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: Times (UK)
September 22, 2008
A 650-million-year-old underwater reef, 10 times higher than the Great Barrier Reef, has been discovered in the middle of Australia's outback.
The ancient reef, formed nearly 100 million years before the first known animal life evolved, is the only one of its age in the world. Scientists believe it may hold evidence of the earliest examples of primitive animal life.
The reef was discovered by three Melbourne scientists in the Northern Flinders Ranges in South Australi
Source: Guardian (UK)
September 22, 2008
A rare medieval cookbook is to be digitally photographed page by page and the results uploaded to the internet for gourmands around the globe to study.
Forme of Cury, a recipe book compiled by King Richard II's master cooks in 1390, details around 205 dishes cooked in the royal household and sheds light on a little-studied element of life in the Dark Ages.
Written in Middle English, it contains the instructions for creating long-forgotten dishes such as blank mang (a sw
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 22, 2008
The British researchers claim that the findings help explain why the massive "bluestone" rocks, said to have healing powers, were transported 150 miles from Wales to Salisbury Plain to construct the monument.
The first dig around the circle in nearly half a century also suggests that the monument is 300 years younger than previously thought dating it to about 2300 BC.
The finding came in a project by Professors Timothy Darvill and Geoffrey Wainwright who cut a
Source: AP
September 22, 2008
Derek Jeter climbed the mound, surrounded by his teammates, and began the final farewell.
Microphone in hand, the New York captain addressed the 54,610 fans who came to say so long to Yankee Stadium, his words booming around the old ballpark where the voices of Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle had echoed years before.
"So take the memories from this stadium, add it to the new memories that come with the new Yankee Stadium and continue to pass t
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
September 22, 2008
HERE, as the dirt was scraped away, lay the last, sad unspoken message from the soldiers who died on the Sandakan death marches: the brass buckles from their long-perished uniforms, the adjusters from their haversacks, neatly stacked together in the soil of Borneo.
Then there was the globular shape resting on top of the buckles, in pride of place. Lynette Silver rubbed away the dirt, spat on it and rubbed again. Now she could see an outline map of Australia and, now, a crown on top,
Source: Deutsche Welle
September 21, 2008
Lutherans gathering in the eastern German town of Wittenberg have officially launched a decade of celebrations to mark the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told the congregation that he hoped the memorial decade would be a time for Lutherans to try harder to help other faiths, especially Islam, integrate into German society. The break from the Catholic Church began in 1517 when a monk called Martin Luther nailed 95 demands to the door o
Source: BBC
September 21, 2008
Miners in Lesotho have discovered a huge gem stone which may become the largest ever polished diamond.
The stone weighs 478 carats and is the 20th largest rough diamond ever found, said Gem Diamonds.
The company said the uncut rock was recovered recently from the Letseng mine, owned by the company in Lesotho.
The diamond, which is as yet unnamed, has the potential to yield a 150 carat cut stone, and could sell for tens of millions of dollars, the company
Source: BBC
September 21, 2008
Archaeologists have pinpointed the construction of Stonehenge to 2300 BC - a key step to discovering how and why the mysterious temple was built.
The radiocarbon date is said to be the most accurate yet and means the ring's original bluestones were put up 300 years later than previously thought.
The dating is the major finding from an excavation inside the henge by Profs Tim Darvill and Geoff Wainwright.
The duo found evidence suggesting Stonehenge was a
Source: NYT
September 20, 2008
Seven years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, the remains of 13 of the 19 men responsible have been identified and are in the custody of the F.B.I. and the New York City medical examiner’s office.
But no one has formally requested the remains in order to bury them.
“Politically, one can understand that this is a hot potato,” said Muneer Fareed, secretary general of the Islamic Society of North America and a former professor of Islamic studies. “People don’t want
Source: LAT
September 19, 2008
Suddenly it seem everyone is weighing in on whether George W. Bush will be remembered kindly or poorly by history.Conservative columnist George Will issued a blistering attack on the White House Thursday night for bailing out mismanaged Wall Street giants, saying Bush's intervention makes
Source: WaPo
September 20, 2008
Historic. Breathtaking. Revolutionary.
It would be hard to find a superlative that would overstate how much the parameters and contours of American economic policy have been reshaped over the past two weeks.
The degree of government intervention into the workings of the private marketplace is unprecedented. Three giant financial institutions taken over. Government purchases of vast quantities of hard-to-sell assets from banks, investment banks and anyone else whose demi
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 20, 2008
Known as the Steel Magnolia in her youth, Miss Rice has guided the US through the war on terror, looked tyrants in the eye and faced down terrorist threats during her nation's darkest hours.
But a new book reveals that she was not so steadfast in facing down her own more personal enemies within the Bush administration.
Instead, Miss Rice was so fazed by former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that she burst into tears at a meeting in the White House situation room.
Source: AP
September 20, 2008
The history of the Mosaic Templars was believed to have drawn to a close in the 1930s, when the Great Depression swallowed one of the largest benevolent societies for blacks in the nation and likely the world.
Its finances ruined, the organization created by two freed slaves in the wake of the Civil War left little behind other than its iconic brick building in Little Rock's black business district. But even that relic is now gone, left in disrepair until transients trying to stay w
Source: AP
September 20, 2008
Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks — many calling them "lazy," "violent," responsible for their own troubles.
The poll, conducted with Stanford University, suggests that the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference be
Source: NYT
September 19, 2008
Does the Resolution Trust Corporation — the government entity formed in 1989 to dispose of hundreds of failed savings banks and hundreds of billions of dollars in their bad loans and other assets — offer a model for dealing with today’s financial crisis?
Although some lawmakers and former officials are tempted by the idea, other experts say the analogy is faulty and the current situation is vastly larger and more complex than the comparatively contained savings and loan mess of two
Source: Politico
September 16, 2008
It’s the climax of practically every election movie: the big debate scene, in which an underdog trailing in the polls scores major points against his stuffy opponent through oratory. Who can forget Robert Redford as liberal neophyte Bill McKay going off script about poverty and race while battling rival Crocker Jarmon in “The Candidate”? Or Warren Beatty in “Bulworth,” playing a rap-happy senator bringing class warfare to the debate process by summing it up as “pretty rich guys here, getting pai
Source: AP
September 21, 2008
Two generations ago, bullets flew and tear gas canisters exploded among the magnolias as segregationists fought federal authorities over the court-ordered admission of the first black student to the University of Mississippi.
It was the flagship school in what was then the most defiantly white supremacist state in the union. Now, Ole Miss is a diverse university where racial conflict is a topic for history classes rather than a fact of everyday life, and it's hosting the first presi
Source: Yahoo
September 19, 2008
Archaeologists have found two groups of complete
Neolithic human remains in peninsular Malaysia and on Borneo island that
may better explain prehistoric human life, reports said Friday.
Archaeologists say the remains are more than 3,000 years old and were
found within two months of each other, in prehistoric burial grounds
surrounded by ceremonial beads, pottery, shells and animal bones, the Sun
daily reported."These remains are very important as the skeletons are almost fully
co
Source: AP
September 20, 2008
Weary and recovering from illness, Richard Nixon looked so bad in his TV debate with John Kennedy that his mom called afterward to see if he was all right. Forty years later, Al Gore loudly sighed, shrugged in exasperation and got in George W. Bush's face in a display of pique and impatience.
In presidential campaign debates, a slip of the tongue, an awkward gesture, style points and the seemingly spontaneous one-liner have provided the telling moments that shape elections and live
Source: Sydney H. Schanberg at the Nation Institute website
September 18, 2008
John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn't return home. Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents. Thus the war hero who people would logically imagine as a
