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: Daily Mail (UK)
Oct 7, 2009
An Israeli mayor has caused uproar with plans for his town to become the first to twin with a German town which housed a Nazi death camp.
Rosh Ha-Ayin, a middle-class dormitory town about 15 miles from Tel Aviv with a population of 40,000, has twinned with the infamous Bavarian town of Dachau, home of the first Nazi concentration camp about 12 miles from Munich.
More than 200,000 people from 30 countries were imprisoned at Dachau, a third of them Jews. Nearly 60,000 w
Source: BBC
Oct 7, 2009
France's Louvre Museum says it is open to the idea of returning ancient Egyptian fresco fragments at the centre of a row with Egyptian officials.
Earlier, Egypt's head of antiquities Zahi Hawass told the AFP news agency that the Louvre had bought the fragments knowing they were stolen.
Egypt had severed co-operation with the Louvre, pending their return, he said.
The Pharaonic steles, on display in the Louvre, are reported to be from a tomb in the Valley
Source: BBC
Oct 7, 2009
Taiwan's main museum has refused to exhibit two Chinese sculptures owned by late French designer Yves St Laurent.
Beijing has demanded the return of the sculptures, and the director of the Taipei National Palace Museum said she could not display looted objects.
China says the two Qing dynasty bronzes were seized illegally in 1860 by invading French and British forces.
The decision comes on the week Taiwan and China hold their first joint exhibition of rel
Source: BBC
Oct 7, 2009
It's eight years to the day since the first shots were fired in America's War on Terror. But can the terrorism tactics it sought to crush be traced back to a single attack on a Parisian cafe more than 100 years ago, asks Professor John Merriman.
On February 12, 1894, a young intellectual anarchist named Emile Henry went out to kill. And, in doing so, he arguably ignited the age of modern terrorism.
As he had looked down on Paris from near his miserable lodgings in the
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 7, 2009
The ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru and Japan's vanishing merchant houses in Kyoto are among the most endangered world heritage sites, according to a New York-based preservation group.
The World Monuments Fund on has released its biannual watch list of global architectural treasures at risk from urban development, tourism, neglect and bad planning.
The 2010 list comprises 93 sites in 47 countries, including ancient structures but also 15 that were built in the 20th cent
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 7, 2009
Amateur French fossil hunters have unearthed the largest dinosaur footprints in the world, belonging to a cousin of the diplodocus, it was announced on Tuesday.
The "colossal" prints, left by giant sauropods weighing up to 50 tons, were found in the tiny French village of Plagne in the Jura plateau, near the southeastern city of Lyon.
The trail of craters the giant herbivores left stretches for hundreds of yards. They were found in April this year but only re
Source: CNN
Oct 7, 2009
Al Capone's legend of bootlegging, gangland slayings and tax evasion lives on more than 60 years after the Chicago gangster's death. Now comes a footnote that is a sign of the times: foreclosure.
A Wisconsin lodge that may have been one of Capone's old hideouts goes on the auction block this week with a starting bid of $2.6 million.
The two-story stone lodge, tucked away on 407 acres in Couderay, Wisconsin, was owned by the Capone family in the 1920s. It will be auctio
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education
Oct 7, 2009
For one of today's winners of the Nobel Prize in Medicine, Elizabeth H. Blackburn of the University of California at San Francisco, the news isn't her first exposure to widespread public attention.
Back in 2004, during the Bush administration, Ms. Blackburn was one of two scientists dismissed from the President's Council on Bioethics, after they dissented from the panel by arguing that the federal government should not bar scientists from creating cloned embryos as a source of stem
Source: The Dallas Morning News
Oct 6, 2009
Hovering in the shadows of President Barack Obama's decision last week to ramp up the nation's war effort in Afghanistan, even as he promises to bring it to a swift conclusion, are ghosts of another decision, made 44 years ago by a Texan in the White House.
In 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson took ownership of a war he, like Obama, had inherited. Gen. William Westmoreland wanted more troops in Vietnam, and after a protracted debate within the White House, Johnson sent them.
Over
Source: The Globe and Mail
Oct 6, 2009
Willard S. Boyle, a McGill University graduate born in Nova Scotia, was a joint recipient of the 2009 Nobel Physics Prize Tuesday morning in Stockholm, Sweden.
Mr. Boyle, a dual citizen of Canada and the U.S., shared the award with two Americans - George E. Smith and Charles K. Kao. In 1966, Mr. Kao figured out how to transmit light over long distances through optical glass fibers, a discovery that made it possible for people to exchange text, music and images around the world withi
Source: Jerusalem Post
Oct 6, 2009
The remains of an ancient synagogue have been revealed in an archeological dig in Turkey.
