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: BBC
December 2, 2009
A hoard of silver coins hidden in a Northamptonshire field during the Wars of the Roses has fetched more than £29,000 at auction.
The 186 coins, found in Brackley in 2005, were sold at Morton and Eden by the metal detector enthusiast who found them and the owner of the field.
It is thought they were hidden in the summer of 1465 by someone who went into hiding during the dynastic civil war.
They were sold in separate lots for £29,900 at the auction house.
Source: BBC
December 2, 2009
Cambodia's Khmer Rouge war crimes court has named Andrew Cayley as its new international prosecutor.
The genocide tribunal appointed British-born Mr Cayley several months after the resignation of his Canadian predecessor, Robert Petit.
Mr Cayley recently defended the former Liberian President Charles Taylor at his war crimes trial.
Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni formally appointed Mr Cayley, according to a court statement.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 2, 2009
The trial of John Demjanjuk, the Nazi guard accused of involvement in the murder of 27,900 Jews at the Sobibor death camp, was adjourned yesterday because he was too ill to appear in court.
A doctor examining the 89-year-old said Demjanjuk had a fever which continued to rise despite medication and the judge decided it was not safe to transport him from hospital. to court.
Ralph Alt, presiding, said the trial would resume on 21 December.
Wednesday was to h
Source: CNN
December 2, 2009
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld criticized President Obama's assertion Tuesday that the Bush administration ignored requests for more troops to battle the Taliban, declaring the president's remark made during his address on Afghanistan a "bald misstatement."
Rumsfeld said Wednesday that during his time as Bush's Secretary of Defense, he was "not aware of a single request of that nature."
But Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
Source: AP
December 31, 2069
HELSINKI, Finland -- Finns on Monday marked the 70th anniversary of the Winter War, a conflict that saw this tiny country hold off Stalin's Red Army for 105 days and suffer one-third as many casualties in weather that was so cold some soldiers hallucinated.
Finland lost the war, but its resistance against the massive Soviet war machine with its white-clad "ghost army" stunned Moscow, which had planned to occupy its western neighbor within a few weeks, into accepting peace.
Source: MTI
January 12, 2009
Archaeologists have discovered rare gold objects from the time Hungarian tribes first arrived in the Carpathian basin, near Szeged, the head of the excavation told MTI on Monday.
Tibor Paluch, archaeologist of Szeged's Ferenc Mora Museum, said that the relics - thin gold sheets to cover the eyes and mouth of a dead person - had been found in one of eight early graves.
The archaeologist said that the purpose of applying the covers was to protect the soul of the dead. He
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 29, 2009
Rwanda joined the Commonwealth on Sunday, becoming only the second country which was not formerly a British colony to be admitted to the group.
The small central African country applied last year to join the group of 54 nations, all of which - aside from Mozambique - have historic links to Britain dating back to the colonial era.
Rwanda's President Paul Kagame has lobbied hard for his country to join the Commonwealth as part of a policy of moving towards the Anglophone
Source: WSJ
December 2, 2009
HERSHEY, Pa.—The charitable trust that controls Hershey Co. nurtures some 1,800 disadvantaged children from preschool through high school and beyond here in Pennsylvania.
But amid rising costs to fulfill its mission, the trust is also taking on an unlikely role in a major international takeover battle: Though it could involve shouldering $10 billion more in debt, the trust's board has pushed Hershey to consider outbidding Kraft Foods Inc.'s $16.5 billion offer for British rival Cadb
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 1, 2009
Sir Frederick and Sir David Barclay had fought to try to modernise the island’s 450-year-old system in favour of full democracy. They have decided to take their case to Strasbourg after Britain’s highest court of appeal ruled against them.
Sark’s parliament, the Chief Pleas, used to be made up of hereditary members. It voted in February to switch to an elected chamber.
Opponents led by Sir Frederick and Sir David challenged the reform, arguing that it kept the “relics o
Source: Reuters
December 1, 2009
ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - Russia on Tuesday published previously secret documents that shed light on a notorious murder 75 years ago that historians say sparked the purges of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
The mysterious killing of Stalin's rival Sergei Kirov on December 1, 1934 has remained one of the Kremlin's most closely guarded riddles for decades because many of the key documents were immediately classified by the secret police.
