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: Washington Times
8-15-12
Vice President Joseph R. Biden's incendiary comment to a largely black audience Tuesday about Republican Mitt Romney wanting to put voters "back in chains" isn't the first time he has used slavery imagery in a political appeal.In 2006, when then-Delaware senator was campaigning in South Carolina for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, he reminded people that he represented a former slave state.Asked on Fox News how a "Northeast liberal" such as himself could win in South Carolina, Mr. Biden replied, "You don't know my state. My state was a slave state. My state is a border state. My state is the eighth largest black population in the country. My state is anything from a Northeast liberal state."...
Source: Telegraph (UK)
8-15-12
The ship that took Captain Robert Falcon Scott on his ill-fated mission to the Antarctic 100 years ago has been discovered off the coast of Greenland.The SS Terra Nova, built in Dundee in 1884, was found by a research company, Schmidt Ocean Institute, when they were testing new equipment on one of their vessels.The discovery has amazed experts as the ship had lain on the sea bed under icy waters for 70 years.Captain Scott and his team sailed it from Cardiff to the Antarctic in their quest to be the first people to reach the South Pole a century ago....
Source: The Atlantic
8-15-12
Loris Taylor, the CEO and president of Native Public Media, still has the scars on her hands from when she was caught speaking Hopi in school and got the sharp end of the ruler as a result. "They hit so hard, the flesh was taken off," she remembers. "Deep down inside, it builds some resistance in you."Now, she's at the forefront of a movement to revive dead and dying languages using an old medium: radio. As CEO and president of Native Public Media, she's lobbied the FCC and overseen projects to get increasingly rare tongues like Hopi onto airwaves so that Native Americans can keep their ancestors' ways of speaking alive—and pass those ways of speaking to new generations.Similar efforts are taking place worldwide. In Ireland, Dublin's youthful Top-40 Raidio Ri-Ra and Belfast's eclectic indie Raidio Failte have been broadcasting entirely in Irish for several years. In Washington, D.C. earlier this month, indigenous radio producers from Peru, Mexico, Canada, El Salvador, and a handful of other countries gathered for the "Our Voices on the Air" conference, organized by the 40-year-old nonprofit Cultural Survival and the Smithsonian's Recovering Voices program....
Source: USA Today
8-14-12
Congress is on pace to make history with the least productive legislative year in the post World War II era.Just 61 bills have become law to date in 2012 out of 3,914 bills that have been introduced by lawmakers, or less than 2% of all proposed laws, according to a USA TODAY analysis of records since 1947 kept by the U.S. House Clerk's office.In 2011, after Republicans took control of the U.S. House, Congress passed just 90 bills into law. The only other year in which Congress failed to pass at least 125 laws was 1995.These statistics make the 112th Congress, covering 2011-12, the least productive two-year gathering on Capitol Hill since the end of World War II. Not even the 80th Congress, which President Truman called the "do-nothing Congress" in 1948, passed as few laws as the current one, records show....
Source: CNN.com
8-15-12
(CNN) -- One of the world's largest private superyachts is the latest to set sail on an expedition to uncover the secrets of a British battle cruiser lost during World War II.Octopus -- a 414 foot megayacht -- was donated to the British Navy by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft. Allen will fund the recovery and research expedition, sparing the British government any cost.A previous expedition by Blue Water Recoveries, a deep sea shipwreck recovery company, located the wreck 11 years ago.This week the recovery team will return to the wreck site with a two-fold mission: Retrieve the ship's bell and document the remains of the battle cruiser in the hopes of later determining what happened in the Hood's final moments....
