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: Huffington Post
October 19, 2009
GENEVA — The Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at President George W. Bush leaned back in his chair and soaked in the round of applause.
This was not Baghdad or Damascus or Beirut. This was Geneva, where Muntadhar al-Zeidi was given a hero's welcome Monday far warmer than the subdued reception in his own homeland.
Source: Yahoo News
October 16, 2009
HONOLULU – Mike Weidenbach has walked across the historic teakwood decks and through the metal hallways of the USS Missouri countless times in the past decade. But he recently realized how massive the aging battleship is from a new perspective — underneath.
"I touched the bottom of the ship," gushed Weidenbach, curator of the iconic World War II vessel that now serves as a memorial and museum.
The "Mighty Mo" — the last battleship built by the United
Source: BBC
October 19, 2009
China is planning to send teams of experts to the United States, Europe and Asia to find looted treasure.
The teams will be looking for precious items stolen from Beijing's former Summer Palace nearly 150 years ago.
Chinese experts believe 1.5 million items could have been taken from the site, which was destroyed by British and French troops.
Over recent years, China has become increasingly active in its efforts to raise the issue of stolen treasures.
Source: Yahoo News
October 19, 2009
KASESE, Uganda – For years, Charles Wesley Mumbere worked as a nurse's aide in Maryland and Pennsylvania, caring for the elderly and sick. No one there suspected that he had inherited a royal title in his African homeland when he was just 13.
On Monday, after years of political upheaval and financial struggle, Mumbere, 56, was finally crowned king of his people to the sound of drumbeats and thousands of cheering supporters wearing cloth printed with his portraits.
At a
Source: BBC
October 20, 2009
The answer to one of Spain's great historical mysteries is believed to lie in an area of olive-clad mountainside, the size of half a football pitch.
The site has been fenced off and placed under 24-hour guard, such is the sensitivity of what is about to take place.
This remote spot, between the Andalucian villages of Viznar and Alfacar, is where the poet and dramatist Federico Garcia Lorca was murdered before daybreak on 18 August 1936 - by gunmen loyal to General Fran
Source: Live Science
October 19, 2009
A trick used by ancient Egyptians to exploit cracks in Earth to make tomb-digging easier has come back to haunt the Valley of the Kings, new evidence suggests.
While the natural fractures were followed to carve out burial sites, several instances show, rare heavy rainfall events can flood the tombs. Archaeologists are racing to map and photograph the tombs to better preserve their contents and figure out ways to divert the rain.
"We have seen evidence of seven se
Source: The New York Times
October 18, 2009
Culture lovers reveled in the reopening of the Neues Museum in the heart of Berlin on Friday, the culmination of decades of efforts to renovate the site, which was destroyed during World War II.
But the celebrations have been marred by a growing dispute between the German and Egyptian governments over the star of the show: the 3,500-year-old limestone-and-stucco bust of Queen Nefertiti, a wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten.
Nefertiti has been in Germany since 1913. But now Egypt
Source: Live Science
October 18, 2009
When monkeys drum, they activate brain networks linked with communication, new findings that suggest a common origin of primate vocal and nonvocal communication systems and shed light on the origins of language and music.
In the wild, monkeys known as macaques drum by shaking branches or thumping on dead logs. Similar behavior has been seen in non-human primates - for instance, gorillas beat their chests and clap their hands, while chimpanzees drum on tree buttresses.
Source: BBC
October 20, 2009
The Crown Office has dismissed an MSP's claims that she uncovered new evidence which could have compromised the Lockerbie prosecution as "misleading".
The SNP's Christine Grahame said a fragment of bomb timer used in the atrocity left Scotland twice before the trial of Abdelbasset al-Megrahi.
She said a Freedom of Information inquiry response revealed the evidence had been taken to Germany and the US.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 19, 2009
The Prince of Wales joined World War Two veterans on Sunday to mark the restoration of a famous Army memorial.
The service, held on Powrie Brae on the outskirts of Dundee, included a re-dedication for a bronze statue of a Black Watch soldier.
It came 50 years after the Queen Mother unveiled the original memorial.
