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: CNN
November 30, 2009
(CNN) -- Against the chilling scale of the Rwandan genocide, the events that unfolded on May 7, 1994, at the Kibeho College of Arts appear as a blip of horror.
Eighty Tutsi students perished at the hands of their teachers, fellow students and security forces. They died that day, according to the Rwandan government, because of the groundwork laid by one man: Emmanuel Uwayezu.
That he was an educator and a priest made the act that much more inhuman to his accusers.
Source: North Jersey
November 29, 2009
They called him "Valhalla."
But it was more than a nickname.
For more than five years, Hal Turner of North Bergen lived a double life.
The public knew him as an ultra-right-wing radio talk show host and Internet blogger with an audience of neo-Nazis and white supremacists attracted to his scorched-earth racism and bare-knuckles bashing of public figures. But to the FBI, and its expanding domestic counter-terror intelligence operations in the wake
Source: BBC
November 30, 2009
Across Timbuktu, in cupboards, rusting chests, private collections and libraries, tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of manuscripts bear witness to this legendary city's remarkable intellectual history, and by extension, to Africa's much overlooked pre-colonial heritage.
Now a giant, new, state of the art library has landed - rather like a spaceship - in the dilapidated centre of Timbuktu, offering the best hope of preserving and analysing the town's literary treasures.
Source: AP
November 29, 2009
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.
A small but growing number of Georgia archaeologists and history buffs are starting to use high-tech gear, ground-penetrating radar, metal detectors, new
Source: Air Force Times
November 28, 2009
There are places here where the desert floor is so speckled with artifacts, it is difficult to find a step that will not fracture history.
In a place called Lago Seco, pieces of pottery, many more than 800 years old, glisten in the morning sun. Stone tools and arrowheads are covered with only a thin layer of sand.
Then in the howling silence, a massive cloud of dirt and sand rises from the ground. Moments later, a concussive blast rolls out of Manned Range 4.
Source: BBC
November 29, 2009
A lawyer for John Demjanjuk, accused of helping to murder 27,900 Jews at a Nazi death camp, has accused German prosecutors of double standards.
Mr Demjanjuk, 89, denies he was a guard at Sobibor camp, in wartime Poland.
As the case began in Munich, his legal team said in previous cases Germans assigned to the camp had been cleared.
Doctors have said Mr Demjanjuk is in poor health, and asked that hearings be limited to two 90-minute sessions a day.
Source: BBC
November 30, 2009
Rwanda and France have restored diplomatic relations three years after they were broken in a row over responsibility for the 1994 genocide.
Both governments said they had agreed to appoint ambassadors at the end of long negotiations.
The two nations fell out after a French judge said President Paul Kagame helped spark the genocide, and Rwanda accused France of arming the Hutu militias.
On Sunday Rwanda was also admitted to the Commonwealth.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 31, 2069
A suitcase filled with wartime mementoes belonging to a Battle of Britain hero has been opened by his daughter 50 years later.
Jozef Jeka, a Polish airman who fled to Britain after Germany invaded his homeland, was a World War Two pilot who won the Distinguished Flying Medal and many other awards for his exploits.
He was twice shot down by the enemy and was credited with eight kills, four probables and one flying bomb.
He married a British woman after the w
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 31, 2069
Pete Doherty, the singer and songwriter, has been removed from the stage during a solo performance in Germany after he sang a Nazi anthem.
The lead singer of rock band Babyshambles began singing ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über alles', which was used as the national anthem under the Third Reich.
An outraged crowd at the on3 music festival in Munich began booing and shouting, but Doherty carried on singing five more songs before festival organisers ushered him from the sta
Source: BBC News
December 31, 2069
Peru has apologised for the first time to its citizens of African origin for centuries of "abuse, exclusion and discrimination".
The government said racially-motivated harassment still hindered the social and professional development of many African-Peruvians.
A public ceremony will be held to apologise to African-Peruvians, who make up 5-10% of the population.
Their ancestors were brought as slaves to the region by Spanish colonisers.
Source: BBC News
December 31, 2069
John Demjanjuk, accused of helping to murder nearly 28,000 Jews at a Nazi death camp, has gone on trial in the German city of Munich.
