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: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 13, 2010
Barack Obama and Sarah Palin are 10th cousins through a common ancestor, John Smith, a 17th century pastor, according to genealogists.
Ancestry.com found that the two politicians, who could face each other in the 2012 race for the White House, are both related to Mr Smith, a Protestant pastor who was an early settler in Massachusetts.
The website, based in Provo, Utah, also discovered that Mr Obama was a 10th cousin once removed from Rush Limbaugh, the conservative tal
Source: AP
Oct 13, 2010
Cambodia's U.N.-backed genocide tribunal has moved its five Khmer Rouge prisoners out of the custom-built jail in Phnom Penh where they have been held because it is at risk of flooding after heavy rains this week, a spokesman said Wednesday.
Tribunal spokesman Lars Olsen did not disclose where they were moved to Tuesday. The five are among the former leaders of ultra-communist regime during whose 1975-79 rule an estimated 1.7 million people were executed or died from overwork, dise
Source: Medievalists.net
Oct 12, 2010
If one is interested in experiencing how people lived in Anglo-Saxon England, a trip to Lincolnshire might offer some unique insights. In the village of East Firsby a reconstruction of the 7th-century home has been built by Steven and Jude Jones. Based on archaeological evidence and built with traditional tools, Saxonhouse is an attempt to show how ordinary people lived and worked during the Early Middle Ages.
Saxonhouse is open to visitors, where Steven and Jude, both teachers, tal
Source: NYT
Oct 12, 2010
HANOI, Vietnam — A visit to Vietnam this week by Robert M. Gates, the United States defense secretary, is just the latest step in a bilateral relationship that is at its warmest since diplomatic ties were established 15 years ago.
A steady progression of careful gestures has eroded the enmities of the Vietnam War, built a basis of increasing trust and turned the two nations’ attention, in large part, from issues of the past to the present....
It is an issue with some hi
Source: Yahoo News
Oct 12, 2010
MOSCOW – A Russian archaeologist claimed Tuesday to have found the well-preserved ruins of a "Caucasian Stonehenge" built by a previously unknown Bronze Age civilization in southern Russia.
Andrey Belinskiy said that unusual circular settings made of stones were found at one of some 200 settlements that date back to 1600 B.C. and are located in the North Caucasus mountains. The settlements have been uncovered in the past five years by a Russian-German expedition he heads,
Source: The New Republic
Oct 12, 2010
The Senate recently held its third in a series of hearings on for-profit schools, many of which stand accused of mismanaging federal dollars and employing sketchy recruitment tactics, only to have less than half of their students graduate. Among those under scrutiny are big-name proprietary schools like the University of Phoenix and Kaplan. When undercover investigators applied at 15 for-profit colleges, they found recruiters misleading applicants and encouraging fraud so the would-be students—a
Source: Discovery News
Oct 12, 2010
Early humans appear to have occupied a much lower link of the food chain than their modern counterparts.
Early humans may have evolved as prey animals rather than as predators, suggest the remains of our prehistoric primate ancestors that were devoured by hungry birds and carnivorous mammals.
The discovery of multiple de-fleshed, chomped and gnawed bones from the extinct primates, which lived 16 to 20 million years ago on Rusinga Island, Kenya, was announced today at th
Source: Discovery News
Oct 12, 2010
Early humans must have taken care of this elderly member of their group, providing some of the first evidence of compassion.
A prehistoric pelvis, nicknamed "Elvis," and other fossilized bones are what's left of the world's first known elderly human with clear signs of aging and impairment, according to a paper in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The remains, which date back to 500,000 years ago, also represent the earliest post-cran
Source: BBC
Oct 12, 2010
The eldest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il says he opposes a dynastic succession that would see his younger half-brother take power.
Kim Jong-un, the youngest son, has been unveiled as the nation's heir apparent, appearing alongside his father at a series of recent high-profile events.
His elder brother, Kim Jong-nam, 39, lives overseas in China and Macau.
His comments are highly unusual in the secretive North. But he is not thought to have influence
Source: BBC
Oct 12, 2010
A copy of the 1,200-year-old book which the Pope gave to the Queen on his visit to the UK has gone on display at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh.
The manuscript, known as the Lorsch Gospels, contains more than 400 pages written entirely in gold ink on vellum.
The facsimile edition which Benedict XVI presented to the Queen featured reproductions of the ivory covers.
