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: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 6, 2011
A little known drawing kept in a provincial British museum has been revealed to depict the product of a meeting between two of the country's most beloved and famous artistes.
The sparse sketch by John Constable has been identified as showing another 19th century artistic great - the poet William Wordsworth.
The drawing belonging to the Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM) in Exeter, Devon, was being formatted for inclusion on the museum's website when the curator of art,
Source: AP
Jan 6, 2011
The first study to link a childhood vaccine to autism was based on doctored information about the children involved, according to a new report on the widely discredited research.
The conclusions of the 1998 paper by Andrew Wakefield and colleagues was renounced by 10 of its 13 authors and later retracted by the medical journal Lancet, where it was published. Still, the suggestion the MMR shot was connected to autism spooked parents worldwide and immunization rates for measles, mumps
Source: BBC News
Jan 6, 2011
He was famous for painting the town red, but now a mural of George Best in his native east Belfast has been painted out of history.
The mural of the former Manchester United legend on the Woodstock Road was a popular attraction for tourists from around the world.
But now a decision has been made to replace it with another, to the concern of a number of people in the area.
Andy Moorhead of East Belfast Alternatives, which is in charge of the mural, explained
Source: BBC News
Jan 6, 2011
A new edition of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is causing controversy because of the removal of a racially offensive word.
Twain scholar Alan Gribben says the use of the word "nigger" had prompted many US schools to stop teaching the classic.
In his edition, Professor Gribben replaces the word with "slave" and also changes "injun" to "Indian".
But the publisher says hundreds of people have complained abo
Source: Your4State (MD)
Jan 5, 2011
FREDERICK, MD - Thousands of people visit historic sites in the our area each year, but few people know about the important roles African Americans played, especially when it comes to the Civil War and medicine. This is why the National Library of Medicine is teaming up with museums across the country to educate the public using a traveling exhibit.
Robert Hartman volunteers at the National Museums of Civil War Medicine on East Patrick Street in Frederick. He believes the contribut
Source: The Examiner
Jan 5, 2011
By the time it boasts all its glory, the “Grand Central of the West” will actually sit on the site of an ancient village archeologists recently dusted off one relic at a time on their hands and knees.
They found dozens of vestiges — dolls, a piece of a tent, tableware and “many, many liquor bottles” — that tell stories dating as far back as 1848 under a roughly 100-square-foot portion of a parking lot near First and Minna streets by the future Transbay Transit Center. Underneath the
Source: CNN
Jan 5, 2011
Austrian officials plan to exhume a mass grave near a psychiatric hospital that could contain victims of the Nazis' so-called euthanasia program.
Officials in the western Austrian city of Hall told UPI that they will begin digging in March, when the ground thaws. The process could take two years.
The Irish Times reported that construction workers at the hospital, about 6 miles east of Innsbruck, found 220 decomposed bodies while they were excavating the site for a new b
Source: Haaretz (Israel)
Jan 5, 2011
Over 915,000 visitors viewed exhibit in 2010, with 28% from Berlin, just under 40% from the rest of Germany and some 32% from abroad.
The exhibition "Hitler and the Germans" in Berlin has been extended by three weeks because of the throngs of visitors it continues to attract, the German Historical Museum announced on Wednesday.
Instead of ending on February 6, it will now close on February 27.
The exhibition features 600 objects and 400 photos in
Source: CNN
Jan 5, 2011
Several million people will decide in the next week or so whether to give birth to the world's newest nation.
They will cast ballots on whether to declare independence at polling stations sprinkled across the vast, flat plains of Southern Sudan, an East African landscape long riven by chaos.
War and famine have ravaged generations in the south for as long as anyone can remember. Fighting forced more people from their homes than in any other nation on earth. Hope remaine
Source: Spiegel Online
Jan 5, 2011
Not many people want to live in the isolated tracts of Siberia, where temperatures can fall to minus 40. But for the Old Believers, members of an offshoot of the Russian Orthodox Church who were persecuted by the Soviets, it's paradise. Now Moscow is trying to lure the deeply devout ethnic Russians back out of exile in a bid to repopulate the region.
With his white beard and felt jacket, Fjodor Kilin looks like he has stepped straight out of an oil painting by an old Russian master.
