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: New York Times
Apr 11, 2009
“When I first read about the Somali pirates, I almost did a double take and turned to my wife at the breakfast table and said, ‘This is déjà vu,’ ” recalled Frank Lambert, a professor at Purdue who is an expert on the Barbary pirates.
Dr. Lambert explained how those brigands, like today’s Somalis, usually kept their hostages alive. It wasn’t out of any enlightened sense of humanity. It was simply good business. They only hanged captives from giant hooks or carved them into little p
Source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Apr 11, 2009
Artifacts tell the story of a Tequesta Indian settlement along the New River.
Six decades ago, during an idyllic youth along Fort Lauderdale Is your Fort Lauderdale restaurant clean? - Click Here.'s New River, Bill Caldwell and his pals played cowboys and Indians.
A recent archaeological dig has proved Caldwell's former home — and indeed the entire neighborhood — was the site of a major Tequesta Indian settlement that thrived along the riverbank a thousand years ago.
Source: BBC
Apr 11, 2009
Battles in castles will be re-enacted over the Easter weekend to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the body which helps protect Welsh historic sites.
Cadw, the Welsh Assembly Government's heritage service, launches its programme of events to mark the milestone later.
It includes staging mock battles and military displays at some of Wales' most famous heritage locations.
Its sites include Caerphilly Castle, Castell Coch and Tintern Abbey in the south as w
Source: The Columbus Dispatch (Ohio)
Apr 11, 2009
Archaeologists found human remains inside some of the caskets that surfaced this week because of erosion along the eastern bank of Alum Creek in Delaware County, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said yesterday.
Four of the five unearthed caskets contained bones, but their identities are a mystery because no headstones or markers were found at the excavation site, said Aaron Smith, an archaeologist with the Corps' Huntington District.
The remains were buried at least 50
Source: NYT Lede blog
Apr 11, 2009
When video appeared online this week of a Turkish television anchor in blackface, reporting on President Barack Obama’s speech to the Turkish parliament, American bloggers leapt to comment on it — despite having little or no idea what the anchor was saying or what he could possibly have been thinking when he applied the makeup....
Here at The Lede, we were fortunate enough to be able to turn for help to Sebnem Arsu, a Turkish journalist who reports for The Times from Istanbul. Sebne
Source: WaPo
Apr 11, 2009
DALLAS -- The new couple at 10141 Daria Place accepted an invitation to a neighborhood dinner party last month. The guest list totaled eight. The main dish was chicken potpie. George and Laura Bush left their cul-de-sac in the back of a dark sedan, exited through a Secret Service checkpoint and rode down streets bordered by lawn signs adorned with gigantic W's to welcome them home.
It had been a bad week for the country. President Obama spoke on television about the burdens he had i
Source: NYT
Apr 11, 2009
An American skipper in the hands of seafaring rogues. Some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes under attack. Tough men from a messy patch of Africa eluding and harassing the world’s greatest powers.
Sound familiar? Well, it’s not last week’s drama on the high seas we’re talking about, when Somali pirates attacked an American freighter in the Indian Ocean and took its captain hostage, then made off with him in a lifeboat. We’re talking about the Barbary Wars, about 200 years ago, w
Source: CBS News
Apr 11, 2009
This month marks the 41st anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Now, thanks to a quirk of fate, some of his most stirring words are getting a whole new hearing, as CBS News correspondent Michelle Miller reports.
The halls of the University of Dayton field house echoed with the voice of Martin Luther King, Jr. The November 1964 speech was powerful and passionate in its optimism.
"I must say that we have come a long, long wa
Source: AP
Apr 11, 2009
They've been described as "noble heroes" by sympathetic Somalis, denounced as criminals by critics. But the word most used to describe the men holding an American captain off the Horn of Africa is "pirate" — conjuring images of sword-wielding swashbucklers romanticized by Hollywood.
The 21st century reality, though, is a far cry from that. There are no treasure-laden islands or Blackbeards in this part of the world, no wooden schooners flying skull and crossbone
Source: Google Book Settlement
Apr 11, 2009
This is the settlement administration website for the Google Book Search Copyright Class Action Settlement. The purpose of this website is to inform you of a proposed Settlement of a class action lawsuit brought by authors and publishers, claiming that Google has violated their copyrights and those of other Rightsholders of Books and Inserts (click for definitions), by scanning their Books, creating an electronic database and displaying short excerpts without the permission of the copyright hold
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 11, 2009
A British ancestor of US President Barack Obama left 12 pence to his son in a will, it has been revealed.
