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: Google News
October 13, 2009
DETROIT — An 88-year-old retired auto engineer told a judge Tuesday that he never shot Jews while serving in a Nazi-controlled police force during World War II, during an initial hearing over whether the government can deport him.
Speaking through his lawyer, John Kalymon, of suburban Detroit, denied the U.S. Justice Department's assertion that he claimed to have fired his gun at least eight times and killed a Jew in August 1942, when Jews were being rounded up and removed from what
Source: Asian News Internationa
October 13, 2009
Ankara (Turkey), October 13 (ANI): Archaeologists have found traces of a temple built for the Greek goddess of divine retribution, Nemesis, during excavations in the ancient city of Agora in the Aegean port city of Izmir in Turkey.
According to a report in Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review, Akin Ersoy of Dokuz Eylul University’s archaeology department and heading the archaeological excavations in the ancient city, said that there might be a temple built for Nemesis in the area
Source: CNN
October 14, 2009
Scientists say a very rare find of some 20 fossilized pterodactyls has produced the first clear evidence of a controversial theory of evolution.
The fossils were found in north-east China earlier this year, embedded in rock dating back 160 million years, and have been called "Darwinopterus" after the renowned naturalist Charles Darwin.
The creature's discovery has astounded scientists because their age puts them within two recognized groups of pterodactyls --
Source: CNN
October 14, 2009
WASHINGTON (CNN) — The National Republican Congressional Committee has removed a tweet Tuesday that linked to a video comparing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with Adolf Hilter.
The tweet, sent out Tuesday morning on their official Twitter account, read: "Funny Video: Moonbattery: Hitler Reacts to ObamaCare Maneuvers http://bit.ly/2mOvZ7 #Pelosi". It comes the same day the NRCC released a petition on their site to "Fire Nancy Pelosi.&qu
Source: NYT
October 13, 2009
The Supreme Court will consider throwing out the convictions of the former Enron chief executive Jeffrey K. Skilling for his role in the collapse of the one-time energy giant.
The court said Tuesday that it would hear Mr. Skilling’s appeal of lower court rulings that upheld all 19 of his 2006 convictions of conspiracy, securities fraud, insider trading and lying to auditors involving the 2001 collapse of Enron.
Mr. Skilling, serving a 24-year prison term, is asking the
Source: Miami Herald
October 10, 2009
MIAMI -- A Cuban man originally sentenced to life in prison for spying in the U.S. would instead receive only a 20-year term under an agreement filed in court Friday by federal prosecutors and the man's attorney.
The deal was reached in the case of Antonio Guerrero, one of the so-called Cuban Five convicted in 2001 of espionage conspiracy and other charges. An appeals court last year threw out the sentences of Guerrero and two others as unjustifiably harsh. All five convictions we
Source: BBC
October 12, 2009
An Olympic torch, said to be from the post-war 1948 games in London, is being sold on an internet auction site.
The seller is from Greece and lives near to the birthplace of the modern games, Athens.
The man, who calls himself Artoneli, said he bought the torch 20 years ago from an old man who lived nearby.
He is trying to raise about £7,500 and insists the torch is genuine. He is also selling a torch said to be from the 1956 games in Melbourne, Australia.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 14, 2009
After almost a century of hostility, Turkey and Armenia celebrate their new era of co-operation – over a football match.
Armenian president Serzh Sarkisian is scheduled to attend a World Cup qualifying game between the two countries in the Turkish city of Bursa, days after they signed an agreement establishing diplomatic relations for the first time.
The trip, which has been described as an act of “football diplomacy”, follows a visit by Abdullah Gul, the Turkish pres
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 14, 2009
Over 1,000 black garden gnomes with their right arms raised in a Heil Hitler salute have invaded a German town - all in the name of art.
The sculptures, displayed in a military formation in the centre of Straubing, in Lower Bavaria, are designed, according to the artist Ottmar Hoerl, "to get people to think, to react".
Nazi salutes and symbols relating to the Third Reich have been illegal in Germany since the end of the Second World War, but Mr Hoerl argued s
Source: Agence France-Presse
October 15, 2009
A CERAMIC rack from a crematorium at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp has been found during maintenance work at the site.
"The ceramic rack was buried in the ground among the ruins of one of the former crematoria,'' Bartosz Bartyzel, spokesman for the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum at Oswiecim, southern Poland, said.
