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: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 12, 2010
Life on Earth suffers catastrophic extinctions every 27 million years, according to researchers.
For at least the last 500 million years, say Adrian Melott, an astrophysicist at the University of Kansas, and Richard Bambach, a palaeontologist at the Smithsonian Institute, there has been a burst of extinctions every 27 million years.
Periodic mass extinctions have been posited before, and it has been suggested that it means the Sun has a huge, dark neighbour which orbi
Source: AP
Jul 12, 2010
The International Criminal Court on Monday charged Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir with three counts of genocide in Darfur, a move that will pile further diplomatic pressure on his isolated regime.
The decision marked the first time the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal has issued genocide charges.
An arrest warrant for al-Bashir said there were "reasonable grounds to believe" that since April 2003 Sudanese forces attempted genocide against the Dar
Source: CNN
Jul 12, 2010
The United States is pushing for what would become nuclear wars against Iran and North Korea, former Cuban leader Fidel Castro said in a rare televised interview Monday.
Castro blamed the United States, not North Korea, for the sinking of a South Korean ship that killed 46 sailors. The incident was orchestrated to stir conflict in the region, Castro said.
The former Cuban leader, who is 83, said he was disappointed that China and Russia didn't veto a U.N. Security Counc
Source: CNN
Jul 12, 2010
The remains of a U.S. soldier missing for nearly 92 years were laid to rest Monday at Arlington National Cemetery, with military honors for an Army private who died in a World War I skirmish in France.
Pvt. Thomas Costello was buried with honors including a casket team, a firing party that fired three volleys and a bugler who sounded taps. His grave is not far from the grave of World War I Gen. John J. "Black Jack" Pershing. Soldiers from the Army's 3rd U.S. Infantry Regi
Source: Orange County Register
Jul 12, 2010
Police evacuated City Hall and shut down busy Beach Boulevard on Tuesday afternoon after an elderly woman turned up with a carload of World War I era rifles and shells.
The woman told police she had discovered the antique weapons when she cleaned out her garage. Her late husband – who died 20 years ago – had apparently collected them, Buena Park Police Sgt. Bill Kohanek said.
The woman took the weapons – which included rifles, handguns and bayonets – to the Police Depa
Source: sifyNews
Jul 11, 2010
From three metres 25 years ago, the length of the 'chadar' offered by the devout at the annual Shah Jahan Urs in the Taj Mahal has increased to 450 metres this time. The number of faithful has risen from a dozen to nearly 100,000.
With thousands freely entering the majestic Taj Mahal for the three-day Urs celebrations that end Sunday, questions are being raised over the security of the white marble wonder that thousands come to see from all over the world.
This year, f
Source: Boston Globe
Jul 11, 2010
In a political about-face, a South Korean commission investigating a century of human rights abuses has ruled that the U.S. military's large-scale killing of refugees during the Korean War, in case after case, arose out of military necessity.
Shutting down the inquiry into South Korea's hidden history, the commission also will leave unexplored scores of suspected mass graves believed to hold remains of tens of thousands of South Korean political detainees summarily executed by their
Source: CNN.com
Jul 11, 2010
A University of Texas at Austin student dormitory named after a man prominent in the Ku Klux Klan in the 1800s may soon have its name changed, university officials said.
University President William Powers Jr. will ask the university system's board of regents to rename Simkins Residence Hall, following a recommendation by a 21-member advisory group, according to a press release from the university.
Gregory Vincent, the university's vice president of diversity and commun
Source: AP
Jul 11, 2010
Hoisting hundreds of coffins aloft, a line of weeping relatives stretched for at least a mile (1.6 kilometers) Sunday as they honored Srebrenica massacre victims on the 15th anniversary of the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.
A whole hillside in the eastern Bosnian town was dug out with graves, waiting for 775 coffins covered in green cloths to be laid to rest at the biggest Srebrenica funeral so far.
Still, that was less than a tenth of the total number of
Source: Great Falls Tribune
Jul 11, 2010
Word spread far and wide that gold was discovered in Yogo Creek more than 130 years ago, calling miners to its remote riverbeds with greed gleaming in their eyes.
At one point, newspapers — perhaps falsely — boasted that the approximately 70 acres that made up Yogo Town was home to 1,500 miners.
