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
Jan 16, 2011
The South Sudanese leader has urged his people to forgive the north for killings during a civil war that lasted more than 20 years.
Salva Kiir made the appeal from the pulpit of a Catholic Cathedral in Juba.
Early results from Southern Sudan's referendum indicate the region has voted overwhelmingly to split from the north and form a new country.
Full results of the poll are not due until next month, but the region is widely expected to choose to secede....
Source: WaPo
Jan 16, 2011
Chris Sharp was standing at a copying machine in the Vermont high school where he teaches art when the White House security people called: Was he the guy who sent the heavy bronze sculpture of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the homemade wooden packing crate?
Absolutely, Sharp replied. He was the guy who at his own expense sculpted, cast and was shipping in carpet-lined crates his 60-pound statues of King to President Obama and 16 other destinations across the country.
Source: The Local (DE)
Jan 15, 2011
Klaus Barbie, the Nazi war criminal known as the ‘butcher of Lyon’ for his hideous treatment of Jewish prisoners, was paid by the German intelligence services for political information during the 1960s, according to Der Spiegel.
Barbie fled to Bolivia after the war, in which he had served as the head of the SS in Lyon, and lived there under the name Klaus Altmann from 1951. It was there that he was recruited by the BND intelligence service, the magazine reported on Saturday.
Source: AOL News
Jan 15, 2011
Archaeologists who have been searching the sunken Queen Anne's Revenge for more than a decade found a gilded sword hilt that may have belonged to the infamous 18th-century pirate Blackbeard.
National Geographic published photos released by the team, which has been excavating the sunken ship off the coast of North Carolina since 1997. The Queen Anne's Revenge was the flagship of Edward Teach, known as Blackbeard, until it ran aground in an inlet in 1718.
The sword hilt w
Source: Time.com
Jan 14, 2011
It's likely Edward Teach didn't need much to scare his enemies. After all, the notorious pirate better known as Blackbeard boasted a thick mass of facial hair so intimidating that it got immortalized in history.
He also numbered among the first corsairs to fly a black flag with bones on it. And, according to some accounts, he had a habit of lighting fuses beneath his hat, a halo of smoke giving the bristly sea dog a decidedly demonic aspect....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 14, 2011
The letter, sent by King Alaungphaya, was an effusive and gushing appeal for camaraderie and trade with Britain. But although engraved on a gold sheet and adorned with 24 rubies, it was simply banished to a vault in the King's home town of Hanover, Germany, and not deemed worthy of a reply.
The letter has languished there, in the Leibniz library, for more than 250 years as nobody could read it. But historians who have spent three years examining the document have now unravelled its
Source: Spiegel Online
Jan 14, 2011
More than 250,000 concentration camp prisoners died in death marches shortly before the end of World War II. Many of them were murdered by German civilians. A new book tries to answer the question why.
The end was in sight, with Allied troops already on the outskirts of the city. Nevertheless, a number of citizens of Celle in north-central Germany became murderers on April 8, 1945.
They participated in the hunt for hundreds of concentration camp prisoners who, during an
Source: NJ.com
Jan 14, 2011
Call it a high-end garage sale, or a fabulous rent party: the New Jersey Historical Society is auctioning off prime artifacts from its collection to help pay the bills. You don’t have to be a historian to gasp at the $2.1 million sale last month of an extremely rare 1784 map of the United States. It had been in the historical society’s possession since 1862. No more. Other items will go on the auction block soon, including oil paintings, silverware and 18th-century furniture.
Someth
Source: BBC News
Jan 14, 2011
US and world leaders have honoured Richard Holbrooke, the US diplomat who died last month at 69, praising him as a giant in foreign policy.
Mr Holbrooke, a diplomatic veteran, was President Barack Obama's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Mourners included Mr Obama, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton.
Mr Holbrooke was credited in part with ending war in the Balkans in the 19
Source: CNN
Jan 14, 2011
Some school districts in the South are making up for days missed because of this week's snow and ice by requiring students to attend class on Monday's Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, a decision that does not sit well with some parents and community leaders.
The issue is especially sensitive in King's home state of Georgia, where administrators in two rural districts - Fannin and Gilmer counties - have canceled the school holiday.
