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 News
Oct 12, 2009
The first single malt made in England for about a century has attracted the interest of UK whisky enthusiasts.
St George's Distillery, a family-run Norfolk company, is behind the drink.
Managing Director James Nelstrop said production of the whisky, which is being sold for £35 a bottle, was the culmination of a "45-year-old dream".
The distillery was built in Roudham, south Norfolk, in 2006, and now, after three years maturing its first batch, i
Source: Daily News (NY)
Oct 12, 2009
A firefighter and two cops who worked at Ground Zero in the days and weeks after Sept. 11 have died of cancer in the past five days, the Daily News has learned.
Family members and advocates are blaming their deaths on toxins released into the air after the twin towers collapsed - and they're urging Congress to act on a bill that would help pay for their medical care.
Source: Los Angeles Daily News
Oct 12, 2009
On the grounds of the old Ambassador Hotel where Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, officials on Saturday dedicated a site of national tragedy that had turned into one of potential local triumph.
Two of Kennedy's grandchildren were among those who witnessed ribbon-cutting ceremonies for a new elementary education facility featuring two pilot schools.
"This is sacred ground," labor leader and Kennedy friend Dolores Huerta told about 500 people who atte
Source: Nature News
Oct 12, 2009
An independent study has cast more doubt on a controversial theory that a comet exploded over icy North America nearly 13,000 years ago, wiping out the Clovis people and many of the continent's large animals.
Archaeologists have examined sediments at seven Clovis-age sites across the United States, and did not find enough magnetic cosmic debris to confirm that an extraterrestrial impact happened at that time, says the report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (P
Source: MSN Money
Oct 12, 2009
DAYTON, Ohio (AP) - An Indian tribe says plans to build a commercial wind farm in western Ohio pose a threat to an ancient burial mound and the state should put a barrier around it to keep it from being disturbed.
The Piqua Shawnee Tribe asked that the mound be protected in a motion it filed with the Ohio Power Siting Board regarding EverPower Wind Holdings Inc.'s proposal to build the 70-turbine farm near Urbana.
Gene Park, an elder of the Alabama-based Shawnees and an
Source: Yahoo News
Oct 12, 2009
LONDON (AFP) – Up to 100,000 pilgrims are expected to flock to the mother church of Roman Catholics in England for the culmination of a tour of the relics of a 19th century French nun which arrived in London Monday.
The heavy jacaranda wood casket containing the relics of St Therese of Lisieux was to be on show in Westminster Cathedral until Thursday, the high point of a month-long tour of England and Wales.
The relics, made up of portions of her thigh and foot bones, h
Source: BBC
Oct 12, 2009
An Olympic torch, said to be from the post-war 1948 games in London, is being sold on an internet auction site.
The seller is from Greece and lives near to the birthplace of the modern games, Athens.
The man, who calls himself Artoneli, said he bought the torch 20 years ago from an old man who lived nearby.
He is trying to raise about £7,500 and insists the torch is genuine. He is also selling a torch said to be from the 1956 games in Melbourne, Australia.
Source: NYT
Oct 12, 2009
The 1918 flu epidemic was probably the deadliest plague in human history, killing more than 50 million people worldwide. Now it appears that a small number of the deaths may have been caused not by the virus, but by a drug used to treat it: aspirin.
Dr. Karen M. Starko, author of one of the earliest papers connecting aspirin use with Reye’s syndrome, has published an article suggesting that overdoses of the relatively new “wonder drug” could have been deadly.
What raise
Source: The Crescent News
Oct 12, 2009
A nationally recognized scholar and author on Abraham Lincoln tackled the difficult subject of civil liberties during wartime Sunday during the Town and Gown program at Schomburg Auditorium.
"There was torture under the administration of Abraham Lincoln," said Dr. Mark Neely Jr., professor of history at Penn State University. "At the time of the Civil War there was a loose idea of the laws and customs of war, so it's unclear if the torture was illegal."
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Oct 12, 2009
COLLEGE PARK, Md. – Undergraduates here announced on Friday the findings of their year-long study to uncover the University of Maryland’s slavery ties, discovering no evidence that slaves built or worked at the institution, even though many of its founders were themselves slaveholders.
