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: NYT
Nov 20, 2010
When editors at the University of California Press pondered the possible demand for “Autobiography of Mark Twain,” a $35, four-pound, 500,000-word doorstopper of a memoir, they kept their expectations modest with a planned print run of 7,500 copies.
Now it is a smash hit across the country, landing on best-seller lists and going back to press six times, for a total print run — so far — of 275,000. The publisher cannot print copies quickly enough, leaving some bookstores and online r
Source: AP
Nov 19, 2010
WASHINGTON – The Senate has approved almost $4.6 billion to settle long-standing claims brought by American Indians and black farmers against the government.
The money has been held up for months in the Senate as Democrats and Republicans squabbled over how to pay for it. The two class action lawsuits were filed over a decade ago.
The settlements include almost $1.2 billion for black farmers who say they suffered discrimination at the hands of the Agriculture Department
Source: Guardian (UK)
Nov 19, 2010
The £27m project to build a new visitor centre at Stonehenge and make other much-needed improvements to the world heritage site received a boost last night when the Heritage Lottery Fund said it would contribute £10m. Visitors have long expressed disappointment and sometimes astonishment at the state of facilities at the iconic monument in Wiltshire.
English Heritage announced plans last year to build a new visitor centre, including a cafe and education facilities, a mile and a half
Source: TIME.com
Nov 19, 2010
Every year around this time, a tempest brews in the mountains just north of Madrid. On the weekend closest to Nov. 20, devotees of Francisco Franco, who died on that day in 1975, travel to the elaborate basilica-turned-mausoleum called Valley of the Fallen, where he is buried. There, they pay homage to the general who ruled Spain as dictator for nearly 40 years. Because the site is owned by the state, the event produces heated complaints over the Spanish government's continued financial support
Source: NYT
Nov 19, 2010
INDIANAPOLIS — In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel “Cat’s Cradle,” the narrator meets a woman on a plane who is delighted to discover that he is from Indiana. Holding his arm tightly, she tells him, “We Hoosiers got to stick together.”
Mr. Vonnegut’s writing was filled with references to his Midwestern roots and to the tight-knit families he met growing up here. Still, some readers may be surprised that his memorial library is opening in his hometown, Indianapolis, and not on the East Coast, w
Source: NYT
Nov 19, 2010
Nearing 40 and nearly broke, ousted from his last job as an English professor, a folklore buff named Robert Winslow Gordon set out in the spring of 1926 from his temporary home on the Georgia seacoast, lugging a hand-cranked cylinder recorder and searching for songs in the nearby black hamlets.
One particular day, Mr. Gordon captured the sound of someone identified only as H. Wylie, singing a lilting, swaying spiritual in the key of A. The lyrics told of people in despair and in tro
Source: NYT
Nov 19, 2010
WASHINGTON — The Senate on Friday approved $4.55 billion to settle longstanding charges that the federal government had denied or underpaid aid to black farmers and mismanaged trust funds for American Indians.
The bill sets aside $1.15 billion to resolve racial bias claims brought by black farmers against the Agriculture Department and $3.4 billion to pay claims stemming from the Department of the Interior’s handling of American Indian trust funds.
The Senate appr
Source: NYT
Nov 19, 2010
ANDREW RAMOS always believed it made him more charming, an endearing characteristic integral to his identity. But, finally, after too many people mocked him, he began seeing a therapist....
“I was diagnosed with a New York accent,” Mr. Ramos said....
The New York accent is a distinctive amalgam of Irish, German, Yiddish and Italian — now infused with black and Hispanic dialects and a Caribbean lilt — that was identified at least as far back as the early 19th century. In
Source: Discovery News
Nov 19, 2010
Noodles, moon cakes and other foods dating to 2,500 years ago were recently unearthed in a Chinese cemetery.
Noodles, cakes, porridge, and meat bones dating to around 2,500 years ago were recently unearthed at a Chinese cemetery, according to a paper that will appear in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
Since the cakes were cooked in an oven-like hearth, the findings suggest that the Chinese may have been among the world's first bakers. Prior research determined
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 19, 2010
A first glimpse of a controversial biopic about South Africa's Winnie Mandela which promises to restore her reputation as Mother of the Nation has been provided by the leaking of the official trailer on the Internet.
