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: Sify News
Aug 31, 2010
Chinese archaeologists have found the ruins of two prehistoric villages in Tongliao City of eastern Inner Mongolia.
The archaeologistsin north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region found the ruins in Hamin'aile Village, of Horqin Left-wing Middle Banner (County).
The remains were identified in the spring as possibly originating from Hongshan Culture, dating back 5,000 years, said Ji Ping, a researcher at the Institute of Cultural and Historical Relics and Archaeology
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Aug 31, 2010
Canadian scientists' announcement Monday that they failed to find the final resting place of British naval hero Sir John Franklin deepened one of the most enduring mysteries of the Arctic.
In May 1845, Franklin set sail from England with 134 men aboard two ships, the Terror and Erebus, to search for the fabled Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic to the Pacific Ocean. Five sailors left the ship in Greenland. The rest were never heard from again.
Last week, a si
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 31, 2010
...But now researchers believe they will be able to raise the Titanic - digitally - after amazing High Definition images were beamed back from its final resting place.
Images originally designed to give scientists an insight into how long it takes for wrecks to disintegrate are to be turned into a 3D map of the wreckage.
It will mean people could one day be able to take a 3D tour of the shipwreck.
Using state-of-the art HD robotic cameras and sonar, scient
Source: AP
Aug 31, 2010
A former Argentine military officer is going to have to wait a little longer to find out if he will be sent to Argentina to stand trial on charges that he was involved in a 1972 massacre of leftist guerrillas.
A federal judge in Miami said at a hearing Tuesday he would issue a written decision in a few weeks in the case of 68-year-old Roberto Guillermo Bravo.
Argentina wants Bravo to face 16 counts of murder and other charges in the 1972 killings. Bravo's attorney says
Source: CNN
Aug 31, 2010
President Obama telephoned former President George W. Bush from Air Force One in advance of Tuesday night's prime time speech regarding the end of the combat mission in Iraq - but the White House isn't saying what the two men discussed.
Obama called his predecessor while flying to Fort Bliss to meet with military personnel Tuesday morning ahead of his Oval Office address. The two spoke for several minutes according to Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton. There were no details about t
Source: CNN
Aug 31, 2010
Almost 7½ years ago, President George W. Bush launched a blistering "shock and awe" invasion of Iraq.
The goal: eliminate a perceived threat of weapons of mass destruction while replacing a hostile, tyrannical regime with a friendly democracy in the heart of the Middle East.
At 5 p.m. ET Tuesday -- at a cost of more than 4,400 U.S. military personnel killed and 30,000 wounded -- America's combat mission in Iraq will officially draw to a close.
The
Source: The Telegraph
Aug 31, 2010
As Captain John Webster’s Jeep approached a small German town in 1945, he ordered his driver to turn down an unmade track. The officer had glimpsed some white buildings which, he recalls, “just didn’t look right”.
Capt Webster, senior liaison officer with Lowland Brigade HQ of the 15th Scottish Division, had been sent to find an armoured column that had failed to make contact with his unit in the British advance into north Germany in April 1945.
He told his driver to pr
Source: Kiev Post
Aug 31, 2010
The percentage of Russians approving of the signing in August 1939 of the treaty of non-aggression between the USSR and the Nazi Germany (the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact) has noticeably dropped from 40% to 33% in the past five years, sociologists from the Levada-Center told Interfax on Monday.
Forty-six percent respondents are unaware about the pact's existence at all (37% in 2005), according to the findings of a nationwide poll conducted on August 20-23. The document is condemned by 5
Source: AFP
Aug 31, 2010
Fish frying will become legal in Gloucester and people will be allowed to beat carpets in Blackpool under government plans announced Tuesday to let local councils scrap outdated byelaws.
Local Government Minister Grant Shapps outlined the proposals as part of a strategy to hand power back to councils and communities.
The reforms will mean that councils can create new byelaws or get rid of old ones without seeking permission from Whitehall.Under the
Source: The Telegraph
Aug 31, 2010
The problem became so severe that British aircraft were ordered to try to avoid travelling over the sea because too many being drowned, it has emerged.
Amid the 70th anniversary commemorations this summer it can be disclosed that at least 200 pilots died “needlessly” in 1940 after bailing out over water.
Once they hit the water there was very little chance of survival with only the occasional flier being picked up by a passing destroyer or fishing boat.
