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
Jan 22, 2011
'Sometimes I sarcastically, perhaps cynically, say that I'm glad that I received virtually all of my education before it became fashionable for white people to like black people," writes Walter Williams in his new autobiography, "Up from the Projects." "By that I mean that I encountered back then a more honest assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Professors didn't hesitate to criticize me—sometimes to the point of saying, 'That's nonsense.'"
Mr. Willia
Source: Navy Times
Jan 22, 2011
NEW YORK — For more than a century, tens of thousands worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, building some of the nation's most storied warships — sailing frigates, Civil War ironclads, gunboats, sloops and 20th-century warships and submarines. The yard's sprawling hospital treated soldiers from the 1860s through World War II.
Now, more than four decades after the largest-scale shutdown of any military facility in U.S. history, the Navy Yard is coming to life again.
Today, t
Source: NYT
Jan 22, 2011
FOR a superpower, dealing with the fast rise of a rich, brash competitor has always been an iffy thing.
Just ask the British, who a century ago were struggling to come to terms with the erosion of their status as the world’s No. 1 empire. It didn’t help that they were being upstaged by a former colony that had turned into an upstart sea-power with money, talent, and a knack for mangling a perfectly good language. Eventually they took the hit to the national ego from those Americans
Source: BBC
Jan 22, 2011
A Wiltshire village that was deserted after being taken over by troops for training during the Second World War is being remembered at a special event.
People living in Imber, on Salisbury Plain, were evacuated in December 1943 and have never been allowed to return.
Fifty years ago, thousands of people marched into the village to protest at its continued use by the Army.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said the village still plays a vital role in training tro
Source: BBC
Jan 22, 2011
When John Barratt drilled a hole into an old vase and turned into an electric lamp, he had no idea he was messing with a 2,000-year-old relic worth more than a third of a million pounds.
He fitted a lamp socket and furnished the 19-inch urn with a red lamp shade.
Nearly 40 years later, despite his alterations, it sold for £370,000 at Christie's auction house on Friday.
Mr Barratt, a retired school teacher who died last year, had inherited the urn and kept i
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 22, 2011
Victims of Baby Doc's brutal regime are warily watching his moves after the former ruler returned to Haiti last week, writes Jacqui Goddard in Port au Prince.
It was known to some as Haiti's Auschwitz, a death camp where innocent hordes met with horror at the hands of a regime determined to cleanse the country of political dissenters and democratic thinkers.
Hidden inside a slum, whose dirt-poor residents now face their own daily battles for survival, crumbled walls a
Source: AP
Jan 22, 2011
For more than a century, tens of thousands worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, building some of the nation's most storied warships — sailing frigates, Civil War ironclads, gunboats, sloops and 20th-century warships and submarines. The yard's sprawling hospital treated soldiers from the 1860s through World War II.
Now, more than four decades after the largest-scale shutdown of any military facility in U.S. history, the Navy Yard is coming to life again.
Today, the 300-acr
Source: The State (South Carolina)
Jan 21, 2011
For the past two days, a sign on the cafeteria door at Hammond School read, “Jews and dogs not allowed.”
The sign was part of the sixth-grade’s simulation of 1930s Germany in which students were divided into two groups – Nazis and Jews.
The students portraying Nazis spent a day as a privileged class, sitting in front rows, serving as teachers’ pets and being told they were smart. Meanwhile, the students who portrayed Jews ate in silence in the hallways, sat on the floor
Source: The State (SC)
Jan 21, 2011
For the past two days, a sign on the cafeteria door at Hammond School read, “Jews and dogs not allowed.”
The sign was part of the sixth-grade’s simulation of 1930s Germany in which students were divided into two groups – Nazis and Jews.
The students portraying Nazis spent a day as a privileged class, sitting in front rows, serving as teachers’ pets and being told they were smart. Meanwhile, the students who portrayed Jews ate in silence in the hallways, sat on the floor
Source: The Local (Germany)
Jan 21, 2011
German researchers have shed light on life during the Iron Age after examining the ancient remains of a woman found in a bog in what is now Lower Saxony. The body dates back to the pre-Roman era, more than 2,600 years ago.
A team of experts presented their findings on Thursday in Hannover, including facial simulations of the bog woman dubbed “Moora.” Archaeologists first began studying the find six years ago, according to news magazine Der Spiegel.
