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: Salon
Oct 1, 2009
It's become a truism that American attitudes on gay rights are changing at a rapid clip. Supporting civil unions -- now a compromise position -- almost endangered the career of then-Vermont Gov. Howard Dean as recently as 2000. And that was Vermont. Now, a mere nine years later, the Pentagon appears to be signaling that it's ready to give up on the "don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) policy regarding gays in the military.
The evidence is mainly in the form of an article denying
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 1, 2009
Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the last chief of the Reich Main Security Office, is said to have sunk the secret loot in the remote lake high in the Alps, 60 miles from Salzburg in western Austria, as Allied forces swept through Europe at the end of the Second World War.
Previous dives have dredged up hundreds of thousands of pounds of forged British currency and boxes of top secret SS documents. Hans Fricke, a German scientist, even discovered a new bacteria, called the "worm of Toplitz
Source: Asian News International
Oct 1, 2009
An Armenian-American-Irish archeological expedition claims to have found the remains of the worlds oldest human brain, estimated to be over 5,000 years old.
The discovery was made recently in a cave in southeastern Armenia.
An analysis performed by the Keck Carbon Cycle Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory at the University of California, Irvine confirmed that one of three human skulls found at the site contains particles of a human brain dating to around the first
Source: Dallas Business Journal
Oct 1, 2009
Belo Corp. said Thursday it will be preserving its television broadcasting history by donating its archives to Southern Methodist University’s DeGolyer Library.
Dallas-based Belo Corp. (NYSE: BLC) said the archives also will receive documents and materials from The Dallas Morning News and its parent company, A.H. Belo Corp., which was spun off from Belo Corp. to establish two separate entities in 2008.
“Since 1985, Belo Corp. has invested in updating its archival collec
Source: NYT
Oct 1, 2009
BEIJING — China’s leaders marked their nation’s 60th anniversary on Thursday with a precision display of military bravado that included, improbably, a female militia unit toting submachine guns and attired in red miniskirts and white jackboots, and a fleet of floats with representations of a giant fish and Mount Everest.
The celebration of the founding of the People’s Republic of China was immense, powerful and flawless, down to the crystalline skies that, just a day earlier, had be
Source: NYT
Oct 1, 2009
CHANGCHUN, China — Unlike in other cities taken by the People’s Liberation Army during China’s civil war, there were no crowds to greet the victors as they made their triumphant march through the streets of this industrial city in the heart of Manchuria.
Even if relieved to learn that hostilities with Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Army had come to an end, most residents — the ones who had not died during the five-month siege — were simply too weak to go outdoors. “We were just lying
Source: Time
Oct 1, 2009
Figuring out the story of human origins is like assembling a huge, complicated jigsaw puzzle that has lost most of its pieces. Many will never be found, and those that do turn up are sometimes hard to place. Every so often, though, fossil hunters stumble upon a discovery that fills in a big chunk of the puzzle all at once — and simultaneously reshapes the very picture they thought they were building.
The path of just such a discovery began in November 1994 with the unearthing of two
Source: philly.com
Oct 1, 2009
Nearly 25 years after G. Douglas Jones watched a historic case unfold as a law student, the former federal prosecutor found himself in the same third-floor courtroom.
He was no longer a lawyer in training seeking tips on how to try a case. He was the lead prosecutor, and the case was a historic sequel to the one he had watched from a balcony seat decades earlier.
The case of the 1963 bombing deaths of four young girls in a Birmingham, Ala., church yielded a conviction i
Source: Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Network of Education and Academic Rights (NEAR)
Oct 1, 2009
Prominent academic and human rights defender, Dr. Salomón Lerner Febres, has reported receiving death threats at his office in the Catholic University of Peru, Human Rights Watch has said. The former president of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been subjected to harassment before and the Peruvian authorities are being called upon to investigate the threats immediately.
Dr Lerner, also the former rector of the Catholic University of Peru and current president of the Insti
Source: National Parks Traveler
Oct 1, 2009
Despite years' old concerns that terrorists might strike at iconic units of the National Park System, the National Park Service's approach to security is haphazard, inefficient, and ineffective, according to a Government Accountablity Office report.
