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: MyNorth.com
May 18, 2010
After days floating on the cobalt, emerald and steely swells of Lakes Huron and Michigan bound for the Straits of Mackinac from Fort Detroit, Jonathan Carver must have become accustomed to the fresh, organic and faintly fishy scent of water. An aroma purified of humans and their business.
So the waft of humanity that greeted the stocky, 56-year-old Carver when he arrived at Fort Michilimackinac’s water gate on a late-August day in 1766, had to have been jolting. Gamey smoke swirled
Source: Science Daily
May 18, 2010
Azendohsaurus just shed its dinosaur affiliation. A careful new analysis of A. madagaskarensis -- this time based on the entire skull rather than on just teeth and jaws -- aligns this 230-million-year-old animal with a different and very early branch on the reptile evolutionary tree. Many aspects of Azendohsaurus are far more primitive than previously assumed, which in turn means that its plant-eating adaptations, similar to those found some early dinosaurs, were developed independently.
Source: Montreal Gazette
May 18, 2010
The portrait of a middle-aged man — an oil-on-wood painting once used as a serving tray — is likely the image of Leonardo da Vinci done by the master himself, says a panel of experts that includes a Calgary art historian.
A dozen of scientists and David Bershad, an art history professor at St. Mary's University College, agree. The image of a man with blue eyes, long greying hair and a moustache appears to be a self-portrait of the renowned Renaissance artist, inventor and thinker.
Source: AP
May 18, 2010
John Demjanjuk has been sent to a clinic for tests after complaining of heart pains before the opening of a session of his trial on charges of serving as a Nazi camp guard....
Source: Times-News (TN)
May 18, 2010
KINGSPORT — The days of the rebel flag on the campus of Sullivan South High School could be numbered, or at least limited.
Because of a recent complaint about the rebel flag, Sullivan County Director of Schools Jack Barnes said a special committee at the school will examine the issue and may make recommendations in what Barnes called a proactive approach to the matter.
“We’ve had a complaint,” Barnes said.
“We’re investigating it,” Barnes said. “There has b
Source: The Evening Sun (PA)
May 18, 2010
A permit was granted late Monday afternoon for the neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations to hold a rally at the Gettysburg National Military Park, according to park spokeswoman Katie Lawhon.
Aryan Nations - which identifies itself as a white-supremacist organization and has been called a "continuing terrorist threat" by the FBI - will hold the rally on June 19 from 1 to 3 p.m. on the park's lawn west of the Cyclorama Center, according to the group's website.
"Bec
Source: CNN.com
May 18, 2010
The United Kingdom has "no doubt" about its sovereignty of the Falkland Islands, a British government minister said Tuesday.
The response comes after Argentine President Cristina Kirchner requested new talks with Britain over the disputed islands, which lie off Argentina's coast in the South Atlantic.
Speaking at a summit in Spain for countries of Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean, British Foreign Office minister Jeremy Browne said British sovereignty i
Source: San Antonio Express-News
May 18, 2010
NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous and former U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige plan to testify today against new history curriculum standards, contending Texas schoolchildren won't get a full understanding of the Civil War and subsequent struggles of minorities if the State Board of Education approves the proposal at a final vote set for Friday.
More than 200 people have signed up to speak during the public hearing that will cap months of contentious debate over new social stud
Source: AP
May 18, 2010
Don McLeroy helped make the State Board of Education a lightning rod this year with his ideological approach to rewriting social studies standards for Texas schools.
McLeroy, the most outspoken member of the board's conservative wing, has pushed for standards that reflect conservative Christian values. Although he lost his bid for re-election in the March primary, he has refused to go quietly and still hopes to leave his stamp on the state's social studies curriculum with a series o
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 18, 2010
Israeli contractors building a controversial "museum of tolerance" in West Jerusalem have been accused of digging up and damaging hundreds of human skeletons from an ancient Muslim graveyard.
Reigniting a dispute that has simmered for six years, Israel's left-leaning Haaretz newspaper claimed that overseers badly botched a "clandestine" five-month operation to excavate the highly-sensitive Mamilla Cemetery.
