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: WSJ
November 3, 2009
BERLIN -- Chancellor Angela Merkel will mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in a speech Tuesday to the U.S. Congress, a rare honor for a German leader, but political observers say she is expected to face tough questions from the U.S. about Germany's contributions to the economic recovery, Iran and Afghanistan.
President Barack Obama could make uncomfortable demands on Ms. Merkel now that September's German elections are out of the way, analysts say. The U.S. exp
Source: Slate
November 3, 2009
More than 20 years ago, in July 1989, the National Security Archive filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the CIA, seeking documents related to an Iranian-born businessman implicated in the Iran-Contra affair. This summer, the CIA finally sent the files, 15 documents in all, according to the archive, a nongovernmental research institute. "In the last 20 years, the CIA sent status updates about this request intermittently: in August 1989, in October 1992, and in November 2003,"
Source: Yahoo News
November 3, 2009
MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Kremlin could have started World War Three in 1989 had it used troops to crush the demonstrations that preceded the fall of the Berlin Wall, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said on Tuesday.
Gorbachev is hailed in the West for ignoring hardliners who advised him to guarantee the Soviet Union's future by crushing a growing wave of dissent in Eastern Bloc countries which led to the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989.
When asked by a r
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 2, 2009
"For young people, the Communist era is as exotic as ancient Greece," said Anna Dzierzgowska, a history teacher in Warsaw.
"We are lucky not to have to wear uniforms, observe army-style discipline, have our hair cut for school and admire Lenin," Clara Dimitrova, a high school student from Sofia, said with relief.
What students learn in school often clashes with the memories of their disillusioned parents, who struggled during the transition to democ
Source: BBC
November 3, 2009
A Russian businessman who was convicted in Israel as a KGB spy has been shot dead in Moscow, police say.
Investigators said Shabattai Kalmanovich, 60, was killed by gunmen who fired at his Mercedes from a passing car, Russian media reported.
His driver was seriously wounded in the attack but tried to chase the killers, reports said.
Mr Kalmanovich was well known in Russia as a music concert promoter and as a basketball sponsor.
His killing appe
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 3, 2009
The Bomber Command Association hopes the memorial to the 55,573 airmen who died in the Second World War will be in place by 2011, with work beginning next year if sufficient funds can be raised by then.
Since The Daily Telegraph launched the Forgotten Heroes appeal a year ago, more than £1.5million has been raised following an overwhelming response from readers, but the appeal needs to raise another £1m before the project can go ahead.
Details of how you can donate to
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 3, 2009
The former French president Jacques Chirac has expressed his grudging admiration for Margaret Thatcher despite their bitter clashes over Europe.
In his memoirs, to be published on Thursday, the 76-year-old Mr Chirac recounts what he decribes as his country’s “conflictual” relations with Britain.
While he is critical of Lady Thatcher, in particular over her handling of the 1981 hunger strike of IRA prisoners, he is clearly impressed by her statesmanship.
Source: The Times Online (UK)
November 4, 2009
An enthusiast with a metal detector has unearthed a £1 million hoard of Iron Age gold necklaces from a field near Stirling in a discovery that is set to revolutionise the way that historians view some of Scotland’s ancient inhabitants.
According to experts at the National Museums of Scotland (NMS), the four beautifully worked “torcs” represent the most significant find of Iron Age metalwork in the country. One of the Stirling necklaces is a ribbon torc made from twisted Irish or Sco
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
November 4, 2009
It looks like a scene from Britain's worst wartime nightmare.
German soldiers parade down The Mall in sight of Buckingham Palace, hailed by arms raised in Nazi salutes.
The flag on the coffin bears a swastika. The respectful silence is broken only by the stamp of military boots.
Were it not for the Grenadier Guardsmen, the extraordinary top photograph might have been taken after Hitler's plans to dominate Britain and Europe came to fruition in London.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 3, 2009
A former Prisoner of War camp in County Durham which was advertised for sale online failed to attract any bids.
Tourist attraction Harperley camp, near Crook, was put on auction site eBay for £900,000 by its current owners who can no longer afford its restoration.
James and Lisa McLeod now hope a public body, charity or heritage organisation will step in to save the camp.
The camp housed German and Italian prisoners in World War II and won ancient monumen
Source: BBC
November 3, 2009
A small selection of the most important Anglo-Saxon find since the discovery of the Sutton Hoo burial site has gone on display at the British Museum.
