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: AAP
November 25, 2009
BRITAIN and the US were at odds over whether to overthrow dictator Saddam Hussein two years before the pair teamed up to invade Iraq in 2003, an inquiry has heard.
Former senior British military and government officials told the first public hearings of Britain's latest Iraq war inquiry that while talks were under way in the US in 2001 about regime change, the UK preferred to toughen up UN sanctions against Iraq in an attempt to control Saddam.
At the time, President
Source: http://medievalnews.blogspot.com
November 25, 2009
An excavation on the rue de Rivoli is currently uncovering the first Medieval city fortifications of Paris. This excavation by an Institut national des recherches archaeologiques preventives team has found a deep ditch on land isolated among a group of buildings. This earth and wood fortification comprised a ditch and a bank, which probably held in place a wooden palisade. The bank and the palissade were destroyed when the fortification was abandoned, and have left no traces. The ditch, however,
Source: Houston Chronicle
November 23, 2009
DALLAS — Gladys Johnson didn't allow drinking.
If a liquor bottle or beer can was found inside a room, the landlady wouldn't issue a warning.
Patricia Puckett Hall's grandmother simply piled a tenant's belongings on the front porch, her method of informing the rule-breaker that he was no longer welcome at her Oak Cliff rooming house at 1026 N. Beckley Ave.
Hall, 57, loves the old place.
It's hers now — her inheritance, her responsibility.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 24, 2009
Otto von Bismarck, the 'Iron Chancellor' who forged modern Germany, was the subject of thousands of letters of fan mail including marriage proposals from women devoted to the dashing leader.
More than 6,000 personal letters, which have been made available to scholars for the first time by the Bismarck Foundation in Friedrichsruh, were sent to the 19th century leader while in office and retirement.
Professing love and devotion to the Prussian leader, who died in 1898, th
Source: Fox News
November 24, 2009
President Obama has shattered the budget record for first-year presidents -- spending nearly double what his predecessor did when he came into office and far exceeding the first-year tabs for any other U.S. president in history.
In fiscal 2009 the federal government spent $3.52 trillion -- $2.8 trillion in 2000 dollars, which sets a benchmark for comparison. That fiscal year covered the last three-and-a-half months of George W. Bush's term and the first eight-and-a-half months of O
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 24, 2009
A 95-year-old former British athletics champion banned by the Nazis from competing in the Olympics because she was Jewish has finally been recognised for her sporting achievements.
The German track and field association has honoured Gretel Bergmann for a 5ft 3in high jump she made in Stuttgart in June, 1936 - a record that was erased from the history books by the Nazis.
It said its recognition of her achievement after her snub by the Nazis was an "act of justice a
Source: Guardian (UK)
November 19, 2009
Woolly mammoths and other large, lumbering beasts faced extinction long before early humans perfected their skills as spearmakers, scientists say.
The prehistoric giants began their precipitous decline nearly 2,000 years before our ancestors turned stone fragments into sophisticated spearpoints at the end of the last ice age.
The animals, which included mammoths, elephant-sized mastodons and beavers the size of black bears, were probably picked off by more inept hunters
Source: AP
November 22, 2009
An auction house says it is selling a rare first edition of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" found in a family's guest lavatory in southern England.
Christie's auction house said Sunday the book — one of around 1,250 copies first printed in 1859 — had been on a toilet bookshelf at a family's home in Oxford.
The book will be auctioned on Tuesday — the 150th anniversary of the publication of the famous work. Christie's said the book is likely to sell
Source: Times (UK)
November 24, 2009
A nationwide search has begun to find the jottings and sketches by Charles Darwin in his Galapagos notebook.
The book, which proved so important for his treatise On the Origin of Species, has been missing since the early Eighties from Down House, Kent, Darwin’s former home and now a museum dedicated to his life and work.
English Heritage, which bought the property on behalf of the nation in 1996, is anxious to locate the original observations to complete a historical
Source: WSJ
November 23, 2009
PRAGUE -- Persistent unemployment and a growing distrust of the political class has taken some of the gloss off the Velvet Revolution that restored democracy to this country 20 years ago.
Celebrations marking the anniversary of the event have been subdued. Polls show that most Czechs don't regret the revolution; they just don't like what has happened since then.
