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
Sep 17, 2009
A 3m-long dinosaur fossil from China which predates T. rex by 60 million years is a blueprint for the mighty carnivore, say researchers.
They tell Science magazine that the fossil displays the same features as T. rex but in miniature.
The new species, Raptorex kriegsteini, would have weighed around 65kg; its descendants were 90 times as massive.
Scientists believe it could be the "missing link" between earlier species of dinosaur and
Source: Irish Times, Tara Watch
Sep 17, 2009
The controversial M3 motorway in Co Meath (Ireland), which has been the subject of several years of protests, is now almost 90 per cent complete, the National Roads Authority (NRA) has said. At almost 60km
of main motorway and a further 40km of link roads and interchanges,the it is one of the longest motorways under construction in Europe.
The M3 is not scheduled to open until July 2010. Work could still finish ahead of this scheduled date, but not before mid-spring next ye
Source: Epoch Times
Sep 17, 2009
New findings indicate that farming in the Yangtze Basin existed as early as 4,000 years ago. Excavation in the Xiezi Area of Hubei Province yielded a total of 402 cultural relics, including carbonized rice.
Stone tools, pottery, bronze, jade and porcelain were unearthed, as well as a number of spinning wheels, drop spindles made of clay and other textile tools. There were also stone mounds and smelting relics such as slag. A variety of grains and seeds were found, and experts bel
Source: Time
Sep 17, 2009
As you're reading this, two German ships are heading for the Dutch port of Rotterdam, having set sail from South Korea in late July. Nothing remarkable about that. Except that by Sept. 16, both vessels — the Beluga Fraternity and Beluga Foresight — had passed Novaya Zemlya, the crescent-shaped island off Russia's north coast that to many marks the end of the Northeast Passage. Shunning conventional shipping routes between Asia and Europe in what appears to be the first commercial navigation via
Source: NYT
Sep 17, 2009
Like many veterans, Max Fuchs did not talk much about what he did in the war. His children knew he landed at Omaha Beach. Sometimes, they were allowed to feel the shrapnel still lodged in his chest.
And once, he had told them, he sang as the cantor in a Jewish prayer service on the battlefield.
On Oct. 29, 1944, at the edge of a fierce fight for control of the city of Aachen, Germany, a correspondent for NBC radio introduced the modest Sabbath service like this:
Source: Discovery Channel
Sep 17, 2009
An unprecedented miniature portrait of a young, resolute, sexy Alexander the Great has emerged during excavations in Israel, archaeologist announced this week.
Engraved on a brilliantly red gemstone, the finely carved tiny head portrait is estimated to be 2,300 old, possibly dating to after the Macedonian king's death in 323 B.C.
Less than a half-inch long, the gemstone was found by a University of Washington student in the remains of a large public building from the He
Source: MSNBC
Sep 17, 2009
MADRID - A Spanish judge on Thursday indicted three alleged ex-Nazi death camp guards who all lived for many years in the United States, charging them with being accessories to genocide and crimes against humanity.
Judge Ismael Moreno of the National Court issued international arrest warrants for Johann Leprich, Anton Tittjung and Josias Kumpf. The 18-page indictment says Kumpf apparently now lives in Austria and the other two are still in the United States...
... He sa
Source: Talking Points Memo (liberal blog)
Sep 17, 2009
Former Bush administration official Ellen Sauerbrey, who served as Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration, is warning that President Obama's policies point in a very dangerous direction: economic fascism.
The County Times of St. Mary's County, Maryland, reported on an appearance that Sauerbrey -- a former two-time GOP nominee for governor -- put in at a local Republican dinner this past Saturday. The paper reports that Sauerbrey said that President Obama
Source: The Daily Beast
Sep 17, 2009
A (relatively) miniature Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton—with the classic outsize jaws, long legs, and teensy arms—has been discovered in China, and is providing scientists insight into the evolutionary line that produced the beast that would someday inspire a million Halloween costumes. This scaled-down Tyrannosaurus ancestor, called Raptorex kriegsteini, was nine feet long and weighed only about as much as a human: 150 lbs. (A whippet compared to its descendant, which was nearly 100 times heavier a
Source: History Today
Sep 17, 2009
Mary Queen of Scots’ last letter, dated 1587, went on display in the George Bridge Building at the National Library of Scotland on Tuesday, September 15th, to mark the official launch of the library’s new visitor centre. The 422-year-old manuscript is the farewell letter which Mary wrote to Henri III, King of France, just six hours before she was executed. The letter will remain on show until Monday 21st September. It will thereafter be replaced by a facsimile.
