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: Guardian (UK)
Jul 4, 2011
The inventory of every gun, bullet, rocket launcher, grenade and explosive put beyond use by the IRA and loyalist paramilitaries will not be made public, the body that oversaw the disarmament process in Northern Ireland has said.In the final report of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, it said files on the weapons and explosives decommissioned by the paramilitary organisations will instead be held by the US state department in Washington.The commission said part of the reason behind its decision was to avoid discouraging future acts of decommissioning by other terror groups in Ireland. This would include those anti-ceasefire republicans such as the Real IRA who are still engaged in "armed struggle"....
Source: Guardian (UK)
Jul 4, 2011
The fashion for dental bling goes back 1,000 years, according to a new discovery by archaeologists. Long before contemporary trends for gold dental caps or teeth inlaid with diamonds became popular, young Viking warriors were having patterns filed into their teeth.If their intention was to intimidate the enemy, they failed: the evidence has come from front teeth from a pit full of decapitated skeletons, found during roadworks in Dorset and now believed to be victims of a massacre of Viking invaders by local Britons.The front teeth have horizontal lines that were so neatly filed, archaeologists believe it must have been done by a skilled craftsman rather than by their owners, and the process undoubtedly would have been excruciating....
Source: WaPo
Jul 4, 2011
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — He put on a cap, defying the rules of the courtroom. He gestured to the packed public gallery despite a judge ordering him not to. He threatened a boycott because his chosen lawyers weren’t there.A belligerent Ratko Mladic repeatedly disobeyed and shouted at judges Monday during an arraignment at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal. Finally, the former Serb general was thrown out of the hearing and the court entered not guilty pleas on his behalf to 11 charges of masterminding the worst atrocities of the Bosnian war.The 69-year-old’s courtroom theatrics came at the start of a solemn week for survivors of the massacre he is accused of orchestrating — the killing of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in 1995 in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica.Officials are preparing to rebury 600 people whose remains were dug out of mass graves in the past year and identified using DNA tests. The bodies unearthed in the hills surrounding Srebrenica will be laid to rest July 11 at a cemetery for victims of the mass killings....
Source: NYT
Jul 4, 2011
To the list of things that J.D. Salinger found hard to bear, we can now add these: pompous graduation ceremonies and shlepping overseas to see tulips.“I’ve been going to graduations, and there isn’t much that I find more pretentious or irksome than the sight of ‘faculty’ and graduates in their academic get-ups,’’ he wrote a friend in June 1982, mentioning that it took self-control at one point “not to gag.”He had an equally visceral and unprintable response to the barrage of tulips that greeted him on a three-week spin through Europe in 1994. Writing to the same friend, he expressed relief that Kafka was not alive to see what “a tourist trap” town fathers had made of his house in Prague. Salinger also complained about the time he spent in Europe prowling for restaurants that offered “a decent, huge green salad.”...
Source: NYT
Jul 4, 2011
SNOWMASS, Colo. — Two different time scales collided in this place.More than 130,000 years ago in the chilled depths of the Illinoian ice age, an errant glacier left a hole atop a 9,000-foot-high ridge near what would become the town of Aspen in the central Colorado Rockies. The depression filled with snowmelt, and for tens of thousands of years, the little lake attracted the giants of the Pleistocene — mammoths, mastodons, ground sloths half again the size of grizzly bears, supersize bison, camels and horses — that came to drink, and in many cases to die, in the high alpine mud.The second time scale was more like a runner’s sprint. Scientists had only 70 days — a number framed by mountain winter weather and lawyerly fine print — to search the old lake bed sediments for remnants of these ancient animals.
Source: NYT
Jul 4, 2011
ALBERESE, Italy — On a recent dewy morning on this flat stretch near the Tuscan coast, a man rode his horse with the reins in one hand and a long, hooked, wooden stick in the other.
Source: NYT
Jul 4, 2011
MUMBAI, India — A court-ordered search of vaults beneath a south Indian temple has unearthed gold, jewels and statues worth an estimated $22 billion, government officials said Monday.The treasure trove, at the 16th century Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple, is widely believed to be the largest find of its kind in India, catching officials in the state of Kerala by surprise and forcing the government to send two dozen police officers to the previously unguarded shrine for round-the-clock security....