The
Source: NYT
Aug 30, 2010
Orange County has been a national symbol of conservatism for more than 50 years: birthplace of President Richard M. Nixon and home to John Wayne, a bastion for the John Birch Society, a land of orange groves and affluence, the region of California where Republican presidential candidates could always count on a friendly audience.
But this iconic county of 3.1 million people passed something of a milestone in June. The percentage of registered Republican voters dropped to 43 percent,
Source: LA Times
Aug 30, 2010
The Bank of Mexico said Monday it would place in circulation a new 500-peso bill featuring the well-known faces of two of the country's best-known artists, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. In the bank's official video to promote the bill's anti-counterfeiting features (embedded above in Spanish), two figures resembling the celebrity couple stroll in costume around traditional and modern sites in Mexico.....
Source: New York Times
Aug 30, 2010
For the first time in more than half a century, Germany’s political leadership appears ready to end the draft, a post World War II mandate embedded in the Constitution to prevent this nation’s military from ever again developing into a state-within-a-state that could impede democracy and start war.
The idea of the draft has become an anachronism in the post-cold-war world, where security concerns have shifted, demanding smaller, professional militaries to deal with hot spots around
Source: New York Times
Aug 30, 2010
Don’t tread on Andy C. McDonel.
This year, Mr. McDonel began flying a yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flag on his roof in this unincorporated area just outside Phoenix. The historic banner — which dates to 1775, when it was hoisted aboard ships during the initial days of the Revolutionary War — has been adopted by the Tea Party movement. But Mr. McDonel said that he had unfurled the flag for its historical significance and nothing else.
He notes that the banner, the Gadsden
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 30, 2010
A dragon-like dinosaur with vast claws terrorised Europe 80 million years ago, a study has found.
The creature was a powerfully-built meat-eating dinosaur with scythe-like claws for ripping its prey apart. It used its lower limbs to disembowel its victims.
Experts have named the seven-foot long dinosaur, which was discovered in Romania, Balaur bondoc, which means ''stocky dragon''.
Other fossils found in the same region include cow-sized relatives of gian
Source: AP
Aug 30, 2010
Israeli archaeologists believe thousands of ancient shards of flint found scattered around a fire pit in a cave near Tel Aviv might be the world's oldest known disposable knives.
Dating to the Stone Age, the tiny knives are believed to be at least 200,000 years old. A Tel Aviv University excavation team found the tools around a fireplace littered with charred animal bones.
Archaeologist Ran Barkai said he believes Stone Age hunter-gatherers used the rough, round-shaped
Source: AP
Aug 30, 2010
The Red Cross says nearly 15,000 people are still missing from the wars fought in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
The figures were released Monday to commemorate the International Day of the Disappeared.
About 10,500 of those missing are from the 1992-95 war in Bosnia, while 2,392 are from the 1991-95 conflict in Croatia. Another 1,839 are from the 1998-99 conflict in Kosovo.The International Committee of the Red Cross statement urges authoritie
Source: AP
Aug 30, 2010
A Vietnam War-era artillery shell exploded and killed a villager in southern Vietnam as he was cutting it up for scrap metal.
Long Duc village chief Truong Hoang Hai in the southern province of Soc Trang said the man was killed in the explosion Monday that also seriously wounded his wife. The man was in his early 40s.
Vietnamese government figures show unexploded ordnance has killed more than 42,000 people and wounded some 62,000 since the conflict ended in 1975....
Source: AP
Aug 30, 2010
Venezuelan authorities exhumed the remains of Simon Bolivar's sisters Monday, seeking genetic clues to help them investigate President Hugo Chavez's theory that the South American independence hero may have been murdered.
Scientists and forensic experts extracted DNA samples from the bones of Juana and Maria Antonia Bolivar — the only siblings of the man known in Venezuela as "El Libertador" — after authorities opened their tombs inside a cathedral in downtown Caracas, Vic
Source: The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Aug 30, 2010
Crafted from steel and carved in a never-ending circle, a monument to be built by world-renowned architect Daniel Libeskind will be the first Canadian tribute to the MS St. Louis, a ship carrying Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany that the Canadian government turned away in 1939.
The ship’s journey is a black mark for Canada, because a third of its 900 occupants later died in Nazi concentration camps. A lack of public awareness about the incident led the Canadian Jewish Congress to h
