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: BBC
Aug 18, 2010
A funeral has been held for a Palestinian said to have been involved in the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre in which 11 Israeli athletes died.
The ceremony for Amin al-Hindi was held in Ramallah, with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and senior Palestinian leaders present. He was buried in Gaza.
Mr Hindi, who died aged 70 in Jordan on Tuesday, led the General Intelligence Service under the late Yasser Arafat.
In the 1970s, he was a security officer in the
Source: BBC News
Aug 18, 2010
A 4,000-year-old skeleton, known as the Queen of the Inch, is to be re-interred in the tiny island of Inchmarnock in the Firth of Clyde.
The grave was found by a farmer in the 1950s as he ploughed a field.
Preserved in an ancient cist, the remains included a necklace and dagger.
Despite being examined by archaeologists and reburied in the 1960s, the skeleton was recently exhumed and studied using modern research techniques.
Scientists have sinc
Source: Bucks Free Press
Aug 18, 2010
ARCHAEOLOGISTS investigating a mass burial of 97 infants were 'horrified' to find what they believe to be the skeleton of a dismembered child.
Chiltern Archaeologists suspect the site in Hambleden could have been a Roman brothel – where unwanted babies were systematically killed.
Dr Jill Eyers, who lives in Lane End, said the group has discovered cut marks on the bones of one of the babies.
She added: “These were knife marks and would represent a dismember
Source: NYT
Aug 18, 2010
[Charles A. Stevenson, a lecturer at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, is the author of “Warriors and Politicians: U.S. Civil-Military Relations Under Stress.”]
EARLIER this month the White House recommended that the Senate rehabilitate John D. Lavelle, an Air Force general who in 1972 was removed from his command in Vietnam and demoted to major general after he ordered unauthorized air strikes and created a system to falsely report them.
Source: NPR
Aug 18, 2010
They call it the mystery ship: a wooden vessel that may have sailed the Hudson River and the East Coast, transporting goods between the flourishing Colonies. Its remains were found last month in the ruins of the World Trade Center in New York City. They've since been moved to a science lab in Maryland, where each day brings new discoveries.
The first thing that hits you when you lean toward the enormous tanks filled with water, where scientists use small brushes to clean the timbers
Source: BBC
Aug 18, 2010
A 4,000-year-old skeleton, known as the Queen of the Inch, is to be re-interred in the tiny island of Inchmarnock in the Firth of Clyde.
The grave was found by a farmer in the 1950s as he ploughed a field.
Preserved in an ancient cist, the remains included a necklace and dagger.
Despite being examined by archaeologists and reburied in the 1960s, the skeleton was recently exhumed and studied using modern research techniques.
Scientists have sinc
Source: BBC
Aug 18, 2010
They are popularly called "terror birds", and with good reason.
The giant, flightless beasts that roamed South America for more than 50 million years following the demise of the dinosaurs were fearsome predators.
New research shows the birds' huge beaks could deliver swift and powerful pecks, very probably killing their victims in one blow before ripping the flesh from their bodies....
Source: BBC
Aug 18, 2010
The former head of the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund, Jeremy Ractliffe, has resigned from the charity's board after admitting he secretly kept diamonds received from the model Naomi Campbell.
Mr Ractliffe admitted he had the gems only when Ms Campbell mentioned him at the war crimes trial of former Liberian leader Charles Taylor two weeks ago.
Prosecutors say she received the diamonds from Mr Taylor in 1997.
Mr Ractliffe had apologised for his secrecy, th
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 18, 2010
Colonel Gaddafi's son has arranged for 500 youths from around the world to fly to Tripoli to celebrate the first anniversary of the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi.
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi has spent millions of pounds bringing hundreds of foreign teenagers to Tripoli for an event which was supposed to mark the UN Year of the Youth.
But those attending the gathering will find themselves at the centre of national celebrations commemorating the
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 18, 2010
A Second World War veteran who was once a driver for General Eisenhower in France has been murdered by a thief who escaped with just his bus pass and £40.
Geoffrey Bacon, 90, was attacked from behind on the doorstep of his home on a south London estate where he had lived since he was six years old.
He was punched and had his hip broken by being thrown to the floor, before the mugger stole his belongings and fled.