Source: BBC
Jul 4, 2011
Inspectors unearthing priceless treasures from a South Indian temple have had to halt their search because the final vault cannot be opened.Five vaults replete with precious stones, gold and silver have already been opened in Kerala state's Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple.The haul's value is now thought to have risen from 25 billion rupees ($500m) to 900 billion rupees ($20.3bn).Historians say assessing the treasure's true value will be very difficult.The goods have not been officially valued and inspectors are merely taking an inventory.The inspectors managed to open the outer doors of the sixth vault but found an iron wall inside it. The vault was last opened 136 years ago, according to temple records....
Source: Fox News
Jul 4, 2011
A 10-foot bronze statue of former President Ronald Reagan to commemorate 100 years since his birth has been unveiled in London, the Independent newspaper reports.Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joined British Foreign Secretary William Hague in paying tribute to Reagan Monday at the U.S. Embassy in London.
Source: MSNBC
Jul 3, 2011
It may not be a $500 million golden hoard, but underwater archaeologists are nevertheless excited about finding what they believe are traces of the five ships that British privateer Henry Morgan lost off the coast of Panama in 1671.The discovery was made at the mouth of Panama's Chagres River, near another underwater site where six iron cannons were found. Taken together, the evidence suggests that the three-century-old story of Captain Morgan's lost fleet is finally near its conclusion. By the time he died in 1688, Morgan was seen as one of the most bloodthirsty (and most successful) pirates in the Americas. His exploits inspired enough pirate tales to fill a dead man's chest, including the Errol Flynn movie "Captain Blood" and the James Bond novel "Live and Let Die."
Source: AP
Jul 3, 2011
Walking along the rows of tombstones here offers a glimpse of the wars America has fought and the men and women who waged them. But most of the grave markers have been half-buried for 20 years, and there is little hope that the volcanic ash obscuring names, dates and epitaphs will be cleared any time soon.
Clark Veterans Cemetery was consigned to oblivion in 1991, when Mount Pinatubo's gigantic eruption forced the U.S. to abandon the sprawling air base surrounding it. Retired U.S. soldiers, Marines and sailors volunteer to keep watch, relying on donations to try to maintain the grounds, but they lament that they're helplessly short on funds to fix things, and that Washington is unwilling to help.
As America marks Independence Day, the U.S. veterans who collect funds to care for the cemetery renewed their calls for Washington to fund and take charge of the work....
Source: BBC
Jul 2, 2011
Researchers working in Uganda say they have unearthed the well-preserved fossil skull of an ancient primate.
The 20 million-year-old specimen comes from the site of an extinct volcano in Uganda's north-east Karamoja region.
The scientists say preliminary analysis showed the tree-climbing herbivore was roughly 10 years old when it died.
The skull is about the same size as that of a chimp, but its brain was smaller....
Source: Marist Poll
Jul 1, 2011
Just in time for the July 4th weekend, the Marist Poll has asked Americans in which year the United States declared its independence. And, the result is many Americans need to brush up on their American history.Click Here for Complete July 1, 2011 USA Poll Release and TablesOnly 58% of residents know that the United States declared its independence in 1776. 26% are unsure, and 16% mentioned another date.There are age differences on this question. Younger Americans are the least likely to know the correct answer. Only 31% of adults younger than 30 say that 1776 is the year in which the United States broke away from Great Britain. 59% of residents between 30 and 44 report the same. Americans 45 to 59 — 75% — are the age group most likely to have the correct answer. Among those 60 and older, 60% report that 1776 is the year in which the United States declared its independence....
Source: AOL News
Jul 1, 2011
The Ukrainian city of Vinnitsa is eager to attract tourists, but is torn about the creation of a Nazi museum in the nearby bunker where Hitler stayed several times during WWII, which they say could be a magnet for neo-Nazis.According to the BBC, Communist Party leaders are particularly worried about the opening of the Wehrwolf command center because the new attraction's operators plan on allowing visitors to dress up in Nazi uniforms and pose with swastika flags. Hitler used this bunker while helping to plan the expansion of the Eastern Front. German soldiers destroyed most of the sprawling site, which was built largely by forced Ukrainian labor, as they retreated in 1944, but left three large bunkers and most of a swimming pool, which is the sites most obvious marker. A mass grave was also left behind, filled with the more than 10,000 POWs and locals who were forced to build Wehrwolf....
