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: CNN
Aug 3, 2010
New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission denied landmark status Tuesday for a building at the site of a proposed Islamic center and mosque near ground zero.
The commissioners voted unanimously against landmark status for 45-47 Park Place. It and an adjoining building are owned by real estate developer Soho Properties, which intends to build an Islamic center two blocks north of the former site of the World Trade Center.
While the public vote was the focus of
Source: Time
Aug 3, 2010
Two years ago, TIME met Ali Ahsan Mojaheed at the headquarters of his far-right Islamist party, nestled amid a warren of religious bookshops and seminaries in Dhaka. He welcomed this reporter by peeling a clutch of ripe lychees. "Our fruit is the sweetest," said the secretary general of Bangladesh's Jamaat-e-Islami, proffering a sticky hand. But the conversation soon soured. Asked about the traumatic legacy of Bangladesh's 1971 independence — when the territory then known as East Pakis
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 3, 2010
Gordon Brown has been voted the third worst British Prime Minister since the Second World War by a poll of more than 100 academics.
The former Minister, who was beaten by David Cameron at the May election, only placed ahead of Sir Alec Douglas-Home and Sir Athony Eden, who led Britain into the Suez invasion.
It found Clement Attlee, the Labour leader who established the National Health Service, was the most successful prime minister since 1945, with a rating of 8.1 out
Source: Washington Post
Aug 3, 2010
Earlier this year, eighteen Catholic scholars from the United States, Germany, and Australia, took the unprecedented step of writing a letter to Pope Benedict XVI, urging him to slow down the canonization process that would designate Pope Pius XII a saint of the Catholic Church, until more evidence could be found to defend the action against charges that he failed to do enough during the Nazi Holocaust. Pope Benedict inherited the Pius XII dossier from his predecessors but angered critics, inclu
Source: Fox News
Aug 3, 2010
The man who made one giant leap for mankind takes one small step for himself Thursday: Neil Armstrong is turning 80.
Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, before the eyes of hundreds of millions of awe-struck television viewers worldwide.
After stepping from the ladder of his lunar lander, he spoke the words that would echo through American heads for decades: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
Source: CNN
Aug 3, 2010
Monkeys on cocaine. New windows for a closed visitor center. Modern dance as a tool for software development.
A report to be released Tuesday by conservative Republican Sens. Tom Coburn and John McCain cited these and 97 other projects as leading examples of misguided or wasteful spending under the Obama administration's $862 billion economic stimulus bill.
Titled "Summertime Blues," the report is the third by the two senators targeting projects that they say fail t
Source: Huffington Post
Aug 2, 2010
...
Your request is being processed...
Jesse Kornbluth
Jesse Kornbluth
Editor of HeadButler.com
Posted: August 2, 2010 01:15 PM
BIO Become a Fan
Get Email Alerts Bloggers' Index
Brian May, Guitarist for Queen, Discovers 150-Year-Old Photos Of An English Village -- In Stereo Vision
What's Your Reaction:
digg
facebook Twitter stumble reddit del.ico.us
Amazing
Inspiring
Source: BBC News
Aug 2, 2010
A website showcasing the social history of Wales is being unveiled at the National Eisteddfod of Wales.
People's Collection Wales is a bilingual gathering of experiences, pictures and video of life in Wales.
Archive material from museums has been used, but the developers are now looking for contributions from the public.
The website uses GPS technology allowing the viewer to travel a map of Wales and view artefacts in 3D....
Source: CBS News
Aug 2, 2010
The Teutonic Knights have long been reviled in Poland, where the Germanic warriors swept in during the Middle Ages and converted pagans to Christianity at the point of a sword. Many here see them as an early incarnation of a Germany that has attacked Poland over the centuries, most recently in World War II.
But now one Polish town is putting all grudges aside and celebrating the memory of the Teutonic Knights in an attempt to highlight the rich history of this once-German municipali
Source: Medievalist.net
Aug 2, 2010
The Medieval Academy of America announced today that its 2011 annual meeting will still be held in Arizona. The academic organization was under pressure to move the conference because of the recent immigration law adopted by the state.
