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
Nov 3, 2010
A collection of Indian sound recordings from the early 20th Century, which has never been made public before, has been put online and is available to download free.
The recordings were made by British colonial officers as part of a massive effort to study hundreds of different languages and dialects spoken in Britain's Indian Empire, which in those days stretched from the frontier with Afghanistan all the way into Burma.
The gramophone records were only recently tracked
Source: BBC
Nov 3, 2010
A French court has ordered the extradition of Rwandan rebel leader Callixte Mbarushimana to face trial at the International Criminal Court.
Mr Mbarushimana is accused of 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo last year.
His ethnic Hutu FDLR group is at the heart of years of conflict in eastern DR Congo, near Rwanda.
Arrested in France last month, he has previously denied war crimes charges.
Source: BBC
Nov 3, 2010
President Boris Tadic is to become the first Serbian leader to pay his respects to Croatian victims of a notorious 1991 massacre.
He will visit the town of Vukovar, which was captured after a three-month siege by the Serb-led Yugoslav army.
Mr Tadic will lay wreaths at a memorial commemorating the murder of 260 hospital patients.
He and Croatian President Ivo Josipovic will also go to a graveyard where 18 Serb villagers were killed by Croats.
C
Source: BBC
Nov 3, 2010
A detailed depiction of Henry VIII's so-called lost palace is expected to fetch up to £1.2m when it is auctioned.
Construction of Nonsuch Palace on the Surrey/London border began in 1538 on the 30th anniversary of the monarch's accession to the throne.
It stood on the site of Cuddington village, near Ewell before it fell into disrepair and disappeared in the 1690s.
A 1568 watercolour of the building painted by Joris Hoefnagel is to be auctioned at Christie'
Source: BBC
Nov 3, 2010
The flag of Norway is to be raised over Dumfries to mark the 70th anniversary of its special links with the nation.
The connection was made in World War II when the town played host to the exiled Norwegian army.
The relationship is celebrated annually in St Michael's Church where many of the servicemen worshipped.
Church elder, Richard Reade, said the local council had come on board to help recognise the added significance of this year's commemorations.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 3, 2010
Former President George W. Bush said being called a racist by rapper Kanye West was one of the worst moments of his eight years as President.
Mr Bush says criticism from some, including prominent rapper Kanye West, that his handling of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina showed he did not care about black people represented "an all-time low".
Mr Bush writes in his book, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, that his initial mistake on Katrina was failing to commun
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 3, 2010
The British Museum will exhibit a hoard of ancient Afghan gold jewellery after Kabul today (THURS) signs an agreement loaning the treasure to Britain.
The discovery of the Bactrian Hoard in a burial mound in northern Afghanistan is considered one of the greatest archaeological events of last century.
The collection of 21,000 pieces of finery buried by Afghanistan’s nomadic ancestors was feared looted from Kabul or melted down during the 1990s as the country endured ci
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 3, 2010
A model used on a chocolate box in the 1920s has had to be toned down for its 21st century re-launch after being deemed too raunchy for modern consumers.
Staff at the world famous Bettys Tea Rooms unearthed the ornate model on top of a 90-year-old chocolate box buried deep in their archives.
The racy image deemed suitable for the 20s has now been chosen to appear on the boxes of their new vintage chocolates, released later this month, but not before making the mystery
Source: AP
Nov 3, 2010
Viktor Chernomyrdin, who served as Russia's prime minister in the turbulent 1990s as the country was throwing off communism and developing as a market economy, died Wednesday. He was 72.
No cause of death has been released, but Chernomyrdin had grown thin in recent years and was reported to have been ill.
Chernomyrdin helped see Russia through some difficult times, including the economic devastation that followed the Soviet collapse and the war in Chechnya, and was much
Source: CNN
Nov 3, 2010
Protection from the Sahara's howling dust storms may have helped the Sphinx maintain its steady gaze over the millennia.
Newly discovered walls on the Giza plateau were part of an enclosure to protect the Sphinx from wind-borne sand, Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities says.
