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: AOL News
Jul 11, 2010
New photographs of a smiling, tracksuit-clad Fidel Castro greeting workers at a scientific think tank were posted on the blogs of two Cuban journalists and a media website Saturday, offering a rare glimpse of the reclusive revolutionary leader in a public forum.
Castro, 83, appears slightly stooped but otherwise healthy in the pictures, which were said to have been taken Wednesday during a visit to the National Center for Scientific Investigation in Havana.
One set of f
Source: AOL News
Jul 11, 2010
When a devastating war has displaced half the population, it might be time for a new census. But many in Bosnia say such a reckoning would entrench the ethnic divisions that were forced upon it with a brutal violence unknown in Europe since World War II.
Bosnia's last census was in 1991, a year before it seceded from the former Yugoslavia. At the time, its population of 4.4 million consisted of 43 percent Muslim Bosniaks, 31 percent Eastern Orthodox Serbs and 17 percent Catholic Cro
Source: This is Grimsby (UK)
Jul 10, 2010
ARCHAEOLOGISTS have discovered 46 sets of human remains from what is thought to be a late-Roman cemetery during the redevelopment of a derelict pub.
The remains – including complete skeletons – were found during a dig at the site of the Talbot Inn, in Caistor, which is being transformed into a £1.3-million Lincolnshire Co-operative foodstore....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 10, 2010
Ten historic Spitfire aircrafts have taken to the sky to mark the 70th anniversary of
the start of the Battle of Britain.
Their impressive display formed part of the Flying Legends air show at the Imperial War Museum in Duxford, Cambridgeshire, on Saturday.
It showcased the fighter’s development throughout the Second World War, from the rare Mk I Spitfire, one of the first designs, through to the Mk XIX, which became the last of the specialised photo reconnaissa
Source: Daily Progress
Jul 10, 2010
At James Madison’s house, Montpelier, archaeologists are unearthing the undisturbed remains of slave dwellings.
The actual dwellings of house, stable, garden and field slaves were abandoned abruptly in about 1840. But the sites on which they had stood were never dug up again, leaving a trove for researchers.
Researchers are in the first year of a three-year program backed by a $250,000 We the People grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The digging has
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 10, 2010
A former president of Bosnia, Ejup Ganic, says he fears being murdered in a Serbian prison if a British court sends him to Belgrade to face war crimes charges.
Serbian prosecutors accuse Dr Ganic, 64, of responsibility for the shooting of Serbian soldiers after they had surrendered in May 1992 at the chaotic outbreak of Bosnia's civil war.
Dr Ganic, now a professor of engineering who spends much of his time in Britain, was arrested at Heathrow in March on a warrant iss
Source: Copenhagen Post (DK)
Jul 9, 2010
When archaeologists from the National Museum discovered the foundations of a small building at Bispegård on the island of Samsø, they did not realise initially that they had uncovered the remains of a castle that had belonged to a medieval king.
The discovery of the castle of King Erik Menved, who reigned between 1287 and 1319, helps to fill in a hundred-year gap in the island’s history, according to Nils Engberg, head of the National Museum, and the person who headed the dig....
Source: LA Times
Jul 9, 2010
When my niece, Sarah, was little, she returned from a long trip to Europe with her parents and announced she never wanted to set foot in another museum. Children who travel abroad are lucky, but on another level you have to pity the poor kids dragged through ancient ruins, art galleries, cathedrals and castles, until they're ready to drop, when all they really want is a Game Boy and a hot dog.
But in the Burgundy region of France, there's a castle that fascinates children — and it i
Source: Copenhagen Post (DK)
Jul 9, 2010
The Heritage Agency has given 18th Century Trekroner Fort a full digital makeover complete with light and sound shows
The makeover of Trekroner Fortress was dubbed fully complete on 25 June when Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary inaugurated the former navy installation, which will now serve as a living, interactive historical museum for visitors....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 9, 2010
The Census, the official population count carried out by the Government, is to be scrapped after more than 200 years, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, said the Census, which takes place every 10 years, was an expensive and inaccurate way of measuring the number of people in Britain.
Instead, the Government is examining different and cheaper ways to count the population more regularly, using existing public and private databa
Source: BBC
Jul 9, 2010
A painting that depicts the body of Nelson Mandela undergoing an autopsy has been condemned by South Africa's ruling party.
