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: WaPo
Dec 5, 2010
HELENA, Mont. -- Native Americans who sued the federal government over lost royalties have been waiting nearly 15 years for the $3.4 billion settlement Congress passed last month. Now they'll have to wait some more.
The plaintiffs expect it will be at least next August before Indian trust landowners see a dime, and six months after that before the last claims are settled with trust account holders....
The dispute began over property owned by the Indians and held in trus
Source: National Parks Traveler
Dec 5, 2010
How can Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument better interpret the history it seeks to preserve? That's a relatively simple question, but one not so easily answered.
The monument that seeks to interpret Custer's Last Stand in June 1876 against the Sioux Nation is undersized, needs a larger visitor center with room for artifacts in a more appropriate location, and currently leads visitors in a backward direction tracing the U.S. Army's 7th Cavalry defeat at the hands of the Si
Source: BBC News
Dec 5, 2010
A rare window into life in imperial Russia is due to open on Monday, when hundreds of letters, postcards, photographs and even menus from the court of Tsar Alexander III are put up for auction in Geneva.
The documents were all sent by Alexander's children, Nicholas (who later became Nicholas II), George, Michael, Olga and Xenia to their Swiss tutor Ferdinand Thormeyer.
Mr Thormeyer was born and brought up in Geneva, but emigrated to Russia as a young man where - in 1886
Source: BBC News
Dec 5, 2010
A newly-discovered poem by Philip Larkin will be heard for the first time on a BBC TV documentary about his relationship with his secretary.
The unpublished poem, Dear Jake, was among other rarely-seen works found in a lost notebook by producers of Philip Larkin and the Third Woman.
The poems, sent in 1976 to his secretary of 28 years Betty Mackereth - now 87 - reveal her as a muse.
In the programme, she speaks for the first time about being his lover.
Source: NYT
Dec 5, 2010
They came in throngs. On Friday afternoon hundreds of residents from this tiny hilltop town in eastern Sicily excitedly trekked up the steep slope to the town’s archaeology museum to celebrate the return to Aidone of a treasure trove that was buried nearby some 2,200 years ago and illegally whisked away in more recent times.
This year this cache of 16 Hellenistic silver-gilt objects known as the Morgantina silver was on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. For decade
Source: BBC
Dec 5, 2010
A rare window into life in imperial Russia is due to open on Monday, when hundreds of letters, postcards, photographs and even menus from the court of Tsar Alexander III are put up for auction in Geneva.
The documents were all sent by Alexander's children, Nicholas (who later became Nicholas II), George, Michael, Olga and Xenia to their Swiss tutor Ferdinand Thormeyer.
Mr Thormeyer was born and brought up in Geneva, but emigrated to Russia as a young man where - in 1886
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 5, 2010
From small-town boy to leader of the free world, disgraced US president to rehabilitated elder statesman, the life of Bill Clinton has been one of dramatic turns.
An opera about him is being performed in the state where in 1946 he was born, as he once said, "in a place called Hope".
Yet 'Billy Blythe' eschews the melodramatic tumult of the late 1990s, when Mr Clinton faced public and political humiliation over his affair with Monica Lewinksy, a White House i
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 5, 2010
Michelangelo scribbled jokes, thoughts and mundane shopping lists in the margins of his artistic sketches, providing a fascinating insight into his moods and artistic genius, a new book reveals.
The Renaissance artist is best known for great works such as the statue of David and the Sistine Chapel ceiling but he also left behind around 600 cartoons and drawings.
The scraps of writing on about a third of the drawings include lines of poetry, memos to his assistants, ex
Source: AP
Dec 5, 2010
Danish actor Palle Huld, who reportedly inspired a Belgian cartoonist to create the comic book reporter Tintin, has died. He was 98.
Huld died Nov. 26 in a retirement home in Copenhagen. The cause of death was not given.
Huld was a stage actor with Denmark's Royal Theater, and he appeared in 40 Danish films between 1933 and 2000....
Source: AP
Dec 5, 2010
Maria Esther Gatti de Islas, a human rights activist who helped found Uruguay's organization of relatives of people who disappeared during South America's "dirty wars," died Sunday at age 92, her group said.
A photograph of the eyes of her missing 18-month-old granddaughter became a symbol of the struggle of Uruguayan families to find out what happened to their loved ones who were taken away by a military dictatorship.
