accused the Obama administration of "repeating the mistake of history" by bringing the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and his accomplices
Source: Fox News
Nov 15, 2009
ORLANDO, Fla. — The Army Corps of Engineers will be returning to an Orlando middle school to search for World War II explosives that might be buried there.
The federal agency will inspect part of the Odyssey Middle School campus where 15 portable classrooms are being removed because of declining enrollment. Corps officials hadn't been able to search that area with metal detectors and other bomb finding technology before.
More than 400 pounds of World War II-era bombs
Source: The Daily Beast
Nov 15, 2009
The CIA has given hundreds of millions of dollars to support Pakistan's spy network since the September 11 attacks, contributing as much as a third of the foreign agency's annual budget, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. Additionally, a secret State Department program pays Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency tens of millions of dollars for capturing or killing wanted militants, officials tell the newspaper. All of this money has some in the U.S. government concerned because of fea
Source: Santa Fe New Mexican (NM)
Nov 14, 2009
Historic preservation specialist Jeff Brown is hoping his work crews won't find the spot where legs and arms are buried at Pecos National Historical Park.
The appendages would be those amputated from Civil War soldiers in 1862 at a makeshift hospital housed in Kozlowski's Trading Post east of Santa Fe.
Finding the bony remains, while exciting, would slow down Brown's current project: a six-year renovation of the almost 2-century-old stage stop and tavern. The low-slung
Source: NYT
Nov 14, 2009
THERE are 46 days left in 2009, which means it is just about time to commence the beloved and enduring parlor game known as “Name That Decade.”
You know the rules — coin a pithy, reductive phrase that somehow encapsulates the multitude of events, trends, triumphs and calamities of the past 10 years. If you can also rope in some of the big personalities and consumer obsessions, that’s a bonus.
For the ’00s, it seems the trick will be finding a small package sturdy and fl
Source: Fox News
Nov 14, 2009
STOCKHOLM — With a solemn ceremony in Stockholm's antiquities museum, Sweden on Saturday marked the return of 22 skulls looted from a native Hawaiian community mainly in the 17th century.
The symbolic ceremony — attended by guests from Hawaii and the Nordic countries' own indigenous Sami population — was part of Sweden's increased efforts to return indigenous remains collected by scientists across the world in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The Swedish government in 2005
Source: DVIDS
Nov 14, 2009
BAGHDAD – The contributions of Native Americans to American history, as well as the military, are quintessentially, well, American.
November marks Native American History Month and is intended to celebrate and commemorate the rich culture of the various Indian nations, said Sgt. 1st Class Tamatha Denton, from New York.
"The theme for this year is 'Understanding American Indian Heritage Now and Then,'" she said. "We're touching on military service all the
Source: NYT
Nov 14, 2009
MARASHONI, Kenya — With the stroke of a pen, the last of Kenya’s honey hunters may soon be homeless.
Since time immemorial, the Ogiek have been Kenya’s traditional forest dwellers. They have stalked antelope with homemade bows, made medicine from leaves and trapped bees to produce honey, the golden elixir of the woods. They have struggled to survive the press of modernity, and many times they have been persecuted, driven from their forests and belittled as “dorobo,” a word meaning r
