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 (UK)
Aug 10, 2009
The ancient ancestors of humans were tree dwellers, rather than the often depicted knuckle-dragging apes who slowly raised themselves up and evolved into walking humans, claim North American scientists.
Researchers believe that early human ancestors never used their knuckles to walk like gorillas but evolved from other apes that spent most of their time in trees.
They found that although our wrists were capable of 'knuckle walking', our predecessors were more likely t
Source: AP
Aug 10, 2009
Belarusian officials says that a massive statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin collapsed on a man who was hanging from it, killing him on the spot.
The Emergency Situations ministry said Monday that the 21-year-old man was drunk when he climbed onto the five-meter (16-feet)-high plaster monument early Monday and hung from its arm. It then broke into pieces and he was crushed.
The statue in the southeastern Belarus town of Uvarovichi was built in 1939.
Source: www.australia.to
Aug 10, 2009
Greg Combet, Minister for Defence Personnel, Materiel and Science, today announced that full analysis and matching of DNA from Australian and British World War One soldiers discovered in France will proceed.
Today’s announcement follows the successful conclusion of a pilot study to evaluate if the DNA present in the remains found at the Fromelles site could be used to identify our fallen soldiers.
Over 1300 descendants of Australian soldiers who died in the Battle of Fr
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 9, 2009
A sarcophagus in an English parish church could solve the centuries-old literary debate over who really wrote the plays of William Shakespeare
Parishioners at St Mary's church in Warwick have sought permission to examine the contents of the 17th monument built by Fulke Greville, a writer and contemporary of Shakespeare who some believe is the true author of several of the Bard's works.
In an echo of the blockbuster book and film, The Da Vinci Code, the search has been
Source: Multi-National Force--Iraq
Aug 9, 2009
In an attempt to restore national pride and tourism to one of the oldest landmarks in Iraq, American Paratroopers and Iraqi Army (IA) Soldiers discussed plans for renovating the area here surrounding the famous Arch of Ctesiphon, Aug. 5.
The all-brick arch was built nearly 16 centuries ago and is one of the oldest free standing arches in the world. But years of neglect and war in the region have transformed the once popular attraction into an IA outpost surrounded by acres of trash
Source: TheStar.com
Aug 9, 2009
The looting of Iraq's National Museum was one of the greatest scandals of the U.S. invasion in 2003.
Archaeologists had repeatedly warned Washington that, without protection, the Baghdad museum – which held the priceless cultural heritage of not just of Mesopotamia, but of mankind – would be ransacked by looters.
And it was...
...The oldest known sculpture of a natural human face, the Warka Head, known as the Sumerian Mona Lisa, gone. A 4,500-year-old bronz
Source: AP
Aug 9, 2009
The fire began in the galley, where the crew had kept a stove burning while they visited a tavern ashore. As the flames devoured her stern, the Anna Maria sank through the ice in the Stockholm archipelago.
The Anna Maria is part of a vast graveyard of ill-fated ships hidden in the murky waters of the Baltic Sea, protected from the shipworm that destroys wooden wrecks in saltier oceans. Some 20,000 shipwrecks have been found — half of them in Swedish waters — dating back to as far as
Source: AP
Aug 9, 2009
Hebrew University has received a surprise donation of more than $100,000 from an unexpected benefactor — a woman who survived the Nazi Holocaust and appeared to be destitute, a university official said Sunday.
Upon her death two years ago, a homeless Holocaust survivor living on the streets of New York City willed the gift to the university. The Jewish woman lived out of a shopping cart in Manhattan and had no known relatives, said Yefet Ozery, Hebrew University's director of develo
Source: http://www.mydesert.com
Aug 9, 2009
What Lolly Burns remembers most about Watergate is Maureen Dean, sitting behind her husband John Dean, in the congressional chamber where the Watergate hearings were held in 1973.
“I remember his gorgeous wife,” Burns said Saturday. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, to look like that.' I thought it was major.”
Burns, 70, was one of about 80 Palm Springs Rotary Club members who turned out Saturday for a spaghetti lunch and a chance to grill the former White House counsel, who accu
Source: Lee P. Ruddin
Aug 9, 2009
The Merchant Navy training ship HMS Conway opened in August 1859 and was moored on the River Mersey until after the Blitz in May 1941.