During the visit the Queen presented the Pontiff with a facsimile of drawings by Han
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 12, 2010
New Zealand's national museum has sparked outrage by telling pregnant women to stay away from a tour of sacred Maori artefacts, or risk incurring a curse.
The Wellington-based museum, known as Te Papa - a Maori name that translates as "Our Place" - said it was imposing the rule as a condition demanded by tribes that had provided some of the items.
The "stay away" warning went out to staff from regional museums who have been invited to a behind-the-s
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 12, 2010
Demi Moore is selling two 19th century European paintings at auction, including a French work the actress says inspired her because of the artist's depiction of strong women.
William Bouguereau's Frère et Soeur, an oil painting of a young woman tenderly holding her baby brother, could fetch up to $1.5 million (£950,000) at Sotheby's on November 4.
It was painted in 1887 by the French artist, whose work is enjoying renewed interest.
Moore's other painting,
Source: AP
Oct 12, 2010
An Egyptian court convicted 11 officials from the Culture Ministry, including the deputy minister, of gross negligence and incompetence in the theft of a Vincent Van Gogh painting that embarrassed the government.
The defendants received sentences of three years in prison and will have to post a bond of $1,800 to stay out of prison until the appeal.
The "Poppy Flower," valued at $50 million was stolen in broad daylight from Cairo's Mahmoud Khalil Museum. Subseq
Source: CNN.com
Oct 12, 2010
Condoleezza Rice's personal memoir of her family history hits the book stands Tuesday. In "Extraordinary, Ordinary People," the former U.S. Secretary of State recalls much of her family's time during the Civil Rights era in Birmingham.
Rice has said that she will write a memoir about her eight years in the White House but felt she could not do so until people understood the "personal and implausible journey" she had taken from being born in 1950s segregated Alaba
Source: Spiegel Online
Oct 12, 2010
US President Jimmy Carter and German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt seemed like good friends in public. Behind the scenes, however, they didn't much care for each other. Indeed, not having to deal with Schmidt anymore, Carter wrote in his diary, was the only positive aspect to losing to Ronald Reagan in 1980.
Helmut Schmidt was Germany's chancellor from 1974 to 1982, and Jimmy Carter was the president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. Though they have both grown older now, they are
Source: Spiegel Online
Oct 12, 2010
The Israel Chamber Orchestra plans to play music by Richard Wagner, the composer revered by Hitler, during the annual Wagner Festival in Bayreuth next year. The move is controversial in Israel, where the composer's work has been shunned for decades.
The music of Richard Wagner, Hitler's favorite composer, is hated in Israel and has been unofficially banned there for decades. But the Jewish Austrian conductor Roberto Paternostro, the musical director of the Israel Chamber Orchestra,
Source: NewsLeader.com (VA)
Oct 12, 2010
CHARLOTTESVILLE — Letters, military strategies, meeting notes, journals and other historical documents from the Founding Fathers that illustrate the building of the United States of America more than 200 years ago will be made available to the general public for free, thanks to a cooperative agreement between the University of Virginia Press and the National Archives.
The agreement will create a new website to provide free access to the fully annotated published papers of key figure
Source: Deutsche Welle
Oct 12, 2010
What are memorials, and is it important that they occupy public space? Certainly they're a call to remembrance and reflection, but does a "digital memorial" leave out something important by letting people choose when they observe it?
In Munich, an audio map titled Memory Loops by artist and musician Michaela Melian has raised questions like these. The project is a digital memorial to the victims of National Socialism in the Bavarian capital. It draws on archival and audio
Source: Guardian (UK)
Oct 12, 2010
It is one of Britain's most-loved ancient hill figures, careering across the downland. Now vets are being urged to question whether the White Horse of Uffington was meant to be a horse at all.
Challenging the traditional description of the Oxfordshire landmark, retired vet Olaf Swarbrick asks whether the "beautiful, stylised" figure might instead be a dog such as a greyhound or wolfhound.
In a letter to the Veterinary Record, his profession's journal, the form
Source: Irish Central
Oct 12, 2010
During the Troubles, hundreds of men and women were convicted of terrorist activities on the basis of convictions that in many cases were beaten out of them in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. Among them were children as young as 14 and 16 who were tortured for days on end.
The Diplock court system allowed for convictions on the basis of confessions only, and non jury trials.A pervasive culture of forcing confessions to win convictions has now been revealed by a Guardian newspaper inves