The African National Congress (ANC) said the artwork, which is being completed at a Johannesburg shopping centre, violated Mr Mandela's dignity.
The piece shows Mr Mandela's body being cut open, while prominent leaders crowd around.
But artist Yiull Damaso says his aim is to make people confront death....
Source: BBC
Jul 9, 2010
A Rwandan priest captured last week and accused of helping to orchestrate the 1994 genocide has pleaded not guilty at a UN-backed tribunal.
Jean-Bosco Uwinkindi was arrested after entering western Uganda from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
He is accused of ordering the killing of ethnic Tutsis after they sought refuge in his church.
Mr Uwinkindi was indicted in 2001 by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), which is based in Tanzania, on
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 9, 2010
Two Australian towns have become engaged in a fierce war of words over which can lay the bigger claim to the legacy of Mary Poppins creator Pamela Travers.
Maryborough, on the south east coast of Queensland, Australia, has been hosting a Mary Poppins festival for several years in honour of Travers, who was born in the town in 1899.
The five-day event draws tourists to the region during the quiet winter months to enjoy Poppins-themed activities such as nanny races, umb
Source: NYT
Jul 9, 2010
Wry and cranky, droll and cantankerous — that’s the Mark Twain we think we know, thanks to reading “Huck Finn” and “Tom Sawyer” in high school. But in his unexpurgated autobiography, whose first volume is about to be published a century after his death, a very different Twain emerges, more pointedly political and willing to play the role of the angry prophet.
Whether anguishing over American military interventions abroad or delivering jabs at Wall Street tycoons, this Twain is strik
Source: WaPo
Jul 9, 2010
An elaborate spy swap reminiscent of the Cold War took place Friday at Vienna International Airport -- a minutely choreographed operation involving 10 members of a Russian espionage ring that infiltrated American suburbia and four Russians who had been jailed in Russia for their contacts with the West....
Though in some ways a throwback to the Cold War, Friday's drama was a far cry from the last major spy swap, which took place in 1986 at Berlin's Glienicke Bridge, an Iron Curtain c
Source: Ottawa Citizen
Jul 8, 2010
An obscure language in Siberia has similarities to languages in North America, which might reshape history, writes Randy Boswell.
A new book by leading linguists has bolstered a controversial theory that the language of Canada's Dene Nation is rooted in an ancient Asian tongue spoken today by only a few hundred people in Western Siberia.
The landmark discovery, initially proposed two years ago by U.S. researcher Edward Vajda, represents the only known link between any O
Source: Heritage-Key.com
Jul 8, 2010
Today archaeologists believe that the “Tunit,” who are mentioned in Inuit stories, flourished in the arctic during ancient times, vanishing around the 14th century AD.
Archaeologists first encountered their remains in 1925 at a place called Cape Dorset on Baffin Island. They gave them the name “Dorset culture,” a term that is still used today.
The Dorset developed special technologies that allowed them to survive in the harsh arctic environment. They used harpoons and
Source: BBC News
Jul 8, 2010
On the other side of the wood, the fighters soared and looped in a bright blue sky.
I was standing in a cornfield and thought of how, in another time, that sound would have sent me running in terror for any cover I could find.
But I was not in south Lebanon now, or Iraq or Afghanistan. When the French military jets, practising for an air show, eventually wheeled away, the song of a skylark filled the air.
The soldier poet, Isaac Rosenberg, heard that song.
Source: Lex18 (KY)
Jul 8, 2010
Kentucky officials announced Thursday that a settlement has been reached to return the historic Indian Head Rock to Kentucky.
An Agreed Order between the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the city of Portsmouth, Ohio, its former mayor Gregory Bauer, Steven Shaffer and David Vetter, dismissing the civil suit, was filed Thursday in federal district court.
As part of the settlement, the city of Portsmouth will relinquish custody and control of the artifact and permit its trans
Source: Washington Times
Jul 8, 2010
A statue of three soldiers installed at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial after critics thought the V-shaped memorial wall was too abstract has been restored to its original finish in a six-week project completed Thursday.
A private foundation that built the memorial raised about $125,000 to restore the bronze "Three Servicemen" statue of three soldiers for the first time. After 25 years, weather and the hands of millions of visitors wore down the patina finish on the soldiers