Experts from the Univ
Source: New Scientist
Jan 21, 2011
Can we be sure which mummy was the daddy? When a state-of-the-art DNA analysis of Tutankhamun and other ancient Egyptian royals was published last year, its authors hailed it as "the final word" on the pharaoh's family tree. But others are now voicing doubts.
The analysis of 11 royal mummies dating from around 1300 BC was carried out by an Egyptian team led by Egypt's chief archaeologist Zahi Hawass. The project was overseen by two foreign consultants, Albert Zink of the E
Source: KHON2 (Hawaii)
Jan 21, 2011
Here at home and abroad, people are also mourning the death of World War II Veteran Barney Hajiro -- a decorated war hero who was America's oldest living medal of honor recipient.
Private Hajiro died early yesterday morning at the Maunalani nursing home at the age of 94.
His son, Glenn remembers his father as a shy person who never wanted recognition for serving his country.
In 2000, President Clinton awarded Barney Hajiro with the military's highest award,
Source: Deutsche Welle (Germany)
Jan 21, 2011
Jewish organizations have come together in a project to identify and commemorate those buried in Holocaust mass graves across Eastern Europe. Germany's Foreign Ministry has donated 300,000 euros to the project.
International Jewish organizations have come together in an effort to commemorate hundreds of thousands of unnamed Holocaust victims.
Meeting in Berlin on Friday, the organizations announced that they have begun to identify, protect and memorialize thousand
Source: NYT
Jan 21, 2011
WHAT drives an ordinary man to burn himself to death?
That question has echoed across the Arab world and beyond in the weeks since an unemployed Tunisian, Mohamed Bouazizi, doused himself with paint thinner and lit a match on Dec. 17. His desperate act set off street clashes that ultimately toppled the country’s autocratic ruler, and inspired nearly a dozen other men to set themselves on fire in Egypt, Algeria and Mauritania....
Yet burning oneself as political protest
Source: BBC
Jan 21, 2011
Tony Blair has said he "regrets deeply and profoundly the loss of life" during and after the 2003 Iraq war.
The ex-PM said his refusal to express regret for the decisions that led to war at his first appearance before the committee had been misinterpreted.
But his words were met with cries of "too late" from the public gallery.
Mr Blair also urged the West to stop apologising for its actions and warned of the threat from Iran, during a f
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 21, 2011
The surprise return of ousted dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier to Haiti may have been part of a plan to unlock $5.7 million (£3.6 million) held in Swiss bank accounts.
The surprise return of ousted dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier to Haiti may have been part of a plan to unlock $5.7 million (£3.6 million) held in Swiss bank accounts.
Duvalier, who presided over a nightmarish period in Haitian history with his infamous Tonton Macoute
Source: CNN
Jan 21, 2011
Ernest Hemingway hasn't lived here in over 50 years but Finca Vigia is still his home.
In the garden there's his boat "the Pilar" used to hunt marlin and then Nazi subs off Cuba during World War II. Scrawled on a bathroom wall next to a scale are the daily records of what the writer weighed.
Lizards and frogs he caught rest in jars filled with formaldehyde. Antelopes and buffalo heads taken as trophies from African safaris decorate the walls. Yellowing Time
Source: CNN
Jan 21, 2011
Facial protrusions that look like hands; dangling sticks and feathers; a wide and mischievous grin: It's no wonder this rare Eskimo shaman's mask was so precious to the Surrealists.
And now a price has been put on the value of the Donati Studio Mask -- it was sold for over $2.5 million Thursday to a U.S. collector.
It breaks the previous record for indigenous U.S. art sold at public auction, said a spokesman for the Winter Antiques Show in New York, where the mask was
Source: Discovery News
Jan 20, 2011
King Tutankhamun’s tomb will not be closed in the near future, Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, told Discovery News.
Many reports in the past two weeks announced the closure of this tourist magnet by the end of this year.
Although suffering from the wear and tear caused by hordes of sweaty visitors drawn in by the elaborate murals and the boy king’s mummy, which is kept in a climate-controlled glass case, the burial won’t close its doors so
Source: BBC
Jan 20, 2011
The first British portrait of a freed slave, which faced being lost to the nation, will remain in the UK for the next five years.
William Hoare's painting of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, also known as Job ben Solomon, was purchased by the Qatar Museums Authority (QMA) in 2009.
The government imposed a temporary export bar last year because of its historic importance to the UK.
Money was raised to buy the work back, but the QMA agreed to lend it instead.
