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: Times (UK)
September 16, 2009
Buried away on the dusty shelves of a London library is a student’s vision for a new world order.
Doctoral dissertations are usually of little interest outside the world of academic research but this book casts an intriguing light on the beliefs of one of the Middle East’s most influential figures.
The publication by Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the eldest son of the Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and his second wife, is set to fuel the debate about the pace of democ
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
September 16, 2009
The dementia affecting hundreds of thousands of Britons may be a legacy of the Second World War, a scientist has claimed.
Research presented at a conference in York yesterday suggested that traumatic stress can trigger Alzheimer's and other conditions.
More than 700,000 people suffer from dementia in the UK and Dr Karen Ritchie, from France's National Institute of Health and Medical Research, believes that many of today's cases could have been caused by armed combat,
Source: BBC
September 16, 2009
At least 10,000 coins believed to be from the Roman era have been uncovered in Shropshire.
Officials from Shropshire Council's Museum Service said the coins, thought to be from 320 AD to 340 AD, were found in a large storage jar.
They said the haul, found by an amateur treasure hunter, had been sent to experts in London to examine.
Councillor Stephen Charmley said it was the largest coin hoard to be found in the county in modern times.
Source: BBC
September 15, 2009
US President Barack Obama has extended the 47-year-old trade embargo against Cuba for another year.
In a statement, Mr Obama said that it was in the US national interest to extend the Trading With The Enemy Act which covers the trade embargo.
It is largely a symbolic step because the final decision rests with Congress.
Under legislation from 1996, the Helms-Burton Act, the embargo can only be lifted when Cuba is deemed to have begun a democratic transitio
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 16, 2009
Tony Blair has said that he does not miss life at Number 10 because he hated Prime Minister’s Questions.
Reflecting on his political career and 10-year term as leader, Mr Blair also said he sometimes wished he had become a rock star instead.
Mr Blair made the comments as he addressed a star-studded audience of around 1,000 people attending the GG2 Leadership & Diversity Awards at the Grosvenor House hotel in London’s Park Lane.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 14, 2009
A giant man-eating bird that appears in ancient Maori legends did actually exist, according to new research.
The Te Hokioi was described as a huge black-and-white predator with a red crest and yellow-green tinged wingtips, in an account given to Sir George Gray, an early governor of New Zealand.
Scientists now think the stories handed down by word of mouth and depicted in rock drawings refer to Haast's eagle, a raptor that became extinct just 500 years ago.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 15, 2009
The Cuban government has given permission for religious services to be held in the island's prisons for the first time in 50 years, a church official said on Tuesday.
The services will be allowed in all prisons where the inmates request them, said Marcial Miguel Hernandez, president of the Cuban Council of Churches.
The communist government's relations with the religious world have been rocky since the 1959 revolution that put Fidel Castro in power.
But te
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 16, 2009
George W Bush believed Barack Obama was "a cat" who "has no clue", dismissed Sarah Palin as a nonentity and insulted Hillary Clinton's posterior, according to a new account of life in the White House under the former president.
For all his politeness in public, Mr Bush is alleged to have privately mocked fellow big name politicians, claims his former speech writer Matt Latimer, whose book Speech Less: Tale of a White House Survivor has been awaited with some anx
Source: CNN
September 16, 2009
Former President Jimmy Carter said Tuesday that racial politics played a role in South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst during President Obama's speech to Congress last week and in some of the opposition the president has faced since taking office.
Carter made similar remarks at an event at his presidential center in Atlanta, Georgia, The Associated Press reported Tuesday, pointing to some protesters who have compared Obama to a Nazi. "Those kind of things are not just casua
Source: NYT
September 14, 2009
A leading human rights group has suspended its senior military analyst following revelations that he is an avid collector of Nazi memorabilia.
The group, Human Rights Watch, had initially thrown its full support behind the analyst, Marc Garlasco, when the news of his hobby came out last week. On Monday night, the group shifted course and suspended him with pay, “pending an investigation,” said Carroll Bogert, the group’s associate director.