Both districts are considering canceli
Source: CNN
Jan 14, 2011
Most would not consider civil rights the top concern of the nation's spies, but it was standing room only this week as hundreds gathered in the Central Intelligence Agency auditorium attentively listening to speeches on the civil rights movement.
Even the CIA commemorates the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. It was one of several agencies remembering the civil rights hero in advance of the federal King holiday on Monday.
Director Leon Panetta told the intelligence officers
Source: CNN
Jan 14, 2011
Former President Ronald Reagan's youngest son suggests in a new book that his father showed signs of Alzheimer's disease while he was in the White House.
Former president Reagan disclosed he had Alzheimer's disease in 1994, five years after he left the White House. Questions have been raised in the past about whether he developed the disease while he was still in office, but suggestions that he did have been widely dismissed.
In an effort to set the record straight, fo
Source: BBC News
Jan 14, 2011
An extensive study of tree growth rings says there could be a link between the rise and fall of past civilisations and sudden shifts in Europe's climate.
A team of researchers based their findings on data from 9,000 wooden artifacts from the past 2,500 years.
They found that periods of warm, wet summers coincided with prosperity, while political turmoil occurred during times of climate instability.
The findings have been published online by the journal Scie
Source: National Parks Traveler
Jan 14, 2011
A campaign to forever save from development a nearly 50-acre parcel of Virgina land that witnessed pitched fighting during the Civil War has succeeded. The land eventually will be turned over to the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, which surrounds the acreage.
“Saving critically important landscapes like this is precisely why this organization exists,” said Civil War Preservation Trust President James Lighthizer. “Generations of Americans will now have the opp
Source: CNN
Jan 14, 2011
The abandoned ruins of the town of Pripyat near the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster, at Chernobyl in northern Ukraine, have been crumbling away for almost a quarter of a century.
The absence of humans has seen nature seemingly flourish in the town's deserted streets, squares and buildings, apparently defying the radiation that leaked out when reactor number four exploded on April 26 1986.
But how true is this picture?
New research is showing that some
Source: BBC News
Jan 14, 2011
Pope Benedict XVI has formally approved a miracle attributed to his late predecessor, paving the way to John Paul II's beatification on 1 May.
The process of beatification, or declaring the late pontiff to be "blessed", is a crucial step towards making him a saint.
John Paul II died in 2005 after a papacy of nearly 27 years.
The Vatican credits him with the miraculous cure of a nun said to have had Parkinson's Disease.
Church official
Source: Medievalists.net
Jan 13, 2011
A medieval wall painting at the Tower of London has received some special attention from scientists at Nottingham Trent University. Dr Haida Liang and her team of researchers were invited by Historic Royal Palaces to use hi-tech equipment developed at the University to examine the 14th century Byward Tower wall painting – without the need to touch or damage it in any way.
For the past six years, Dr Liang and her team have been refining the development and use of non-invasive techniq
Source: Stuff
Jan 13, 2011
A Russian film crew is in Wellington researching a little-known Kiwi war hero awarded a rare medal by the former Soviet Union.
Wing Commander Henry Ramsbottom-Isherwood, who was born in Petone in 1905, led a RAF fighter wing from inside the Arctic circle at Murmansk after Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.
Russian state television company Rossiya-1, which broadcasts to up to 140 million Russians, is making a documentary and book that will include his story as par
Source: Live Science
Jan 13, 2011
What may be the earliest known relative of T. rex and all meat-eating dinosaurs has been discovered.
The dog-sized mini-predator would've made its future relatives proud as it fed on small dinosaurs and the young of other reptiles, and is now shaking up what scientists had previously learned about the evolution of those extinct giants.
The small, lanky, two-legged carnivore named Eodromaeus murphi -- Eodromaeus being Greek for "dawn runner," murphi in honor o
Source: CNN
Jan 13, 2011
Members of the Senate and House armed services committees currently are talking to the Pentagon about the next round of hearings on Afghanistan, trying to coordinate sessions with the U.S. commander there, Gen. David Petraeus.
When Petraeus, probably the best-known military man in the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan, returns to answer questions, the television lights will shine on the four stars he wears on each shoulder.
Now a new debate is swirling in Washington, thanks