Source: India Today
8-15-12
Security has been stepped up in state capitals and key installations on Independence Day eve to thwart any terror strike, with an elaborate ground-to-air vigil being maintained in Delhi where the Prime Minister will unfurl the tricolour at the Red Fort on Wednesday.With insurgents outfits and Maoists calling for a boycott of celebrations, tens of thousands of police and paramilitary forces have been deployed and patrolling intensified in the North-eastern states and those hit by Left wing violence, including Chhattisgarh.In Jammu and Kashmir, security measures have been intensified across the Valley following stepped up militant attacks over the past week, with police and other security forces resuming random frisking of pedestrians and searching of vehicles....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
8-15-12
A French explorer's ship that sank in the Gulf of Mexico in the 17th century is to be rebuilt after undergoing a complex freeze drying operation, the first such undertaking of its size.By placing the ship – La Belle – in a constant environment of up to 60 degrees below zero, more than 300 years of moisture will be safely removed from hundreds of European oak and pine timbers and planks.The freeze-dryer, located at the old Bryan Air Force base several miles northwest of College Station, is 40 feet long and 8 feet wide – the biggest such machine on the continent devoted to archaeology.Researchers will then rebuild the 54 ½-foot vessel, which will become the centrepiece of the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin....
Source: AP
8-13-12
EBENSBURG, Pa. (AP) — A 110-year-old Pennsylvania widow is getting a benefits boost because of her husband's World War I service.Family members say Alda Collins is now getting about $1,000 a month to assist with her stay at a nursing home near Ebensburg. She had been getting $36 a month.Her son tells the Daily American of Somerset (http://bit.ly/OURXLU) that Collins lived by herself in a trailer until she was 106. She can use a walker, feeds herself and knows the Pirates are in second place....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
7-31-12
All Saints, Waterden, stands in splendid isolation in the middle of a field in a hidden valley 10 miles from the north Norfolk coast. It is a 1,000-year-old Anglo-Saxon village church without a village – but even if it has lost its original purpose, it remains picture postcard perfect, a Grade I-listed gem in a landscape that carries those who happen upon it back through the centuries....The building belongs to the parish of South Creake, where the 40 or so regular worshippers have already had to find £100,000 to repair the roof of their own Saint Mary’s. They use All Saints only once every four weeks for Evensong. It is quite a bill to foot in return for 12 services a year.Their dilemma neatly encapsulates the crisis facing the custodians of the 12,000 listed Anglican parish churches around the country, two thirds of which are in rural areas with tiny and dwindling congregations struggling to pay maintenance bills. The desperation caused by this funding shortfall has been brought into sharp relief this week by the news that thousands of homeowners living near ancient churches potentially face large bills for the upkeep of their fabric, even if they never set foot inside them....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
8-8-12
Running from 1948 to 1951, top secret "Operation Stone" created a number of false border posts near the Czech-German with an elaboration and attention to detail worthy of a film set in order to trick people into thinking they had made it to safety.Once comfortable in what they thought was Germany a Czech secret policeman posing as an American intelligence officer would then ask them to write down all their contacts back home."It was human tragedy. These people were brought into areas which they thought were in the West," said Pavel Bret, from the Czech Republic's Centre for the Documentation and Investigation of Communist Crimes. "There were American flags, American uniforms, and they were also asked to give the names of people co-operating with Western intelligence. They still feel ashamed that they were tricked."But you cannot deny just how clever the operation was."...
Source: NYT
8-11-12
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For months now, the alarm has been resounding throughout the insular and competitive world of antiquarian books: beware of volumes bearing the stamp of the storied Girolamini Library in Naples. They could be hot.The library's former director, Marino Massimo De Caro, was arrested in May, accused of systematically despoiling the library he had been charged with keeping safe, stealing books and selling them on the open market or directly to collectors. And sharp sleuthing on the part of a professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta has raised questions about Mr. De Caro and the sale of other, possibly forged, books....
