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: Jalopnik.com
Oct 18, 2010
During World War II, Allied forces readily admitted that German tanks were superior to their own. The big question for Allied forces, then, was how many tanks Germany was producing. Here's how they reverse-engineered serial numbers to find out.
To solve the problem of determining production numbers, the Allied forces initially tried conventional intelligence gathering: spying, intercepting and decoding transmissions and interrogating captured enemies.
Via this method, t
Source: NYT
Oct 18, 2010
JONESBORO, Ark. — The Southern white Democrat, long on the endangered list, is at risk of being pushed one step closer to extinction....
The swing has been under way since the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, when President Lyndon B. Johnson predicted that his fellow Democrats would face a backlash of white voters that would cost the party the South. It continued with Ronald Reagan’s election and reached a tipping point in the Republican sweep of 1994, with more than one-thi
Source: AFP
Oct 18, 2010
Egyptian archaeologists have discovered the tomb of a priest who conducted prayer rituals before statues of a dead pharaoh more than 4,000 years ago, the antiquities council said on Monday.
The tomb, which belonged to the priest Rwd-ka and dated back to the Fifth Dynasty of 2,514 to 2,374 BC, was found near the pyramids of Giza, antiquities chief Zahi Hawass told AFP.
One of the priest's roles was to lead a series or rituals and prayers before statues of a departed phar
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Oct 18, 2010
A perfectly preserved medieval village is set to lose its iconic cobbled paths over health and safety fears, it emerged today.
The historic settlement of Dunster, Somerset, dates back to Bronze and Iron Age Britain and is regarded as one of the most-perfectly preserved medieval villages in England.
The village attracts thousands of visitors a year because of its 1,000-year-old castle and quaint features including the medieval cobbled streets.
Now health and
Source: Live Science
Oct 18, 2010
The remains of a sunken warship recently found in the Mediterranean Sea may confirm the site of a major ancient battle in which Rome trounced Carthage.
The year was 241 B.C. and the players were the ascending Roman republic and the declining Carthaginian Empire, which was centered on the northernmost tip of Africa. The two powers were fighting for dominance in the Mediterranean in a series of conflicts called the Punic Wars.
Archaeologists think the newly discovered re
Source: Global Arab Network
Oct 18, 2010
Head of the Archaeology Department Nicolas Kabbad said one of the two presses is dedicated for olive pressing and the second for pressing grapes, adding that both presses are made up of rock basins engraved on rock designed for pressing and refinement, gathering the juice in a circular basin 1.5 m in diameter, with a hole for olive and grapes juice to pass.
He added the recent discovery is to be added to a series of archaeological discoveries at the site. The mission has already une
Source: CNN.com
Oct 18, 2010
Before it could open its doors in Philadelphia next month, the new National Museum of American Jewish History had to resolve a classic Jewish American predicament: how to treat Saturdays, the Jewish Sabbath.
If the museum remained open for the Sabbath - called Shabbat - the institution would be violating Jewish law, which forbids work and financial transactions on that day.
But if the museum closed for Shabbat, it would prevent the institution from carrying out its miss
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Oct 18, 2010
A former Japanese Tourist Bureau helper's 70-year-old diary has sparked an international search after it was discovered to contain photographs of supposedly Jewish men and women he helped escape the Nazis.
The yellowing images appear to show Jews who were led from the clutches of the anti-Semitic Nazis by Germany's close allies, Japan.
One of the photos shows a young man's monochrome portrait and although faded, it is still clear he had style. His hair is slicked down,
Source: BBC
Oct 18, 2010
Roman, Bronze and Iron Age remains have been unearthed at the site of a new bypass in Powys.
Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust (CPAT) said a number of interesting finds had been made, but nothing unusual at Four Crosses, near Welshpool.
Among the earliest sites found is a ringed ditch representing an early prehistoric burial mound.
Roman metalworking and farming activity was also discovered by archaeologists in the village....
Source: BBC
Oct 18, 2010
A Somerset village could lose its medieval cobbled paths because they are feared to be too dangerous.
People have been tripping over the cobbles in Dunster's High Street and suffering injuries, because of their poor state of repair.
Nobody is currently responsible for the cobbles.
The Dunster Working Group has said it wants to re-lay the cobbles but is worried about being sued if anyone falls in the future....