Family members paid tribute yesterday to
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 18, 2010
The debate over whether to build a mosque near the Ground Zero site of the Sept 11 terrorist attacks in New York is a "local decision", Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the US House of Representatives has said.
The controversial Cordoba Muslim cultural centre has become a national debate and created a split in the Democratic party ahead of November's mid-term elections.
Ms Pelosi said she backed calls for transparency regarding who is funding the project - an Isl
Source: AP
Aug 18, 2010
A year after Scotland's release of the terminally ill Lockerbie bomber caused an uproar, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi is still stirring outrage simply by surviving.
Loved ones of those killed in the 1988 jetliner bombing, who were told he would likely die within three months, feel betrayed. U.S. lawmakers are investigating whether oil giant BP pushed for his release from prison to get Libya's oil and are assailing Scotland for freeing him.
And with the anniversary Friday of a
Source: CNN
Aug 18, 2010
A DNA test on the remains of chess legend Bobby Fischer has determined that he is not the father of a Filipino girl, the girl's lawyer told CNN on Wednesday.
Results of the test "excluded" the possibility that Fischer, who died in January 2008, was the father of Jinky Young, lawyer Thordur Bogason said.
In June, Iceland's supreme court ruled in favor of a request by Young to exhume Fischer's remains in order to settle the question of paternity....
Source: CNN
Aug 18, 2010
Fossils from Australia show animal life on Earth began at least 650 million years ago, 70 million years earlier than previous estimates, Princeton University scientists report.
Princeton geosciences professor Adam Maloof and graduate student Catherine Rose came upon the fossils while researching a massive ice age, known as the “snowball effect,” that left much of the planet covered in ice 635 million years ago. Scientists had thought animal life could not have survived that ice age.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Aug 18, 2010
They were arch enemies, fighting each other for their very survival. But five years after bomber pilot William Ross was shot down and killed in the Second World War, it was a German soldier who showed compassion to the fiancee left behind.
Gernot Knop had witnessed the 28-year-old RAF sergeant’s death in anti-aircraft fire as he attacked a Nazi fuel ship.
And writing in English to Dorothy Bird, he told her of Sergeant Ross’s heroic last mission and returned to her the f
Source: National Parks Traveler
Aug 18, 2010
A summer archeological field program at Great Smoky Mountains National Park offered more than science for a group of students from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI)—it also allowed them to connect with their ancestral past.
At first glance, a description of the topics covered in the program is quite impressive: "Students participated in archeological excavations and were provided an opportunity to learn archeological field methods and regional culture history. Afterno
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 18, 2010
The vuvuzela has blasted its way into the Oxford Dictionary of English for the first time after becoming the sound of the World Cup.
Along with other new words like tweetup, cheeseball and turducken, it is included in the third edition of the dictionary, published today (THURS).
The word vuvuzela has only been in common use since the summer when the long horn began to be heard at the World Cup matches in South Africa.
It is one of more than 2,000 new words
Source: Fox News
Aug 18, 2010
Fearing the U.S. is a sinking ship, a man from North Carolina's Piedmont has set out on a mission to teach everyday Americans how to shoot a rifle and how to embrace their Revolutionary War history.
"How do you measure the value of liberty to a society?" Appleseed Project founder Jack Dailey asked a small group of families and individuals that gathered this past weekend at the West Georgia Youth Range in Georgia's Haralson County. "Wouldn't you measure it by the numbe
Source: Live Science
Aug 18, 2010
Fossils of what could be the oldest animal bodies have been discovered in Australia, pushing back the clock on when animal life first appeared on Earth to at least 70 million years earlier than previously thought.
The results suggest that primitive sponge-like creatures lived in ocean reefs about 650 million years ago. Digital images of the fossils suggest the animals were about a centimeter in size (the width of your small fingertip) and had irregularly shaped bodies with a network
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 17, 2010
An American journalist saved up to 4,000 Jews from the Nazis and helped ship some of the brightest Jewish minds from art and literature to New York, newly released passenger figures show.
Those saved by Varian Fry, known as the American Oskar Schindler, include Marc Chagall, the Jewish French-Russian artist, Claude Levi-Strauss, the French anthropologist, and surrealist artist, Marcel Duchamp.
But while Schindler, a German Industrialist, has been internationally recogn
