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 28, 2006
To evade authorities chasing him, Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski kept shoes with smaller soles attached to the bottom in his reclusive Montana cabin, according to evidence released 10 years after his capture.
The shoes were intended to make it appear as if a person with smaller footprints were walking in them, investigators believe.
Kaczynski, 64, is serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole for a bombing spree that lasted from 1978 to 1995. The blasts from ho
Source: Reuters
Nov 28, 2006
The man who tried to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981
wants a day's leave from jail to discuss theology with Pope Benedict when
he visits Turkey this week, his lawyer said on Monday."I (Mehmet Ali Agca) asked the Turkish government to release me for one
day so that I can discuss theological issues with (Pope) Ratzinger," Agca
said in comments passed on by his lawyer Mustafa Demirbag at a news
conference."I want to discuss with him religious and mystic issues," Demirbag quoted
Agca as saying.
Source: Jeffrey B. Spurr, Islamic and Middle East Specialist, Harvard University
Nov 28, 2006
Friends and colleagues,
I have just received the grave and deeply dispiriting news from Dr.
Saad Eskander that he has closed the Iraq National Library and
Archive for the time being as of last Tuesday. On 15 November, he
informed me that his institution had been bombed thrice in three
weeks, and subjected to sniper fire, including directly into his own
office. Another young librarian was recently murdered, and the
building had been shelled several times in the few days previo
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Nov 28, 2006
Students who hand in papers with text copied from the Internet: Are they unethical sneaks, or just young people confused by the wide-open nature of the Web? Often they're the latter, some experts say.
Now Pima Community College is about to put that theory to the test.Instead of suspending or expelling students found guilty of plagiarism, the Arizona college will try to rehabilitate offenders by putting them through a five-step "traffic school," reports the Tucson Citizen.
Source: Guardian
Nov 28, 2006
The world's most celebrated boy king, Tutankhamun, may have died after badly breaking a leg while playing sport.
A detailed scan of the mummy, which was uncovered in the Valley of Kings in 1922, has revealed the high-impact fracture as the most likely cause of death.
Speculation over the death of Tutankhamun has raged since the mummy was first inspected in 1925, three years after his tomb was excavated by Howard Carter and his patron Lord Carnarvon. The first x-ray sca
Source: NYT
Nov 28, 2006
Gazprom City, a proposed complex of stylish modern buildings that evoke, among other things, a gas-fueled flame, a strand of DNA and a lady’s high-heeled shoe, would sit on a historic site on the Neva River here, opposite the Baroque, blue-and-white Smolny Cathedral.
In any of six designs under consideration, the main tower would soar three or four times higher than this city’s most famous landmarks, an alteration of the landscape that has drawn heated protests from the director of
Source: Orange County Register
Nov 28, 2006
There's no use in UCLA fans putting out a contract on the lone, 76-year-old man at the center of USC's campus.
The statue of Tommy Trojan has been wrapped in plastic and mummified with duct tape as protection from the UCLA-loving Jackson Pollocks who shake blue and gold spray-paint cans....
On Monday, a local radio station furnished Trojan haters with a Buick Park Avenue sedan, painted brick red (almost Trojan cardinal) and painted with "Beat SC" on its doors
Source: BBC
Nov 28, 2006
Ukraine's parliament has voted in favour of declaring a Soviet-era famine an act of genocide against its people.
Historians say Soviet leader Joseph Stalin created the famine, confiscating the harvest of Ukrainian peasants to force them to join collective farms.
The bill was proposed by President Viktor Yushchenko, who wants the UN to also recognise the famine as genocide.
Up to 10 million people died during the 1932-1933 famine.
Source: Guardian
Nov 27, 2006
They got the date wrong by some 3,000 years, but the oldest detailed drawing of Stonehenge, apparently based on first hand observation, has turned up in a 15th century manuscript.
The little sketch is a bird's eye view of the stones, and shows the great trilithons, the biggest stones in the monument, each made of two pillars capped with a third stone lintel, which stand in a horseshoe in the centre of the circle. Only three are now standing, but the drawing, found in Douai, northern
Source: Stone Pages
Nov 27, 2006
Much has been made of the corruption that has tarnished the image of Chinese local government officials but it seems bribery among the country's authoritative ranks was in full swing more than 2,800 years ago. The inscriptions on two bronze urns unearthed recently in northwest China's Shaanxi province tell the story of how, in 873 BCE, a noble man managed to bribe the judiciary in order to dodge charges of appropriating farmland and slaves.
