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: Kansas City Star
May 11, 2010
A foot below the grasses of rural Bates County, Ann Raab’s trowel has uncovered scars of a countryside torched by the Union Army.
Burnt wood embedded in rock. Melted glass, scorched ceramics and discolored soil where a flaming wall fell.
As a Ph.D. candidate in archaeology at the University of Kansas, Raab is less interested in the signs of destruction than in the ordinary remnants of lives ravaged. Buttons, for example, offer clues to the kinds of coveralls western Mis
Source: Science Daily
May 11, 2010
It's in the teeth. An odd mosaic of dental features recently unearthed in northern Egypt reveals a previously undocumented, highly-specialized primate called Nosmips aenigmaticus that lived in Africa nearly 37 million years ago.
Because it is only known from its teeth, the paleontologists who discovered it don't know what its body looked like, but the find likely represents an ancient African lineage whose discovery makes early primate evolution on that continent more complicated.
Source: AP
May 11, 2010
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed a bill targeting a school district's ethnic studies program on Tuesday, hours after a report by United Nations human rights experts condemned the measure.
State schools chief Tom Horne, who has pushed the measure for years, said a Tucson school district program promotes "ethnic chauvinism" and racial resentment toward whites while segregating students by race.
"It's just like the old South, and it's long past time that we pr
Source: AFP
May 11, 2010
Ancient Greeks were forced to tighten their tunics thousands of years before their descendants faced a similar fate under debt-cutting austerity measures, a senior archaeologist said on Tuesday.
Graves excavated in recent months in the northern Greek region of Macedonia show the population scaled back on funeral offerings some 2,300 years ago, probably under royal decree, archaeologist Manthos Besios told Ta Nea daily.
The graves in Pydna, a prominent city in the ancien
Source: NPR
May 11, 2010
In touting Elena Kagan's qualifications, President Obama described his nominee to replace liberal Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens as a proven "consensus-builder."
Since his announcement, the Kagan-as-a-consensus-builder talking point has been the one most relentlessly promoted by supporters making the case for her Senate confirmation.
The evidence cited? Kagan, 50, now the nation's solicitor general, was widely viewed as a calming and popular force w
Source: Moscow Times
May 11, 2010
Eye-witnesses of the Victory Parade held in Moscow on June 24, 1945, remember a detachment of dog-handlers with their charges parading across Red Square.
Among those who had the honor of taking part was Dzhulbars, a dog who was famous at the time. Gifted with an incredible ability to detect explosives with his sense of smell, Dzhulbars saved architectural masterpieces in Prague, Vienna, Hungary and Romania. The dog had been injured and deemed unable to take part in the procession un
Source: NYT
May 11, 2010
It was an all-American moment at Christie’s on Tuesday night. One of Jasper Johns’s seminal “Flag” paintings, from 1960-66, which had belonged to the writer Michael Crichton, became the star in the auction house’s postwar and contemporary art auction, selling for $28.6 million.
That figure was a record for the artist at auction, and well above the painting’s high $15 million estimate. Before the sale, many had speculated that it would set a record for a work by a living artist. (Th
Source: Discovery News
May 11, 2010
A few months ago we told you about a toothy new dinosaur that gulped down its food whole without chewing. Now new details about this ultimate dinosaur fast food lifestyle are coming in. They help to explain why some dinosaurs grew to become so tall, long and fat.
Research in the journal Biological Reviews presents a common sense bit of truth: The larger an animal is, the more time it spends eating. Elephants, for example, spend 18 hours per day satisfying their voracious appetites.
Source: Discovery News
May 11, 2010
Egyptian archaeologists carrying routine excavations at the so-called “Avenue of Sphinxes,” have unearthed the remains of a 5th century Egyptian Christian church and a "nilometer," a structure used to measure the level of the Nile during floods.
Already announced by Dr. Sabry Abd El Aziz, head of the SCA's Egyptology sector, in a 2008 Discovery News exclusive interview, the Avenue of Sphinx project involves the restoration of a 2.7-km (1.7-mile) ancient processional avenu
Source: Discovery News
May 11, 2010
Nearly two years have past, and families throughout China still don't know what happened to their loved ones.
Wednesday marks the second anniversary of China's worst disaster in a generation, the Sichuan earthquake -- and a painful milestone for the families of the 17,921 people still recorded as missing.