Students from a two-semester history research course led by Ira Berlin, a prominent slavery scholar, presented the culmination of hours of library and archival research Friday, a 30-page report “Knowi
Source: True/Slant
Oct 12, 2009
Courtesy of the great Robert Garcia of the City Project we get this little gem on KCET’s blog:
Frederick Rindge bought the Topanga Malibu Sequit, a 13,316 acre rancho, for $300,000 in 1892. His widow May spent 25 years to keep the state from building what became the Pacific Coast Highway through the land. By the 1930s, May began selling beachfront lots to movie stars and others to pay her taxes. The parcels carried racial restrictions prohibiting people of color from using th
Source: NYT
Oct 12, 2009
Under rules to be proposed this week, the Department of Veterans Affairs plans to add Parkinson’s disease, ischemic heart disease and hairy-cell leukemia to the growing list of illnesses presumed to have been caused by Agent Orange, the toxic defoliant used widely in Vietnam.
The proposal will make it substantially easier for thousands of veterans to claim that those ailments were the direct result of their service in Vietnam, thereby smoothing the way for them to receive monthly di
Source: Taegan Goddard's Political Wire
Oct 12, 2009
Michael Smerconish says a source tells him Bill Clinton never told independent counsel Ken Starr about the secret tapes he recorded with the help of historian Taylor Branch.
"Sporadically in The Clinton Tapes, Branch addresses the conundrum posed by recording the sitting president and the need to avoid certain subjects because of investigations. Still, their conversation continued, and one suspects that the likes of Ken Starr would have salivated upon knowledge of their occurre
Source: Time
Oct 12, 2009
The march on Washington that gays staged Sunday on the National Mall drew something like 200,000 people — that's a good guess based on conversations with many of the organizers and local authorities, although estimates of Mall crowds are notoriously unreliable. But one number you can take to the bank: the average age of those backstage who wore walkie-talkie headsets and staff badges, the men (and a few women) who were behind much of the organizing effort, wasn't over 30. And that, by far, was t
Source: CNSNews.com
Oct 12, 2009
Fort Edward, N.Y. (AP) - Crews dredging a polluted stretch of the upper Hudson River this year battled high water, old logging debris and unexpected levels of PCB contamination that slowed progress.
But as the first phase of one of the most costliest and complex federal Superfund projects wraps up this month, regulators say results are generally positive and show dredging can work. They are already preparing for a far more expansive second phase, which would clean up 40 miles of riv
Source: CNSNews.com
Oct 12, 2009
In the chaos of an early morning assault on a remote U.S. outpost in eastern Afghanistan, Staff Sgt. Erich Phillips' M4 carbine quit firing as militant forces surrounded the base. The machine gun he grabbed after tossing the rifle aside didn't work either.
When the battle in the small village of Wanat ended, nine U.S. soldiers lay dead and 27 more were wounded. A detailed study of the attack by a military historian found that weapons failed repeatedly at a "critical moment"
Source: Time
Oct 12, 2009
He is neither old nor a priest nor particularly attached to time-honored traditions. At 35, John Eriksen, one of the nation's youngest Catholic-school superintendents, offers a ruthless assessment of parochial education. "The biggest threat that urban Catholic schools face is nostalgia," he says both of districts nationwide and of his own diocese of Paterson, N.J. A Notre Dame and Harvard graduate fluent in Spanish and Arabic, Eriksen is part of the next generation of Catholic leaders
Source: Rhode Island News
Oct 12, 2009
In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue,
It was a courageous thing to do,
But someone was already here.
The Inuit and Cherokee,
The Aztec and the Menominee,
Onondaga and the Cree.
“I Will Be Your Friend,” by Nancy Schimmel, a songwriter and storyteller
PROVIDENCE — Christopher Columbus was a heroic explorer who discovered America, proved the Earth was round and led his nation to untold riches in the New Wo
Source: WaPo
Oct 12, 2009
One day in 1791, President George Washington received a bill for 60 pounds, 1 shilling and 7 pence from his physician friend James Craik, who regularly made the rounds at Mount Vernon. The invoice ran two pages:
"Anodyne Pills for Breachy . . . Laxative Pills for Ruth . . . syphilic Pills for Maria . . . oz 1 Antiphlogistie Anodyne Tincture . . . Bleeding Charlotte . . . oz 4 Powdered Rhubarb . . . Extracting one of your Negroes tooth . . . a Mercurial Purge for Cook Jack . . .
Source: Rasmussen Reports
Oct 12, 2009
Intrepid explorer who discovered America or merciless oppressor of the native peoples who already lived here? Some historians paint a darker picture of Christopher Columbus these days, and nearly a quarter (24%) of adults now don't think America should honor him with a national holiday.
Fifty-eight percent (58%) disagree and say Columbus should be honored with a holiday. Seventeen percent (17%) are undecided.
Sixty-nine percent (69%) of Republicans favor continuance of
