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: Fox News
October 9, 2009
The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama is an "embarrassment" to the process, a presidential historian told FOXNews.com.
President Obama said Friday he was "most surprised and deeply humbled" to win the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, adding that he accepts the honor as "a call to action to confront the common challenges of the 21st century."
In a brief statement in the White House Rose Garden on Friday, the president said he does
Source: AP
October 9, 2009
The U.S. is taking legal steps in Miami to return a stolen, 3,000-year-old sarcophagus to Egypt.
Federal prosecutors filed court papers Thursday seeking forfeiture of the ancient artifact.
It wound up in Miami last year following a series of transactions that began at an antique dealership in Barcelona, Spain.
Source: CNN
October 9, 2009
Did President Obama land a Nobel peace prize at such an early stage of his presidency simply because he's not George W. Bush?
Diplomatic circles are certainly not dismissing such a notion and a "surprised and humbled" Obama has himself agreed that the award (for which nominations had to be submitted only two weeks after his inauguration) can hardly have been a recognition of anything he has yet accomplished. It is a prize for aspiration rather than achievement.
Source: WSJ
October 7, 2009
WASHINGTON -- The struggle to set the future course of the Afghan war is becoming a battle of two books -- both suddenly popular among White House and Pentagon brain trusts.
video
Washington bureau chief John Bussey discusses two new books with competing Afghanistan narrative on the News Hub.
The two draw decidedly different lessons from the Vietnam War. The first book describes a White House in 1965 being marched into an escalating war by a military viewing the
Source: Pew Research Center Publications
October 7, 2009
Young Latino adults in the United States are more likely to be in school or the work force now than their counterparts were in previous generations. In 1970, 77% of Hispanics ages 16 to 251 were either working, going to school or serving in the military; by 2007, 86% of Latinos in this coming-of-age group were taking part in these skill-building endeavors, according to a comprehensive analysis of four decades of Census Bureau data by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center.
Source: The National Security Archive
October 8, 2009
Washington, DC, October 8, 2009 - A declassified U.S. State Department document filed in a Colombian court yesterday blames the Colombian Army, and Col. Alfonso Plazas Vega in particular, for the deaths of over 70 people during military operations to retake the Palace of Justice building from insurgents who had seized the building in November 1985. The document, a January 1999 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Colombia, was obtained by the National Security Archive under the Freedom of Information
Source: WSJ
October 9, 2009
Romanian-born German novelist Herta Müller was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in literature, praised for her portraits of life behind the Iron Curtain.
Ms. Müller, whose body of work is heavily influenced by her life in Romania under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaucescu, is the 12th woman to win the prize and the first German-speaking author since 2004, when Austrian playwright Elfriede Jelinek was the recipient.
Announcing the award in Stockholm, the Swedish Academy hai
Source: The Age (Australia)
October 8, 2009
It was a moment that went a long way to putting Afghanistan and its cultural heritage back on the map. In a small space in a once bombed-out building on the southern edge of Kabul, Afghan dignitaries and western diplomats squeezed past each other to see into the display cases: bronze age digging implements, pieces of carved marble and elaborate metal goods spanning Afghanistan's rich history.
It was only a two-room exhibit and much of the rest of Afghanistan's National Museum remain
Source: telegraph.co.uk
October 8, 2009
Professor Ellen van Wolde, a respected Old Testament scholar and author, claims the first sentence of Genesis "in the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth" is not a true translation of the Hebrew.
She claims she has carried out fresh textual analysis that suggests the writers of the great book never intended to suggest that God created the world -- and in fact the Earth was already there when he created humans and animals.
Prof Van Wolde, 54, who wi
Source: Pittsburgh Post Gazette
October 8, 2009
A fossil of a prehistoric mammal discovered in northeastern China may help scientists figure out how the delicate hearing organs in mammals developed, an article authored by a team of Chinese and American scientists reports in the latest issue of Science.
Carnegie Museum of Natural History curator Dr. Zhe-Xi Luo was part of the team of paleontologists that studied the small, squirrel-like mammal, termed Maotherium asiaticus, and he co-authored the Science report, which appears in th
Source: LA Times
October 5, 2009
Reporting from Martinez, Calif. - It used to be that to run the National Park Service, the director in Washington would simply open the front gates on a system that was intended to protect treasured landscapes, preserve history, and serve as a refuge for wildlife and a salve for visitors seeking the peace of wild places.
