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: New York Observer
Aug 3, 2010
The way we look at 9/11 is about to undergo a radical change.
Quietly, as the city focuses on the ground zero mosque and Condé Nast's planned move to the neighborhood, Joe Daniels has been working on a $700 million monument to the dead. Mr. Daniels, president of the foundation behind the 9/11 Memorial and Museum at ground zero, is doing more than simply planning a museum-he and his team may well be reframing the dialogue about that day in a surprisingly forthright and confrontationa
Source: Seattle Pi
Aug 3, 2010
If Scott Sloan felt any regret as he watched the last of two remaining Liberty Ships cut into scrap, he concealed it well.
The expression on his face looked more like pure relief.
"These were war veterans, but they were almost 70 years old," Sloan said, watching as a gantry crane lifted one of the last chunks of the SS Woodbridge Ferris into the air and swung it toward a waiting barge.
"They weren't designed to withstand the ocean environment
Source: BBC News
Aug 3, 2010
The US military is to use manga-style comics to teach Japanese children about the two countries' security alliance.
Four comics featuring a Japanese girl and a visiting US boy will be posted online, each exploring how US and Japanese troops work together.
A US spokesman said they were intended as a light-hearted explanation of the history of the alliance.
The comics, marking 50 years of the security pact, come amid strained ties over US bases in Okinawa.
Source: CHE
Aug 3, 2010
...Roughly 800 miles from P'yongyang in Tokyo's leafy western suburbs, Korea University is an anomaly, an intellectual oasis in a society that distrusts and even despises the ethnic group it caters to—native Koreans loyal to P'yongyang. The institution has never received financial support or even official recognition from the government of Japan....
"The atmosphere now is very, very bad," said Kim Yang-Sun, an administrator at the university....
Mr. Kim's ance
Source: BBC News
Aug 3, 2010
An extreme storm may have contributed to the deaths of famed climbers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine as they tried to reach Everest's summit in 1924.
That is the conclusion of a new study using weather data recorded during their historic expedition.
Mallory and Irvine were sighted on 8 June 1924, scaling Everest's north-east ridge, before vanishing.
The storm caused a pressure drop big enough to deprive the climbers of oxygen, the new study proposes.
Source: NYT
Aug 3, 2010
Soon, grave sites at the Canarsie Cemetery will be for sale again.
They have not been since 1993, when the city stopped selling dirt three feet under — the law in New York requires that bodies be buried at least three and not six feet deep — because the cemetery’s fate was uncertain. The city inherited the cemetery, which it did not want, when the five boroughs merged in 1898.
But now, a generation after the first sale attempt in 1982, the city has found a taker. Cypres
Source: NYT
Aug 3, 2010
CARACAS, Venezuela — The clock had just struck midnight. Most of the country was asleep. But that did not stop President Hugo Chávez from announcing in the early hours of July 16 that the latest phase of his Bolivarian Revolution had been stirred into motion.
Marching to the national anthem, a team of soldiers, forensic specialists and presidential aides gathered around the sarcophagus of Simón Bolívar, the 19th-century aristocrat who freed much of South America from Spain. A state
Aug 3, 2010
The United Nations tribunal for Rwanda has sentenced a Rwandan former official to 25 years in jail for his role in the 1994 genocide.
Dominique Ntawukulilyayo, 68, was accused of transporting soldiers to an area of the southern Gisagara district where Tutsis had taken refuge.
Thousands of people who had been promised protection were killed.
About 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutu militias in 100 days during Rwanda's genocide.
Source: BBC
Aug 3, 2010
A letter which describes how Scottish poet Robert Burns was "reduced and shattered" in his final days has been unveiled.
The letter, which was written in 1796 by Burns's boss at the Excise, where he worked, has only recently been discovered.
It describes how the poet made a journey to Dumfries to collect his salary exactly a week before his death.
The letter, which was written to the Commissioner of Excise, was found by David Brown, the head of co
Source: BBC
Aug 3, 2010
A rare medieval roof finial which was found in London's River Thames offers an insight into how the capital looked 600 years ago, experts have said.
The object, which dates from the late 12th Century or 13th Century, is in the shape of an animal and would have embellished the ridges of tiled roofs.
It is thought the object was made in the Woolwich area and brought to the city with other pots and roof tiles.