Source: Discovery News
Jan 4, 2011
This is no ordinary mummy. It did not originate from ancient Egypt or the Inca. It is not thousands of years old, nor is it wrapped in bandages. (In fact, if you look closely, you'll see this person died wearing knee-high stockings.)
This mummy is from North America. When he was alive, this person live in 18th-century Philadelphia. During a construction project in Philadelphia in 1875, the body was unearthed by accident.
But that's not what makes this mummy special.
Source: BBC
Jan 4, 2011
An extinct flightless bird from Jamaica fought rivals and predators using wings evolved into clubs, scientists suggest.
The boney bludgeons carried by Xenicibis xympithecus are unlike anything else known in the bird world - or in mammals, reptiles or amphibians.
Writing in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B, the scientists report finding bones that had apparently been broken by another bird's club.
The species may have survived until less than 10,000 y
Source: Bloomberg
Jan 4, 2011
The British Museum said it will prolong its loan to Iran of an ancient artifact for three more months, meeting a request by the Iranian authorities.
The Cyrus Cylinder, which went on show at the National Museum of Iran in September and was due back Jan. 16, will stay in Tehran until April 15 -- after late March celebrations of the Iranian New Year (Norouz), the museum’s press office said in an e-mailed statement.
“This decision has been taken in recognition of the fact
Source: NYT
Jan 4, 2011
The crime evoked a touch of nostalgia, tracing back to an era when political activism and crime sometimes went hand in hand. Hijackings, especially to Cuba, seemed commonplace.
Luis Armando Peña Soltren was one of three men accused of hijacking of Pan American Flight 281, bound for Puerto Rico but taken to Cuba on Nov. 24, 1968. The other two men have long since pleaded guilty and served their sentences.
After 40 years living as a fugitive in Cuba, Mr. Soltren, now 67,
Source: WaPo
Jan 4, 2011
The actual process is getting increasingly complicated -- the Senate's first "legislative day" might take a couple of weeks, for instance -- but Senate Democrats look to be pushing forward with their effort to reform the filibuster. Cue shock and horror. It's "a radical changing of the Senate's rules," writes Brian Darling, "a naked power grab." Democrats used much the same language in 2005, when Sen. Bill Frist sought to eliminate the filibuster on judicial nominat
Source: BBC
Jan 4, 2011
A US man of Cuban origin has been sentenced to 15 years in jail for hijacking a plane from New York to Cuba in 1968.
Luis Armando Pena Soltren, 67, boarded the Puerto Rico-bound plane with a pistol and a knife.
He forced the pilots to divert the plane, carrying 103 passengers and crew, to Havana.
Pena Soltren returned to the US from Cuba in 2009 reportedly to see his family. He pleaded guilty last March.
He was charged with conspiracy to commit
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 4, 2011
A veteran of Republican presidential administrations, including those of Ronald Reagan and George W Bush, has been found dead in a dump in Delaware.
The body of John Wheeler III, who also helped lead efforts to build the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall in Washington, was discovered on New Year's Eve as a rubbish truck emptied its contents at a landfill. His death has been ruled a homicide.
Wheeler, 66, retired from the military in 1971 and lived in Delaware state. He h
Source: CNN
Jan 4, 2011
A new tax on tourists to the Eternal City is causing controversy, with hotels expressing fears it could hurt their business and scare tourists away.
As of January 1, nonresidents of Rome must pay the extra charge when staying at a hotel or visiting any tourist site, such as a museum, that charges admission.
Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno introduced the tax law last year after the Italian government of Silvio Berlusconi cut funding to Italian cities, including Rome, as part
Source: CNN
Jan 4, 2011
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly appealed to President Barack Obama on Tuesday to release convicted spy Jonathan Pollard, promising Israel would never again spy on the United States in the way Pollard did.
The White House has received the letter and "will review it," White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said Tuesday.
Netanyahu agreed in December to formally request the release of Pollard, a former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst who was caught
Source: NYT
Jan 4, 2011
MOSCOW — A couple of months ago one of Russia’s elder statesmen set out on a paradoxical mission: to rehabilitate one of the most beloved figures in Russian history, Tolstoy.
This would have seemed unnecessary in 2010, a century after the author’s death. But last year Russians wrestled over Tolstoy much as they did when he was alive. Intellectuals accused the Russian Orthodox Church of blacklisting a national hero. The church accused Tolstoy of helping speed the rise of the Bolshev
