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
Oct 5, 2010
n 1986, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal made an unprecedented secret deal with Justice William J. Brennan Jr., who had by then served on the Supreme Court for 30 years and was its leading liberal voice.
“I basically would sneak up to his chambers at 7 o’clock in the morning and interview him and go through papers,” the reporter, Stephen Wermiel, said last week. Over the next four years, Mr. Wermiel conducted 60 hours of interviews....
The idea behind their arrang
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 5, 2010
Marilyn Monroe wrote of her devastation at discovering that Arthur Miller had written in his diary that she was an embarrassment to him, new archives have disclosed.
The actress recorded her anguish in a poem in which she appeared to call the playwright a “peaceful monster” after finding the entry during their 1956 summer stay in England.
Miller complained in his diary that he was “disappointed” with the world’s most adored sex symbol and sometimes felt embarrassed by h
Source: Salon
Oct 5, 2010
The FBI looked into rumors that Jack Kemp, then a long-serving Republican member of Congress, was gay as a potential source of concern during a 1989 background check. The agency finally concluded that the chatter -- which haunted, and hindered, Kemp's attempts to advance in national politics for years -- was unsubstantiated.
Kemp, who died in May 2009, started his professional life as a quarterback in the National Football League and the old American Football League before throwing
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 5, 2010
Kim Jong-un, the heir to the North Korean regime, has reportedly undergone plastic surgery so that he more closely resembles his grandfather, the deeply respected Kim Il-sung.
The speculation began in South Korea after the release last week of the first official photographs of the 27-year-old son of Kim Jong-il.
The images show a chubby, nervous looking young man sitting in the front row of a packed auditorium as he was named vice chairman of the Central Military Commi
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 5, 2010
A convicted Nazi war criminal serving a life sentence for the massacre of hundreds of civilians outside Rome during the Second World War has been allowed out on shopping trips, sparking anger in Italy.
Erich Priebke, 97, a former captain in the SS, is serving the sentence under house arrest near Rome for his part in the murder of 335 Jews, partisans and prisoners of war in March 1944 at the Ardeatine Caves, on the outskirts of the city. He was extradited to Italy in 1995 after bein
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 5, 2010
Moscow's new acting mayor is pushing to remove a giant statue of Peter the Great from the heart of the capital, as part of an unravelling of his sacked predecessor's legacy.
The statue, a work by sculptor Zurab Tsereteli, a nearly 328ft high edifice in central Moscow, was vehemently opposed when the Moscow government, headed by Yury Luzhkov, erected it in 1997.
The statue, which sits on the tip of a Moscow river island less than a mile from the Kremlin, pictures Peter t
Source: AOL News
Oct 5, 2010
The discovery in 2002 of a limestone burial box with the Hebrew inscription "James son of Joseph brother of Jesus" electrified the world of archaeology. If genuine, the burial box, or ossuary, would be the only archaeological artifact yet found with a possible direct link to Jesus of Nazareth.
Amid international fanfare, the ossuary went on display at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum and swiftly spawned numerous articles, scholarly studies, several documentary movies and at
Source: AP
Oct 5, 2010
The head of Rome's Jewish community joined the Vatican newspaper and others Tuesday in sharply rebuking Premier Silvio Berlusconi for a joke about Jews, money and the Holocaust which was caught on videotape.
The joke was one of several controversial comments Berlusconi made while chatting with fans outside his residence on his 74th birthday last week. His comments were captured on video and broadcast this weekend on the website of the left-leaning La Repubblica newspaper.
Source: AP
Oct 5, 2010
A former commander of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Bosnia testified Tuesday that Radovan Karadzic directed Serb troops to terrorize civilians with sniping campaigns and reduce Muslim enclaves to near starvation throughout the country's devastating war.
British Gen. Michael Rose's testimony at Karadzic's genocide trial is expected to be key to proving the former Bosnian Serb leader had complete control over troops responsible for the 1992-95 conflict's most bloody atrocities.
Source: CNN
Oct 5, 2010
Members of the Tea Party movement tend to be Christian conservatives, not libertarians, and are more likely than even white evangelical Christians to say the United States is a Christian nation, a detailed new study has found.
More than half of self-identified Tea Party members say America is a Christian nation, while just over four out of 10 white evangelicals believe that - the same as the proportion of the general population that says so.
The details come from the
Source: Hurriyet (Turkey)
Oct 5, 2010
Turkey's Hagia Sophia museum in Istanbul has been granted Italy's prestigious Rotondi Award to the Saviors of Art for the restorations carried out in the museum.