Source: Bloomberg News
Jul 1, 2011
For a 90-year-old, China’s Communist Party is hanging with a young crowd.The organization that has ruled China since Mao Zedong’s forces won a civil war in 1949 added 1.24 million university students as members last year, an 8.2 percent increase from 2009. Founded 90 years ago today to build a socialist Utopia for the laboring classes, the party has become a ticket to elite jobs in government and state-owned businesses that offer security, power and a path to wealth.“I joined because it’ll help when looking for jobs,” said Ling, a 24-year-old student at Beijing’s Renmin University who declined to be identified by her full name because of concern that she faces retribution from the government. “Getting a government job is so hard, but if I got an offer I’d definitely jump for it. My second choice would be state-owned companies.”...
Source: The Huffington Post
Jul 1, 2011
An old Turkish prison in Jerusalem is briefly opening to the public this weekend, allowing visitors a rare glimpse inside an infamous local landmark. The Kishle prison in Jerusalem's Old City was built by the Ottoman Turks in the mid-1800s. It later served the British as a jail, housing Jewish and Arab prisoners in the stormy years leading up to Israel's creation in 1948.One of those prisoners, Samuel Matza, who was a member of a Jewish underground group as a young man, recalled sleeping on rags on the jail's floor after British police arrested him on weapons charges 64 years ago.Matza, now 84, said Friday he hoped to visit the building again.The old lockup has remained closed because of a lack of funds for restoration and refurbishment. It will open on Saturday for three weeks, having been temporarily transformed into a concert space for a visiting troupe of Swedish musicians...
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 30, 2011
John Gordon, who in 1845 was the last person to be executed in the state of Rhode Island, was hanged for supposedly murdering Amasa Sprague, a wealthy mill-owner from an important local family.Lincoln Chafee, the Governor of Rhode Island, said that Mr Gordon had been “put to death after a highly questionable judicial process and based on no concrete evidence”.Mr Sprague was the brother of the one-time state governor and US Senator William Sprague. His killing inflamed tensions between Rhode Island's ‘Yankee’ protestant majority and the newly-arrived Irish population.After Mr Sprague's body was found brutally beaten on a snowy road on New Year's Day 1844, Mr Gordon and his two brothers, Nicholas and William, were quickly placed in the frame....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 30, 2011
China’s Communist Party has bought two of Karl Marx’s letters and scoured Russian archives for film footage of early Communists as it tries to shore up its founding myth ahead of its 90th anniversary. The two handwritten letters will take China’s collection of Marx’s correspondence to five, split between the State Archive and the National Library, and will be put on display in an exhibition on “Marxism in China” during July.The purchase came as the Chinese Communist Party celebrated its 90th anniversary on Thursday, which has seen giant models of the hammer and sickle emblem erected across the country, even as many Chinese wonder whether communism has any relevance at all to their lives. The letter came up at auction in 2009 in the United States, with an estimate of $14,000 (£8,740), but Chinese officials declined to comment whether they had purchased it then or at a subsequent sale....
Source: WaPo
Jun 30, 2011
YAN’AN, China – The Chinese Communist Party has been pulling out all the stops to celebrate the 90th anniversary of its founding. There have been concerts, commemorative coins, exhibitions of revolutionary paintings, saturation coverage in the state-controlled media, and even a “red games” sporting competition.But though the party has used Friday’s anniversary to try renew interest in its past glories, the hoopla might be having an unintended consequence, causing some to question whether the current leaders have lived up to the original ideals of its founders.Nearly each day brings new revelations of corruption and excesses by senior and provincial-level party officials. And China’s security apparatus, shaken by the fall of authoritarian regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, is engaged in a broad crackdown on dissent, jailing bloggers, lawyers or anyone who questions the party’s right to rule.Many Chinese are asking whether the party has lost its way.
Source: MSNBC
Jun 29, 2011
Jamestown, N.Y. (WKBW release) -- The Vikings are coming! The Vikings are coming!Centuries ago, such a statement would have been viewed as an ominous warning of impending doom to coastal towns and villages throughout western Europe. Today, however, it should be met with great enthusiasm, as anyone wanting to catch a glimpse of a replica Viking ship will have the chance to do so on July 14 when The Norseman sails the waters of Chautauqua Lake.The event is being held to help promote the 2011 Scandinavian Folk Festival, taking place July 15 – 17 at the Gerry Rodeo Grounds, located just 10 minutes north of Jamestown.