Source: Yahoo News
Sep 17, 2009
AUSTIN, Texas – Minority activists urged Texas education officials on Thursday to not minimize the importance of civil rights leaders Cesar Chavez and Thurgood Marshall in public schools.
The State Board of Education heard testimony in a plan to update the social studies requirements for the state's 4.6 million K-12 students. Two members of a board-appointed advisory panel had suggested removing Chavez and Marshall from some grades' curriculum, triggering a strong backlash from civi
Source: MailOnline (Daily Mail UK)
Sep 17, 2009
Over the last century they have passed into gruesome folklore, but Victorian census records on Jack the Ripper's victims cast new light on the lives of some of the murdered prostitutes.
An online genealogy website which trawled the 1881 census - taken seven years before their deaths - has pulled together information on the women that 'provides a small window onto the past' and dispels the myth that they had been teenage street walkers.
The five - Mary Ann Nichols, Anni
Source: Ascribe Newswire
Sep 17, 2009
Pasadena: The Planck mission has captured its first rough images of the sky, demonstrating the observatory is working and ready to measure light from the dawn of time. Planck - a European Space Agency mission with significant NASA participation - will survey the entire sky to learn more about the history and evolution of our universe.
The space telescope started surveying the sky regularly on Aug. 13 from its vantage point far from Earth. Planck is in orbit around the second
Source: Armenia Now
Sep 17, 2009
In the light of present discussion on Armenian-Turkish relations some Armenian politicians are inclined not to comment on the current stage of relations but instead suggest reviewing history.
Arman Melikyan, former Foreign Minister of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, believes that Armenia should not sign Armenian-Turkish protocols, (which among other things suggest the recognition of the current Armenia-Turkish border) but instead to start negotiations with Turkey over annulling the T
Source: Yahoo News
Sep 17, 2009
MOUNTAIN VIEW, California (AP) -- Google Inc. is giving 2 million books in its digital library a chance to be reincarnated as paperbacks.
As part of a deal announced Thursday, Google is opening up part of its index to the maker of a high-speed publishing machine that can manufacture a paperback-bound book of about 300 pages in under five minutes. The new service is an acknowledgment by the Internet search leader that not everyone wants their books served up on a computer or an elect
Source: Yahoo News
Sep 17, 2009
MOUNTAIN VIEW, California (AP) -- Google Inc. is giving 2 million books in its digital library a chance to be reincarnated as paperbacks.
As part of a deal announced Thursday, Google is opening up part of its index to the maker of a high-speed publishing machine that can manufacture a paperback-bound book of about 300 pages in under five minutes. The new service is an acknowledgment by the Internet search leader that not everyone wants their books served up on a computer or an elect
Source: The Huffington Post
Sep 17, 2009
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama abruptly canceled a long-planned missile shield for Eastern Europe on Thursday, replacing a Bush-era project that was bitterly opposed by Russia with a plan he contended would better defend against a growing threat of Iranian missiles.
The United States will no longer seek to erect a missile base and radar site in Poland and the Czech Republic, poised at Russia's hemline. That change is bound to please the Russians, who had never accepted U.S. arg
Source: National Park Traveler
Sep 17, 2009
Is an old railroad bridge a hiking trail? Come October 2 and that could be a new national park trivia question now that the Poughkeepsie-Highland railroad bridge in New York State has been designated a National Recreation Trail by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.
The “Walkway Over the Hudson” project on the Hudson River turned an historic railroad bridge that stretched more than a mile into a scenic biking and pedestrian pathway. Now it will become part of a national network of sceni
Source: Politico
Sep 17, 2009
Top officials from George W. Bush's White House are greeting the impending arrival of the latest unflattering insider account of the administration with a collective question: Who is Matt Latimer?
Latimer, a former special assistant to the president for speechwriting, is the author of a new book titled "Speech-less: Tales of a White House Survivor," which includes a number of embarrassing Bush anecdotes including the assertion that the former president was confused about t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 16, 2009
A New York exhibition has stripped back the concrete jungle that makes up the Big Apple to reveal the literal jungle that was the city 400 years ago.
Entitled the Mannahatta Project, these images show what Manhattan Island must have looked like in 1609, when the English explorer Henry Hudson first sailed up the river that now bears his name.
Using CGI technology, the team behind the Mannahatta natural history project can now pin point any area of Manhattan's 22 square
