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: Foxnews
Aug 29, 2009
An internal CIA report released this week said Khalid Sheik Mohammed became "one of the U.S. government's key sources on Al Qaeda" -- a breakthrough that intelligence officials reportedly say came after he was subjected to waterboarding by the CIA.
The inspector general's report, released this week, says Mohammed wasn't much help before he was waterboarded but went on to become "one of the U.S. government's key sources on Al Qaeda." Such revelations have fueled
Source: Times Online (UK)
Aug 29, 2009
Presidents and members of America’s most famous family paid final tribute Saturday to Edward M Kennedy, mourning the loss of a senator who was a political force for over 47 years in Congress and of the man who carried the Kennedy clan through tragedy and triumph.
President Barack Obama was delivering the eulogy to cap a two-hour Roman Catholic funeral Mass for Kennedy. The service drew to Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica three of the four living former presidents, dozens of Kenn
Source: http://techpresident.com
Aug 28, 2009
The Kennedy family, you might have heard, quickly erected a Twitter account (at @kennedynews) to push out information on and observations from Senator Ted Kennedy's "memorial and funeral activities," said the feed. But that's the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the digital memorialization of the senator's life that has begun to take place. And consider this. Ted Kennedy is today lying in repose in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. That Boston edifice, dedicated to his brot
Source: The Guardian
Aug 28, 2009
The site at the Links of Noltland on the island of Westray on the northern fringes of the Orkney islands (Scotland) is emerging as one of the UK's most important prehistoric digs: over the last 30 years archaeologists have uncovered a complex of neolithic and bronze age houses, field systems, rich middens and possibly ceremonial buildings dating to 3,500 BCE. Even before the recently found prehistoric
figurine emerged (as we reported last week), Noltland had revealed glimpses of this slowly evo
Source: Herald Express
Aug 28, 2009
A new dig to find evidence of Britain's first man starts in Torquay (Devon, England) next week. The team of archaeologists are back at Kents Cavern to continue their major excavations underground in search of more evidence for the Neanderthal occupation of the caves tens of thousands of years ago. The cavern is open during the excavation from Tuesday to Thursday from September 10 and visitors will be able to view the dig in action, the first in more than 80 years, as part of the guided cave tour
Source: Azzaman
Aug 28, 2009
The government has set up a commission to recount Iraq Museum possessions in the light of the standards applied in international museums, an Antiquities Department official said.
Abdulzahra Talaqani, the department’s information officer, said the registering of the possessions is part of measures by the government to check smuggling and trace items stolen from the museum.
Not only relics on display will be recounted, but also items kept in the museum’s stores and wareh
Source: The Korea Herald
Aug 28, 2009
The National Museum of Korea said yesterday it has unearthed a 2,000-year-old skeleton of a Mongolian nomad at the Xiongnu Tombs of Duurlignars, about 500 kilometers northeast of Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia.
The skeleton of a man was identified as mortal remains of the Xiongnu, a confederation of nomadic tribes in Central Asia, a finding that archeologists and historians could use to advance the studies about the ancient tribe. The Xiongnu tribe is often linked with the Hu
Source: Time
Aug 28, 2009
The 54-year reign of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party is expected to come to an end on Sunday in the country's first general election in four years. The main opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), has little experience leading on a national level, but there are strong indications that voters will overwhelmingly support the party and its ambitious platform of reforming Japan's broken system.
After half a century Japan, it seems, is finally clamoring for change. The L
Source: Google News
Aug 28, 2009
CHICAGO — The glass-topped casket that displayed lynching victim Emmett Till's disfigured body to the world and became a rallying point for the civil rights movement is headed to the Smithsonian Institution, Till's family announced Friday.
"Hopefully, when this casket, when it's on display at the Smithsonian, young boys and young girls from all over the world are going to see it and it's going to inspire them to fight for those who are too weak to fight for themselves," sa
Source: NYT
Aug 28, 2009
The hunt for the comrade to a single shoe in a mountain of shoes. The calls, shouted to be heard above the din, of “Are you decent?” The buddy system. The comfort of knowing that no matter where you went, everyone knew at least one of your older brothers or sisters, and so in a way, knew you, too.
