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: Discovery News
Sep 20, 2010
Physical traces of ethnic cleansing that took place in the early 800s suggest the massacre was an inside job.
Crushed leg bones, battered skulls and other mutilated human remains are likely all that's left of a Native American population destroyed by genocide that took place circa 800 A.D., suggests a new study.
The paper, accepted for publication in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, describes the single largest deposit to date of mutilated and processed human
Source: BBC
Sep 20, 2010
The US recession lasted 18 months and was the most prolonged since World War II, a report has concluded.
The National Bureau of Economic Research said the recovery began in June 2009, with recession having begun in 2007.
Its views carry weight in the US, even though there is usually a lag before it reaches a position, said BBC World Service economics editor Andrew Walker.
The organisation's figures take in data beyond simply GDP....
Source: BBC
Sep 20, 2010
Scientists have uncovered mechanisms that allow plants to thrive in highly radioactive environments like Chernobyl.
They analysed seeds from soybean and flax grown near the site of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor which was hit by a series of explosions in 1986.
The team says that plants may have an innate ability to cope with radioactivity.
The study appears in the Environmental Science and Technology journal.
One of the researchers speculates t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 20, 2010
Boston is planning to build a new museum on the site of the Tea Party, the Revolutionary event in which colonists protested against British tax by dumping three ship loads' worth of tea into the harbour.
All that currently marks the site of the 1773 protest in the Fort Point Channel is a commemorative plaque. But as the namesake Right-wing movement continues to grow in prominence and success, the Massachusetts city has announced plans to build a museum that would include restoring
Source: Fox News
Sep 20, 2010
The cancer-stricken Lockerbie bomber can get out of bed and walk, although he is a very sick man, the father of a victim reportedly said after visiting him in Libya.
Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi invited Jim Swire, whose 23-year-old daughter Flora was killed in the 1988 bombing, to visit him and the two men spent an hour together in a hospital ward in Tripoli on Tuesday, Agence France-Presse news agency reported late Sunday.
Swire, who is British, is convinced Al-Megrahi is inn
Source: AP
Sep 20, 2010
North Korea will hold its biggest political meeting in 30 years next week, state media said Tuesday, as observers watch for signs that the secretive regime's aging leader will appoint his son to succeed him.
Now 68, and reportedly in poor health two years after suffering a stroke, Kim Jong Il is believed to be setting in motion a plan to tap a son to take the Kim dynasty into a third generation by appointing his heir to top party posts at the Workers' Party convention.
Source: CNN
Sep 20, 2010
Don Rumsfeld's long-anticipated memoir will be released in January, and the former defense secretary isn't going to pull any punches, his publisher said Monday.
The upcoming book – "Known and Unknown" – will hit book stores January 25 and "is filled with previously undisclosed details and insights about the Bush administration, 9/11, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq," according to the book's publisher, Sentinel, a division of Penguin.
The book's
Source: CNN
Sep 20, 2010
The imam behind the proposed Islamic center and mosque near ground zero is largely avoiding New York City because of security concerns and is receiving protection from the New York Police Department, according to those close to the imam.
Morton, former dean of New York's Cathedral of St. John the Divine, said the imam was mostly avoiding New York, where he typically works, since returning from a State Department trip to the Middle East two weeks ago.
Rauf did not attend
Source: CNN
Sep 20, 2010
The Vatican Apostolic Library reopened its hallowed halls Monday following a three-year renovation, according to library officials.
Climate-controlled rooms for precious manuscripts, electronic microchips in books, and state-of-the-art security measures to prevent theft and loss are just a few of the changes made to the library, officials said.
Pictures released by the Vatican give the public a rare view of the library, which is open only to teachers, scholars and resea
Source: AOL News
Sep 20, 2010
...Using DNA tests, archaeologists believe they have identified at least two people of African descent buried at the site of the first European colony in the Americas, La Isabela, which was founded (and swiftly abandoned) by Columbus in the late 15th century.