Kirov, a fiery Bolshevik rev
Source: The Washington Times
December 1, 2009
The United States is about to lose a key arms-control tool from the closing days of the Cold War -- the right to station American observers in Russia to count the long-range missiles leaving its assembly line.
The end of full-time, on-site access will likely ignite complaints in Congress, with insiders from both parties arguing over whether the George W. Bush or the Obama administration is responsible.
Republicans are worried by the previously undisclosed agreement betw
Source: WSJ
December 2, 2009
SEOUL -- North Korea redenominated its currency for the first time in 50 years and limited how much old money could be traded for new, likely wiping out millions of residents' savings and much of the cash used in market activities frowned upon by its authoritarian government.
The action triggered chaos in the isolated country on Monday and Tuesday, according to news outlets in South Korea that specialize in obtaining information from the North. Millions of people rushed to banks and
Source: Yahoo News
December 1, 2009
BOSTON – President Barack Obama's aunt buried her face in her hands and sobbed as she described her anguish over no longer having contact with him and his family after the revelation she had been living illegally for years in the United States in public housing.
Zeituni Onyango (zay-TUH'-nee awn-YAHN'-goh) told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview that she is troubled that her immigration woes have made her a political liability to her nephew.
Onyango, the hal
Source: Reuters
November 30, 2009
Long shadows from the global financial downturn hang over the United Arab Emirates as it marks its 38-year existence with flags and fireworks this week.
A debt crisis in Dubai has undercut investor confidence in the brash emirate's ambitions. It remains to be seen whether the UAE's oil-producing powerhouse Abu Dhabi will seize the chance to puncture the dreams of its freewheeling neighbour.
Balloons in the green, white, red and black of the UAE flag adorn myriad shoppin
Source: CNSNews
November 30, 2009
New York (AP) - By a wide margin, Americans consider Rush Limbaugh the nation's most influential conservative voice.
Those are the results of a poll conducted by "60 Minutes" and Vanity Fair magazine and issued Sunday.
The radio host was picked by 26 percent of those who responded, followed by Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck at 11 percent. Actual politicians -- former Vice President Dick Cheney and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin -- were the choic
Source: ANI
December 31, 2069
Budapest (Hungary): A team of Hungarian marine archaeologists has found the wreckage of a Dutch cargo ship that sank near the Brazilian coast over three centuries ago.
Voetboog was a three-mast flyboat, which left the port of Batavia (now Jakarta) for The Netherlands with a 109-member crew on board, the expedition leader Attila K. Szaloky told MTI, a Hungarian news agency.
Owned by the Dutch East India Company, the Fluyt ship carried silk, spices, tea, Japanese and Chin
Source: The Times (UK)
December 12, 2009
A new Russian history book for schools, approved by the Putin Government, glosses over Stalin’s Terror and other truths.
Now you see him, now you don’t. Stalin was a past master at the art of airbrushing. In one classic set of photographs, there Stalin is with his secret police chief, Nikolai Yezhov — and in the next photo, there Yezhov isn’t (he was executed in 1940, with his boss’s approval). And now, in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the airbrushing of history seems to be all the rage
Source: NPR
December 1, 2009
Obama's plan will raise the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to about 100,000. Will that hasten the end of the war? Is the Karzai government, widely seen as corrupt, worth fighting for? Is victory possible? And what defines victory?
There are many questions; fewer answers.
More important, many Democrats are demanding a say in the process. Only five times in the nation's history, and not since World War II, has Congress used its power to declare war.
In
Source: CNN
December 1, 2009
Washington (CNN) -- As President Obama announced he's sending more troops to Afghanistan, he also took on critics who made comparisons between the current situation and the war in Vietnam.
Obama addressed those critics, who believe the area cannot be stabalized and think the United States should cut their losses and rapdily withdraw, by highlighting what he beileves are major differences between Vietnam and Afghanistan.
"Unlike Vietnam, we are joined by a broad coa
Source: AP
December 31, 2069
ATLANTA—Just north of I-20 on Moreland Avenue in Atlanta sits an intersection on a low hill. There's a gas station and a liquor store and some other businesses, but not much else.
Though you would never know it from the unremarkable view, thousands of men died here 145 years ago in one of the fiercest fights of the Civil War.
Confederate Private Sam Watkins, wounded in the battle that July day in 1864, recalled bodies, horses, wagons and cannon "piled indiscriminat