In contemporary times, however, the job of overseeing John Muir's "cathedrals of nature" requires presiding over fights of partisanship, science, religio
Source: telegraph.co.uk
October 8, 2009
Hitler and his new bride Eva Braun were already dead and the couple knew they were in the final moments of the Third Reich.
They had already taken the decision to murder their five daughters and one son to save them from a world "without their Fuehrer to lead and guide them".
The children were knocked out with morphine by an SS doctor and then had cyanide capsules crushed between their teeth. Afterwards Goebbels shot his wife and then himself.
Th
Source: BBC
October 8, 2009
Joseph Stalin's grandson has launched a court action claiming a liberal Russian newspaper has defamed the former Soviet dictator.
Yevgeny Dzhugashvili says an article claiming Stalin personally ordered the deaths of Soviet citizens is a lie.
A Moscow court has agreed to hear the case against the opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta.
The paper published a piece referring to declassified death warrants which it says bore Stalin's personal signature.
Source: Guardian (UK)
October 8, 2009
A historic accord to normalise relations between Turkey and Armenia, long at odds over Armenian claims of first world war genocide, was thrown into doubt tonightwhen Turkey's foreign minister refused to say whether the signing ceremony would go ahead as planned in Zurich on Saturday.
Ahmet Davutoglu said he remained confident that the accord, which would also reopen the common border closed by Turkey in 1993, would be completed. But he added: "I am not giving any dates. Let's w
Source: Times (UK)
October 9, 2009
His poetry is difficult, his images obscure, and when he gave a reading of The Waste Land in front of the Royal Family the Queen Mother got the giggles at “this lugubrious man in a suit”.
Yesterday, however, more than 90 years after the publication of The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, the suspicion with which the British public usually regard modern poetry was laid aside when T. S. Eliot was announced as the nation’s favourite poet.
In a BBC online poll which seemed to
Source: Times (UK)
October 9, 2009
The “Royal disease” that afflicted Queen Victoria’s family line was a severe form of haemophilia, according to a new study. The verdict was reached after genetic analysis of the bones of the wife and children of the last Russian Tsar, Nicholas II, who were descendants of the British monarch.
Tsarina Alexandra, Queen Victoria’s granddaughter, and two of her children, Crown Prince Alexei and his sister Anastasia, all carried genetic mutations associated with the condition, also known
Source: Times (UK)
October 8, 2009
The only surviving Union Jack to have been flown by the Royal Navy at the Battle of Trafalgar has been discovered in a drawer. The flag was flown from the jackstaff of HMS Spartiate, one of Nelson’s warships, as the battle against the French navy raged 204 years ago this month.
After the defeat of the French, the flag was presented by a grateful crew to Lieutenant James Clephan, one of the most popular officers in the Royal Navy and one of the few to have risen from the ranks. After
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 8, 2009
The theory is based on a newly discovered document that shows Hitler's dentist had about 11lbs of dental gold from the concentration camps at his disposal for the treatment of senior Nazis.
Co-author Henrik Eberle, a historian who has written several successful books on the Nazi leader, said dentist Hugo Blaschke had put 10 fillings in Hitler's mouth in 1944.
"The most likely place the gold came from is from the supply Blaschke had from the concentration camps,&quo
Source: BBC
October 7, 2009
The three-month exhibition at Taiwan's National Palace Museum features 37 items borrowed from Beijing - the first time any artwork from the centuries-old Chinese emperors' collection has been loaned to Taiwan.
These items - including paintings, lacquer boxes and porcelain which belonged to the 18th Century Qing Dynasty Emperor Yongzheng - are being displayed with some 200 exhibits from Taiwan's collection.
The exhibition is particularly significant because of the hist
Source: Artdaily.org
October 8, 2009
The head of Egypt's antiquities department has announced the severing of ties with France's Louvre museum after it refused to return what he says are stolen artifacts.
Zahi Hawass issued a statement saying that no archeological expeditions sponsored by France's premier museum would be allowed to work in Egypt due to the disagreement.
Hawass told the Associated Press Wednesday that the Louvre had ignored repeated Egyptian requests for the return of four reliefs he says