Source: Stone Pages
Nov 27, 2006
Researchers working on the Archaeological Settlements in Turkey (TAY) project have discovered 120 previously unknown ancient settlement areas in various locations in eastern Anatolia, the project's manager said. Assistant Professor Alparslan Ceylan, a lecturer at Erzurum's Atatürk University and the project's leader, said that the 120 settlement areas, thought to belong to the Iron Age, included a temple and several fortresses. Ceylan said inventories for 480 ancient settlements in the region -
Source: Salon
Nov 27, 2006
Former dictator Gen. Augusto
Pinochet was indicted Monday and ordered to remain under house arrest for
the execution of two bodyguards of Salvador Allende, the freely elected
Marxist president who was toppled in a 1973 coup.
The indictment came after Pinochet's 91st birthday Saturday, which he
marked by issuing a statement for the first time taking full political
responsibility for abuses committed by his regime.
Monday's indictment was the fifth time Pinochet has been put under
Source: NY Daily News
Nov 27, 2006
He may be a certified lame duck now, but President Bush and his truest believers are about to launch their final campaign - an eye-popping, half-billion-dollar drive for the Bush presidential library.
Eager to begin refurbishing his tattered legacy, the President hopes to raise $500 million to build his library and a think tank at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Bush lived in Dallas until he was elected governor of Texas in 1995.
Bush sources with direct knowl
Source: AP
Nov 27, 2006
It took two decades for the government to begin recognizing the sites where thousands of citizens were tortured and killed by the military junta during Argentina's so-called Dirty War, and next year the most infamous one will finally be vacated by the military so it can become a museum.
President Nestor Kirchner announced plans in 2004 to create a "Museum of Memory" on the site of the Navy Mechanics' School, resolving a long controversy over what to do with the white-colo
Source: AP
Nov 27, 2006
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- Victor Basterra steps into the cold attic of the Navy Mechanics' School where he once lay hooded and shackled, a secret prisoner of Argentina's last military dictatorship.
During the seven years of junta rule that ended in 1983, some 5,000 people passed through the main torture center in the state crackdown on dissent. Suspected leftists, union leaders and other foes of the regime were tortured and, in most cases, killed.
Overall, the offici
Source: MSNBC
Nov 27, 2006
With a great deal of tension in the air and concerns for his safety — as well as the fear of repercussions against Turkey's small Catholic population — both the wisdom and the timing of the visit have been questioned.
But with Germanic determination Benedict is marching resolutely into a potential lion’s den, armed with stated good intentions and positive messages but also carrying the liability of his penchant for using blunt language, a trait that has gotten him into trouble in
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
Nov 27, 2006
ST SOPHIA is a place of dizzying magnificence. One of the most sacred sites in Christendom for almost a millennium, then a mosque for almost 500 years, the Byzantine masterpiece is today a museum that testifies to centuries of feuding between Christianity, Islam and secularism.
So when Pope Benedict XVI takes to the Istanbul tourist trail on Thursday to admire the mosaics under the soaring dome of the sixth-century basilica, it will be the most delicate moment of the most sensitive
Source: International Herald Tribune
Nov 27, 2006
As histories of the Holocaust go, that of the concentration camp at Jasenovac probably ranks among the most brutal and certainly the most disputed.
Almost everyone agrees that the Nazi puppet regime that ruled Croatia from 1941 to 1945 imprisoned hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and opponents here and in dozens of other camps and that many, many prisoners were killed.
But in the 61 years since the camp was closed, successive governments have written and rew
Source: CentralOhio.com
Nov 27, 2006
Plans for an extension of James Parkway to Kaiser Drive are under way, but national magazine coverage has stirred up tension between developers and an archaeologist.
Bradley Lepper, of the Ohio Historical Society, said the remnants of a 2,000-year-old road might be present on two 300-acre sites.
"It may be the only remnants of what I call the Great Hopewell Road," he said.
The Heath-Newark-Licking County Port Authority, a developer of one of the s
Source: Reuters
Nov 27, 2006
Divers have found the wreck of a Japanese midget submarine that attacked Sydney Harbour in 1942 and brought World War Two to Australia's biggest city, ending a 64-year mystery over its fate.
The missing two-man submarine M24 was one of a trio that slipped in darkness past protective nets stretched across the harbour entrance on May 31, 1942, with a plan to attack shipping, including the American battle cruiser USS Chicago.
Two of the 46-tonne subs were sunk. But the M24
