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: AP
Nov 20, 2008
WARSAW, Poland – Researchers said Thursday they have identified the remains of Nicolaus Copernicus by comparing DNA from a skeleton and hair retrieved from one of the 16th-century astronomer's books. The findings could put an end to centuries of speculation about the exact resting spot of Copernicus, a priest and astronomer whose theories identified the Sun, not the Earth, as the center of the universe.
Polish archaeologist Jerzy Gassowski told a news conference that forensic facial
Source: Boston Globe
Nov 20, 2008
Every house has a story, and Marian Pierre-Louis is committed to discovering and preserving it.
"I've always loved old houses - I'm obsessed with them," said Pierre-Louis, vice president of the Medway Historical Society and founder of Fieldstone Historic Research, which tracks genealogical and house histories.
When homeowners learn about the people who lived in their house decades or even centuries before, the landscape of American history becomes all the more
Source: AFP
Nov 20, 2008
US elected officials scored abysmally on a test measuring their civic knowledge, with an average grade of just 44 percent, the group that organized the exam said Thursday.
Ordinary citizens did not fare much better, scoring just 49 percent correct on the 33 exam questions compiled by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI).
"It is disturbing enough that the general public failed ISI's civic literacy test, but when you consider the even more dismal scores of ele
Source: http://www.pittsburghcitypaper
Nov 20, 2008
Growing up, I used to think that every house came with a free copy of Stefan Lorant's Pittsburgh: The Story of an American City. It was a fixture on every coffee table, and it provided a lot of intellectual furniture too. Lorant's narrative is one we still take for granted: Big-shot white guys build Pittsburgh, nearly ruin it, and then build it anew.
This is the "great man" approach history, and it dominated scholarship for decades, just as "great men" dominated
Source: AFP
Nov 20, 2008
It's taken more than a century, but Einstein's celebrated formula e=mc2 has finally been corroborated, thanks to a heroic computational effort by French, German and Hungarian physicists.
A brainpower consortium led by Laurent Lellouch of France's Centre for Theoretical Physics, using some of the world's mightiest supercomputers, have set down the calculations for estimating the mass of protons and neutrons, the particles at the nucleus of atoms.
Source: Guardian (UK)
Nov 20, 2008
George Bush is working at a breakneck pace to dismantle at least 10 major environmental safeguards protecting America's wildlife, national parks and rivers before he leaves office in January.
With barely 60 days to go until Bush hands over to Barack Obama, his White House is working methodically to weaken or reverse an array of regulations that protect America's wilderness from logging or mining operations, and compel factory farms to clean up dangerous waste.
In the la
Source: CNN (click here to watch videos)
Nov 20, 2008
For 63 years, Martin Vogel longed for information about how his only brother -- his best friend and a fellow U.S. soldier -- died in World War II.
He knew that Bernard "Jack" Vogel had tried to escape from a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp, but the details were sketchy. Martin was so devastated after the war, he didn't ask too many questions. But as time passed, his thoughts often drifted to his brother.
"A month doesn't go by that it doesn't come up in the cou
Source: AFP
Nov 20, 2008
A 2,200-year-old gold and silver collar valued at more than 350,000 pounds which was unearthed by a metal detector enthusiast in a field in Nottinghamshire has been described as the best find of its kind in 50 years.
The discovery of the ornate Iron Age necklace, or torc, which is made of eight twisted metal strands, is the most valuable single find in Britain in recent history.
"I was only in the field because a customer kept me late," said Maurice Richardson, a 59-year-old tree surg
Source: TheDailyBeast.com
Nov 20, 2008
President Bush may be planning preemptive war-related pardons for his administration before his term ends, but that, apparently, won't save his vice president. Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have been indicted on separate charges stemming from alleged prisoner abuse in federal detention centers, CNN reports. A grand jury in Willacy County, Texas, indicted the two men; a lawyer for another lawmaker indicted, Democratic state Senator Eddie Lucio Jr., called the county's d
Source: Times (UK)
Nov 20, 2008
Children play alongside one of 21 memorial plaques unveiled in the Polish capital yesterday, their laughter a stark contrast to the horrors experienced by half a million Jews imprisoned by the Nazis in the infamous ghetto during the Second World War.