On Nov. 27, 1989, waves of Czechoslovak factory workers marched into Prague to join student protesters in a n
Source: Slate
November 22, 2009
Pop quiz: Which of the following names represents a nonsectarian, universal deity? Allah, Dios, Gott, Dieu, Elohim, Gud, or Jesus?
If you answered"none of the above," you are right as a matter of fact but not law. If you answered"Allah," you are right as a matter of law but not fact. And if you answered"Jesus," you might have been trying to filibuster David Hamilton, Barack Obama's first judicial nominee.
Hamilton, nominated last March, has seen his confirmation s
Source: LA Times
November 24, 2009
Underwater archaeologists said Monday that they have found a virtual time capsule of life during Canada's Klondike Gold Rush: a sunken Yukon River stern-wheeler so well-preserved that researchers can document the last minutes of the five-man crew as well as their life aboard the primitive cargo-hauler.
The door of the steam boiler on the A.J. Goddard was open, and slightly charred wood found inside suggested the crew was trying to build up a head of steam, perhaps to break loose fro
Source: The New York Times
November 24, 2009
Amira Edan, the director of Iraq’s National Museum, says that soon she will no longer have to worry so much that the famous institution remains closed to the public for fear of violence.
People will just be able to Google it. “It’s really wonderful,” she said Tuesday.
Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, had just made a presentation inside the museum, announcing that his company would create a virtual copy of the museum’s collections at its own expense, and make
Source: Guardian.CO.UK
November 19, 2009
Woolly mammoths and other giant ice-age mammals faced extinction 2,000 years before deadly speartips were invented.
Woolly mammoths and other large, lumbering beasts faced extinction long before early humans perfected their skills as spearmakers, scientists say.
The prehistoric giants began their precipitous decline nearly 2,000 years before our ancestors turned stone fragments into sophisticated spearpoints at the end of the last ice age.
The animals, whic
Source: BBC
November 24, 2009
An appeal has been launched to trace Charles Darwin's missing Galapagos notebook which provided crucial evidence for his theory of evolution.
English Heritage says the notebook, which helped him write On The Origin of Species, may have been stolen from his former Kent home in the 1970s or 80s.
In it he described encountering a giant tortoise and made notes on local birds.
English Heritage is putting Darwin's 15 notebooks online 150 years after On The Orig
Source: BBC
November 24, 2009
A libel trial has started in Poland over charges former President Lech Walesa once worked as a communist spy.
The court case pits the anti-communist leader against his one-time ally and successor as president, Lech Kaczynski.
The court case was adjourned until 18 December to allow more time for preparation.
Mr Walesa, now 66, is seeking a retraction of a claim made by Mr Kaczynski that he spied for the communist secret service in the 1970s.
Source: BBC
November 24, 2009
Two alleged Congolese militia leaders have denied war crimes at the start of their trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui are accused of directing an attack on the village of Bogoro in 2003 in which more than 200 people were killed.
They face charges of ordering attacks on civilians, sexual slavery, rape, and enlisting child soldiers.
Both deny the allegations and have expressed sympathy for the v
Source: Fox News
November 24, 2009
President Obama plans to have his cake and eat pumpkin pie too when he hosts his first White House state dinner Tuesday, providing the 320 guests expected to attend the lavish ceremony with fine dining from a top chef and entertainment by Oscar-winning musicians.
First lady Michelle Obama's staff, which has planned what could be Washington's hottest social event since the inauguration, has kept a tight lid on the details for the event in honor Indian Prime Minister Monmahon Singh an
Source: AP
November 24, 2009
A New York gallery will auction off what is believed to be one of three known surviving historic envelopes postmarked on the first day of the Pony Express.
The envelope postmarked April 3, 1860, is valued at $300,000. It is among 63 items owned by 88-year-old Thurston Twigg-Smith that will be sold Dec. 5 by Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries in New York. Twigg-Smith is the former publisher of The Honolulu Advertiser in Hawaii.
It estimates the collection's value is $2.5
Source: Spiegel
November 20, 2009
In Czechoslovakia, it all started with the students.
By late autumn of 1989, the Berlin Wall had already fallen, the border between Hungary and Austria had become porous and Poland had long since held largely free elections. But in Czechoslovakia, the communist government was still doing what it could to maintain a firm grip on the reins of power. It wasn't to last...
... 'Slave to Capitalism'
This week, the Czech Republic is marking the 20th anniver