La Isabela -- on the north coast of what is now the Dominican Republic -- was established by Columbus in 1493 on his second trip to the New World. His 17-ship armada dropped off 1,500 men (including Franciscan friars, farmers
Source: Salon
Sep 20, 2010
This week marks the publication of Jimmy Carter's private journal of his presidency, "White House Diary." The entries are often brief, but Carter does offer an interesting account of one of the most widely discussed moments of his doomed 1980 reelection effort: Ted Kennedy's apparent snub of him on the final night of the Democratic convention in New York, just after Carter had delivered his acceptance speech.
"Afterward," Carter writes in his diary, "Kennedy
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 20, 2010
Boston is planning to build a new museum on the site of the Tea Party, the Revolutionary event in which colonists protested against British tax by dumping three ship loads' worth of tea into the harbour.
All that currently marks the site of the 1773 protest in the Fort Point Channel is a commemorative plaque. But as the namesake Right-wing movement continues to grow in prominence and success, the Massachusetts city has announced plans to build a museum that would include restoring
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Sep 20, 2010
An ancient Egyptian queen who was been hailed for thousands of years as the perfect example of beauty may not have been such a looker after all, researchers have claimed.
The 3,300-year-old carved bust of Queen Nerfititi with her aquiline nose and high cheek bones has won her admiring fans around the world.
But a delicately carved face in the limestone core of the famous bust suggests the royal sculptor at the time may have smoothed creases around the mouth and fixed a
Source: AP
Sep 20, 2010
Ronald Oba grew up saluting the U.S. flag and saying the Pledge of Allegiance in school, like millions of other American boys.
But he was labeled an "enemy alien" after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, because his ancestors came from the same land as the attacking planes.
To prove his loyalty, Oba joined the Army as soon as President Franklin D. Roosevelt allowed Japanese-Americans to enlist. His segregated unit — the 442nd Regimental Combat Team — s
Source: LA Times
Sep 20, 2010
Reporting from Baltimore —
You're, like, totally not going to believe this but Baltimore declared Sunday " Frank Zappa Day," dedicating a bust in his honor.
Grody to the max.
Seventeen years after the rocker's death in Los Angeles, Zappa drew a large, fittingly eclectic crowd to a ceremony in the city where he was born.
"It's about time he got the recognition he deserves," said Greg Stinson, 50, accompanied by his 16-year-old son
Source: WaPo
Sep 20, 2010
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. made it sound so simple that day in 2007, when he and four other members of the Supreme Court declared that this city's efforts to desegregate its schools violated the Constitution.
"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race," Roberts wrote, "is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."
But life has been anything but simple for school officials here. They have steadfastly - or stubbornly, depending on t
Source: NYT
Sep 20, 2010
He sniffed at Hillary Rodham Clinton’s smugness, denounced Spiro T. Agnew as a demagogue, opposed Pamela Harriman’s application to a prestigious Manhattan club and called the Peace Corps elitist. He presciently raised the specter of global warming, advocated for safer cars and championed equal rights and recognition for women, especially his wife.
He huffed about the defense establishment that produced over-reaching military advice about Vietnam, fretted about making enough money, o
Source: NYT
Sep 20, 2010
...After many years of complaints about the racial insensitivity of having a man dressed as a Confederate soldier as the symbol of a university where 14 percent of students are black, Ole Miss is pulling the plug on Colonel Reb this football season....
It is part of a longstanding plan to recast the university’s image, still tarnished by its reputation for racial strife in the 1960s, to signal that it is more tolerant and diverse. Confederate battle flags were discouraged from footb
Source: NYT
Sep 20, 2010
A day after drawing both adoring crowds and the largest protests of his papacy, Pope Benedict XVI wrapped up a historic and contentious four-day visit to Britain on Sunday, moving a Catholic convert one step closer to sainthood and recalling the valor of Britons during the Second World War....
The pope praised Cardinal Newman, a 19th-century thinker and writer who left the Church of England and the pulpit of Oxford University to convert to Catholicism, for “his insights into the rel
Source: CNN
Sep 20, 2010
Betty Kilby was gripped with apprehension. Descendants of the white family that enslaved her kin were coming to dinner.
She scrolled through a mental Rolodex of relatives who might flip out. Her brothers had already asked her: Why would you want to meet the family of those who held our loved ones in bondage?
Phoebe says it started out awkwardly in those first few minutes when they met. One of Betty's brothers was awfully skeptical, she says, but he "warmed up a lit