“We have questions about whe
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 14, 2009
An Iraqi who was jailed for throwing shoes at President George W Bush is to be released from jail on Tuesday and stands to garner a windfall of gifts from well wishers.
Fans of Muntazer al-Zaidi plan to give the television reporter a riotous reception on his release from Baghdad's central jail.
He has been offered cars, money, a penthouse apartment by the television station for which he worked, and presents ranging from the eccentric, such as a statue of a golden horse
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 15, 2009
A leading international human rights group has suspended a senior researcher who frequently criticised Israel's military conduct after it emerged that he was a collector of Nazi memorabilia.
Human Rights Watch, a group whose global reputation rivals that of Amnesty International, said it had sent Marc Garlasco home on full pay pending an investigation into his hobby.
Last week, pro-Israeli websites disclosed that Mr Garlasco, a former Pentagon intelligence officer, was
Source: Reuters
September 15, 2009
THE Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal in The Hague has granted a request for the early release of former Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic after serving two-thirds of an 11-year sentence for war crimes.
Plavsic was convicted in February 2003 of persecuting Bosnian Muslims in the 1992-95 Bosnian war, but will have served two-thirds of her sentence in October, making her eligible for parole under laws in Sweden, where she is being detained.
Judge Patrick Robinson at t
Source: CNN
September 14, 2009
When Rep. Joe Wilson interrupted President Obama's speech to a joint session of Congress by yelling "You lie!" a livid House Speaker Nancy Pelosi looked as if she was about to jump out of her seat and give her colleague a five-minute "time out" for misbehavior.
But is this actually the worst of times in congressional politics? Not really. When the going gets tough, congressional politics has often gotten ugly. Throughout much of the 19th century, legislators disl
Source: CNN
September 14, 2009
The FBI has seized a two-page, handwritten letter of condolence sent by Jacqueline Kennedy to the widow of Robert F. Kennedy shortly after he was assassinated in 1968. The family contends the letter was stolen.
The letter's path from the Virginia home of Robert Kennedy's widow, Ethel Kennedy, to a locked evidence vault in the Dallas field office of the FBI is described in a six-page affidavit filed last month in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Texas by Special Agent
Source: CNN
September 15, 2009
The Iraqi man who threw his shoes at then-President George W. Bush last year said Tuesday that he was beaten and tortured while he was detained.
Muntadhar al-Zaidi told reporters after he was released that he was beaten with cables and pipes and tortured with electricity immediately after guards removed him from a news conference for hurling both shoes at Bush.
He said he was taken into another room and beaten even as the press conference continued.
Source: Times (UK)
September 15, 2009
In the second half of the 19th century most of the world may have been coloured Victorian pink on the maps, but Henry Harrison managed to capture it in its vibrant kaleidoscope of colours.
Harrison travelled the world in his capacity as a paymaster-general in the Royal Navy, taking his camera everywhere. The enthusiast, who was also a talented marine artist, turned his photographs into slides for the magic lantern by painstakingly tinting each one by hand. Because he was on the spo
Source: Times (UK)
September 15, 2009
Some of Jack the Ripper’s most notorious victims appear to be living respectable domestic lives in census records that went online today.
At least five women, all working as prostitutes, were murdered by a Victorian serial killer whose identity has been a matter of speculation for more than a century.
But some only turned to prostitution later in life after the break up of their marriages. Records from the 1881 census, which go online today, show several living with h
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 15, 2009
He faces murder charges connected with the execution of the seven at the Medininkai border crossing with Belarus on the night of July 31, 1991.
The Lithuanians, a mixture of border guards and police officers, were captured by men of the Soviet interior ministry's Special Purpose Police Squad.
Ordering their prisoners to lie on the ground they then killed them with shots to the head.
One man survived but was left in a wheelchair by the severity of his inj
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
September 15, 2009
It's considered to be one of the more recent innovations to help the hapless traveller.
But the satnav system may not be as modern as we think.
According to a new theory, prehistoric man navigated his way across England using a similar system based on stone circles and other markers.
The complex network of stones, hill forts and earthworks allowed travellers to trek hundreds of miles with 'pinpoint accuracy' more than 5,000 years ago, amateur historian To