Mr Demjanjuk, who is 89 and was deported from the US in May, entered the courtroom in a wheelchair. His eyes were closed but he seemed conscious.
He denies being a camp guard at Sobibor, in Nazi-occupied Poland.
The trial is expected to last until May and, if found guilty, Mr Demjanjuk could be sentenced to 15 years in jail.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 30, 2009
Sir Isaac Newton's landmark account on how white light is comprised of the colours of the spectrum and Professor Stephen Hawking's early writing on black holes are among 60 papers to be put online.
More esoteric writings include a paper written by leading 18th century scientists confirming Mozart as a child genius, and a gruesome 1666 account of an early blood transfusion.
Asked to name his favourite, Lord Rees, president of the Royal Society, and a professor of cosmolo
Source: NYT
November 29, 2009
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — The first trial to showcase the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge three decades ago concluded with the regime’s chief torturer still seemingly unable to grasp the magnitude of his actions. Yet despite that surprising end, the trial may have helped Cambodia begin to move beyond the horrors of its past...
... The case broke new ground as a hybrid of national and international justice systems with the support of the United Nations. In another innovation, it included
Source: Examiner
November 29, 2009
145 years ago today, November 29, 1864, Colorado's Sand Creek Massacre took the lives of 160 Cheyenne and Arapahoe tribal members when the 1st and 3rd Colorado Calvary attacked. Under the leadership of Col. John Chivington, they opened fire on a peaceful camp of Native Americans in Southeastern Colorado and left only a handful of survivors.
About 40 tribal members and Native American supporters gathered in Denver to join in the 11th Annual Spiritual Healing Run/Walk which started at
Source: Dallas News
November 29, 2009
In the 1920s, fiction outsold nonfiction 4-to-1; in the 1960s, the ratio was reversed. Ben Yagoda charts the genre of memoir-autobiography over its 2,000-year history to make sense of that change.
He begins with Julius Caesar and moves through St. Augustine, the unfortunate Peter Abelard, the humanist Aeneas Sylvius (Pope Pio II), the rogue-artist Benvenuto Cellini, the philosopher Rousseau and others before arriving at his principal focus, the American memoir. Yagoda maps the vario
Source: Yahoo News
November 29, 2009
BAGHDAD – Turning on their TVs during the long holiday weekend, Iraqis were greeted by a familiar if unexpected face from their brutal past: Saddam Hussein.
The late Iraqi dictator is lauded on a mysterious satellite channel that began broadcasting on the Islamic calendar's anniversary of his 2006 execution.
No one seems to know who is bankrolling the so-called Saddam Channel, although the Iraqi government suspects it's Baathists whose political party Saddam once led. T
Source: CNN
November 29, 2009
(CNN) -- It was to be a somber memorial, a remembrance of those who perished in a lethal milky fog.
To mark the 25th anniversary of the world's worst industrial disaster, authorities planned to open up the now-dilapidated shell of the Union Carbide fertilizer plant, where in the wee hours of December 3, 1984, 40 tons of methyl isocyanate gas oozed out onto the sleeping city of Bhopal, India.
About 4,000 people died instantly in the toxic leak, an event that came to be
Source: Fox News
November 29, 2009
WASHINGTON — The military says Capt. Michael "Scott" Speicher died when his fighter jet was shot down over Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War and was never captured or tortured.
But Speicher's family is unconvinced.
The Navy pilot's remains were identified earlier this year under about 18 inches of sand in the Iraqi desert.
In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, the chief of POW/MIA analysis at the Defense Intelligence Agency describes a ser
Source: The Daily Beast
November 25, 2009
President Obama will withhold the release of millions of pages of military and intelligence documents even though the information was scheduled to be declassified at the end of the year. The decision runs counter to a White House that promised transparency and openness, the Boston Globe reports. The documents are all more than 25 years old, with some dating back to World War II. “The national-security bureaucracy is deeply entrenched and is not willing to give up some of the protections they fee
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 29, 2009
The government agency, which runs the scheme, rejected the application by supporters of the founder of Scientology after its blue plaques panel decided that it was unconvinced about Mr Hubbard's "reputation".
The decision has frustrated the Hubbard Foundation, which had nominated him. In an unusual move, a foundation representative went to visit English Heritage officials, following the verdict, to find out more about why he had been rejected and how his case could be help