Source: Media Matters
Oct 18, 2010
Led by Glenn Beck -- who was once condemned by the Anti-Defamation League for saying Al Gore used "the same tactic" as Adolf Hitler -- Fox News personalities have frequently invoked Nazi Germany in their political commentary, often comparing progressives to Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, and the Nazi "brownshirts."...
Beck: Obama advisers show "the kind of thinking that ... eventually led to the Holocaust." On his October 5 radio show, Beck said that statemen
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 18, 2010
The campaign for a war-crimes tribunal to investigate alleged atrocities in the Sri Lankan civil war has intensified following the release of photographs which appeared to show a massacre of Tamils.
The photographs, which showed blood stained bodies of young men and women who had been blindfolded and had their hands tied behind their backs, were released by the Global Tamil Forum (GTF), a group which includes former supporters of the Tamil Tiger rebels.
Their release w
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 18, 2010
A rare poster showing the Titanic sailing into the sunset has sold for £69,000.
The 30x40 inch promotional poster was based on a painting by artist Montague Black showing the doomed liner and its sister ship Olympic passing each other at sea.
The 45,000 ton Olympic can be seen in the foreground with Titanic heading for the horizon in the distance.
The poster was commissioned by White Star Line before Titanic struck and iceberg and sank on April 15, 1912, k
Source: CNN
Oct 18, 2010
Australia got its first Catholic saint Sunday, a feisty 19th-century nun who was briefly excommunicated when her colleagues exposed an abusive priest.
Mary MacKillop co-founded the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart in 1867, and gained a reputation as the first Australian nun to leave the cities and minister to the rural poor.
Nuns in her order got evidence that a priest was engaged in "scandalous behavior," according to the Rev. Paul Gardiner, who has
Source: CNN
Oct 18, 2010
Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri are believed to be hiding close to each other in houses in northwest Pakistan, but are not together, a senior NATO official said.
Pakistan has repeatedly denied protecting members of the al Qaeda leadership.
The official said the general region where bin Laden is likely to have moved around in recent years ranges from the mountainous Chitral area in the far northwest near the Chinese border, to the Kurram Valley, which ad
Source: Steven Aftergood at Secrecy News
Oct 18, 2010
[Steven Aftergood is a senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists.]
It is to be expected that national intelligence services will sometimes fail to identify and discover a threat to the nation in a timely fashion. But when intelligence warns of a threat that isn’t really there, and then nations go to war to meet the phantom threat — that is a serious, confounding and deeply disturbing problem.
But in a nutshell, that is the story of the war in Ira
Source: Wall Street Journal
Oct 18, 2010
By the end of World War II, nearly 4,000 Boeing B-29 Superfortresses had been built, most of them to rain bombs on targets across the Pacific Theater. Today, there's only one B-29 still flying, and she's nicknamed "Fifi."
At a time when most vintage warplanes have retired to a quiet life on display in drafty museums, 65-year-old Fifi is embarking on a new mission: giving rides to paying enthusiasts and once again making the air-show rounds, which occasionally feature a sim
Source: AP
Oct 18, 2010
Russia's Interfax news agency is reporting that President Dmitry Medvedev has bestowed the country's highest state honors on the sleeper agents deported from the United States.
The report says the awards were made in a Kremlin ceremony on Monday, less than four months after the biggest spy swap between the U.S. and Russia since the Cold War. The report cites Medvedev's spokeswoman, Natalya Timakova.
In June, 10 Russian agents who infiltrated suburban America were deport
Source: CNN
Oct 18, 2010
The distant rumble of big guns on Fort Hood's artillery range rattles the ceiling tiles in the small military courtroom.
But the sounds of war training don't interrupt the intensity inside the military hearing as dozens of witnesses here recall that day last November when 13 people were shot to death and 32 wounded on the base in central Texas.
Training with Paladin howitzers is part of everyday life at Fort Hood, the country's largest Army base. Most of the shooting vi
Source: BBC News
Oct 18, 2010
A new online database lets Holocaust survivors and their relatives search details of more than 20,000 artworks stolen from Jews during World War II.
The database of works stolen from occupied France and Belgium between 1940 and 1944 includes Monet paintings.
It is a joint project of the Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Art collectors, galleries and museums can also make use of the free ser