The nearly 50-page report, requested near the end of the Bush administration by members of the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Homeland Security and presented to the committee late this past August, paints a sordid picture of
Source: Yahoo News
Oct 1, 2009
WASHINGTON – A federal judge ruled Thursday that the FBI must publicly reveal much of its interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney during the investigation into who leaked the identity of a CIA operative.
The FBI interviewed Cheney in June 2004 as it was investigating the leak of Valerie Plame's identity after her husband publicly criticized the Bush administration. Both the Bush and Obama administrations said they wanted to keep the interview confidential because future pre
Source: Slatest
Oct 1, 2009
Just days after its title was announced and almost two months before it will be released, Sarah Palin's memoir is already selling strong. Going Rogue: An American Life is now No. 1 at Amazon's and Barnes & Noble's online lists, topping even Dan Brown's blockbuster thriller The Lost Symbol. At Amazon, people who bought Going Rogue also appeared likely to have bought books by conservative pundits Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck or by Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, giving Talking Points Memo the da
Source: Media Research Center (Conservative media watchdog group)
Oct 1, 2009
Unemployment under President Barack Obama is at a 26-year-high. The last time the economy had 9.7 percent or higher unemployment was under President Ronald Reagan. But despite similar periods of rising unemployment, Obama and Reagan received almost exactly opposite treatment from the network news media.
Under Obama reporters have gone to great lengths to spin rising unemployment by finding “positive trends” in the job losses, even focusing on as few as 25 jobs being “saved” by the e
Source: LAT
Oct 1, 2009
Once privately run, the Yorba Linda presidential museum is making a transition to government operation. And that has turned statues of Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai into political footballs.
The statues depict two old men relaxing in easy chairs. As others mill about the drawing room, the men engage in conversation, one gesturing at the other to underscore a point. For nearly 20 years the likenesses of China's communist leaders Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai have sat perfectly still in
Source: BBC
Oct 1, 2009
British archaeologists have unearthed an amphitheatre at a ancient port outside Rome which may have played host to emperors such as Hadrian and Trajan.
The team, led by the University of Southampton, say the arena could have held up to 2,000 people and been used for gladiator games or animal baiting.
It was found inside a gigantic imperial-style palace within the well-preserved old harbour of Portus.
Experts said the entire site deserved greater recogniti
Source: BBC
Oct 1, 2009
Geologists in southern India say they have found hundreds of dinosaur egg clusters which could be about 65 million years old.
It was a chance find discovered when a team of scientists were locating a place to excavate an ancient riverbed in the state of Tamil Nadu.
As they dug deeper they saw layers of what looked like fossilised eggs.
The photos and samples were then sent to various universities who confirmed that they were dinosaur eggs.
Source: BBC
Oct 1, 2009
An ancient ape-like creature that may be a direct ancestor to our species has been described by researchers.
The assessment of the 4.4-million-year-old animal called Ardipithecus ramidus is reported in the journal Science.
Even if it is not on the direct line to us, it offers new insights into how we evolved from the common ancestor we share with chimps, the team says.
Fossils of A. ramidus were first found in Ethiopia in 1992, but it has taken 17 years t
Source: Fox News
Oct 1, 2009
Republicans are likening Rep. Alan Grayson's remark to Rep. Joe Wilson's widely criticized shout of "You lie!" during President Obama's address to Congress earlier this month.
A Democratic congressman under fire for saying that Republicans want Americans to "die quickly" if they get sick fanned the flames further Wednesday by comparing the U.S. health care system to a "holocaust."
Taking a page from Democrats who disciplined Rep. Joe Wilso
Source: AP
Oct 1, 2009
Pope Benedict XVI will attend a concert marking the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II being performed by young musicians from around the globe.
The Vatican says the Oct. 8 concert will feature music by Jewish-born composers Gustav Mahler and Felix Mendelssohn, and will be performed by the InterRegionales JugendsinfonieOrchester, which gathers young musicians from 10 nations.
Vatican official Cardinal Walter Kasper said Thursday the concert aims to involve in
Source: AP
Oct 1, 2009
Tanks and other heavy weaponry rumbled across Beijing behind goose-stepping troops as China celebrated 60 years of communist rule Thursday with its biggest-ever military review — a symbol of its rapidly expanding global might.
The elaborate ceremony for the founding of the People's Republic unfolded on national television but behind tight security that excluded ordinary people from getting near the parade route through Tiananmen Square.
Precisely choreographed, the two-