Peter Blossom, who genealogists claim is a forefather of the US President, was a farm labourer in Stapleford, near Cambridge.
Experts believe his son, Thomas, born in nearby Great Shelford in around 1580, sailed to America in about 1620 and the current president of the US is a direct descendant of Thomas.
Now details of Peter's will have emerged - an
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 11, 2009
A remarkable set of photographs portraying life in China in the late Qing Dynasty is to go on public display for the first time.
Taken between 1870 and 1871 by the Scottish photographer John "China" Thomson, the images reveal with often startling intimacy a cast of characters from orphans and street gamblers, to beautiful peasant girls and their high-born ladies.
Hailed as a pioneer of photojournalism, Thomson spent two years travelling more than 5,000 miles
Source: BBC
Apr 11, 2009
The US state of California has returned three Renaissance paintings that were confiscated from Jewish art dealers in Nazi Germany during the 1930s.
The 16th-Century paintings were returned to the heirs of their former owners, Jakob and Rosa Oppenheimer, who died during the Holocaust.
After World War II, the paintings ended up in the collection of US newspaper tycoon, William Randolph Hearst.
They have been on display at a California museum for over 30 ye
Source: Times (UK)
Apr 11, 2009
Times readers who fancy themselves as amateur codebreakers are invited to decipher a 350-year-old message sent by French spies conniving to strike a killer blow against England’s allies in Europe. Only one man, a 17th-century master cryptographer, has ever been able to crack the message but his method remains a mystery because he refused to say how he did it.
John Wallis, whose breaking of the French codes was pivotal in thwarting England’s longstanding enemy, shared his techniques
Source: New YorK Times
Apr 10, 2009
Condoleezza Rice will be there. So will Karen Hughes and Dan Bartlett and Michael Gerson. And George W. Bush himself.
The old gang is getting back together next week in Dallas for a reunion of sorts, the Bush team’s first since leaving the White House. On tap is a dinner with the former president and a daylong discussion of the future George W. Bush Policy Institute.
Barely 80 days after turning the Oval Office over to President Obama, a tanned and rested Mr. Bush is em
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 10, 2009
Japan has been accused of rewriting its brutal wartime past in a controversial government-approved school history textbook.
Officials in South Korea claim the new book, which will be used in schools from next year, has whitewashed Japan's history of colonising Asian states before and during the Second World War.
The complaints centre on attempts to justify Japan's invasion of Asian states while playing down the brutal role of the army.
The textbook, publ
Source: Foxnews
Apr 10, 2009
The records are being released in accordance with the Presidential Records Act and the new Executive Order 13489, which was signed by President Barack Obama on Jan. 21.
More than 245,000 pages of records from the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush presidencies will be opened for research on Monday at their respective libraries, the National Archive announced Friday.
The records include presidential briefing papers, Office of Speech writing research material and about 1
Source: AP
Apr 10, 2009
Federal customs agents say a pearl-handled AK-47 that belonged to Saddam Hussein is being sent back to Iraq.
The weapon had been in the hands of the U.S. Army. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says the automatic rifle is chrome-plated and has a photo of Hussein near the sight.
ICE agent Peter J. Smith calls the AK-47 "a priceless symbol of Iraqi history."
Source: Deutsche Welle
Apr 10, 2009
"The CIA no longer operates detention facilities or black sites and has proposed a plan to decommission the remaining sites," CIA Director Leon Panetta said in a letter to staff that was released on the CIA's website.
"I have directed our agency personnel to take charge of the decommissioning process and have further directed that the contracts for site security be promptly terminated," he said.
Panetta said the CIA still reserved the right to hold
Source: MSNBC
Apr 10, 2009
Scholars agree over some elements of his life, are hotly divided on others.
There are no "eyewitness" accounts written about Jesus during his lifetime, so historians have to rely on interpretations of the four main canonical gospel texts, mostly scrawled several decades after his death.
The "Jesus" of history isn't a complete mystery to Biblical scholars, who often make a distinction between the man and the religious figure depicted in the scripture