Source: AP
8-13-12
Like the people who hike it, the Appalachian Trail is always moving.Technically, Tuesday marks the 75th anniversary of its completion. But the 2,180-mile path stretching across 14 states from Springer Mountain, Ga., to Katahdin, Maine, is never really finished.It took 15 years for hundreds of volunteers, state and federal partners, trail maintenance clubs and young workers with the New Deal-era Civilian Conservation Corps to build the original path. In the decades since, nearly 99 percent has been relocated or rebuilt, and transferred from private to public ownership.That means the trail and some 250,000 contiguous acres are better-protected than ever from development and suburban sprawl....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
8-10-12
A glimpse into the brutal way warriors proved their prowess 3,600 has been unearthed in Egypt.Archaeologists excavating a palace in the ancient city of Avaris have dug up four pits containing 16 large right hands believed to have been sliced from the arms of vanquished enemies.Experts believe the discovery is the earliest and only physical evidence that soldiers used to present the cut-off right hands of enemies in exchange for gold....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
8-10-12
Perhaps no Prince of Wales in history has been less trusted — or more spied upon — than the boy everyone knew as Bertie. When he attended a military summer camp, at age 19, the future King Edward VII was surrounded by minders: two stern Grenadier officers, a colonel and a general. He even had to share a general’s quarters.Happily, however, they had not thought to lock Bertie’s bedroom window. So, one night, the heir to the throne wriggled out, made a beeline for the camp prostitute — one Nellie Clifden — and triumphantly lost his virginity.Moreover, as I discovered from his engagement diary for September 1861, there was a ‘2nd time’ and a ‘3rd time’ with the luscious ‘NC’, proving he lacked in neither courage or enthusiasm....
Source: Ynet News
8-2-12
Adolf Hitler's nephew pleaded to enlist in the US army and fight against his uncle's Nazi regime, a letter written in 1942 reveals.The New York Daily News on Thursday reported that William Patrick Hitler, who fled from Germany to the US in 1939, wrote US President Franklin D. Roosevelt after being rejected from the US Army, begging him to fight alongside the Allied Forces....
Source: Gawker
8-30-12
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The New York Times' Julie Bosman reports that Jonah Lehrer, the precocious New Yorkerwriter who was caught fabricating Bob Dylan quotes in his book Imagine, has resigned from the magazine. Here's his statement, via Bosman's Twitter feed:
Source: AP
8-10-12
The wife of former astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, says he's "amazingly resilient" and making progress toward recovering from heart surgery.Carol Armstrong told The Associated Press in an email Friday that in the days since the surgery, her 82-year-old husband has been able to get out of bed and sit in a chair, and then walk up and down the corridor....
Source: NPR
8-9-12
HNN Editor: Last month the readers of HNN voted David Barton's book “the least credible history book in print.” See our poll.
Citing a loss of confidence in the book's details, Christian publisher Thomas Nelson is ending the publication and distribution of the bestseller, The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You've Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson.
The controversial book was written by Texas evangelical David Barton, who NPR's Barbara Bradley Hagerty profiled on All Things Considered Wednesday. The publishing company says it's ceasing publication because it found that "basic truths just were not there."
Since its initial publication, historians have debunked and raised concerns about numerous claims in Barton's book. In it, Barton calls Jefferson a "conventional Christian," claims the founding father started church services at the Capitol, and even though he owned more than 200 slaves, says Jefferson was a civil rights visionary....
Source: AP
8-9-12
The United States began a landmark project Thursday to clean up a dangerous chemical left from the defoliant Agent Orange - 50 years after American planes first sprayed it on Vietnam's jungles to destroy enemy cover.Dioxin, which has been linked to cancer, birth defects and other disabilities, will be removed from the site of a former U.S. air base in Danang in central Vietnam. The effort is seen as a long-overdue step toward removing a thorn in relations between the former foes nearly four decades after the Vietnam War ended."We are both moving earth and taking the first steps to bury the legacies of our past," U.S. Ambassador David Shear said during the groundbreaking ceremony near where a rusty barbed wire fence marks the site's boundary. "I look forward to even more success to follow."The $43 million joint project with Vietnam is expected to be completed in four years on the 19-hectare (47-acre) contaminated site, now an active Vietnamese military base near Danang's commercial airport.
Source: Fox News
7-27-12
Two sculptures of life-size lions, each weighing about 5 tons in antiquity, have been discovered in what is now Turkey, with archaeologists perplexed over what the granite cats were used for.One idea is that the statues, created between 1400 and 1200 B.C., were meant to be part of a monument for a sacred water spring, the researchers said.The lifelike lions were created by the Hittites who controlled a vast empire in the region at a time when the Asiatic lion roamed the foothills of Turkey."The lions are prowling forward, their heads slightly lowered; the tops of their heads are barely higher than the napes," write Geoffrey Summers, of the Middle East Technical University, and researcher Erol Özen in an article published in the most recent edition of the American Journal of Archaeology....