Two years after the first flood of prospectors, the 1880 census recorded only a few dozen people in the area....
Six University of Montana archeology students spent
Source: NYT
Jul 11, 2010
You could certainly make the argument that New York’s upper classes hardly want these days for personal attention, surrounded as they are by helicopter pilots who fly them to the Hamptons and private stylists who make haircut house calls. But even with today’s apparently recession-proof forms of conspicuous consumption, it would be hard to find a servant with the all-encompassing talents — the cradle-to-grave service — of Isaac H. Brown.
Mr. Brown, who died 130 years ago, was the lo
Source: AP
Jul 11, 2010
Artifacts of a battle between a Native American tribe and English settlers, a confrontation that helped shape early American history, have sat for years below manicured lawns and children's swing sets in a Connecticut neighborhood.
A project to map the battlefields of the Pequot War is bringing those musket balls, gunflints and arrowheads into the sunlight for the first time in centuries. It's also giving researchers insight into the combatants and the land on which they fought, par
Source: BBC
Jul 11, 2010
A Scottish bishop has criticised Prime Minister David Cameron for failing to act quickly to scrap the law preventing Catholics from taking the throne.
Joseph Devine, Bishop of Motherwell, said the Act of Settlement was a "scandalous" law that discriminated against members of his faith.
The act was passed by the English parliament in 1701 and extended to Scotland after the union.
It applies in countries where the Queen is head of state.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 11, 2010
Vlad the Impaler, the medieval Romanian prince who inspired the character of Count Dracula, was not a blood-thirsty tyrant, he was simply a misunderstood victim of bad Western European propaganda, a new exhibition has claimed.
The show, which has just opened in Bucharest, attempts to rehabilitate Vlad Tepes, also known as Vlad Dracula or Vlad the Impaler, who ruled Wallachia in the 15th century.
The exhibition includes portraits of Vlad from the Kunsthistoriches Museu
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 11, 2010
Historians claim to have finally located the site of King Arthur’s Round Table – and believe it could have seated 1,000 people.
Researchers exploring the legend of Britain’s most famous Knight believe his stronghold of Camelot was built on the site of a recently discovered Roman amphitheatre in Chester.
Historians believe regional noblemen would have sat in the front row of a circular meeting place, with lower ranked subjects on stone benches grouped around the outsid
Source: AP
Jul 11, 2010
Justice Anthony Kennedy, who already decides whether liberals or conservatives win the Supreme Court's most closely contested cases, is about to take on an even more influential behind-the-scenes role.
Kennedy will inherit retiring Justice John Paul Stevens' power to choose the author of some court opinions, an authority that has historically been used to subtly shape a ruling or preserve a tenuous majority.
David Garrow, a Cambridge University historian who has writt
Source: AP
Jul 11, 2010
Taiwan's president urged his Chinese counterpart to work toward improving historically testy ties following the signing of a landmark trade deal.
Ma Ying-jeou — who has sought to build better relations with the mainland since taking office in May 2008 — said this was an opportunity for the two sides to end decades of mistrust and search for common ground.
Taiwan and China signed a broad trade pact last month....
Source: AP
Jul 11, 2010
Hoisting hundreds of coffins aloft, a line of weeping relatives stretched for at least a mile (1.6 kilometers) Sunday as they honored Srebrenica massacre victims on the 15th anniversary of the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.
A whole hillside in the eastern Bosnian town was dug out with graves, waiting for 775 coffins covered in green cloths to be laid to rest at the biggest Srebrenica funeral so far.
Still, that was less than a tenth of the total number of
Source: AP
Jul 11, 2010
British veterans of the Battle of Britain, the furious aerial conflict between British and German aircraft in 1940, joined Sunday in a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the battle.
Around 5,000 people, including Prince Michael of Kent and Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton, the senior commander of the Royal Air Force, converged at the Battle of Britain memorial at Capel-le-Ferne near the English Channel port of Dover.
It is believed that about 100 British air f
Source: CNN
Jul 11, 2010
Two years ago, U.S. military officials came knocking on Michael Frisbie's door asking for information on his family tree.
They returned about a year ago, this time informing him that the remains of his great-great-uncle -- a soldier missing in action since World War I -- had been identified.
More than 90 years after his death, Costello will finally be buried with full military honors Monday.
Costello, from New York City, enlisted in the Army on September 19
