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: SF Gate
Oct 5, 2009
Scientists have reproduced the Shroud of Turin — revered as the cloth that covered Jesus in the tomb — and say the experiment proves the relic was man-made, a group of Italian debunkers claimed Monday.
The shroud bears the figure of a crucified man, complete with blood seeping out of nailed hands and feet, and believers say Christ's image was recorded on the linen fibers at the time of his resurrection.
Scientists have reproduced the shroud using materials and methods t
Source: Department of Foreign Affairs
Oct 5, 2009
The Philippine Consulate General in San Francisco, together with the Bay Area Filipino American community, kicked off the celebration of Filipino American History Month in simple ceremonies held at the California Academy of Sciences (CAS).
Philippine Consul General to San Francisco Marciano A. Paynor, Jr. and Fil-Am Board of Education Commissioner Hydra Mendoza, representing San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, cut the ceremonial ribbon officially marking the start of Filipino American
Source: BBC
Oct 5, 2009
Featuring stories of great escapes and survival against the odds, a new exhibition dedicated to servicemen who were taken prisoner during the two world wars opens on Monday at the Somme Heritage Centre in Newtownards.
The museum has collected a selection of personal stories from veterans from Northern Ireland, describing their experiences in prison camps in Germany and the Far East.
Also on display is a large-scale model of the notorious Colditz Castle, the place where
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 5, 2009
The United Nations is to include the Holocaust in a new curriculum for schools attended by children in Gaza despite protests by the Palestinian territory's Hamas rulers.
A UN agency is producing a human rights curriculum which is to be proposed for inclusion in the studies of secondary school pupils. It is to be discussed with the local community within weeks.
At least one senior UN official in Gaza has said he is confident the Holocaust will become part of the curric
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 5, 2009
The fossilised skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex nicknamed "Samson" is still looking for a home after bidders failed to bite at an auction in Las Vegas.
Auctioneers had hoped bids would top $6 million (£3.8 million) but the highest offer was only $3.7 million (£2.3 million).
Samson was the star attraction in a huge dinosaur auction at the Venetian hotel and casino.
About 50 other lots, including a duck-billed dinosaur, a pair of Einiosaurus skeleto
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 5, 2009
A baby woolly mammoth which spent 40,000 years frozen in the Siberian permafrost, has provided scientists with clues about how the species survived during the Ice Age.
"Lyuba" was sucked to her death in a muddy river bed. She was so well preserved that traces of her mother's milk remained in her belly when she was discovered three years ago by nomadic reindeer herders.
Lyuba is to be the star of a mammoths-and-mastodons exhibition at Chicago's Field Museum, d
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 5, 2009
An historian has claimed to have discovered the real identity of Jack the Ripper, and believes the notorious Whitechapel murderer was also responsible for killing two more women.
Mei Trow used modern police forensic techniques, including psychological and geographical profiling, to identify Robert Mann, a morgue attendant, as the killer.
His theory, the result of two years intensive research, is explored in a Discovery Channel documentary, Jack the Ripper: Killer Reve
Source: Independent (UK)
Oct 5, 2009
The United Nations' refugee agency is planning to include the Holocaust in a new human-rights curriculum for Gaza's secondary-school pupils, despite strident opposition to the idea from within Hamas.
John Ging, the UN Relief and Works Agency's (UNRWA) director of operations in Gaza, told The Independent that he was "confident and determined" that the Holocaust would feature for the first time in a wide-ranging curriculum that is being drafted.
Mr Ging, a pas
Source: Independent (UK)
Oct 5, 2009
Britain offered to pay Colonel Muammar Gaddafi £14m in return for Libya ending its military support for the IRA, secret papers seen by The Independent have revealed.
The deal, worth £500m today, was part of a package of compensation measures to appease the Libyan leader and help open up trade with the North African state during the late 1970s.
Discovery of the secret offer, detailed in a letter sent by the then Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, raises fresh questions about
Source: BBC
Oct 5, 2009
The book found that MI5 did not get to grips with Soviet espionage in Britain until the early 1970s.
The history was written by Professor Christopher Andrew, who insisted he was given complete access to MI5's files.
The Defence Of The Realm also reveals numerous attempts by politicians to use MI5 for their own ends.
