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: National Parks Traveler
Aug 28, 2010
To demolish, or not demolish. That is the question being pondered by officials at Gettysburg National Military Park over their empty Cyclorama building.
Originally, park officials were planning to tear down the structure, which became somewhat obsolete after the Cyclorama painting -- an elaborate depiction of Pickett's Charge up Cemetery Ridge -- was moved to the park's new visitor center. But then a federal court ordered the park to consider other alternatives for the building, whi
Source: BBC
Aug 28, 2010
Rwanda has threatened to withdraw co-operation with the UN if a draft report criticising its army is published.
Kigali said it would reconsider its contributions to UN peacekeeping missions, dismissing claims in the UN report as "insane".
The document accuses Rwanda's Tutsi-led army of killing Hutus in Democratic Republic of Congo in the 1990s - acts it says may amount to genocide.
Extremist Hutus killed an estimated 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda durin
Source: CNN
Aug 28, 2010
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s niece is slated to speak Saturday at a controversial rally by radio talk show host Glenn Beck scheduled to take place in the same location as her uncle's "I Have a Dream" speech.
Saturday is also the 47th anniversary of the speech the civil rights leader delivered in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
Beck, a hero to many conservative voters across the country, says that the mission of the rally is to honor American troops and t
Source: New York Times
Aug 28, 2010
JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. — The American economy could experience painfully slow growth and stubbornly high unemployment for a decade or longer as a result of the 2007 collapse of the housing market and the economic turmoil that followed, according to an authority on the history of financial crises.That finding, contained in a new paper by Carmen M. Reinhart, an economist at the University of Maryland, generated considerable debate during an annual policy symposium here, organized
Source: Savannah Morning News
Aug 27, 2010
Covered over for a couple of hundred years, a British-built Revolutionary War fort at Ebenezer shows up perfectly on Dan Elliott's ground-penetrating radar as a set of squiggly lines.
Just a few feet away, radar shows more squiggly lines, this time indicating several graves outside the cemetery fence.
"The story of the dead here is really interesting, and complicated," said Elliott, who, since 1987, has been worked on several projects at Ebenezer.
Source: S.F. Chronicle
Aug 27, 2010
Scientists are studying sonar images of a shipwreck loaded with 3.5 million gallons of crude oil in the holds of a tanker that lies 4 miles off the scenic Central California coast like a rusting time bomb.
The American tanker Montebello was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine Dec. 23, 1941, only 16 days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and sank in 900 feet of water. The Montebello has lain on the bottom ever since.Japanese submarine attacks on ships o
Source: BBC News
Aug 27, 2010
The dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago by at least two meteorite impacts, rather than a single strike, a new study suggests.
Previously, scientists had identified a huge impact crater in the Gulf of Mexico as the event that spelled doom for the dinosaurs.
Now evidence for a second impact in Ukraine has been uncovered.
This raises the possibility that the Earth may have been bombarded by a whole shower of meteorites.
The new findings
Source: National Geographic News
Aug 27, 2010
Notes on the back of a 400-year-old letter have revealed a previously unknown language once spoken by indigenous peoples of northern Peru, an archaeologist says.
Penned by an unknown Spanish author and lost for four centuries, the battered piece of paper was pulled from the ruins of an ancient Spanish colonial church in 2008.
But a team of scientists and linguists has only recently revealed the importance of the words written on the flip side of the letter.
Source: BBC
Aug 27, 2010
Police in Japan have arrested the daughter and granddaughter of a centenarian believed to be Tokyo's oldest man whose mummified remains were found last month.
The pair are suspected of fraudulently receiving the dead man's pension.
Records said he was 111 years old, it is thought he had probably been dead for 30 years....
Source: BBC
Aug 27, 2010
A draft UN report says crimes by the Rwandan army and allied rebels in Democratic Republic of Congo could be classified as genocide.
The report, seen by the BBC, details the investigation into the conflict in DR Congo from 1993 to 2003.
It says tens of thousands of ethnic Hutus, including women, children and the elderly, were killed by the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan army.
Rwanda's justice minister has dismissed the claims as "rubbish".
