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.co.uk
Sep 21, 2009
Scientists from the University of Washington have used advanced photo analysis and modelling techniques to generate fly-though representations of the Colosseum, the Trevi fountain and the Croatian city of Dubrovnik.
The models are created entirely from data taken from images uploaded by members of the public on to the photo-sharing website.
The team used a specially-devised algorithm to detect and arrange photos showing various angles of the same building. The same alg
Source: The Washingron Post
Sep 21, 2009
The manicured lawns and beautiful brick homes that line the streets of Spring Valley look like those in most affluent District neighborhoods.
But the area looked much different during World War I, when the Army was using it as a testing ground for chemical weapons.
On Sunday, visitors on a tour of the neighborhood heard how, 90 years after scientists ended their experiments, the remnants of toxic munitions remain.
"The purpose of the tour is to encoura
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Sep 21, 2009
Former Russian president Boris Yeltsin got so drunk during a visit to Washington that he was found standing outside the White House in his underpants trying to hail a cab to go and buy a pizza.
The following night he was mistaken for a drunken intruder when he was discovered stumbling around the basement of his guest house by secret service agents.
The drunken behaviour of Yeltsin, who was known for his fondness for vodka and died two years ago aged 76, were revealed by
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Sep 21, 2009
The scientist whose discoveries led to the development of the electric motor has been hailed as the greatest inventor in British history.
Michael Faraday, pictured, a pioneer in electrochemistry, won a quarter of the vote in a poll of more than 1,200 adults.
He was followed by engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel (13 per cent), who designed the first propeller-driven steamship, and William Caxton (9 per cent) who introduced the printing press to England.
Source: BBC
Sep 21, 2009
The sapling being planted at a Surrey school for United Nations Peace Day is the latest of about 600 trees grown worldwide all derived from the same original plant - and each offering an inspiring symbol of hope and survival.
Trees have played a special part in Steven Frank's life, and now the keen gardener is hoping a special tree will play an important role in the life of many others.
Mr Frank is a survivor of a World War II concentration camp.
He is ma
Source: BBC
Sep 21, 2009
Ghana is marking 100 years since the birth of Kwame Nkrumah, the country's first president and a founding father of Africa's independence movement.
The governing National Democratic Congress designated the day a national holiday and organised celebrations.
Hundreds of Ghanaians gathered in the capital, Accra, for a vigil.
Nkrumah led Ghana to independence from the British in 1957 and served as president afterwards. He was eventually overthrown in a coup i
Source: BBC
Sep 21, 2009
A lost Renaissance masterpiece has been rediscovered after being left in storage for nearly 60 years.
The owner of the painting had asked an auctioneer to visit his terraced home in Cheltenham during the summer to examine glass and china.
But a photograph of the painting set the expert's "antennas buzzing", and led to its identification as the work of Ludovico Mazzolino, painted in 1522.
Madonna and Child with St Joseph is expected to sell for u
Source: AP
Sep 21, 2009
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Monday he was proud his denial of the Holocaust had enraged the West, as the controversial leader geared up for a United Nations trip to stress what he said would be a message of "peace and friendship."
Ahmadinejad's latest comment about the killing of millions of Jews during World War II comes as Iran is locked in a bitter dispute with the U.S. and other Western nations over its nuclear program. Even as that fight continues, his
Source: CNN
Sep 21, 2009
Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world's longest-reigning monarch, has been hospitalized with fever and fatigue, the royal palace said Sunday.
King Bhumibol Adulyadej, 81, was admitted to a Bangkok hospital on Saturday night. Doctors are monitoring his condition while administering antibiotics and intravenous fluid, the statement from the Royal Household Bureau said.
Thailand abolished absolute monarchy in the 1930s, so the king wields little power although he la
Source: The Hinde
Sep 20, 2009
CHENNAI: A big dolmen with four petroglyphs that portray men with tridents and a wheel with spokes has been found at Kollur, near Tirukoilur, 35 km from Villupuram in Tamil Nadu.
The discovery was made by K.T. Gandhirajan, who specialises in art history, when he led a team to that area. Petroglyphs are engravings made with a tool. What is special about the latest find is that while two men have been shown having tridents in their hands, a third is brandishing unidentified weapons. U
Source: USA Today
Sep 20, 2009
Ringing two abandoned pyramids are nine palaces "frozen in time" that may help unravel the mystery of the ancient Maya, reports an archaeological team.