An email was sent out to its membership and posted the Medieval Academy of America’s (MAA) website, which stated the MAA’s Executive Committee took into account a number of issues when making their decision, including the “fiduciary responsibility for
Source: AP
Aug 2, 2010
An unemployed book dealer has been sentenced to eight years in prison for possessing a stolen first edition of Shakespeare's plays, described by the judge as a "quintessentially English treasure."
Raymond Scott was cleared last month of stealing the rare First Folio but found guilty of handling stolen goods and removing stolen property from Britain....
Source: Radio Free Europe
Aug 2, 2010
A senior Iraqi official says that international cooperation has resulted in the recovery of thousands of ancient artifacts stolen from the country's national museum and historical sites since 2003, RFE/RL's Radio Free Iraq reports.
Tourism and Antiquities Minister Qahtan al-Juburi told RFE/RL that more than 36,000 various artifacts have been recovered in the past seven years.
Juburi said that figure includes roughly 8,000 items that were stolen from the national museum
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Aug 2, 2010
The final moments of Nazi Heinrich Himmler can be revealed 65 years after his suicide following the discovery of an old soldier's war diaries.
Corporal Harry Oughton Jones wrote an account of his top-secret encounter with the head of Hitler's SS police force while he was stationed at a prison camp at the end of the war.
According to his personal recollections, Hitler's number two bit on a cyanide capsule and dropped down dead.
And while Himmler's final words are
Source: WaPo
Aug 2, 2010
TIMBUCTOO, N.J. -- In Timbuctoo lies a hill. Underneath that hill lies a house, or what archaeologists think might have been a house once upon a time. The silver clasp of a woman's handbag, piles of Mason jars, chips of dinner plates and an empty jar of Dixie Peach Pomade lie among the bricks that have broken away from the foundation.
These are crushed fragments of a past life when free black people lived in this New Jersey community almost 200 years ago -- free even then, 45 years
Source: NYT
Aug 2, 2010
A ferocious swarm of earthquakes shook the center of the United States two centuries ago, and it remains a mystery how such strong temblors could have occurred there, in the middle of the North American tectonic plate where the ground ought to be stable.
In the current issue of the journal Nature, researchers suggest that the quakes were essentially set off by the end of the last ice age thousands of years earlier.
In a three-month period starting in December 1811, thre
Source: BBC News
Aug 2, 2010
An antiques dealer has been jailed for eight years for handling a stolen copy of Shakespeare's first folio.
Raymond Scott, 53, from County Durham was cleared of stealing the treasure, but found guilty of handling stolen goods at a trial in June.
The 1623 work was taken from a display cabinet at Durham University in 1998.
Judge Richard Lowden called the folio "quintessentially English treasure" and said damage to it was "cultural vandalisation
Source: Manchester
Aug 2, 2010
An archaeologist studying a remote Pacific island, world famous for its strange stone statues, says outsiders - and not its ancestors - should be blamed for its historic demise hundreds of years ago.
Dr Karina Croucher from The University of Manchester says her research backs a growing body of opinion which casts new light on the people living on the island of Rapa Nui, named ‘Easter Island’ by its discoverers in 1722.
But the art which adorns Easter Island’s landscape,
Source: Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty
Aug 2, 2010
A senior Iraqi official says that international cooperation has resulted in the recovery of thousands of ancient artifacts stolen from the country's national museum and historical sites since 2003, RFE/RL's Radio Free Iraq reports.
Tourism and Antiquities Minister Qahtan al-Juburi told RFE/RL that more than 36,000 various artifacts have been recovered in the past seven years.
Juburi said that figure includes roughly 8,000 items that were stolen from the national museum
Source: The Sofia Echo
Aug 2, 2010
Bulgarian media has reported that the excavations at St Ivan island off the Bulgarian coast have unearthed relics belonging to Saint John the Baptist. The discoveries were announced on August 1 2010 following the excavation on the island near the seaside town of Sozopol.
Last week it was reported that excavations on St Ivan island, the largest of five Bulgarian islands in the Black Sea, discovered artefacts and exquisite marble reliquary incorporated into the church’s altar, the his
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 2, 2010
Campaigners against fox hunting have found an unlikely ally: Winston Churchill.
Documents found in the National Archives show that the former Tory prime minister supported attempts to stop British troops fox hunting in occupied Germany after the Second World War.
The commander of the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR), Sir John Harding, wrote to the government to ask for help in attempting to stop the activity being banned.
It had been banned under the Naz