T
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 27, 2010
An Australian school has apologised after a child dressed as Adolf Hitler won a costume parade.
The boy was judged best dressed among his class of nine and 10-years-olds by the principal and other teachers in a book week contest, with the costume which featured the swastika.
The unnamed Perth Catholic school sent a letter of apology to parents after a number of complaints that commending an outfit of the Nazi dictator was inappropriate.
Meanwhile a US Hi
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 27, 2010
Glenn Beck, the Right-wing broadcaster, has been accused of "hijacking" the legacy of Martin Luther King by staging a rally at the location of his "I have a dream speech".
Critics said Beck and his followers in the Tea Party were trying to "dishonour" King, the figurehead of America's civil rights and a hero to millions.
They ridiculed claims by the Fox News presenter that his purpose was to "reclaim the civil rights movement",
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 27, 2010
Tens of thousands of Kenyans gathered to celebrate the country’s president Mwai Kibaki signing into law a new constitution promised more than two decades ago.
The new US-style laws include a Bill of Rights and reforms to policies designed to address long-held grievances over land stolen by corrupt politicians.
Demands for the constitution stretch back to the end of one-party rule by former president Daniel Arap Moi at the beginning of the 1990s.
Two-thir
Source: AP
Aug 27, 2010
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il reportedly met top Chinese leaders on Friday in an apparent bid for Beijing's diplomatic and financial support for a succession plan involving his third and youngest son, who is said to be traveling with him.
Many North Korea watchers predict the son -- Kim Jong Un, believed to be in his 20s -- will be appointed to a key party position at a ruling Workers' Party meeting early next month -- the first such gathering in decades.
China, as
Source: AP
Aug 27, 2010
Sudan's president defied an international arrest warrant by visiting Kenya on Friday, causing an outcry from the International Criminal Court which fruitlessly pressured authorities here into arresting the man accused of masterminding the genocide in Darfur.
Rather than arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who was invited along with other regional leaders for the signing of Kenya's new constitution, officials here treated him with the dignity accorded a head of state. Wearing a
Source: Fox News
Aug 27, 2010
Hurricane Devastated Political Futures as Well as New Orleans.
Five years ago, Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf region, killing nearly 2,000 and displacing more than 250,000 others from Louisiana to Florida. This week, in a series titled "Hurricane Katrina: Five Years After," FoxNews.com looks back on the costliest natural disaster ever to strike the United States.
Hurricane Katrina flooded a city five years ago and took with it lives, property and dignit
Source: CNN
Aug 27, 2010
Japan, one of the few industrialized countries with the death penalty, showed one of its execution chambers to the media for the first time Friday.
Reporters were shown the death chamber at the Tokyo Detention Facility, one of seven used across the country, according to a report in the Mainichi Daily News.
The unprecedented media access was ordered by Justice Minister Keiko Chiba, who after witnessing the deaths of two condemned prisoners last month, said she wanted to
Source: BBC News
Aug 27, 2010
A Catholic school in Australia has apologised to parents after teachers awarded a costume prize to a child dressed as Adolf Hitler.
The class of nine- and 10-year-olds had been asked to dress up as famous people at the school in Western Australia.
Teachers declared the winner to be a boy who dressed as the Nazi leader, who was wearing an outfit featuring the swastika.
The principal said in hindsight the school would have done it differently.
Th
Source: Discovery News
Aug 26, 2010
The skis and instruments of a physicist who accompanied Captain Scott to Antarctica are being sold by the scientist's Canadian grandson.
The skis and scientific instruments of a physicist who accompanied Captain Scott on his ill-fated trip to the Antarctic will be sold in London next month, Christie's auctioneers said Wednesday.
Canadian scientist Charles Seymour Wright was part of the support team that set off with Captain Robert Falcon Scott in 1910, although he turne
Source: BBC
Aug 26, 2010
As the US prepares to withdraw its last combat troops from Iraq, international cultural experts are warning that the country is "bleeding antiquities" and that artefacts representing the world's cradle of civilisation are still in peril.
Precise figures are hard to establish because much of Iraq's art and antiques remains undocumented. In 2003 an estimated 15,000 artefacts were stolen from the Iraqi National Museum and only about a third have been returned.
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