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: Mobile Advertiser-Tribune
Nov 2, 2010
The following is the latest installment of Mayor Jim Boroff's monthly updates on city issues.
Civil War Museum. Renovation has been started at the Cornerstone Building for the American Civil War Museum of Ohio. About two years ago, Mark Young, president of the Civil War Museum Board, expressed an interest in purchasing the Cornerstone Building at Main and South Washington streets to house the museum's exhibits.
To make the museum a reality, the city, in partnership with
Source: The State (SC)
Nov 2, 2010
Joe McGill can’t get enough exposure to South Carolina’s black history, which is why he occasionally spends nights in slave cabins and re-enacts in a Civil War uniform.
And with the 150th anniversary of the war approaching, he’s ready to promote those stories whenever he can.
“We’ve just got to press on and tell the story as we know it,” said McGill, who is black and works for the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
But with the state’s Civil War reme
Source: CS Monitor
Nov 2, 2010
Why are U.S. elections held on Tuesday?
We’re not asking why the US holds elections in the first place. We’re asking why everybody goes to the polls on that particular day of the week. Did the Founding Fathers think Tuesday was lonely and needed the attention? Is it a secret Masonic thing – if we voted on Thursdays, would the pillars of the National Archives crumble, revealing the awful truth behind Nicolas Cage’s film career?
Nope. It turns out that elections are held
Source: BBC News
Nov 2, 2010
David Cameron has said new treaties on defence and nuclear co-operation with France marked a "new chapter" in a long history of defence co-operation.
Speaking alongside French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the UK PM said it would make both countries' citizens safer and would save money.
A centre will be set up in the UK to develop nuclear testing technology and another in France to carry it out.
The leaders also confirmed plans for a joint army exped
Source: NYT
Nov 2, 2010
LOS ANGELES — Late last week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was still coming to terms with that most deeply confounding of European filmmakers, Jean-Luc Godard.
No one had yet signed on to present an honorary Oscar to Mr. Godard, who has said he will not be on hand anyway at the academy’s awards banquet in Hollywood a week from Saturday. But there was also the touchy question of how to deal with newly highlighted claims that Mr. Godard, a master of modern film, has
Source: BBC News
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: Discovery News
Nov 1, 2010
It's difficult to imagine such a monstrous figure as Adolf Hitler, Nazi dictator, eating a quaint breakfast of bread and marmalade every morning.
However, that is just one secret revealed courtesy of Britain's National Archives. Last week, it made public two previously classified archives. They add personal details to our portrait of Hitler and a fear the Allies had about a Nazi refuge to our World War II military history.
The breakfast tidbit comes from a 19-year-old A
Source: The Daily Beast
Nov 1, 2010
On Sunday night, just two days before the Democrats were to be on the receiving end of what George W. Bush once called a midterm “thumpin’,” Bush was at Game Four of the World Series in Arlington. It felt like some prelapsarian time before Hurricane Katrina and 20-percent approval ratings. Perched on a motorized cart, Bush and his father drove in from the outfield like America’s relief pitchers, called in to get the country out of a jam. When W. hurled the first pitch, the crowd went nuts.
Source: Fox News
Nov 1, 2010
Researchers are preparing to excavate the bones of some ancient animals found near Snowmass Village.
Crews from the Denver Museum of Nature & Science plan to start removing the bones Tuesday under an agreement reached with local officials.
A bulldozer operator discovered some rib bones while working on a construction project at Ziegler Reservoir last month. Since then, the museum said that at least one woolly mammoth and at least three mastodons have been found. Sev
Source: Hampton Roads
Nov 1, 2010
It’s a typical day at the Hatteras Histories and Mysteries Museum in Buxton, N.C., and Scott Dawson is buzzing around glass cases full of centuries-old arrowheads and broken pottery. Puzzled visitors listen as he explains for the gazillionth time the difference between fact and speculation. • He speaks with certainty in a voice tinged with more than a hint of frustration. • “Anybody who researches it knows that the colony came down here,” he says, confidently dismissing competing theories on Ame
Source: AP
Nov 1, 2010
British tea planter Gyles Mackrell organized one of the most remarkable rescue missions during World War II — by using elephants when nothing else would do.
