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: International Herald Tribune
Nov 2, 2008
Iraq is demanding Iran provide information about Iraqi artifacts that have been stolen from the country's archaeology sites.
A government statement asks for Iran's help in tracking down some 12,000 archaeological pieces that are still missing.
Looters snatched some 15,000 priceless artifacts and smuggled them out of the country in the chaos following the 2003 U.S.-led war.
Source: Guardian (UK)
Nov 2, 2008
A unique museum honouring Germans who helped persecuted Jews stay alive under the Nazi tyranny has opened in Berlin. The Silent Heroes Memorial Centre is the first of its kind dedicated to individuals who helped to hide, feed and care for people who otherwise would have gone to the gas chambers.
Tucked away in a tenement block on Rosenthaler Strasse, it lies in the heart of Berlin's pre-war Jewish quarter, not far from the site of the former paintbrush factory where an anti-Nazi ac
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 2, 2008
A senior government official said that the yacht, the palatial 270-foot Ocean Breeze, has been moored off the southern French resort of Nice. It has been estimated that it could fetch approximately £20 million.
The official, Ali al-Dabbagh, said that the government hopes for a sale within the next few weeks.
While grand when it was built in 1981, the Ocean Breeze is modest in size compared with the "megayachts" commissioned by a new wave of super-rich.
Source: NYT
Nov 2, 2008
Most people do not believe that Tim Dufel can push 2,000 tons of steel all the way across New York State. Isn’t the old Erie Canal dried up, they ask him, its locks broken, its ditch filled in and forgotten?
They ask these questions even on days like this one, when Mr. Dufel is standing in an orange life vest, watching brown water flood Lock 16 here and lift his loaded barge like a toy battleship in a bathtub.
“Sixty percent of the people I meet have no idea the Erie C
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 2, 2008
But time and technology have not been kind to the traditional kiosk, with thousands taken out of service in the face of neglect and the increased use of mobile phones.
Now, however, 500 of the booths are to be saved, after local communities stepped forward to safeguard their future - ensuring that in some places at least they will remain a quintessential part of the British landscape.
In 500 locations, parish and district councils have applied to 'adopt a kiosk', as par
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 2, 2008
The 1994 genocide in Rwanda left 800,000 people dead and laid the roots for the conflict in the neighbouring state when many of the perpetrators fled to sanctuary across the border.
The Prime Minister was speaking on a trip to the Gulf as Foreign Secretary David Miliband led an EU mission to Rwanda with. French counterpart Bernard Kouchner.
"The humanitarian need is absolutely pressing," said Mr Miliband, who toured the area of Goma, capital of Nord-Kivu pro
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Nov 2, 2008
Town halls have banned employees from using Latin words on documents because they could confuse people who don't speak English as their first language.
The move has infuriated classical scholars who have blasted it as the 'linguistic equivalent of ethnic cleansing'.
Bournemouth Council has listed 19 items which are no longer suitable for use on its documents.
These include bona fide, eg, prima facie, ad lib, etc, ie, inter alia, NB, per se, pro rata, vis-a-vis an
Source: Atlantic
Nov 1, 2008
Archaeologists believe Hasankeyf [a town on the banks of the Tigris in the heavily Kurdish region of far southeastern Turkey] may be one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the world, dating back some 10,000 years. The cliffs lining the river are speckled with gaping black holes—homes carved out of the soft rock by cave dwellers thousands of years ago. What remains of a citadel built by the Byzantines in the fourth century A.D., and later expanded and reinforced by the Artukids a
Source: Smithsonian Magazine
Nov 1, 2008
Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery. The megaliths predate Stonehenge by some 6,000 years. The place is called Gobekli Tepe, and Schmidt, a German archaeologist who has been working here more than a decade, is convinced it's the site of the wo
Source: AP
Nov 1, 2008
Spain began allowing citizenship applications Saturday from the descendants of people who went into exile after its Civil War. The government said as many as 500,000 people could be eligible under the program to address the painful legacy of the conflict.
The government says 300,000 of those children and grandchildren of war emigres live in Argentina.
Source: Science News Daily
Nov 1, 2008
The 2008 presidential campaign, as reflected in candidates' television spots, has been one of the most negative campaigns in history. A University of Missouri professor analyzed this year's candidates' television spots, including last night's 30-minute ad by Sen. Barack Obama and found that only one other campaign matched this level of negativity.
