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 News
May 28, 2010
Turkey's current tensions over the influence of the powerful military are rooted in a history of political turmoil and coups.
On 27 May, 1960, the Turkish armed forces overthrew the elected government, the first of a series of military interventions in politics which have continued to divide Turkish society.
I travelled to the island where the deposed political leaders were put on trial, with a group of relatives and activists who are campaigning for a new look at those
Source: SF Chronicle
May 28, 2010
"Ardi," the fossil female whose discovery is thought to stretch our human ancestry back more than 4 million years, has been challenged by specialists who discount the evidence of how she lived and maintain she was never a forerunner of the human line.
Last October, Tim D. White, the noted UC Berkeley paleoanthropologist, and his colleagues announced in the journal Science their analysis of a partial female skeleton they had discovered after 17 years excavating her fossils
Source: The Guardian
May 28, 2010
Picasso was a steadfast communist, a tireless peace campaigner, and he loathed the fascists – depicting General Franco with witty brutality in works such as The Dream and Lie of Franco (1937).
But the Picasso who consorted with Soviet officials, who was photographed examining pictures of Stalin, who received telegrams from Fidel Castro, is only part of the story.
According to John Richardson, the biographer of the artist who knew him from the 1940s to the 1960s, the Spa
Source: BBC
May 28, 2010
The discovery of the remains of a woman - sparking police searches in Bradford's red light district - has brought back chilling memories of the 1970s.
Back then, it took six years to find and convict Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, for killing 13 women across the county - mainly prostitutes - and trying to murder seven more.
He had been in jail for three years by the time Fiona started walking the streets around Bradford's Lumb Lane, one of Sutcliffe's killing
Source: The Economist
May 27, 2010
THE doormen outside the headquarters of Shanghai’s Municipal Education Commission have a new colleague these days. On Friday evenings and Saturday mornings they are joined by a young Mandarin-speaking Israeli, who keeps an eye on comings and goings. The ivy-covered compound, built in the 1920s, is also the home of Ohel Rachel, one of Shanghai’s last surviving synagogues. This month, for the first time in almost 60 years, it reopened for regular Sabbath services.
That Ohel Rachel was
Source: NY Times
May 27, 2010
John W. Finn, the last survivor of the 15 Navy men who received the Medal of Honor for heroism during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, died Thursday at a nursing home in Chula Vista, Calif. He was 100 and had been the oldest living recipient of the medal, the nation’s highest award for valor.
His death was announced by J. P. Tremblay, deputy secretary of the California Department of Veterans Affairs.
On the morning of Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, when Japanese planes bombe
Source: Science Daily
May 27, 2010
With the help of ancient fossils unearthed in the Sahara desert, scientists have identified a new type of pterosaur (giant flying reptile or pterodactyl) that existed about 95 million years ago.
According to the findings published in the scientific journal PLoS ONE, the scientists consider the newly identified pterosaur to be the earliest example of its kind.
Unearthed in three separate pieces, the jaw bone has a total length of 344mm (13.5 inches). Each piece is well p
Source: Science Daily
May 27, 2010
A study by researchers at the University of Toronto and the Royal Ontario Museum sheds new light on a previously unclassifiable 500 million-year-old squid-like carnivore known as Nectocaris pteryx.
The new interpretation became possible with the discovery of 91 new fossils that were collected by the ROM from the famous Burgess Shale site (Yoho National Park) in the UNESCO World Heritage Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks, British Columbia over the past three decades, and examined by PhD
Source: AP
May 27, 2010
Last fall, a fossil skeleton named "Ardi" shook up the field of human evolution. Now, some scientists are raising doubts about what exactly the creature from Ethiopia was and what kind of landscape it inhabited.
New critiques question whether Ardi really belongs on the human branch of the evolutionary tree, and whether it really lived in woodlands. That second question has implications for theories about what kind of environment spurred early human evolution.
Source: BBC
May 27, 2010
French authorities have arrested a Rwandan doctor accused of involvement in the 1994 genocide.
Eugene Rwamucyo has been wanted by Interpol since 2006, and was dismissed from his job in a hospital in northern France last month.
Rwandan authorities, who allege Dr Rwamucyo committed war crimes during the genocide, welcomed the arrest.
Dr Rwamucyo has denied the accusations, saying he is the victim of a campaign by the Rwandan government.