The girl was taken at the same time Gatti
Source: CNN
Dec 5, 2010
The alma mater of journalist Helen Thomas will not bestow an award that had been given in her name, making the decision after the 90-year-old scribe made more controversial comments about Jewish people.
Wayne State University, the Detroit, Michigan, institution that Thomas graduated from in 1942, said in a statement Friday that the school will no longer give out the Helen Thomas Spirit of Diversity in the Media Award.
Thomas abrupty retired earlier this year from her po
Source: NYT
Dec 5, 2010
LANDOVER, Md. — In defending their work, members of Congress love to repeat a quotation attributed to Otto von Bismarck: “If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made.”...
But a visit to a sausage factory here, about 10 miles from the Capitol, suggests that Bismarck and today’s politicians are mistaken. In many ways, that quotation is offensive to sausage makers; their process is better controlled and more predictable.
“I’m so insulted whe
Source: NYT
Dec 5, 2010
SAN ANTONIO — For 105 years, a private organization of women descended from Texas pioneers has been taking care of the Alamo with very little oversight by the state.
But in the last year members of the group, the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, have found themselves besieged and divided. Dissidents have accused the leaders of caring more about building a $36 million library and theater nearby than about preserving the site’s old church and priest’s quarters, the only buildings r
Source: CNN
Dec 5, 2010
Former President George W. Bush has stayed out of politics since he left the White House and, except for his own career, he largely keeps the subject at arm's length in his new memoir, "Decision Points."
In an interview with Oprah Winfrey to air on Tuesday when the book is to be released, Bush said he is "through with politics" and refused to offer an opinion on the 2012 presidential election.
In the 481-page book Bush compliments Obama's political
Source: The Sun (UK)
Dec 4, 2010
THE relatives of three soldiers who perished in World War One are being urged to come forward - so the men can be buried with full military honours.
The bodies of the Lancashire Fusiliers have been uncovered during an archaeological dig in Belgium. Experts, who were searching for the remains of 22 soldiers killed in a skirmish with the Germans near the River Lys also uncovered the Fusiliers' cap badges....
Source: BBC News
Dec 4, 2010
Nearly two months on from the toxic sludge spillage, Hungary is to use its communist heritage to benefit the victims of the disaster.
Dozens of images of Lenin jostle for space on the brick wall of a gallery in the Hungarian capital, Budapest. An imposing life-size bust of a historic communist leader looks on from its spot in the corner....
The paintings, photographs and sculptures, a legacy of Hungary's communist era, are to be auctioned by the government to raise fund
Source: Roanoke Times
Dec 4, 2010
The Civil War ended in 1865, but a skirmish about the display of the losing side's flags returned Thursday to Lexington, burial ground for both Gen. Robert E. Lee and Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson.
A local group of the Sons of Confederate Veterans wanted to fly Confederate flags from lampposts on downtown streets from Jan. 10 to 15 to celebrate Lee-Jackson Day, a state holiday set for Jan. 14.
Lexington City Council weighed the request Thursday night and vot
Source: Cnet News
Dec 4, 2010
If you've ever taken Lincoln Boulevard through the Presidio here, you almost certainly didn't know that you passed within feet of one of the best-preserved World War II-era anti-aircraft machine gun nests in the country.
In fact, all around the Presidio are dozens of these original trenches and fox holes, most of which are completely grown over with weeds and other vegetation, but many of which still have the pillars on which Army crews once mounted their .50 caliber guns in prepara
Source: BBC
Dec 3, 2010
A military museum in Bury is hoping to solve the mystery of three Lancashire Fusiliers killed in Belgium in 1914.
The bodies were among six found by a French archeologist in Le Touquet, a village south of Ypres, in November.
Officials from the Lancashire Fusiliers Museum believe the three men are from Wigan and Manchester.
But before they can be given a full military funeral, experts need to trace the soldiers' relatives to confirm their identities through
Source: UPI
Dec 3, 2010
ORKNEY, Scotland, Dec. 3 (UPI) -- British researchers say they've found the remains of at least eight people at an ancient Neolithic tomb site discovered in Scotland in October.
Archaeologists have discovered five chambers at the 5,000-year-old site on the Orkney Islands, two of which have been partially excavated, the BBC reported Thursday.
Bones found carefully placed in gaps in the stones inside the chambers suggest the ancient burial site has never been disturbed, t