According to some texts, the walls were built by King Thutmose IV (1400-1390 BCE) because of a dream he had during a hunting trip, the council's secretary general, Zahi Hawass, said Tuesday....
Source: Politico
Nov 3, 2010
President Obama takes his last question of the presser: Will he be willing to change his leadership style? "Folks didn't have any complaints about my leadership style when I was running around Iowa for a year," Obama says....
Noting that Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton have had similar experiences, Obama jokes, "That's not something that I'm recommending to future American presidents, that they take a shellacking like I did last night."...
Source: BBC
Nov 2, 2010
Former US President George W Bush still has "a sickening feeling" about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, US media report.
He also reveals that he temporarily considered replacing Vice President Dick Cheney, calling him the "Darth Vader of the administration".
But he has no comment on his successor in the White House, Barack Obama.
The 64-year-old former president defends his decision to invade Iraq in his autobiog
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 2, 2010
American Ballet Theatre dancers promised pirouettes – not politics – during the troupe's historic visit to Cuba this week, the first by the New York-based company since shortly after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution turned the island into a U.S. nemesis.
America's premier ballet company was in Havana to pay homage to Cuba's most famous ballerina, 89-year-old Alicia Alonso, who danced with the American Ballet Theatre in the 1940s and 50s before returning to her homeland to found Cuba's
Source: WV Daily
Nov 2, 2010
Since Abby Aldrich Rockefeller acquired it in 1935, an 18th century watercolor has stymied scholars, historians and art enthusiasts who hoped to identify its artist. Now, more than 200 years after placing brush to paper, John Rose has been identified as the painter.
Rose’s identity might never have been known if not for the digging of librarian Susan P. Shames. Shames, a decorative arts librarian for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, used primary documents and existing scholarsh
Source: The Atlantic
Nov 2, 2010
Voting has seen its share of technological change since the founding of our Republic. From paper ballots filled out by hand to the Votomatic to the latest in touchscreen computerized voting, the practice of democracy has long been carried out through the technology of the day.
For your 2010 election day viewing pleasure, here's a gallery of the various devices that we've used to cast our ballots. Thanks go to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, which maintains spe
Source: BBC
Nov 2, 2010
Serbian police are searching three locations for the war-crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic, official sources say.
They are searching two locations in the capital Belgrade as well as a tourism centre in Arandjelova, a village in central Serbia.
Gen Mladic is accused by international prosecutors of genocide while leading Bosnian Serb forces in 1992-95.
Serbia is under pressure to bring Gen Mladic to justice as part of its efforts to enter the European Union.
Source: BBC
Nov 2, 2010
In France, for centuries, the idea of sharing military resources with perfidious Albion would have been unthinkable.
But the two countries have buried ancient enmities, and the prevailing view in France is that the relationship should nowadays be pragmatic and based firmly on realpolitik.
Of course, the relationship between the French and the British has always been a curious mix of mutual suspicion and admiration.
And the defence relationship has also been
Source: BBC
Nov 2, 2010
World War I saw the first widespread use of aerial reconnaisance in combat including one unfortunate group of German soldiers, who were discovered because they maintained flower beds outside their barracks.
In the catacombs of the Imperial War Museum, there is a collection of about 150,000 images taken from the air during World War I, documenting the tales of devastation that ripped through Europe between 1914 and 1918.
Air travel in aeroplanes was barely a decade old
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 2, 2010
The Dutch authorities have urgently recalled "Nazi" number plates issued to drivers after a computer error.
Over 100 car owners received licence plates with the letters "NSB" on them, a Dutch equivalent of the word Nazi.
NSB is the notorious abbreviation for the Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging, the Dutch fascist party which collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War. Number plates displaying the offending letters were recalled by the
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 2, 2010
A skeleton dug up from a cemetery in Sicily is shorter than the legendary bandit king who is supposed to have been buried there, lending weight to suspicions that he faked his own death.
The remains were exhumed in order to ascertain, once and for all, whether Salvatore Giuliano had a lookalike buried in his place and then escaped Italy for a new life in the United States. If still alive, he would be 88.
Surviving relatives of Italy's most famous bandit chieftain insi