The ceramic rack showed signs of heavy use and of having been exposed to extremely high temperatures, as well as damage from when retreating Nazi forces
Source: Megan Stephenson, former HNN intern, and now a freelance writer.
October 14, 2009
Father Damien de Veuster was awarded the highest honor a Catholic priest can attain last Sunday, when Pope Benedict XVI declared him Saint Damien, the patron saint of Hansen’s disease, and a voice for “rejected people of all kinds: the incurably ill (victims of AIDS or other diseases), abandoned children, disoriented youths, exploited women, neglected elderly people and oppressed minorities,” as translated from Latin from the Catholic News Service.
Father Damien came from humble beg
Source: Independent (UK)
October 14, 2009
The sister of Margaret Hassan, the aid worker who was kidnapped and murdered in Iraq, yesterday accused Tony Blair of risking the lives of British forces to help the former US President George Bush.
Deidre Manchanda asked the Chilcot panel, which will hold an inquiry into the Iraq war, to investigate why 650 British troops were deployed to Baghdad in 2004, a place far more dangerous than their base in Basra, just before the US elections. "I want the committee to ask for what po
Source: Guardian (UK)
October 14, 2009
One judge noted with surprise that Barack Obama "didn't look particularly happy" at being named the Nobel peace laureate. Another marvelled at how critics could be so patronising.
In a rare public defence of a process normally shrouded in secrecy, four of the Nobel peace prize jury's five judges have spoken about a selection they said was both merited and unanimous.
To those who say a Nobel is too much too soon in Obama's young presidency, "we simply disa
Source: Guardian (UK)
October 14, 2009
Pint-sized, plastic and the height of kitsch they may be, but no one in Germany would usually think twice about seeing a garden gnome, given there are 25 million of them across the country.
But a battery of 1,250 of them that appeared on a square in a Bavarian town has caused an outcry, not least because their arms are in a Nazi salute.
The artist Ottmar Hörl placed the gnomes in the town of Straubing, close to Munich, in an installation called Dance With the Devil.
Source: BBC
October 14, 2009
The former South African president's archive shows him chiding himself over a "grave error of judgement" when he proposed lowering the voting age to 14.
He also talks about how he was "not a very bright student" at university.
The Nelson Mandela Foundation (NMF) is selling the rights to the 100,000-word archive of notes, diaries and letters at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
Source: BBC
October 14, 2009
A spokesman said the move was aimed at reaching the younger generation and educating them about the Holocaust.
It follows the launch by Auschwitz - now a state museum - of a YouTube channel earlier this year.
More than a million people - 90% of them Jews - were murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz during World War II.
Source: National Security Archive
October 13, 2009
For nearly four decades, the government of Japan, under the seemingly perpetual control of the Liberal Democratic Party, has repeated a well-rehearsed litany of denials in response to queries from the Diet or the press about alleged secret understandings with the United States regarding nuclear weapons. No, there are no such secret understandings. No, in line with former Prime Minister Eisaku Sato's Three Non-Nuclear Principles, the Japanese government has not allowed the introduction o
Source: BBC
October 14, 2009
More than 65,000 people went to see the UK's largest haul of Anglo-Saxon treasure during the two-and-a-half weeks it was on display in Birmingham.
The 1,500 pieces were put on display at the city's Museum and Art Gallery on 25 September after being found in a Staffordshire field in July.
The hoard is now being sent to the British Museum in London to be valued by experts.
Source: BBC
October 14, 2009
India has rejected a demand by the Albanian government for the return of the remains of Nobel laureate Mother Teresa, buried in the city of Calcutta.
A spokeswoman for the nun's Missionaries of Charity described the Albanian request as "absurd".
Correspondents say that the row over her resting place could develop into an ugly three-way squabble between India, where she worked most of her life, Albania where her parents came from and Macedonia where she lived
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 14, 2009
Albania has demanded that India return the remains of Mother Teresea to her ethnic homeland.
The Catholic nun spent most of her life in India and is buried there.
She was also an Indian citizen when she died.
However, Sali Berisha, the Albanian Prime Minister, has said that his government was seeking repatriation of Mother Teresa's remains before the 100th anniversary of her birth in August next year. He said that talks with the Indian Government had begun
