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: Fox News
February 8, 2010
A British teacher was fired from his job after complaining that some of his Muslim students were celebrating the Sept. 11 hijackers as "heroes," the Daily Mail reported.
Nicholas Kafouris, 40, who taught at East London's Bigland Green Primary School for 12 years, is suing the school for racial discrimination after he was allegedly forced from his post because he would not tolerate the remarks of his students.
Kafouris claims members of his class, some as young
Source: Fox News
February 8, 2010
Iran's Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Monday that Iran is set to deliver a "punch" that will stun world powers during this week's 31st anniversary of the Islamic revolution, AFP reported.
The country's top cleric was marking the occasion when Iran's air force gave its support to revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a key event which led to the toppling of the U.S.-backed shah on February 11, 1979.
This year's anniversary is expected
Source: CNN
February 8, 2010
In a series of small ceremonies, the U.S. Coast Guard on Monday afternoon will shut down Loran-C, a navigation and timing system that has guided mariners and aviators since World War II.
The death blow came last May when President Obama called the system obsolete, saying it is no longer needed in an age in which Global Positioning System devices are nearly ubiquitous in cars, planes and boats.
Killing Loran-C will save the government $190 million over five years, Obam
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 21, 2010
It's a crisp, sunny day and retired church minister Peter Twinn is out with his metal detector unearthing evidence of Roman occupation beneath the bare fields of South Gloucestershire.
"Over there is the Roman temple and just beyond those trees is the villa," he says. "No one knew about this site before I came up here – it's all new discoveries."
As we walk he sweeps the detector back and forth in front of him as it chatters away in a series of clic
Source: WaPo
February 8, 2010
Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), 77, a Vietnam veteran who staunchly supported military spending and became a master of pork-barrel politics, died today at Virginia Hospital Center following gallbladder surgery last month.
Elected to Congress in 1974 from a southwestern Pennsylvania district that has been economically devastated by the decline of America's coal-mining and steel industries, the gruff and jowly Murtha was beloved by his constituents for tapping billions of dollars in federal
Source: Steven Aftergood at Secrecy News
February 8, 2010
Last week, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) placed a "hold" on all of the Obama Administration nominations that are pending before the Senate, thereby preventing a vote on their confirmation. There are said to be at least 70 such nominations awaiting Senate action, including those of several senior defense and intelligence officials. Sen. Shelby, a man of flexible principles who has served as both a Democrat and a Republican, reportedly adopted the blanket holds in an attempt to compel the
Source: JournalNews (Hamilton, OH)
February 7, 2010
The African American Voices of Youth will add a musical element to the discussion on black history.
The high school social service organization will present “History through Music: African American Creativity from Gospel to Hip-Hop” later in February, which is also Black History Month. Social studies teacher and organization adviser Damien Strecker said part of the group’s responsibility is to educate the community.
“Some students, at least in the classes I teach, quest
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 8, 2010
Veronica Bowers, 35, and her seven-month-old daughter, Charity, were killed when their Cessna was mistaken for a drug plane in 2001. Her husband, Jim Bowers and the couple's son, Cory, escaped serious injury.
Pilot Kevin Donaldson, who had serious leg wounds, crash-landed the plane on the Amazon River. A cockpit video tape obtained by ABC News shows how a CIA spotter plane sneaked up behind the Cessna and wrongly identified it as a drug plane. CIA operatives then called in the Peruv
Source: Record Net
February 6, 2010
Massive iron objects that have weathered the Mother Lode's fires and rains since the Gold Rush are now melting away in the face of more insidious forces: thievery and strong prices for scrap metal.
In the past two years, thefts of iron objects have been reported at four historic mine sites in Tuolumne and Calaveras counties, as well as from two historic buildings in downtown San Andreas.
In the most recent incident, an employee at the Calaveras Arts Council arrived at w
Source: CNN
February 8, 2010
Iran will this week celebrate the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution -- a day that marked the end of the country's western-backed monarchy and the start of an Islamic republic.
Some experts say the revolution was also a catalyst for the spread of Islamic fundamentalism throughout the Middle East and South Asia.
