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: San Jose Mercury News
Apr 30, 2009
When the news of the end of the World War reached Santa Cruz in the early morning hours of Nov. 11, 1918, the city erupted with the sounds of bells and whistles.
Awkwardly, the war ended in the midst of the largest epidemic in modern history.
The shooting and killing may have stopped, but the influenza continued to suffocate its victims, filling their lungs with fluid and strangling them in their bunks. Named the Spanish influenza though public health officials said i
Source: Guardian.Co.UK
Apr 30, 2009
The Iraqi prime minister arrives in Britain today seeking UK investment. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad reports on how a leader once seen as weak is now being compared to his infamous predecessor.
The charges voiced by the INSI officers are heard, in hushed tones, more and more around Baghdad these days. Critics say Maliki is concentrating power in his office (the office of the prime minister) and his advisers are running "a government inside a government", bypassing ministers and parl
Source: Guardian.Co.UK
Apr 30, 2009
Schools are producing illiterate and uncommunicative children, he tells conference of private school heads.
The TV historian David Starkey today called for schools to bring back memorising dates, elocution and grammar lessons, and public-speaking competitions.
The 64-year-old expert on the Tudor period said education had been "taken over by bean counters" and schools were producing illiterate and uncommunicative children.
He said that in the early
Source: CNN
Apr 30, 2009
If there's a blessing in the current swine flu epidemic, it's how benign the illness seems to be outside the central disease cluster in Mexico. But history offers a dark warning to anyone ready to write off the 2009 H1N1 virus.
In each of the four major pandemics since 1889, a spring wave of relatively mild illness was followed by a second wave, a few months later, of a much more virulent disease. This was true in 1889, 1957, 1968 and in the catastrophic flu outbreak of 1918, which
Source: NYT
Apr 30, 2009
The historic gap between blacks and whites in voter participation evaporated in last year’s presidential race, according to an analysis released today, with black, Hispanic and Asian voters comprising nearly a quarter of the electorate, setting a record.
The analysis, by the Pew Research Center, also found that for the first time, black women turned out at a higher rate than any other racial, ethnic and gender group.
The study attributed the findings to several factors
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 30, 2009
A new museum dedicated to the history of Chinese espionage is so top-secret that foreigners are banned.
The director of the Jiangsu National Security Education museum in Nanjing, who would only give her name as Ms Qian, said the collection of tiny pistols, miniature cameras, and concealed wiretaps may be timeworn, but is still too sensitive for foreign eyes.
No photography is allowed inside the museum either, she said.
However, the museum did reveal that i
Source: BBC
Apr 30, 2009
A stack of Victorian letters hidden in the attic of a derelict building has proved a valuable find after a rare Penny Black stamp was found.
It is among 27 Penny Blacks, first issued in the UK in 1840, and found on letters impaled on spikes in the loft.
It has a catalogue value of £15,000 but its condition means auctioneers in Denbighshire value it at £5-6,000.
The letters were encrusted with bird droppings which may have helped preserve the stamp collec
Source: BBC
Apr 30, 2009
A first edition, first issue of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection has been sold at auction in Norfolk for £35,000.
Just 1,250 copies of the work were produced in its first print run in 1859 and sold out immediately.
All existing copies are highly valued, according to Keys of Aylsham, the firm which auctioned the book which was bought by a local book dealer.
A signed photograph of Darwin sold at the auction for £22,00
Source: BBC
Apr 30, 2009
Beijing said the Qing Dynasty relic was looted by British and French troops from its Summer Palace in 1860.
The Chinese bidder refused to give his name, but said he was acting on behalf of an art collector in France.
The piece sold for more than five times its estimated value after a tense bidding race with another Asian buyer.
Source: Media Matters (liberal media watchdog group)
Apr 29, 2009
Related Links
Response of Judith Klinghoffer
In recent days,
several media figures and outlets have falsely claimed that President Obama's
approval rating at this point in his presidency, according to Gallup, is lower than that
of most or all recent presidents. The falsehood is based on an apples-to-oranges
comparison between an April 20-21 Gallup
Source: National Geographic
Apr 29, 2009
An ancient temple in Turkey has been found filled with broken metal, ivory carvings, and stone slabs engraved with a dead language.