Polish officials marked out the wartime boundaries of the area before a group of Holocaust survivors and members of the Jewish community made their way through the rain to reflect on the past at some of the plaques.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Nov 20, 2008
The remains of a billionaire whose family fortune was built on Nazi slave labour have been stolen from an Austrian graveyard.
Industrialist Friedrich Karl Flick, who lived in fear of being kidnapped, was 79 when he died in 2006.
An oak coffin containing the remains was taken from his family's mausoleum at a cemetery at Velden am Woertherse in what police believe may be an attempt to extort money from his widow.
The graverobbers struck last weekend but th
Source: Sky News
Nov 20, 2008
Scientists from the US and Russia have pieced together 80% of the species' genome, using DNA samples of hair preserved from two mammoths mummified from the ice age.
They hope the ground-breaking development will be a step closer in bringing back the vast beasts from extinction, by inserting their genes into a modern-day elephant.
Professor Stephan Schuster, a leading member of the research team from Pennsylvania State University, said the find would allow scientists to
Source: Deutsche Welle
Nov 20, 2008
Dimitri Stein submitted his thesis on electrical engineering in 1943 but university authorities refused him an oral examination because he had Jewish ancestry.
His professor arranged a hiding place for him and he survived World War II by emigrating to the United States where he worked as an academic and engineer before going into business.
Stein said he asked if he could take the examination in the 1950s but received a rude rejection from the university. When he asked a
Source: BBC
Nov 20, 2008
The scripts from the long-running BBC radio series will be published by the University of East Anglia in Norwich.
Cooke's literary executor Colin Webb is a former student of the university.
Letter From America was broadcast every week from March 1946 until Cooke's retirement in March 2004. He died just a few weeks after his final programme.
In his Letters, Cooke chronicled every aspect of American life including the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal and
Source: ThinkProgress (liberal website)
Nov 20, 2008
A new cartoon by syndicated cartoonist Gordon Campbell hits Gen. Colin Powell for endorsing Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL). The cartoon shows a picture of Revolutionary War general Benedict Arnold — who infamously committed one of U.S. history’s greatest acts of treason — in blackface, followed by the line: “Benedict Powell…Race Patriot."
Politicker reports Campbell also stated that Powell “wishes to see someone who looks like himself in the White House.” Similarly, Rush Limbaugh is
Source: Reuters
Nov 19, 2008
It took six decades for the divided Koreas to meet to talk about Japan's colonial past, but it took them just two hours to agree they had common grievances with their Asian neighbour.
Despite the 1950-53 Korean War that killed millions and decades of animosity, there was little dispute between a South Korean group that visited Pyongyang last week and their North Korean hosts, as they agreed Japan's colonial rule still casts a shadow over the peninsula.
The two Koreas h
Source: Japan Times
Nov 19, 2008
Twenty years after the United States offered a national apology and reparations to Japanese-Americans for forcibly relocating them to internment camps during World War II, those who fought against the injustice still bear a stigma.
High school teacher Haruo Kawate, 61, thought he knew everything about his father until the recent discovery of an old leather trunk in a closet in his home in Mitaka, western Tokyo.
Inside were old diaries and photographs of his father that
Source: NYT Editorial
Nov 19, 2008
On Dec. 15, the United States will endure a quadrennial ritual born in the economics and politics of slavery and the quill-pen era. Members of the Electoral College are scheduled to meet in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia to formally choose the next president.
There is no real doubt about how the electors will vote, but it is disturbing that they have any role at all in making this vital choice in the 21st century. The Electoral College is more than just an antiqu
Source: Telegraph (UK) published list of 30 top conspiracies
Nov 19, 2008
1. September 11, 2001 - Thanks to the power of the web and live broadcasts on television, the conspiracy theories surrounding the events of 9/11 - when terrorists attacked the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington - have surpassed those of Roswell and JFK in traction. Despite repeated claims by al-Qaeda that it planned, organised and orchestrated the attacks, several official and unofficial investigations into the collapse of the Twin Towers which concluded that structura
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 19, 2008
Hitler really did have only one ball, according to claims by a German army medic who saved the Führer's life during the First World War.
The Nazi leader lost a testicle during the Battle of the Somme in 1916, the doctor claimed.
The medical condition, for which there has never been conclusive proof, was mocked in the Second World War ditty which begins: "Hitler has only got one ball, the other is in the Albert Hall."
The disclosure is made in a do