The large Irish-American family, once the norm, is now the exception, a turnaround brought into sharp relief this week with the death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy and the retrospective loo
Source: NYT
Aug 28, 2009
BOSTON — The telephone rang early Wednesday morning in the hushed rectory of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica, the old Catholic church on Mission Hill. Phones are always ringing in old churches in working-class neighborhoods, but this caller, a priest, had a singular request.
He said that the Kennedy family — that would be the Kennedys of Hyannis Port, Washington, the world — wondered whether the funeral Mass for Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who had died just hours earlier, could
Source: BBC
Aug 28, 2009
Interactive technology has brought the Mona Lisa to life - and Leonardo da Vinci's enigmatic 16th Century portrait now speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese.
A digital version of the work is the star attraction in a new exhibition of classic artworks recreated in multimedia form in Beijing.
Exhibition organiser Wang Hui spent two years preparing the collection.
He says it is the first time 3D, holographic and voice recognition technologies have been fused like t
Source: WaPo
Aug 28, 2009
George LeMieux, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist's selection to succeed retired Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), will become the fifth senator this year to take his seat through appointment. A possible sixth appointee is waiting in the wings if Massachusetts leaders change that state's law and allow the governor to make an interim appointment to fill the Senate vacancy left by Edward M. Kennedy's death Tuesday.
In recent times, that's an unusually large number of unelected senators to be holdi
Source: CNSNews.com
Aug 28, 2009
Mark Lloyd, chief diversity officer at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), claimed that communications policies enacted by Republicans negatively impacted the civil rights of minorities.
Lloyd made the claim in a 1998 essay he wrote while working for the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. He said that two decades of Republican communications policies had eroded the gains made by the civil rights movement in minority ownership in communications.
Lloyd also s
Source: Time
Aug 28, 2009
There was a poignant footnote to President Obama's historic July 10 meeting with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican. Behind closed doors in the papal library, Obama handed Benedict a letter that Senator Edward Kennedy had asked him to personally deliver to the Pontiff. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs later told reporters that nobody — not even the President — knew the contents of the sealed missive. Obama asked Benedict to pray for Kennedy and called the ailing Senator afterward to fill him in
Source: Yahoo News
Aug 28, 2009
ATHENS, Greece – Archaeologists said Friday they have unearthed a lavish burial site at the seat of the ancient Macedonian kings in northern Greece, heightening a 2,300-year-old mystery of murder and political intrigue.
The find in the ruins of Aigai came a few meters (yards) from last year's remarkable discovery of what could be the bones of Alexander the Great's murdered teenage son, according to one expert.
Archaeologists are puzzled because both sets of remains were
Source: The Washington Post
Aug 28, 2009
Behind each of Edward M. Kennedy's legislative victories was a vast coterie of staffers who became Washington legend. They meticulously packed the senator's black briefcase each evening with tabbed, underlined and dog-eared briefing papers. They helped him hone his floor arguments late into the night over dinner and wine at his home. They took turns walking Splash and Sunny, cleaning up the mess that Kennedy's Portuguese water dogs left on the manicured Capitol grounds.
Suite 317,
Source: BBC
Aug 28, 2009
North and South Korea have agreed to resume family reunions that were called off by the North two years ago, the two sides have announced in a statement.
The reunions, begun in 2000, were shelved amid worsening relations, but talks on the issue resumed this week.
Red Cross officials from both countries reached agreement after three days of talks at the Mount Kumgang resort in North Korea - where the family reunions are to be held from 26 September to 1 October.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 28, 2009
A moon rock given to the Dutch prime minister by Apollo 11 astronauts in 1969 has turned out to be a fake.
Curators at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, where the rock has attracted tens of thousands of visitors each year, discovered that the "lunar rock", valued at £308,000, was in fact petrified wood.
Xandra van Gelder, who oversaw the investigation, said the museum would continue to keep the stone as a curiosity.
The rock was given to Willem Drees, a
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 28, 2009
Lockerbie bomber release was wrong, Scots say in poll.
Only 32 per cent of the 1,005 people questioned by ICM Research said they agreed with the Scottish government's decision to free Megrahi on compassionate grounds on Aug 20, while 60 per cent of respondents said it was the wrong thing to do, according to the survey done for the BBC.
Almost 70 per cent of respondents said they believed that factors other than legal grounds influenced Scottish justice secretary Kenny M