This key date in Iran's history comes amid protests by the opposition after last year's disputed presidential election won by incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadine
Source: Independent (UK)
February 8, 2010
There was considerable excitement among archaeologists when, in 2005, a firm of housing developers unearthed the only Roman chariot-racing track in Britain, on a site in Colchester, Essex.
Five years later, residents have less than a month to save the site. The racetrack is still hidden beneath local roads, gardens and old army buildings, but campaigners are hoping to buy a large Victorian garden which covers the key part of the circuit.
Buried beneath are eight sto
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 8, 2010
The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) believes the centre's "twee paths" are "more appropriate for an urban garden" and its "delicate roof" is unsuitable for the wind and rain that sweeps across the majestic Wiltshire plains where the stones stand.
Although the plans, by Australian architecture firm Denton Corker Marshall, have been approved by Wiltshire county council planners and are backed by local architects on the Wiltsh
Source: AFP
February 8, 2010
MALAYSIAN researchers believe they have discovered a new set of prehistoric human bones in a cave near the largest man-make lake in south east Asia, newspapers reported today.
The skeletal remains are of a youth who died 8,000 to 11,000 years ago, the Sunday Star quoted Nik Hasan Shuhaimi, deputy director of the Institute of the Malay World and Civilisation of the National University of Malaysia, as saying.
The bones were found in the Bewah Cave near Kenyir Lake in the
Source: BBC
February 6, 2010
A pub clock dating back to the introduction of a tax on timepieces more than 200 years ago has sold at auction for £8,800.
The George III Act of Parliament clock, decorated with hunting scenes, was made around 1797 and was once on the wall of a tavern.
It was discovered in a house in Aberdeenshire, where it had been in the possession of a family for decades.
It was sold at Shapes auction house in Edinburgh.
Source: BBC
February 6, 2010
Scientists in China say they have discovered more than 3,000 dinosaur footprints, all facing the same way.
The footprints - thought to belong to at least six dinosaur types - were found in eastern Shandong province, state news agency Xinhua reports.
Experts believe the prints are more than 100 million years old and say they could represent a migration or a panicked attempt to escape predators.
Dinosaur fossils have been found at about 30 sites in the Zhuc
Source: Fox News
February 6, 2010
Five years after his death and 22 years after his presidency ended, President Reagan's leadership style and policies are still influencing the political debate in 2010.
President Obama echoed the iconic Republican, who wold have been 99 Saturday, in his State of the Union address last week.
Many tea party activists say Reagan and his mantra of cutting taxes are part of the inspiration behind the rallies that have gripped the country in the past year.
And m
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 6, 2010
Newly released documents from Margaret Thatcher's first year in office reveal her widespread distrust of the Establishment - especially the BBC - and her growing impatience with the Carter administration
"Would you accept the Republican nomination for President in 1980?" Margaret Thatcher was asked at a Foreign Policy Association lunch in New York on December 18, 1979.
The scribbled note, from an anonymous doting American, is just one of many documents relea
Source: New York Times
February 6, 2010
Lydia Csato Gasman, an art historian known for her groundbreaking scholarship on the work of Picasso, died on Jan. 15 in Charlottesville, Va. She was 84 and lived in Charlottesville.
Her death was confirmed by Larry Goedde, chairman of the McIntire Department of Art at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she taught for two decades.
Fluent in several languages and equipped with a formidable memory, Dr. Gasman redefined Picasso studies. Most scholars ha
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 6, 2010
Adolf Hitler took a primitive form of Viagra when he tried to have sex with Eva Braun, a new book on the Fuhrer’s fragile health has claimed.
Based on long-dormant medical archives and formerly classified military documents, it claimed the dictator was so afraid of pills that most of his medication was injected.
The authors of the book, titled Was Hitler Ill?, claimed he took 82 different sorts of medication during his rule of Nazi Germany including the primitive “Viag
Source: CNN
February 5, 2010
In a widely cited New York Times column, President Obama called Niebuhr his "favorite philosopher." But how precisely has Niebuhr's philosophy influenced Obama and his handling of everything from health care reform to fighting terrorists?
The answer may be seen by looking at Obama's first year in office, several scholars, and a relative of Niebuhr's, suggest.
At first, there seems to be little resemblance between the cool, cerebral Obama and the pugnacious Nie