Hidden in the hilly jungle, the ancient site of Kiuic (KIE-yuk) was one of dozens of ancient Maya centers abandoned in the Puuc region of Mexico's Yucatan about 10 centuries ago. The latest discoveries from the site may capture the moment of departure.
"The people just walked away and left everything in pl
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 20, 2009
Scotland is full of dangerous natives who speak an incomprehensible language and the weather is awful. That was the verdict of a series of 13th century Viking travel guides that warned voyagers to visit at their peril.
The medieval chronicles, set down on yellowed calf vellum eight centuries ago, describe Scotland – or Skotland, as it was known – as an unwelcome and inhospitable country offering rewards only to the bold.
The chronicles have been interpreted by Gisli S
Source: The Daily Beast
Sep 20, 2009
Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates took to the pages of The New York Times Sunday to defend Barack Obama’s new missile-defense plan, which the president announced last week. Gates, a Republican who was appointed by President George W. Bush, called Obama’s plan to end strategic missile defense in Europe a “vastly more suitable approach” than the one taken by Bush. Gates praised Obama’s goal of implementing sea-based interceptor missiles for providing “greater flexibility.” The president’s propo
Source: NYT
Sep 20, 2009
In their new book, “The Heart of Power: Health and Politics in the Oval Office,” David Blumenthal, a professor at Harvard Medical School, and James Morone, a political science professor at Brown University, reviewed the nation’s many attempts at health care reform to find some “rules of success.” Here are six lessons from Mr. Johnson’s triumph — captured in his own words, at least those that can be published. It appears that President Obama has studied at least some of them closely.
Source: BBC
Sep 20, 2009
Archaeologists are working at a ships' graveyard known as the Purton Hulks in Gloucestershire to expose and record the remains of a barge.
Laser scanning equipment is being used to capture 3D images of the Kennet-built Harriett.
Eighty ships and barges beached in the 1940s were used to shore up the Sharpness Canal against erosion from tidal flow of the River Severn.
Efforts to save the site for the nation was begun by the Friends of Purton.
Source: BBC
Sep 20, 2009
Mikhail Gorbachev is remarkably serene about his record as the last leader of the Soviet Union.
He says he expected a different outcome, but he would do it all over again.
It was Mr Gorbachev's policies that sparked the 1989 revolutions which swept away communism in Eastern Europe.
He ticks off, in quick-fire sentences, the benefits he brought to Russia, which he says people are still enjoying today - more freedom and a reordering of Russia's relations wi
Source: The Times (UK)
Sep 20, 2009
The Lockerbie bomber’s online publication of legal documents that he says clear his name has been condemned by Scotland’s law chief as well as victims’ families.
Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, who was released last month from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds, has set up a Web site detailing an abandoned attempt to appeal his conviction for the 1988 bombing of Pan AM flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Scotland’s Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini on Sunday deplored the m
Source: CNN
Sep 20, 2009
An international rocker is creating a rare opportunity to sing about change on the Communist island of Cuba.
Colombian singer Juanes -- a 17-time Latin Grammy winner -- has brought 15 international artists to Havana. He hopes to thaw U.S.-Cuba relations by staging a "Peace without Borders" concert.
But the reaction in Miami, Florida, home to both Juanes and a large Cuban exile community, has not been entirely peaceful.
Juanes has received death th
Source: NY Post
Sep 20, 2009
Wednesday's Page Six cartoon - caricaturing Monday's police shooting of a chimpanzee in Connecticut - has created considerable controversy.
It shows two police officers standing over the chimp's body: "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill," one officer says.
It was meant to mock an ineptly written federal stimulus bill.
Period.
But it has been taken as something else - as a depiction of President Obama, as a thi
Source: Physorg.com
Sep 19, 2009
Which genes make us uniquely human? Scientists are looking at DNA in old bones to find out. The focus now is not so much on our own species, Homo sapiens. Instead, scientists are probing DNA in well-preserved pieces of bone from our closest extinct relative, the Neanderthal.
Homo neanderthalensis nearly made it through two Ice Ages in Europe, only to disappear roughly 30,000 years ago. That’s about 15,000 years after our own ancestors arrived and settled the continent. For m