William Benoit, professor of communication in the College of Arts and Science, found that in television spots from 1952-2004, candidates
Source: NYT
Nov 1, 2008
“THE conception of political equality from the Declaration of Independence, to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, to the Fifteenth, Seventeenth and Nineteenth Amendments can mean only one thing — one person, one vote,” the Supreme Court ruled almost a half-century ago. Yet the framers of the Constitution made this aspiration impossible, then and now.
Under the Constitution, electoral votes are apportioned to states according to the total number of senators and representatives from each s
Source: NYT
Nov 1, 2008
DONORA, Pa. — When the killer smog rolled into town here in October 1948, 12-year-old Joann Crow thought it was an adventure.
“Dad couldn’t drive us to school because it was so hard to see,” said Mrs. Crow, now 72. “He had to walk us to school that Wednesday with a flashlight, which we thought was fun.”
But the next day, Thursday, Oct. 28, her grandmother, Susan Gnora, 62, started coughing and experiencing chest pains. It was the same for a lot of older residents of thi
Source: Times (UK)
Nov 1, 2008
Graffiti on a wall near the hall where Saddam Hussein is buried describes him as the “martyr of the Arab nation”, another line simply says: “Long live Saddam”.
Inside the tomb, which is treated more like a shrine, the sense of adoration grows stronger. Photographs of the executed president with a smile on his face adorn the walls, along with gifts and a number of poems inspired by his death.
The former dictator’s body rests in the centre of the room. His grave, framed
Source: Times (UK)
Nov 1, 2008
The body of Saddam Hussein was stabbed six times after he was executed, according to the head guard at the former president’s tomb north of Baghdad, who was one of the people that helped bury the corpse.
The claim is categorically denied by the head of Saddam’s tribe. The Iraqi Government similarly denies any mutilation took place after the dictator was hanged on December 30, 2006, for crimes against humanity.
Talal Misrab, 45, is the chief guard at Saddam’s tomb, hou
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 1, 2008
The coffin is part of a collection of the kitsch plastic that could be sold for as much as £8,000.
The 6ft casket is one of only five ever produced and is the largest object ever made from the world's first synthetic plastic.
It is among 24 lots from a private collection that will be sold next week. Other items include telephones, a hairdryer, Art Deco clocks and a 1949 TV set.
In its heyday in the 1930s and 1940s, the "material of a thousand uses"
Source: Deutsche Welle
Nov 1, 2008
"The government intends to obtain a clarification on the issue from the International Court of Justice," a foreign ministry spokeswoman said in Berlin.
German news magazine Der Spiegel said Berlin planned to argue before The Hague court that sovereign actions by countries, including those of their armed forces, are protected under international law by sovereign immunity.
Diplomats fear that the floodgates would otherwise be opened for "legal claims agains
Source: BBC
Nov 1, 2008
Swiss-based marine explorer and inventor Jacques Piccard, who was part of the deepest submarine dive in history, has died at his home aged 86.
In 1960, Piccard and US co-pilot Don Walsh took a submersible developed by his father to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific.
They went 11km (seven miles) beneath the surface of the sea.
Their discovery of living organisms at that depth led to a ban on the dumping of nuclear waste in ocean tren
Source: BBC
Nov 1, 2008
Descendants of people who fled Spain during the country's civil war are to be allowed to apply for citizenship.
The decision will allow an estimated 500,000 children and grandchildren of civil war-era exiles to seek to return.
That number is believed to include 300,000 people in Argentina alone, Spain's government says.
The measure is part of new legislation passed last year that aims to compensate and rehabilitate victims of Spain's 1936-1939 civil war.
Source: Guardian (UK)
Nov 1, 2008
A rare US postage stamp from 1868 has sold for more than $1m at an auction in New York city. The three-cent, rose-coloured "B Grill" stamp was sold in a three-day Siegel auction galleries sale that ended on Thursday. The auction house said that only three other known examples of the stamp remain. "B Grill" refers to the embossed pattern in the stamp paper. An anonymous buyer put in the winning bid of $1,035,000 (£620,000). The auction also included one of the most famous stam