Much like the service 25 years ago when the school closed, Liverpool Cathedral was full of Old Conways and shipping representatives. The ceremony remembered the foundation of Conway, gave thanks for the spirit of loyalty and adventure shown by former cadets on the high seas, under the sea, on land and in the air, in peace and war.
The v
Source: Yale University
Aug 8, 2009
New Haven, Conn. — Fewer black women with postgraduate degrees are getting married and having children, according to a study by the Yale Center for Research on Inequalities and the Life Course, which was presented at the 104th annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in San Francisco on August 8.
“In the past nearly four decades, black women have made great gains in higher education rates, yet these gains appear to have come increasingly at the cost of marriage and fa
Source: OpEdNews
Aug 8, 2009
Leading Chinese dissident Tang Baiqiao doesn't take misbehavior from the Chinese government sitting down. Recently, violence was directed against him with a suspicious attack in Flushing, New York.
The attack came after threats of violence that Tang received last year while Chinese pro-democracy campaigners were opposing the Beijing Olympics and CCP violence then directed against Falun Gong practitioners in Flushing, New York.
Tang was a leader in the student uprising o
Source: NYT
Aug 8, 2009
President Obama has issued signing statements claiming the authority to bypass dozens of provisions of bills enacted into law since he took office, provoking mounting criticism by lawmakers from both parties.
President George W. Bush, citing expansive theories about his constitutional powers, set off a national debate in 2006 over the propriety of signing statements — instructions to executive officials about how to interpret and put in place new laws — after he used them to assert
Source: NYT
Aug 8, 2009
As a freshman Democrat, Representative Frank Kratovil Jr. figured he would spend the August recess reconnecting with the folks back home. Perhaps he should have known this would be easier said than done when an opponent of health care reform hanged him in effigy outside his district office on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
Undaunted, Mr. Kratovil tried last week to hold “Congress on Your Corner” sessions intended, he said, to help voters with “casework matters” — Social Security benefits
Source: Yahoo News
Aug 8, 2009
Researchers are on a three-week research expedition to study World War II shipwrecks sunk in 1942 in what's called the "Graveyard of the Atlantic."
The region off North Carolina is home to includes vessels from U.S. and British naval fleets, merchant ships and German U-boats, all sunk during the Battle of the Atlantic.
"The information collected during this expedition will help us better understand and document this often lost chapter of America's maritim
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Aug 8, 2009
Regulators seized three banks Friday in Florida and Oregon, increasing the number of 2009 U.S. bank failures to 72.
Stearns Bank of St. Cloud, Minn. agreed to take deposits and most assets from the two Florida institutions, Community National Bank of Sarasota County in Venice, Fla. and First State Bank in Sarasota, Fla. Both Gulf Coast banks collapsed due to risky loans made during the housing boom and were severely undercapitalized near the end...
...The number of U.S.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Aug 8, 2009
As Facebook, Twitter and other popular Internet services investigated the cause of this week's massive computer attacks, attention turned to a blogger whose writings blasting Russian officials may have been the target...
...The blogger has been a prolific critic of Russian officials through accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LiveJournal and YouTube, Google Inc.'s video-sharing service. On Twitter -- where he calls himself George and describes his location as "Georgia, Tbilisi"
Source: Telegraph.co.uk
Aug 8, 2009
Beatles fans will cross Abbey Road this morning 40 years to the minute
after the band created one of the most iconic album covers of all
time.
The Beatles walked across a zebra crossing on the road in St John's
Wood, north London, at 11.35am on August 8 1969, for an image caught
on the cover of their classic album Abbey Road.
Source: New York Times
Aug 8, 2009
But has the pendulum swung too far? New technologies are obviously important, but even in today’s fast-paced environment, they can take a long time to substitute for the old. In the meantime, incremental innovation based on old technologies can help a company survive.
When Sony announced its Mavica electronic camera in 1981, headlines trumpeted that “Film Is Dead.” But it took 28 more years for Kodachrome, the film immortalized by Paul Simon, to finally die this past June.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 8, 2009
Boxing legend Muhammad Ali is to visit his ancestral Irish home in September.
The former world heavyweight champion has accepted an invitation to see the birthplace of his great-grandfather in Ennis, Co Clare, on September 1.
He is due to visit Dublin for a charity event the previous day.
Ali's great-grandfather Abe Grady emigrated from his home on the Turnpike Road in Ennis to the United States in the 1860s.
Grady sailed from Cappa Harbour