"Winnie" is due for release next year and stars American actress Jennifer Hudson in the lead role. It tells the story of struggle veteran Winnie Madikizela-Mandela's journey from rural childhood to Johannesburg social worker to wife of one of the world's most
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 19, 2010
Two ancient statues stolen in the 1980s from Italian museums, including a bronze statue of the Greek god Zeus, have ben returned home.
The Zeus statue and a marble female torso, both dating from the 1st century, had ended up in the hands of a dealer and a collector in New York, officials told a news conference Friday in Rome.
The torso, from a small museum in Terracina, south of Rome, was on display in a Madison Ave. art gallery when Michele Speranza, a member of the I
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 19, 2010
Protesters will demand the removal of the cross that towers above the tomb of Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco when they take to the streets on Saturday on the 35 anniversary of his death.
A demonstration has been called at the gates of Valle de los Caidos – The Valley of the Fallen – a vast basilica carved out of living rock in the hills 30 miles northwest of Madrid to call for the monument to be destroyed.
The Federation for Historical Memory said that it c
Source: AP
Nov 19, 2010
As Mexico prepares to mark 100 years since a revolution fought to install democracy and improve the lot of the country's landless peasants, many are focusing on how short it fell from its mark.
Mexico's democracy is anemic and the plight of the poor remains largely unchanged, critics say.
Two protest marches were planned in Mexico City on Friday to denounce what organizers called the failures of the bloody, seven-year conflict that began Nov. 20, 1910, and saw peasant a
Source: CNN
Nov 19, 2010
A settlement in New York City will pay out hundreds of millions of dollars to ground zero workers exposed to toxic debris after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, lawyers said Friday.
Plaintiffs narrowly approved the deal after facing a Tuesday night deadline that required 95 percent of some 10,000 people who worked at ground zero to approve the measure, according to Marc Berns, an attorney for the plaintiffs.
In March, U.S. District Court Judge Alvin Hellerstei
Source: Art Daily
Nov 19, 2010
A Prehispanic sculpture that represents a beheaded ballgame player was discovered by archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) at El Teul Archaeological Zone, in Zacatecas, one of the few Mesoamerican sites continuously occupied for 18 centuries.
The life-size finding took place during research work conducted for the opening to public visit of the ceremonial site in 2012. The quarry dates from 900-1100 of the Common Era and evidence determines th
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 19, 2010
Next week it will be 20 years since Margaret Thatcher fell. Pressure had been building on a number of fronts, but the issue which finally destroyed her was the yet-to-be-born euro. In the last weekend of October 1990, she travelled to a European summit in Rome, where Jacques Delors’ dream of European Monetary Union was high on the agenda. But while Mrs Thatcher was fighting her lone battle against the prospective single currency abroad, she was being fatally undermined at home. Geoffrey Howe, he
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
Nov 18, 2010
The Olympia - last surviving warship of the Spanish-American War of 1898 - may still be scrapped or face a watery grave as an artificial reef off Cape May without money for restoration.
But the Penn's Landing attraction will not close as originally planned Monday after the Independence Seaport Museum's decision, announced late Wednesday, to fund interim repairs.
The Olympia will continue its daily visiting hours through Dec. 31, then move to a three-day schedule throu
Source: NC Register
Nov 18, 2010
SOCORRO, N.M. (CNS) — The adobe churches that are a scenic fixture of New Mexico’s landscape are crumbling from the inside out.
Father Andrew Pavlak knows this all too well. As the only priest assigned to a parish that encompasses most of Socorro County, his responsibilities include not only his main church, the 400-year-old San Miguel, but another nine churches, including seven made of adobe.
One of them, Sagrada Familia, (Holy Family) in the community of Lemitar, had
Source: AFP
Nov 18, 2010
NUREMBERG, Germany — The actual dock where Hermann Goering and other top Nazis sat in the Nuremberg trials features in a new exhibit opening this weekend in the same courthouse, exactly 65 years on.
The exhibit, due to be inaugurated on Sunday by Russia's foreign minister and senior US, British, French and German officials, is aimed at meeting growing interest in the ground-breaking trials in Germany and around the world.
It is located in the attic one storey above the
Source: BBC News
Nov 18, 2010
Two previously unknown violin sonatas by Antonio Vivaldi have been uncovered after lying hidden in a collection of manuscripts for 270 years.
The works, thought to have been written for amateur musicians, were found in a 180-page portfolio after it was donated to the Foundling Museum in London.
One of the rediscovered compositions will be performed at Liverpool Hope University on Sunday.
It is likely to be its first airing in the modern era, the university
