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: BBC
Aug 30, 2007
From Vietnamese spoon music to the first ever recording of bird song, the BBC presides over an extensive sound archive. The fact it almost wound up on a scrap heap only to be saved by a "temp" is one of the great untold stories of broadcasting history - until now.
In 1936 Marie Slocombe was working as a summer relief secretary at the BBC.
One of her tasks was to sort out - and dispose of - a pile of dusty broadcast discs. She noticed that among them were recor
Source: KGCL
Aug 30, 2007
Federal agents spied on the widow of Martin Luther King Jr. for several years after his assassination in 1968, according to newly released documents that reveal the FBI worried about her following in the footsteps of the slain civil rights icon.
Coretta Scott King might try to tie "the anti-Vietnam movement to the civil rights movement" according to some of the nearly 500 pages of intelligence files, which go on to show how the FBI trailed King at public appearances and ke
Source: http://www.news.com.au
Aug 30, 2007
A COIN found in a swamp could help prove a Spanish or Portuguese ship was wrecked on Australia's east coast years before Captain James Cook's voyage.
The coin, found in a snake-infested marsh, could help prove a century-old theory that a Spanish or Portuguese ship was wrecked on Australia’s east coast years before Captain Cook’s famed voyage of discovery.
The find, made by an expedition led by self-funded Brisbane historian Greg Jeffreys, is the first piece of dated ev
Source: NYT
Aug 30, 2007
Mr. Bush, by temperament, governing style and political design, is a polarizing president like no other, pollsters say. And no reshuffling of administration staff members or an incremental wave of good news is likely to change that.
Consider the numbers. Over the last year, Mr. Bush’s approval rating among Democrats has hovered around or below 10 percent in The New York Times/CBS News Poll. At the same time, his approval rating among Republicans has hovered in the 60s and 70s.
Source: NYT
Aug 30, 2007
WHY would some people willingly spend decades — and hundreds of thousands of dollars — renovating houses they will never own? For a small but growing number of so-called resident curators living in old and cherished state-owned houses up and down the East Coast, the answers include the pleasure of bringing an abandoned landmark back to life, freedom from mortgage payments and the chance to live in the kind of home that would otherwise be out of reach.
“We’re people of modest means,”
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Aug 30, 2007
Survey after survey reports that American students — while concerned about the world around them — are apathetic about politics. Events like Katrina or Darfur spark activism and voluntarism. And to be sure, college Democrats and Republicans are good at organizing competing speakers. But voter registration (and voting), turnouts at town hall meetings and knowledge of the political process remain embarrassingly low.
Research that will be presented this week at the American Political S
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 30, 2007
A 17th-century medical handbook advises men to put chicken manure on their scalps as a cure for baldness and offers other bizarre remedies for infertility, "stinking breath", head lice and aching breasts.
The Path-Way to Health, written by Peter Levens and published in London in 1654, was recently discovered among a collection of antiquarian books and is due to be auctioned by Bonhams in Oxford on Oct 9.
Source: NYT
Aug 30, 2007
States would be able to develop assessments of progress, and tests would go beyond English and math to include history and science, according to a proposal on the House education committee’s Web site [concerning a draft bill to amend the No Child Left Behind act]. Schools would be judged partly on graduation rates and college enrollment. “This draft is a work in progress, subject to change over the coming weeks,” said Representatives George Miller, Democrat of California and chairman of the comm
Source: NYT
Aug 30, 2007
JASPER, Ind. Msgr. Othmar Schroeder was revered in this town of 12,000 for starting a parish and a school. The Knights of Columbus Council in Jasper was named for him. He served his entire 50-year career locally.
Now the bishop is calling on churches here to remove photos of the late priest and rescind honors that were given him, because he is suspected of having molested scores of young boys.
The bishop, Gerald A. Gettelfinger, has also prevailed upon the Knights of Co
Source: NYT
Aug 30, 2007
Shiites believe that Imam Mahdi, the 12th imam in a direct bloodline from the Prophet Muhammad, is alive but has remained invisible since the late ninth century, and that he will reappear only when corruption and injustice reach their zenith. This year, in keeping with the government effort to promote and enforce religious values under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the celebration [of the Mahdi's birthday] is receiving plenty of attention from the state, even to the point of being extended an e
Source: http://www.praguepost.com
Aug 29, 2007
Historian Jana Bachová fingers a table-size binder of yellowing posters. Some are scrawled on paper bakery bags, others carefully lettered in tri-colored ink, bearing the stamps of illegal printing presses. Their messages channel a spectrum of emotions, ranging from derogatory anti-Russian slurs and revolutionary slogans to humorist rhymes and sentimental poetry.
