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: AFP
September 19, 2009
Three people suspected of stealing valuable artefacts dating as far back as the Sumerian period, were arrested near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Saturday, the army said.
"A specialist army and intelligence unit arrested three people involved in the theft and trafficking of Iraqi antiquities" in the region of Abassi, west of Kirkuk, General Abdel Amir al-Zaidi told journalists.
He said eight pieces were recovered during the arrests, including the head o
Source: MSU.EDU
September 21, 2009
Routine sidewalk replacement has led to the discovery of part of the foundation of Michigan State University’s historic first building, College Hall.
The Campus Archaeology Program on Sept. 17 unearthed the northeast corner of the building’s stone-and-mortar foundation just south of the site where Beaumont Tower now stands.
Built in 1856 as the nation’s first building for the study of scientific agriculture, College Hall was plagued by defective construction and torn do
Source: BBC
September 23, 2009
A Scottish banknote from 1836 has sold for a world record price at auction.
The £1 note sold for £9,000 ($US14,800) at the charity auction held by the Clydesdale Bank, beating the old record of £7,000 ($US11,500) set in 2001.
The note was issued by the North of Scotland Bank, which became part of Clydesdale Bank in 1951.
The auction, which included collectable notes from a series of new World Heritage designs as well as historic notes, raised £112,830 ($U
Source: BBC
September 23, 2009
A woman convicted over the assassination of Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi has ended a fast to demand her early release from jail.
Nalini Sriharan, who is in a prison in Tamil Nadu state, says she has been eligible for early release since 2005.
She ended her fast after officials said that her demand would be considered.
Rajiv Gandhi was killed by a suicide bomb at an election rally in May 1991. India has always blamed the attack on Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels.
Source: BBC
September 23, 2009
South Korea has come up with a novel way to boost its defence budget - by selling a vast stockpile of old Korean-war rifles to collectors in the US.
The guns were originally sent to Korea as military aid, and some were also used during the war in Vietnam.
For more than five decades, they have been kept mothballed in warehouses.
Most of those on offer are M1 rifles - a weapon once described by US General George S Patton as "the greatest battle-impleme
Source: BBC
September 23, 2009
A commercial airline pilot has been arrested in Spain over his alleged role in Argentina's 1976-1983 "Dirty War".
Julio Alberto Poch, a Transavia airline pilot, was held at Valencia airport as he was about to fly a passenger plane to Amsterdam, Spanish officials say.
Mr Poch is wanted in Argentina for allegedly flying planes used to dump political opponents of the country's military regime into the sea.
Some 30,000 people disappeared or died dur
Source: BBC
September 23, 2009
The former Cuban President Fidel Castro has praised US President Barack Obama's speech before the UN General Assembly for its words on climate change.
Mr Castro described President Obama's admission that the US had been too slow to act on climate change as a brave gesture.
But he added that the American capitalist system was incompatible with a clean planet. He praised the American president for saying that the US had been slow to act o
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 23, 2009
A spy movie which recounts how a French double-agent changed the course of the Cold War has re-opened old wounds with Moscow, which allegedly threatened a Russian actor and bugged its director.
L'Affaire Farewell is the true story of how a French mole in the KGB helped break Russian spy rings to such a devastating extent that it hastened the demise of the Soviet Union.
Colonel Vladimir Vetrov of Directorate T, the industrial spying arm of the KGB leaked thousands of do
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 23, 2009
Shaun Woodward, the Northern Ireland Secretary, was said to be “profoundly shocked” last night after the findings of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry were delayed until March.
The probe into the deaths of 13 Catholic civil rights protesters in Londonderry in 1972 was due to report this autumn after 11 years, and the latest hold-up is set to add another £1 million to the £188 million price-tag.
An exasperated Mr Woodward was said to be planning to pass on his strong displeasu
Source: AP
September 23, 2009
Seventeen former Kosovo rebels went on trial Wednesday before the Serbian war crimes court, charged with murder, rape and torture of Serb civilians in 1999.
Nine of the men were arrested in December in a predominantly Albanian-populated region of Serbia bordering Kosovo. Eight of the suspects are at large and were accused in absentia.
The indictment accuses the men of the kidnapping of 153 Serbs and the deaths of at least 80 of them in the eastern Kosovo town of Gnjilan
Source: The Times (UK)
September 23, 2009
Chairman Mao’s grandson is believed to have been promoted to become the youngest major-general in the People’s Liberation Army.