In a written statement Tuesday, the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism said the Hagia Sophia was presented with the Rotondi Award by the Arca dell’Arte Museum in a ceremony held in Sassocorvaro in central Italy on Sept. 25.
The statement said the Rotondi Award had been presented to individuals or instituti
Source: The Art Newspaper
Oct 5, 2010
Lichen are eating away at the Moai, the 400 volcanic stone heads that dominate the skyline of Easter Island. Earlier treatments to preserve these ancient monoliths at this World Heritage Site called for filling some of the most deeply corroded stones with concrete. Unfortunately, experts think that this treatment might have worsened the damaging effects of the wind and saltwater that batter the Polynesian island. In fact, the lichen may even be feeding off the concrete used to save the Moai.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Oct 5, 2010
Organisers of a village museum's Second World War exhibition have covered up a swastika on a flag in case it offends visitors.
The banner, taken from the Olympic stadium in Berlin in 1945 by a local soldier, was one of the most eye-catching exhibits.
But 'one or two people' at a preview of the display complained that it showed a lack of respect to villagers who died in the war.
Not wishing to upset anyone, the museum committee decided to hide the swastika from view by
Source: CNN
Oct 5, 2010
A judge in Manhattan sentenced Faisal Shahzad to life in prison for the botched Times Square car bombing as the 31-year-old Pakistani-American defiantly warned in court to "brace yourself, the war with Muslims has just begun."
"The defeat of the U.S. is imminent, inshallah, " Shahzad said on Tuesday during the sentencing..
Speaking in a 14th-floor courtroom where a clear view of the World Trade Center site can be seen through a window, Shahzad said Muslims have
Source: BBC News
Oct 5, 2010
Giant carnivorous dinosaur skeletons rarely go on sale, so this week is a particularly exciting one for avid fossil collectors, with the auctioning in Paris of an Allosaurus skeleton.
The Sothebys sale is the second large auction of fossils in less than six months, after Bonhams sold more than 400 dinosaur items in New York in May.
The Allosaurus - an older, smaller cousin of the Tyrannosaurus Rex - walked the earth 155 to 145 million years ago, and weighed up to three
Source: bbc News
Oct 5, 2010
A life-size bronze sculpture by Henri Matisse could fetch up to $35m (£22m) when it goes up for auction next month.
The work, titled Back IV (Nu de Dos, 4eme etat), will be on offer at Christie's in New York on 3 November.
Owned by an anonymous private collector, it has never been sold at auction before.
Conor Jordan, head of impressionist and modern art at Christie's America, said it was a "milestone in the evolution of modernist style".
Source: BBC News
Oct 5, 2010
Serbia's leader has said the ousting of Slobodan Milosevic 10 years ago marked the establishment of the Balkan country's democracy.
Marking the 10th anniversary at a conference in the capital Belgrade, President Boris Tadic said Serbia was closer to joining the European Union.
But commemorations of the event, in which crowds backed by a bulldozer stormed parliament, were muted.
There was little sign of any public gathering in Belgrade.
Both the
Source: Discovery News
Oct 4, 2010
Forget childhood obesity and behavioral problems. Little ones in the 17th Century met colorful ends from eating poisonous beans, falling off wharves and the vague “failure to thrive,” according to Dr. Howard A. Pearson's analysis of colonial doctors' letters in the most recent issue of Pediatrics magazine.
Over one-fifth of infants in some colonial communities died before their first birthdays. So, what was pediatric health-care coverage like in colonial times when kids had it so t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 4, 2010
For 70 years the Parisian apartment had been left uninhabited, under lock and key, the rent faithfully paid but no hint of what was inside.
Behind the door, under a thick layer of dusk lay a treasure trove of turn-of-the-century objects including a painting by the 19th century Italian artist Giovanni Boldini.
The woman who owned the flat had left for the south of France before the Second World War and never returned.
But when she died recently aged 91, expe
Source: Yahoo News
Oct 4, 2010
NEW YORK - Since the remains of a wooden ship were unearthed at the World Trade Center construction site in mid-July, a horde of researchers has been putting the vessel under the microscope - sometimes literally - in a quest to piece together the true story of the resurrected ship, and save it from decay.
On Thursday, three of the experts most intimately involved with the 18th-century mystery ship - Michael Pappalardo, an archeologist, Norman Brouwer, a maritime historian, and Nicho