Source: IBN Live (India)
May 27, 2010
New Delhi: The Indian Army’s history of the 1999 Kargil war with Pakistan may have to be rewritten.
In a major embarrassment for the Army, a military tribunal has ruled that a senior commander had falsified records of the war that cost a brigadier a promotion.
The Armed Forces Tribunal has directed the Army to set the records straight and consider Brigadier (retd.) Devinder Singh, who commanded the Batalik-based 70 Infantry Brigade during the Kargil war, for a notional
Source: Newsweek
May 27, 2010
One of the longest serving members in Congressional history, Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, has thrown his support behind the effort to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, which is expected to come to crucial votes in both the House and Senate shortly.
He is an unlikely civil rights advocate, and gay rights advocates are both surprised—and excited—by his support. Now the oldest member of Congress, Byrd began his career in the early 1940s by recruiting friends to form a Ku Klux Klan c
Source: CNN.com
May 27, 2010
What does it feel like to kill a man? James Lenihan of Brooklyn knew. He fought in Europe in World War II and he killed a German soldier during a battle in Holland.
He described how it felt in a poem:
---
I shot a man yesterday
And much to my surprise,
The strangest thing happened to me
I began to cry.
---
So begins "Murder: Most Foul" a work that echoes poetry about war in the tradi
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 27, 2010
Second World War veterans will make an emotional journey across the English Channel to Dunkirk today to mark the 70th anniversary of the celebrated evacuation.
The former troops, accompanied by their families, will attend a ceremony at the French port to commemorate the historic rescue mission.
They will set sail from Dover following a departure ceremony attended by the Lord Lieutenant of Kent's office, senior military, government officials, police and others.
Source: Tejal Rao at the Atlantic
May 27, 2010
[Tejal Rao is a writer and translator from Northwest London, living in
Brooklyn.]
This was kind of a big deal: one day in 1912 a consulting editor at Ladies' Home Journal put down her sewing to listen to her husband and his friend talk about a new concept called efficiency. It gave her ideas! Soon after she wrote an essay about applying the ideas of industrial efficiency to the home to give middle-class women more time for the stuff they actually wanted to do. Lots of people
Source: McClatchy Newspapers
May 27, 2010
The House of Representatives voted 234 to 194 Thursday night to repeal the military's 17-year-old policy that prohibits gay men and lesbians from serving openly in the nation's armed forces.
The historic House vote followed the Senate Armed Services Committee voted [sic] 16-12 to end former President Bill Clinton's 1993 "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that allows gays and lesbians to serve in the military but subjects them to expulsion if their sexual orientation becomes kn
Source: AP
May 27, 2010
Fort Knox has long been known for its heavy metals — gold bricks and armored tanks.
But the tank's 70-year connection to the Army post in the hills of central Kentucky ended Thursday as the Armor Center, the training school for generations of tank soldiers, began its move to Fort Benning in Georgia.
The ceremony symbolized the shift of authority over Fort Knox from the Armor Center to Accessions Command, making the base the Army's home for recruiting, training and human
Source: Time
May 27, 2010
How do you atone for something terrible, like the Inquisition? Joseph Ratzinger attempted to do just that for the Roman Catholic Church during a grandiose display of Vatican penance — the Day of Pardon on March 12, 2000, a ritual presided over by Pope John Paul II and meant to purify two millenniums of church history. In the presence of a wooden crucifix that had survived every siege of Rome since the 15th century, high-ranking Cardinals and bishops stood up to confess to sins against indigenous
Source: BBC
May 27, 2010
The 400-year-old Llanrwst Almshouses, now a museum, are at the centre of a celebration of the Conwy Valley market town's history.
There will be performing arts and music on Friday 28 May and the following day the town centre will be given over to old-fashioned fair rides, side shows and a Victorian market.
The museum will also be launching its 400th anniversary exhibition, including a time-line of those four centuries in the almshouses, Llanrwst and the UK.
Source: BBC
May 27, 2010
Dame Margot Fonteyn, one of Britain's most famous ballerinas, was "up to her neck" in a coup plot in Central America - along with Fidel Castro, according to government files released today at the National Archives.
It seemed "better than fiction" as the news reporters put it. Britain's leading ballerina, Dame Margot Fonteyn, had been accused of plotting to overthrow the government of Panama. She'd been arrested and held in jail overnight. Mobbed by press in New Y