Chinese law says relatives can apply two years after a disaster to have their loved ones registered among the dead. Not many are expected to do so. It's a choice that
Source: Discovery News
May 11, 2010
The 14th-century aqueduct runs along a route that dates back to the time of Jesus.
Archeologists said Tuesday they have uncovered a 14th-century aqueduct that supplied water to Jerusalem for almost 600 years along a route dating back to the time of Jesus -- but unlike most such finds, this time the experts knew exactly where to look.
Photographs from the late 19th century showed the aqueduct in use by the city's Ottoman rulers, nearly 600 years after its construction in
Source: The Kansas City Star
May 11, 2010
A foot below the grasses of rural Bates County, Ann Raab’s trowel has uncovered scars of a countryside torched by the Union Army.
Burnt wood embedded in rock. Melted glass, scorched ceramics and discolored soil where a flaming wall fell.
As a Ph.D. candidate in archaeology at the University of Kansas, Raab is less interested in the signs of destruction than in the ordinary remnants of lives ravaged. Buttons, for example, offer clues to the kinds of coveralls western Mis
Source: BBC
May 11, 2010
A Swedish artist who created an international furore by depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a dog was assaulted as he delivered a university lecture.
Lars Vilks says he was head-butted by an audience member as he spoke about the limits of artistic freedom.
The cartoonist's glasses were broken, but he was not injured.
Mr Vilks has been threatened on numerous occasions, but the assault at Uppsala University was the first time he has been physically attacked.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 11, 2010
Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, has accused Pakistani government officials of knowing where Osama bin Laden and leaders of the Afghan Taliban are hiding.
Western officials have repeatedly questioned the determination of Pakistan to tackle militants, a problem which has taken on added significance following the arrest of Faisal Shahzad, accused of trying to detonate a bomb in Times Square.
American officials believe his plot was backed by the Pakistan Talib
Source: CNN
May 11, 2010
Investigators are preparing to exhume a possible mass grave site in Serbia where witnesses say the bodies of 250 ethnic Albanians are buried, prosecutors said.
The potential graves are beneath a company building and a parking lot in the town of Rudnica, a few miles north of Kosovo's border, the Office of the Serbian War Crimes Prosecutor said Monday.
Prosecutors said bodies may have been originally buried in Kosovo and later exhumed and transferred to Serbia.
Source: AP
May 11, 2010
A cross erected on a remote Mojave Desert outcropping to honor American war dead has been stolen less than two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed it to remain standing while a legal battle continued over its presence on federal land.
Versions of the memorial have been vandalized repeatedly in the last 75 years and the motive this time was not immediately known, but the theft was condemned Tuesday by veterans groups that support the cross and by civil libertarians that saw i
Source: AP
May 11, 2010
A labor union is pledging $50,000 for upkeep of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial grounds on the National Mall.
The Maryland-based International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers announced the gift Tuesday to help care for about 13 acres for the rest of the year....
Source: Guardian (UK)
May 11, 2010
David Cameron has entered 10 Downing Street as prime minister, returning the Conservative party to power after 13 years.
Cameron accepted the Queen's invitation to form a new government shortly before 8.30pm and minutes later spoke to the country outside Downing Street alongside his wife, Samantha, and announced he will establish a "proper and full" coalition with the Liberal Democrats - the first in British politics since 1945.
It follows four days of intense
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 11, 2010
An Australian physics lecturer has spotted a 99-year-old mistake in the definition of the word "siphon" in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).
Dr Stephen Hughes, from the University of Technology in Brisbane, noticed that the error in the dictionary during research for an article for science teachers.
The OED definition of the word erroneously states that atmospheric pressure makes siphons work, when in fact it is the force of gravity.
Siphons d
Source: WaPo
May 11, 2010
Just after Election Day the fall of her senior year at Princeton, Elena Kagan published an opinion piece in the campus newspaper recounting how she had wept and gotten drunk on vodka at a campaign gathering for a liberal Brooklyn congresswoman who had unexpectedly lost a race for the Senate.
Ronald Reagan was heading to the White House, and Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman -- a champion for women's causes for whom Kagan had toiled 14-hour days as a campaign press assistant -- was leaving Ca