Prof Andrew said it was not until 1971, when 100 Soviet diplomats were expelled from Britain, that MI5 contained KGB and Soviet bloc intelli
Source: Times (UK)
Oct 5, 2009
Colonel Gaddafi, who sent hitmen to Britain to assassinate Libyan émigrés in the 1980s, posed the gravest state-sponsored terrorism threat to this country during that period, the authorised history of MI5 says.
By the spring of 1980, MI5’s F Branch, responsible for counter-terrorism, “possessed conclusive evidence that the Libyan embassy in London — renamed the Libyan People’s Bureau — was directing operational and intelligence-gathering activities against Libyan dissidents”.
Source: Times (UK)
Oct 5, 2009
A rusty iron helmet that may be the only surviving relic of one of the most decisive battles in English history has been found in an antiques shop.
A label on the helmet suggests it was fished out of the River Derwent at Stamford Bridge, where King Harold Godwinson defeated Viking invaders in 1066 before he was beaten by William the Conqueror at Hastings.
Historians speculate that Harold, England’s last Anglo-Saxon king, may have halted the Norman Conquest had he not ha
Source: DNA
Oct 4, 2009
Hyderabad: We often talk and worry about brain drain, where the brightest Indians move out of the sub-continent, generally to the West, seeking better opportunities. However, it may turn out that this is hardly a new trend.
Geneticists at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad released a study last week which suggested that the Indian population has its origin in migrants from Africa who arrived here 45,000 to 65,000 years ago. The next stage of the study, they s
Source: NYT
Oct 4, 2009
PUERTO AYORA, Galápagos Islands — The mounds of reeking garbage on the edge of this settlement 600 miles off Ecuador’s Pacific coast are proof that one species is thriving on the fragile archipelago whose unique wildlife inspired Darwin’s theory of evolution: man.
Tiny gray finches, descendants of birds that were crucial to his thesis, flutter around the dump, which serves a growing town of Ecuadoreans who have moved here to work in the islands’ thriving tourism industry.
Source: Google News
Oct 4, 2009
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will focus "at the right time" on how to overturn the "don't ask, don't tell" ban on gays serving openly in the military, his national security adviser said Sunday.
"I don't think it's going to be — it's not years, but I think it will be teed up appropriately," James Jones said.
The Democratic-led Congress is considering repealing the 1993 law. Action isn't expected on the issue until early next year.
Source: DeSoto Times Tribune
Oct 4, 2009
OLIVE BRANCH - Hundreds of DeSoto County School students got an up close look at life during the famous Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1803-1806 at a living history encampment on the grounds of the Whispering Woods Hotel and Conference Center in Olive Branch Thursday.
Tom Ronk, of Jefferson City, Mo., presided over the 55-foot replica of the keelboat that carried Lewis and Clark as far as they could navigate on river before embarking overland.
The replica was trucked to
Source: NYT
Oct 4, 2009
WASHINGTON — Gen. David H. Petraeus, the face of the Iraq troop surge and a favorite of former President George W. Bush, spoke up or was called upon by President Obama “several times” during the big Afghanistan strategy session in the Situation Room last week, one participant says, and will be back for two more meetings this week.
But the general’s closest associates say that underneath the surface of good relations, the celebrity commander faces a new reality in Mr. Obama’s White H
Source: AP
Oct 4, 2009
An Illinois woman who set out on a treasure hunt for buried gold coins after finding a cryptic note in an antique rocking chair may have been the victim of a prolific prankster who died more than 30 years ago.
With help of a donated backhoe, Patty Henken recently tore up a vacant lot in Springfield, Ill., where a typewritten note signed by "Chauncey Wolcott" — found in an old chair she bought at auction last November — suggested she would find a chest containing more than
Source: Guardian (UK)
Oct 4, 2009
If it is information on the health of medieval women or the battle of Trafalgar you require, then the British Library is a pretty good place to look. But those wanting to shed light on more recent events or discoveries recorded online could be in trouble.
Digital literature, online scientific research and internet journalism that should have been saved in the nation's main libraries over the past five years may have been lost because ministers have failed to give them the legal powe
Source: BBC
Oct 4, 2009
Opening a three-week synod of African bishops, he said political colonialism was over.
But he said the developed world continued to export materialism - which he called "toxic spiritual rubbish" - to the continent.
Almost 200 bishops from 53 African states have gathered to discuss how the Catholic Church can help resolve the continent's social injustices and wars.
The Pope says he will attend as many of the working sessions of the synod as poss