The object was found by the Museum of London durin
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 3, 2010
Australia's cultural heritage has been "whitewashed", Aborigines have claimed, after all 11 sites given Unesco World Heritage status this year relate to the country's colonial past.
Among the sites added to the World Heritage List this year are Sydney's 19th century Hyde Park Barracks and Tasmania's Port Arthur penal settlement, which Unesco deemed of "outstanding universal value".
The listing will ensure protection for the buildings, but the move ha
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 3, 2010
Fidel Castro has unveiled a new book with a much-anticipated autobiographical section and the story of a major military victory that sped the former Cuban leader's rise to power in 1959.
"The Strategic Victory" has yet to be released to the general public, but organisers of the unveiling ceremony said 3,500 copies would be made available in coming days and 50,000 copies would eventually be published.
State television showed images of Castro's appearance at t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 3, 2010
Joe DiMaggio was celebrated as one of baseball's biggest stars and the one-time husband of Marilyn Monroe but he made a very poor soldier, newly-revealed military records show.
US army records obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request portray the sports hero as deeply selfish and desperate to obtain a discharge despite the fact that the USA was at war.
The New York Yankees player served for two and a half years in the US army, enlisting in February 1943.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 3, 2010
Alexander the Great was killed by a deadly bacterium found in the River Styx, rather than by a fever brought on by an all-night drinking binge in ancient Babylon, scientists believe.
American researchers have found a striking correlation between the symptoms suffered by Alexander before his death in 323BC, and the effects of the highly toxic bacterium.
They have speculated that the Macedonian king, who conquered vast swaths of territory between Greece and India, could
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 3, 2010
Archaeologists in the Philippines have unearthed a 67,000-year-old human bone in a discovery they claim proves the area was settled by man 20,000 years earlier than previously thought.
The foot bone - found during a four-year excavation project of a network of caves - predates the 47,000-year-old Tabon Man that was previously known as the first human to have lived in the Philippines.
The discovery was made at the Callao caves near Penablanca, 210 miles north of Manila
Source: NY Daily News
Aug 3, 2010
The grandson of Chairman Mao Zedong, the first leader of the People’s Republic of China, has become the country's youngest army general, state-run media reported.
Photographs of the portly Mao Xinyu wearing the insignia of a major general, the lowest of three general ranks in the People's Liberation Army, were published on the Web site of China News Service. Mao is the youngest person to hold that rank, the Global Times reported Monday, citing Bao Guojun, a spokesman at the Academy
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 3, 2010
A 113-year-old woman listed as Tokyo's oldest person has gone missing, officials said on Tuesday, days after the city's oldest man was found dead and mummified.
Fusa Furuya, born in July, 1897, does not live at the address in Japan's capital where she is registered and her whereabouts are unknown, officials said.
News of her disappearance surfaced days after the discovery that Tokyo's oldest man, who would have been 111 years old, had actually been dead for three decad
Source: WSJ
Aug 3, 2010
It's Friday and the weekly congregational prayer has just ended at the Umayyad Mosque, Syria's most famous monument. As the faithful exit, they walk past an unassuming bit of masonry on the mosque's southern wall: a Greek inscription above a blocked doorway, with a most unlikely message: "Thy Kingdom, O Christ, is an everlasting Kingdom, and Thy dominion endureth throughout all generations." How did Psalm 145 end up on the outside of one of Islam's holiest sites? The answer provides a
Source: AP
Aug 3, 2010
It's been almost two decades since U.S troops were forced out of Somalia after the "Black Hawk Down" battle. Troops from neighboring Ethiopia spent more than two years trying to restore order before withdrawing last year. Now, the U.S. is backing a push by African states to add troops to combat Somali militants.
But Somalia experts who have watched violence spin in circles for nearly 20 years are warning that more troops will not bring peace, and will encounter fierce resi
Source: Medievalists.net
Aug 3, 2010
Electronic Arts (EA) has announced that they will be releasing The Sims: Medieval in the spring of 2011. The developers say it will allow players to create heroes, venture on quests, and build and control a kingdom, all in setting that will be full of drama, romance, conflict, and comedy.
“The Middle Ages is a time of intrigue, legend, and excitement. It offers a perfect backdrop for a brand new series from The Sims studio due to the limitless stories that can be told,” said Scott E