Source: BBC
October 20, 2009
Howard Barton Unruh, who shot and killed 13 people as he walked the streets of New Jersey 60 years ago, has died at the age of 88.
Diagnosed as mentally ill, he never stood trial. He is widely regarded by many as the first single-episode mass murderer in the United States.
Unruh, who was confined in a state psychiatric hospital after the rampage, died on Monday after a long illness.
Unruh had planned whom he was going to shoot for up to a year beforehand.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 19, 2009
Anita Dunn, a senior White House aide, has boasted of how Barack Obama's presidential campaign managed to "absolutely control" the press during the 2008 election.
The top campaign strategist who has shot to attention recently as President Obama's main attack dog against Fox News, the conservative-leaning cable network, was speaking at a conference in the Dominican Republic in January.
"Very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we did
Source: Haaretz
October 19, 2009
The Ministry of Education has taken the unusual step of collecting all copies of the history textbook, "Nationalism: Building a State in the Middle East" which was published about two months ago by the Zalman Shazar Center. They will be returned to the shelves only after corrections are made to the text, particularly with reference to the War of Independence.
The book had already been approved by the ministry.
"Collecting the books from the shops is an un
Source: Spiegel Online
October 19, 2009
Denying the Holocaust can be expensive. That, at least, could be the lesson facing Bishop Richard Williamson, the ultra-conservative Catholic cleric who plunged the Vatican into crisis in January by telling Swedish television that he believed "there were no gas chambers."
Last week, public prosecutors in the southern German city of Regensburg, where Williamson was when he filmed the interview, have formally requested that the bishop be fined €12,000 ($17,860) for incitem
Source: CNN
October 19, 2009
A slight majority of Americans think that the war in Afghanistan is turning into another Vietnam, according to a new national poll which also indicates that nearly six in 10 oppose sending more U.S. troops to the conflict.
Fifty-two percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday say the eight year long conflict has turned into a situation like the U.S. faced in the Vietnam War, with 46 percent disagreeing.
According to the poll
Source: Company homepage
October 19, 2009
Drawing on the archives of Historic Map Works, the world's largest online collection of geo-coded historic maps, Historic Earth allows you to virtually travel back through time in many U.S. cities and states. Geo-coding allows the maps to closely overlay a modern map, so that the same locations can be compared in various time periods.
Launching with 32,000 high-resolution maps covering several cities and states (including NYC, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Maine, and Illinois
Source: Google News
October 18, 2009
BAGHDAD — Iraq on Sunday accused its neighbours of stealing vast sections of its national archives, including documents dating back centuries, after the 2003 US-led invasion of the country.
Some 60 percent of the archives, amounting to tens of millions of documents, were missing or had been damaged and destroyed as a result of water leaks and a fire at a storage centre in Bab al-Muatham in Baghdad's old quarter.
"Historic documents to do with Iraq's relations with
Source: Bloomberg.com
October 19, 2009
The commander-in-chief hugged a grieving mother, telling her to be proud of her fallen son, a Marine killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan’s Helmand province.
Lisa Xiarhos also had a message for President Barack Obama: “Be strong and get the job done,” she recalls telling him. “Don’t back down. Send more troops. Support the ones that are there and do whatever you can.”...
... In some cases, parents have urged him to provide the troops with better equipment or more re
Source: Spiegel Online
October 16, 2009
US President Barack Obama has shelved his plans to attend festivities marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will reportedly take his place at the Nov. 9 celebrations.
Germany is going to have to wait longer than expected for US President Barack Obama's first official visit. Citing government sources in Berlin, Reuters reported on Friday that Obama will not attend the anniversary festivities marking two decades since the fall
Source: CBC (Canada)
October 15, 2009
A controversial exhibit has opened in Vancouver, depicting the Canadian team at one of the most controversial Olympics ever — the 1936 Summer Games in Berlin, staged by the German Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler.
The exhibit of photographs, documents and artifacts, which opened Thursday at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, shows how Hitler's Third Reich turned the Games into a showcase for Nazi propaganda, and how Canadians became part of the spectacle.
"These