The allegations are almost certain to rous
Source: NYT
May 18, 2010
Robert Edsel, author of “The Monuments Men,” came to town the other day with a heavy album bound in green Moroccan leather. “Gemäldegalerie Linz XIII” was embossed on the spine. Inside were black-and-white photographs of mostly obscure 19th-century German paintings.
The album was one of the long-missing volumes cataloging the never-built Führermuseum in Linz, Austria, which Hitler envisioned someday rivaling Dresden and Munich. Starting in 1939, Nazi henchmen and art dealers bought
Source: NPR
May 18, 2010
Police in southern Greece have seized a rare twin pair of 2,500-year-old marble statues and arrested two farmers who allegedly planned to sell them abroad for euro10 million ($12.43 million), authorities said Tuesday.
Police said two Greeks aged 42 and 48 were arrested in the Peloponnese area late Friday as they were loading the illegally excavated figures of young men into a truck. Authorities are seeking a third man suspected of belonging to a smuggling gang that planned to spiri
Source: BBC
May 18, 2010
Unlicensed salvagers have been identified as the biggest threat to the shipwreck of HMS Victory in a report.
More than 1,000 sailors drowned when the British warship, the predecessor to Lord Nelson's Victory, sank in a storm.
The report is part of the public consultation into the future management of the 1744 shipwreck in the English Channel. Consultation ends on 30 June.
The authors of the report said unauthorised salvage could result in "irreparab
Source: Newsweek
May 18, 2010
A reporter who covered 24-year-old intern Chandra Levy's death looks at a new book about the case—and shares where the mainstream media went wrong.
When Chandra Levy went missing in 2001, she left a road map to her body. The 24-year-old intern quit her gym the day before she disappeared and spent her last known moments searching online for jogging paths in the same Washington, D.C., park where she would ultimately be found dead. But right from the start, a combination of police inco
Source: BBC
May 18, 2010
Captain Peter Neale went to war in 1942 as an apprentice architect, and came home a decorated hero.
Only 65 years later is his full story coming to light, as his Military Cross and accompanying documents were sold for £3,200 at a Colwyn Bay auctioneers on Tuesday.
Born in Stratford Upon Avon, Capt Neale lived the latter half of his life in north Wales, firstly in Deganwy, and then in Llandudno.
Displaying the modesty typical of his generation, Capt Neale,
Source: BBC
May 18, 2010
Builders have found what is believed to be a World War Two bomb in the grounds of a school in County Down.
The device, believed to be a mortar, was discovered at the rear of the Assembly Hall at Banbridge Academy on the Lurgan Road.
Source: BBC
May 18, 2010
Connecticut Senate hopeful Richard Blumenthal has denied allegations he misrepresented his military service during the Vietnam war era.
The New York Times ran video from a 2008 veterans ceremony in which he said: "I served in Vietnam."
The Democrat did not serve in Vietnam, instead spending six months in the Marine Reserve in the US.
His campaign team said the newspaper coverage was an "outrageous distortion".
Source: AFP
May 18, 2010
An Australian adventurer will set out to solve Mount Everest's greatest mystery this week by searching for long-lost evidence that the peak was conquered in 1924, 29 years earlier than previously thought.
Mountaineer Duncan Chessell said conditions were the best in decades to find the missing body of Andrew "Sandy" Irvine and perhaps photographic evidence that he reached the world's highest peak with fellow Briton George Mallory.
Mallory and Irvine perished ne
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 18, 2010
The icons of skeletal heads with bared teeth, found carved into wooden seats and shells worn by natives as jewellery, were widely interpreted by early European colonisers to be hostile, anti-Christian and frightening.
But an analysis of human and primate behaviour indicates that the motifs were more likely symbols of non-aggression and good will, similar to a smile.
Dr Bridget Waller, co-author of the report, said the misunderstanding of the motif by Europeans could h
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 18, 2010
The Rev Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's controversial former pastor, has accused the President of "throwing him under the bus", in his bid for election.
The Chicago pastor, who has had a rift with Mr Obama's administration for two years, told a group raising money for African relief that his pleas to release frozen funds for use in earthquake-ravaged Haiti would likely be ignored.
When he was still a senator, Mr Obama cut ties with Mr Wright after the pastor'