Now researchers have released new information that tells, for the first time, the full story of Mackrell's successful effort to use the animals to evacuate hundreds of desperate Burmese refugees stranded by a rain-swollen river. On Monday, Britain's Cambridge University put online a video shot by Mackrell, which together with hi
Source: CNN.com
Nov 1, 2010
Washington (CNN) -- The government has started distributing additional benefits for Agent Orange exposure to Vietnam War veterans who qualify under liberalized rules, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced Monday.
Up to 200,000 Vietnam veterans could be eligible for the disability compensation for diseases now associated with Agent Orange, including hairy cell leukemia, Parkinson's disease and ischemic heart disease, the department said in a news release....
Source: GoUpstate.com
Nov 1, 2010
CHARLESTON — A black South Carolina lawmaker hopes the NAACP will end its tourism boycott of the state as the 150th anniversary of the Civil War approaches.
The Post and Courier of Charleston reported Sen. Robert Ford says it's time for the 11-year boycott to end....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 1, 2010
As the US Federal Reserve meets today to decide whether its next blast of quantitative easing should be $1 trillion or a more cautious $500bn, it does so knowing that China and the emerging world view the policy as an attempt to drive down the dollar.
The Fed's "QE2" risks accelerating the demise of the dollar-based currency system, perhaps leading to an unstable tripod with the euro and yuan, or a hybrid gold standard, or a multi-metal "bancor" along lines propo
Source: NYT
Nov 1, 2010
No matter how it turns out, at least one message from the midterm election is clear: this is not a moment of harmonic convergence....
Still, people tend to exaggerate their differences with opponents to begin with, research suggests, especially in the company of fellow partisans. In small groups organized around a cause, for instance, members are prone to one-up one another; the most extreme tend to rise the most quickly, making the group look more radical than it is....
Source: NYT
Nov 1, 2010
Babies born during the brief but intense Biafra famine in Nigeria 40 years ago have grown up to be more susceptible to obesity and its attendant maladies than those born on either side of it, scientists have found....
Biafra, the homeland of the Ibo tribe, tried to secede from Nigeria in 1967, in a dispute with other tribes and the military-led government over language, religion and oil reserves. The Nigerian Army, buoyed by support from Britain, the Soviet Union and the United Stat
Source: BBC News
Nov 1, 2010
Opening statements have begun in the money laundering trial of former US House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who prosecutors say channelled money into Texas legislative races in 2002.
Mr DeLay, is accused of illegally funnelling corporate money into races to build his political influence.
The 63-year-old Republican, who was nicknamed "the Hammer" for his forceful style in Congress, denies wrongdoing.
Mr DeLay's attorneys say he is guilty only of bein
Source: Voice of America
Nov 1, 2010
Japan reacted quickly and angrily to the Russian president's visit to a disputed island in the Kuril chain. The territorial dispute has overshadowed Russo-Japanese relations since the end of World War II.
As Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday made a brief tour of Kunashir - or Kunashiri to the Japanese - government officials in Japan wasted no time expressing strong displeasure.
Speaking at a parliamentary committee session, Prime Minister Naoto Kan reiterated
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Nov 1, 2010
The highest paid sportsman of all time was a slave-turned-chariot racer from Ancient Rome who earned a staggering £9.42billion, researchers have revealed.
Experts found details of Gaius Appuleius Diocles who was plucked from humble beginnings as a slave to become the a champion charioteer in second century Rome.
The immensely strong but illiterate athlete pocketed a cool 35,863,120 sesterces in prize money during his career - the same as £396million a year in today's te
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Nov 1, 2010
The story of a British man who rescued hundreds of people during the Second World War using a herd of elephants in an operation dubbed a "Far Eastern Dunkirk" is to be told in full for the first time.
Gyles Mackrell, a 53-year-old tea planter, saved 200 Burmese refugees from the banks of a flooded river using the only means he could think of to get them to safety - elephants.
Mackrell's rescue mission was followed by the press at the time, who nicknamed him th
