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: WSJ
Jun 20, 2011
RALEIGH, N.C.—A consensus is emerging on how to compensate thousands of men and women sterilized in one of the largest state eugenics programs in the U.S. But North Carolina's budget troubles make it unlikely that the aging victims will get cash payments anytime soon.A perennial legislative proposal to pay as many as 3,000 sterilized people $20,000 each got a boost this spring after Republicans took over North Carolina's House and Senate following the November elections.
Source: Greenbiz.com
Jun 19, 2011
Question:What does a rack of high-performance, network blade-servers have in common with the 15th century Flemish tapestry The Hunt for the Unicorn?Answer: Both are being watched over by some of IBM's most advanced smart building systems.
Source: AFP
Jun 19, 2011
Standing before the imposing ziggurat which was once part of a temple complex at the Sumerian capital of Ur, Iraqi archaeologist Abdelamir Hamdani worried about the natural elements that are eating away at one of the wonders of Mesopotamia.
The buried treasures of Ur still beckon foreign archaeologists who have begun cautiously returning to Iraq, but experts like Hamdani say that preserving the sites is more urgent than digging for more.
Despite security conc
Source: LA Times
Jun 19, 2011
After examining thousands of artifacts and digging through historical data, maritime archaeologists have a verdict: A ship off North Carolina is all but certainly the Queen Anne's Revenge. ]
North Carolina's top marine archaeologists were pretty sure the wreck was the Queen Anne's Revenge, the cannon-heavy flagship of the notorious pirate Blackbeard that ran aground here in 1718.
Source: Deutsche Welle (Germany)
Jun 19, 2011
Germany's invasion of the USSR was the largest excess of violence in modern history. Millions of soldiers and civilians lost their lives, but it took decades for both countries to come to terms with the past.
Source: WaPo
Jun 19, 2011
Half a century after many Virginia public schools shut their doors rather than accept black students, the state is offering college scholarships to compensate those whose education suffered in the era of “massive resistance” to desegregation. Among the recipients: white students.
Source: NYT
Jun 19, 2011
TOKYO — Japan and the United States will probably agree to delay the relocation of an American air base on Okinawa, Japan’s defense minister said, a decision that could encourage calls to rethink the stalled relocation plan.
Source: NYT
Jun 19, 2011
TULSA, Okla. — With their guns firing, a mob of white men charged across the train tracks that cut a racial border through this city. A 4-year-old boy named Wess Young fled into the darkness with his mother and sister in search of safety, returning the next day to discover that their once-thriving black community had burned to the ground.
Source: BBC
Jun 18, 2011
A convicted murderer, who was India's oldest inmate, has been released from prison at the age of 108.
Brij Bihari Pandey, a Hindu priest, was serving a life sentence for the murder of four people in 1987, when he was 84.
Officials at Gorakhpur jail in Uttar Pradesh state say Mr Bihari, who requires regular hospital visits, was freed on humanitarian grounds.... ....
Source: Scotsman
Jun 18, 2011
A STONE AGE burial chamber in Orkney has yielded a gruesome haul of more than 1,000 human bones, it was revealed yesterday.
The 5,000-year-old human bones - numbering at least 1,000, but possibly as many as 2,000 - were found in just one of the five chambers of the Banks Tomb on South Ronaldsay.
The burial chamber, also known as the Tomb of the Otter
Source: BBC
Jun 18, 2011
Guatemalan authorities have arrested a former armed forces chief accused of joining in massacres during the nation's civil war nearly 30 years ago.
Retired general Hector Mario Lopez Fuentes, 81, was detained in the capital, Guatemala City, on Friday.
Human rights groups have accused him of participating in genocide and crimes against humanity during the military government of Efrain Rios Montt.
It is not clear how Mr Lopez Fuentes is likely to plead to the charges.
Guatemala's office of public prosecutions said he was
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Jun 17, 2011
Waving goodbye to her grandchildren, Gudrun Burwitz has the look of a woman ready to live the rest of her days in peace and quiet.Instead, the 81-year-old daughter of Heinrich Himmler still works at a ruthless pace to keep the Nazi flame alive.Mrs Burwitz has always nurtured the memory of her father, believing the man who ran the Gestapo, the SS and the extermination programme which murdered six million Jews, to be good and worthy.And despite her advanced years, she continues to help the ageing remnants of the Nazi regime to evade justice.
Source: Live Science
Jun 17, 2011
An enigmatic message on a Roman gladiator's 1,800-year-old tombstone has finally been decoded, telling a treacherous tale.
The epitaph and art on the tombstone suggest the gladiator, named Diodorus, lost the battle (and his life) due to a referee's error, according to Michael Carter, a professor at Brock University in St. Catharines, Canada.
Source: BBC
Jun 17, 2011
Archaeologists at the Roman Vindolanda Fort & Museum have unearthed dozens of circular huts which they believe could have been used as temporary refuges.
The excavation at the site in Hexham, Northumberland, has unearthed various finds from Roman Britain including letters, murder victims and shoes.
It is thought the huts were built during the invasion of Scotland under Emperor Septimius Severus (AD 208-211).
An earlier fort at Vindolanda was completely levelled for the construction of the buildings, which could number into
Source: BBC
Jun 17, 2011
The discovery of the lost town of Dunluce has been hailed as an "archaeologist's dream".
Next to Dunluce Castle in County Antrim, the town was razed to the ground in the 1641 Irish rebellion.
Archaeologists have said that because it was abandoned, jewellery, pottery, stone and wooden homes and even a road are still very well preserved.
The town is believed to have first emerged in the Ulster Plantation around the early 1600s....
Source: BBC
Jun 17, 2011
The heirs to Argentina's main media group have accepted a court ruling forcing them to give fresh DNA samples, despite objecting to the tests.
The ruling aims to see if the two siblings were born to detainees killed by the military in the 1970s.
Marcela and Felipe Noble Herrera were adopted by the Clarin Group's owner.
The samples will be compared to a genetic database linked to people who disappeared or were killed under military rule.
The Noble Herreras have said the tests violate their privacy, and they have backed t
Source: BBC
Jun 17, 2011
Vietnam and the United States have taken the first step towards cleaning up Agent Orange contamination.
The US sprayed 12 million gallons of the defoliant over jungles between 1961 and 1971 during the Vietnam war.
Vietnamese experts say more than three million people have suffered the effects of the herbicide, of which some 400,000 died.
The development is being hailed as one of the most significant in relations between Washington and Hanoi.
A ceremony to launch the programme was held at the Danang airport where the def
Source: AP
Jun 17, 2011
President Benigno Aquino III on Friday ruled out a burial for dictator Ferdinand Marcos at the national heroes' cemetery in Manila.
Source: CNN
Jun 17, 2011
Don Price's passion for military airplanes flows through his veins, passed down from his father's stories of piloting Boeing B-17s in World War II.
These days, Price restores those planes and, in doing so, rekindles a connection with his father.
Source: EFE
Jun 16, 2011
Mexican archaeologists have found a new ballplayer monolith dating from between 900 A.D.