The find is casting new light on the "dark age" that was thought to have engulfed the region from 1200 to 900 B.C.
Written sources from the era—including the Old Testament of the Bible, Greek Homeric epics, and texts from Egyptian pharaoh Ramses III—record the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age as a turbulent period o
Source: Poughkeepsie Journal
Apr 29, 2009
FISHKILL - Graves, very likely those of hundreds of Revolutionary War soldiers, have been found, at long last, on undeveloped land in the Town of Fishkill that was proposed to be a shopping center.
Archaeological digs and a survey using ground-penetrating radar confirmed existence of long-suspected remains in the historic site known as the Fishkill Supply Depot, according to letters from state historic officials.
Historians deem the depot to have been a major resource i
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Apr 29, 2009
This beautiful translucent dish belonged to a wealthy East Londoner living in Roman Britain 1,700 years ago.
The rare 'millefiori' bowl - meaning 'one thousand flowers' was unearthed by archaeologists in London and is thought to be the first find of its kind in the western Roman empire. Researchers believe it will give fresh insight into life in Roman Britain.
The dish is made up of hundreds of translucent blue indented glass petals, bordered with white embedded in a br
Source: Spiegel Online
Apr 29, 2009
Barack Obama had everything perfectly choreographed for Wednesday, his 100th day in office. First he would travel to St. Louis for a town hall meeting, where he could be fairly sure of a glowing reception; then he would return to Washington for a televised press conference. His team had provided the media with insider anecdotes and graced a few correspondents with private background interviews.
Nothing was left to chance for the 100th day -- an artificial anniversary established by
Source: Spiegel Online
Apr 29, 2009
The Germans have always had a penchant for looking to America to gain a glimpse into the future.
They marveled at the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. They admired the gray but affordable Commodore personal computer. And they succumbed to the spell of an Internet company with the odd name of Google.
Now the Germans are looking across the Atlantic once again, but this time they see images that remind them of their own past, images of sad-looking people standing in long li
Source: Deutsche Welle
Apr 29, 2009
Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon on Wednesday announced a new investigation of those allegedly responsible for torture at the US prison camp in Guantanamo, Cuba.
"It seems that the documents declassified by the US administration mentioned by the media have revealed what was previously a suspicion," Garzon said in a court document.
They showed the existence of "an authorized and systematic program of torture" of prisoners who had not been charged with
Source: BBC
Apr 29, 2009
Their release comes hours after a UN court ruled there was not enough evidence to hold them.
Supporters of the generals, mainly from the pro-Syrian Hezbollah movement, fired guns into the air and set off fireworks to celebrate the ruling.
The UN court was set up to investigate the bomb attack which killed Mr Hariri and 22 others in February 2005.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 29, 2009
Britain is considering holding an inquiry into an alleged 'massacre' of unarmed Malayan villagers by UK troops in 1948, reversing an earlier decision.
The about face comes three months after the British Government turned down a request from Malaysian activists to investigate the killings, which took place during an anti-communist operation in the Malayan Emergency.
The "Batang Kali massacre" occurred in a village in central Selangor state on Dec 12, 1948, wh
Source: Foxnews
Apr 29, 2009
A California woman has come forward to claim that her late father was the elusive Zodiac Killer and that she accompanied him on many of his shooting sprees in the late 1960s when she was only 7-years-old, KTVU.com reported.
Kevin Mclean, a California-based attorney, has led a 2-year long investigation into claims made by Deborah Perez that her father, Guy Ward Hendrickson, was the Zodiac Killer and urged her to come forward when he heard that another investigator was planning on pre
Source: CNN
Apr 29, 2009
As World War I rages in Europe, fresh U.S. Army soldiers pass the time on a train ride to to Camp Forrest, Georgia. "The boys are just starting to sing," Martin Aloysius Culhane wrote on September 6, 1918, to his friend back home. "They've gotten back to 'Old Black Joe' so far."
Stephen Foster's classic song from the Civil War is about the death of slaves who had become his friends. But Culhane, known as "Al," and the soldiers who sang along could not k