A total of 18 items, all taken from the Staffordshire Hoard, can be viewed by the public in London.
The hoard, made up of more than 1,500 objects, was first discovered in early July in a field in south Staffordshire by a man using a metal detector.
It is being examined by experts who will report to a valuati
Source: BBC
November 3, 2009
Dinosaur bones which have been entombed in rock for more than 210 million years are to finally be extracted and constructed into a complete skeleton.
The rocks containing the fossilised remains of the Thecondontosaurus Antiquus were found in a quarry in South Gloucestershire in the 1970s.
Scientists at the University of Bristol are planning to remove the rock to reveal the bones within.
The project was made possible by a £295,000 Heritage Lottery Fund gra
Source: BBC
November 2, 2009
A former member of the Nazi SS has been read murder charges in a German court relating to the wartime deaths of three Dutch civilians.
Heinrich Boere, 88, is charged with shooting the three in 1944. He has previously acknowledged the killings, as reprisals against the resistance.
Mr Boere also heard a written plea from a relative of one the deceased, asking him to openly admit responsibility.
Reports say throughout the hearing, the accused sat motionless
Source: BBC
November 3, 2009
The trial has begun of Argentina's last military ruler, Reynaldo Bignone, and five other retired generals.
The men are charged in connection with the alleged kidnapping, torture and disappearance of 56 opponents of the military government in the late 1970s.
The abuses are alleged to have taken place at the Campo de Mayo base on the outskirts of the capital, Buenos Aires.
Human rights groups say up to 30,000 people were killed or disappeared in Argentina b
Source: AP
November 3, 2009
Claude Levi-Strauss, widely considered the father of modern anthropology for work that included theories about commonalities between tribal and industrial societies, has died. He was 100.
The French intellectual was regarded as having reshaped the field of anthropology, introducing structuralism — concepts about common patterns of behavior and thought, especially myths, in a wide range of human societies. Defined as the search for the underlying patterns of thought in all forms of h
Source: CNN
November 3, 2009
Bosnian war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic launched a full-throated attack on the International War Crimes Tribunal Tuesday, as he appeared at a hearing to discuss his refusal to appear for trial.
Karadzic, who is accused of responsibility for the worst massacre in Europe since World War II, says he has had insufficient time to prepare his defense. He is representing himself.
But Judge O-Gon Kwon told Karadzic it was the court, not the defendant, who decides when the c
Source: NYT
November 2, 2009
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday said it would not review a case arising from the 1964 kidnapping and killing of two black teenagers along the Mississippi-Louisiana border, an episode that continues to stir legal debate as it stokes memories of the ugliest racism.
The court declined to take the case of James F. Seale, a cancer-stricken former Ku Klux Klan member now in his mid-70s, who was convicted more than three decades after the deaths of Charles E. Moore and Henry H. De
Source: Guardian (UK)
November 1, 2009
A fateful blunder by British military intelligence allowed the Nazis to seize 50,000 Allied prisoners of war from the Italians during the Second World War and transport them to camps in Germany and Poland where thousands are believed to have perished.
Newly published evidence reveals that a top-secret branch of the Ministry of Defence known as MI9 ordered British PoWs in Italy to remain in their camps after Italy surrendered. The order, issued in June 1943 as Field Marshal Bernard M
Source: Fredericksburg.com
October 25, 2009
WHEN IT COMES to history, nobody beats Virginia. Other claimants to No. 1 are mere pretenders, given Virginia's long-term impact on the nation's development.
This is the Cradle of Presidents; the home of Jamestown; the site of the Confederate capital and four of the Civil War's bloodiest battles, as well as the surrender at Appomattox. This space is far too small to enumerate the commonwealth's historic contributions.
Given the ongoing efforts to preserve so many aspect
Source: Associated Press (NAT)
October 20, 2009
On a cold December day in 1861, a few hundred German immigrants in blue Union uniforms squared off against 3,000 Confederates on foot and horseback near Munfordville, Ky.
When the withering artillery and musket fire cleared, the rebels fled, and Kentucky's first Civil War battle ended in victory for the 32nd Indiana regiment known as the "First German."
But before the regiment marched on, infantryman August Bloedner carved a limestone monument to the 13 Union