As a whole, they embody the “colloquial creativity” of a resistant nation, Bachová says.
“It’s an appellation to t
Source: National Geographic News
Aug 29, 2007
Ancient mass graves containing more than 1,500 victims of the bubonic plague have been discovered on a small island in Italy's Venetian Lagoon.
Workers came across the skeletons while digging the foundation for a new museum on Lazzaretto Vecchio, a small island in the lagoon's south, located a couple of miles from Venice's famed Piazza San Marco (see an aerial picture of the Venetian Lagoon).
The island is believed to be the world's first lazaret—a quarantine colony int
Source: Guardian
Aug 29, 2007
Recently declassified secret documents reveal how at the end of the second world war an elite British unit abducted hundreds of German scientists and technicians and put them to work at government ministries and private firms in the UK.
The programme was designed to loot the defeated country's intellectual assets, impeding its ability to compete while giving a boost to British business.
In a related programme, German businessmen are alleged to have been forced to travel
Source: ABC
Aug 29, 2007
Western sections of the Great Wall of China are being reduced to "mounds of dirt" by sandstorms and may disappear entirely in 20 years, a report said Wednesday.
The reasons for the deterioration are entirely manmade, the official Xinhua News Agency said, pointing to destructive farming methods in the 1950s that desertified areas of northern China, causing sandstorms.
Source: WaPo
Aug 29, 2007
Researchers studying Iceman, the 5,000-year-old mummy found frozen in the Italian Alps, now believe he died of head trauma, not the wound of an arrow.
Two months ago, researchers in Switzerland published an article in the Journal of Archaeological Science saying the man known as Oetzi died after an arrow tore a hole in an artery beneath his left collarbone, leading to massive blood loss, shock and heart attack.
Source: Yahoo
Aug 29, 2007
Hurricane Dean's rampage over Mexico's Caribbean coast last week unearthed
three rusted 18th century cannons that had lain buried
under a sandy beach for decades.
The cannons, around 1.80 meter (5.9 feet) long, were
spotted poking through the sand on a beach near the
arty resort of Tulum after Dean hit on August 21,
Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and
History (INAH) said on Wednesday.
Believed to be from a shipwrecked European galleon,
the badly corroded cannons
Source: AP
Aug 29, 2007
A New York architectural firm has been hired to design President Bush’s presidential library.
The firm, Robert A. M. Stern Architects, was one of three finalists. The decision was made after Mr. Stern met with Mr. Bush last week at Mr. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Tex., said Donald L. Evans, chairman of the selection committee.
Source: AP
Aug 29, 2007
Richard Jewell, the former security guard who was erroneously linked to the 1996 Olympic bombing, died Wednesday, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said.
Jewell, 44, was found dead in his west Georgia home, GBI spokesman John Bankhead said.
"There's no suspicion whatsoever of any type of foul play. He had been at home sick since the end of February with kidney problems," said Meriwether County Coroner Johnny Worley.
The GBI planned to do an autopsy Th
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 29, 2007
It looks for all the world like an ordinary key but this unremarkable piece of metal could have saved the Titanic from disaster.
It is thought to have fitted the locker that contained the crow's nest binoculars, vital in detecting threats to the liner lurking in the sea in the pre-sonar days of 1912.
Catastrophically for the Titanic and the 1,522 lives lost with her, the key's owner, Second Officer David Blair, was removed from the crew at the last minute and in his ha
Source: AP
Aug 28, 2007
- Did someone kill Beethoven? A Viennese pathologist claims the composer's physician did — inadvertently overdosing him with lead in a case of a cure that went wrong.
Other researchers are not convinced, but there is no controversy about one fact: The master had been a very sick man years before his death in 1827.
Previous research determined that Beethoven had suffered from lead poisoning, first detecting toxic levels of the metal in his hair and then, two years ago,