The ruins, estimated to be at least 1,500 years old, were unearthed by a team of archeologists from Akdeniz University in September and new artifacts are being discovered daily.
Among those discovered on the site is a marble tablet featuring a menorah flanked by a shofar and a bugle on one side and a palm tree and lemon tree on the other.
Site chief Dr. Nevzat Cevik,
Source: CNN
Oct 6, 2009
It was a moment vividly depicted in the movie about her life: 7-year-old Helen Keller, holding one hand under a water pump as her teacher spelled "W-A-T-E-R" into her other hand.
On Wednesday, a statue commemorating her 1887 breakthrough will be unveiled in the U.S. Capitol's National Statuary Hall, the first statue in the Capitol of a person with a disability, as well as the first of a child, according to the Alabama governor's office.
In 1997, a Franklin Del
Source: CBCNews.ca
Oct 6, 2009
The Nobel Prize is one of the world's most coveted awards, carrying international prestige, a hefty cash award and, at times in its history, considerable controversy.
Named after Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, the prizes have been awarded nearly every year since 1901. (There were breaks during each of the two world wars.)
The Nobel Foundation administers the honours, which were first established in Nobel's will. Prizes are handed out in physics, chemist
Source: The National Security Archive
Oct 6, 2009
Washington, DC, October 6, 2009 - On the 33rd anniversary of the bombing of Cubana flight 455, the National Security Archive today posted recently obtained CIA records on Luis Posada Carriles, his ties to "the Company" and role as an informant on other violent exile groups. The documents provide extensive details on a collaboration between Cuban-American militant Jorge Mas Canosa, who rose to become the most powerful leader of the hardline exile community in Miami, and Posada--codename
Source: Yahoo News
Oct 6, 2009
LONDON – The discovery of a small prehistoric circle of stones near Stonehenge may confirm the theory that the mysterious monument in southwest England was part of a massive funeral complex built around a river, researchers said Tuesday.
The new find shows that the second stone circle — dubbed "Bluehenge" because it was built with bluestones — once stood next to the River Avon about 1.75 miles (2.8 kilometers) from Stonehenge, one of Britain's best loved and least understo
Source: Yahoo News
Oct 6, 2009
BALTIMORE – For Edgar Allan Poe, 2009 has been a better year than 1849. After dozens of events in several cities to mark the 200th anniversary of his birth, he's about to get the grand funeral that a writer of his stature should have received when he died.
One hundred sixty years ago, the beleaguered, impoverished Poe was found, delirious and in distress outside a Baltimore tavern. He was never coherent enough to explain what had befallen him since leaving Richmond, Va., a week earl
Source: AFP
Oct 6, 2009
TYRE, Lebanon — Japanese archaeologists discovered a cave containing frescoed Roman tombs in southern Lebanon's ancient coastal city of Tyre on Monday, an official overseeing the excavation said.
The three-metre by 12-metre (10-foot by 39-foot) cave contains six tombs from a Roman family, archaeologist Nader Siqlawi of the Directorate General of Antiquities told AFP.
"The walls at the entrance are decorated with frescoes of plants, animals and colourful birds, and
Source: BBC
Oct 6, 2009
A pilot held in Spain over his alleged role in Argentina's "Dirty War" will stay in detention pending a decision on extradition, a Spanish judge has ruled.
Julio Alberto Poch, an airline pilot, has been in custody in Madrid since his arrest last month.
He is wanted in Argentina for allegedly flying planes used to dump opponents of the military regime into the sea. He denies the allegations.
Some 30,000 people disappeared or died during the junta
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 6, 2009
German retailers have seen a huge spike in demand for products from the defunct Communist East as the country prepares to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall next month.
From gherkins to trainers and toothpaste to cola drinks, the consumer goods of a lost nation are now top of the shopping lists for millions of people - who are spending €100 million (£92 million) a year on former East German goods.
Zeha trainers are a case in point: once ridi
Source: AP
Oct 6, 2009
Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday the alleged terror plot disrupted in New York was "one of the most serious in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001" — but he gave no indication when more arrests might be made.
In a question-and-answer session with reporters, Holder said prosecutors will bring all those involved in the plot to justice.
So far, one suspect, Colorado shuttle bus driver Najibullah Zazi, has been charged with conspiring to detonate bombs