Speaking recently in his capacity as a researcher at the Academy of Military Sciences and as an expert in Mao Zedong Thought, Mao Xinyu, 39, was introduced as a major-general.
It was the first clue that the only known surviving male heir to the Great Helmsman may have been promoted from senior colonel.
His elevation, reportedly rec
Source: Rasmussen Report
September 22, 2009
Fifty-nine percent (59%) of U.S. voters believe that the current level of political anger in the country is higher than it was when George W. Bush was president.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 22% think the level of political anger is lower now, while 16% rate it as about the same.
Despite frequent Republican complaints about the vitriol leveled at President Bush, 69% of GOP voters say the level of anger is higher now, a view shared
Source: Google News
September 22, 2009
BEIJING — Chinese archaeologists have discovered a new section of the Great Wall, showing that it stretched at least 11 kilometres further east than previously thought, state media said on Tuesday.
The newly discovered section, built during the Qin (221-206 BC) and Han (206 BC to 220 AD) dynasties, was found in northeastern Jilin province, Xinhua news agency said.
A state-sponsored study team found a 172-metre-long section of ruins from the wall section in Tonghua count
Source: The Daily Beast
September 23, 2009
It seems unlikely that building a hotel is the best way to commemorate one of the Holocaust's most notorious massacres of Jews, but that's what's on the table in Ukraine. Haaretz reports that last week, Kiev approved a plan to build 28 hotels to accommodate tens of thousands of visitors expected to mob the town during the 2012 European Championships in soccer, including one hotel on the site of the Babi Yar massacre, which is now in a residential district of Kiev. On September 29th and 30th, of
Source: The Daily Beast
September 23, 2009
In another reversal from Bush-era policies, the Obama administration will announce new rules on Wednesday that will make it harder for the government to withhold information about programs such as warrantless wiretapping and rendition on the grounds that a revelation would threaten national security. Under the old policy, in order to invoke "state secret" privilege, the government only needed one official to back the claim, The Washington Post reports. Under the new rules, government a
Source: The Daily Citizen
September 22, 2009
Dalton State College’s newly opened Bandy Heritage Center will preserve not just Dalton’s history but also the history of all of Northwest Georgia, officials said.
College officials on Tuesday introduced the heritage center’s new director, Kentucky native John Fowler, and assistant director, Rome native Heather Howell, during a ceremony to celebrate the creation of the history preservation program. Both come from the Center for the Study of the Civil War Era at Kennesaw State Univer
Source: Taegan Goddard's Political Wire
September 18, 2009
Larry Sabato notes that for eight consecutive elections -- since 1977 -- Virginia has voted for the gubernatorial nominee of the party opposite to the one controlling the White House.
"Here's the surprise: All the presidents except for Bill Clinton in 1993 and George W. Bush in 2005 had healthy national job-approval numbers, ranging from the mid-50s (several chief executives) to the 80s (George W. Bush after 9/11 in 2001). These moderately-to-strongly positive ratings for the
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
September 21, 2009
Former Russian president Boris Yeltsin got so drunk during a visit to Washington that he was found standing outside the White House in his underpants trying to hail a cab to go and buy a pizza.
The following night he was mistaken for a drunken intruder when he was discovered stumbling around the basement of his guest house by secret service agents.
The drunken behaviour of Yeltsin, who was known for his fondness for vodka and died two years ago aged 76, were revealed by
Source: AP
September 21, 2009
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Monday he was proud his denial of the Holocaust had enraged the West, as the controversial leader geared up for a United Nations trip to stress what he said would be a message of "peace and friendship."
Ahmadinejad's latest comment about the killing of millions of Jews during World War II comes as Iran is locked in a bitter dispute with the U.S. and other Western nations over its nuclear program. Even as that fight continues, his
Source: NYT (Magazine)
September 16, 2009
This is a story about a nearly 100-year-old book, bound in red leather, which has spent the last quarter century secreted away in a bank vault in Switzerland. The book is big and heavy and its spine is etched with gold letters that say “Liber Novus,” which is Latin for “New Book.” Its pages are made from thick cream-colored parchment and filled with paintings of otherworldly creatures and handwritten dialogues with gods and devils. If you didn’t know the book’s vintage, you might confuse it for
