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: The Wall Street Journal
August 31, 2009
WASHINGTON -- U.S. officials, increasingly frustrated in recent years with what they saw as the paralyzed leadership of Japan's ruling party, are looking to the new regime to bring more-effective handling of shared goals.
The Democratic Party of Japan, victorious in Sunday's election, has vowed greater independence from Washington as a centerpiece of its foreign policy. But people involved in relations between the two countries play down the notion of a serious break, noting that co
Source: Independent (UK)
August 31, 2009
Britain has refused to reveal who it will send to the biggest party in Libya's history, a celebration of the rise to power of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in a coup d'etat 40 years ago.
With London desperate to avoid further embarrassment in the wake of allegations that it supported the release of the Lockerbie bomber in return for trade deals, no decision had been made about who would represent the UK at the lavish and potentially controversial carnival in Tripoli.
Official
Source: Times (UK)
August 30, 2009
Gordon Brown was dragged into the centre of the row over the early release of the Lockerbie bomber last night after it emerged that a key decision that could have paved the way for the terrorist to serve his sentence in Libya was approved by Downing Street.
A source close to Jack Straw told The Times that the move to include Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi in a prisoner transfer agreement in 2007 was a government decision and was not made at the sole discretion of the Justice Secretary.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 31, 2009
The Polish leadership wants an acknowledgement from Mr Putin that the Soviet Union's pact with Adolf Hitler, forged the month before the war broke out on September 1 1939, was illegal, and a major contributing factor to the conflict which would go on to claim 55 million lives.
Mr Putin will join Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, David Milliband, the foreign secretary, and his French counterpart in Gdansk for commemorations marking the anniversary. His inner circle are adamant th
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
August 31, 2009
Ireland plotted to send special forces to attack BBC studios in Belfast as part of plans to invade Northern Ireland, it emerged yesterday.
Codenamed 'Exercise Armageddon', the operations against British targets in 1969 would have stunned the world.
Tensions were running high as the Troubles began in earnest.
In August that year, Irish prime minister Jack Lynch said he would not stand by as the innocent suffered, fearing a huge onslaught by loyalists on R
Source: Sky News
August 31, 2009
The visit comes amid rising tension between Warsaw and Moscow over their shared history - particularly over the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact which resulted in Poland being carved up by Hitler and Stalin.
Mr Putin described the pact as "immoral" and expressed sorrow over a Soviet massacre of Poles, ahead of his visit to Gdansk in Poland.
Mr Putin told Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza: "Our duty is to remove the burden of distrust and prejudice left from the past
Source: NYT
August 29, 2009
HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — The smiling couple barreling ahead on the cover of Liberty magazine in 1926 knew exactly where to go. “Florida or Bust,” said the white paint on the car doors. “Four wheels, no brakes.”
So it has been for a century, as Florida welcomed thousands of newcomers every week, year after year, becoming the nation’s fourth-most-populous state with about 16 million people in 2000.
Imagine the shock, then, to discover that traffic is now heading the other way. T
Source: The Daily Beast
August 29, 2009
Leaked ministerial documents show the British government had decided it was "in the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom" to release the Lockerbie bomber, the Times of London reports. The letters were sent two years ago by Jack Straw, the justice secretary, to Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish justice secretary, and show that Straw initially wanted to exclude the Lockerbie bomber, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, from a prisoner-transfer agreement arranged with Libya. But Straw changed
Source: The Independent
August 17, 2009
When Radio Uganda announced at dawn on 25 January 1971 that Idi Amin was Uganda's new ruler, many people suspected that Britain had a hand in the coup. However, Foreign Office papers released last year point to a different conspirator: Israel.
The first telegrams to London from the British High Commissioner in Kampala, Richard Slater, show a man shocked and bewildered by the coup. But he quickly turned to the man who he thought might know what was going on; Colonel Bar-Lev, the Isr
Source: Aljazeera.net
August 30, 2009
An Iraqi journalist jailed after hurling his shoes at George Bush, the former US president, will be released in September.
Muntadhar al-Zaidi's sentence was reduced for good behaviour, his lawyer said on Saturday.
Karim al-Shujairi, a defence attorney, said al-Zeidi will now be released on September 14, three months early.
Al-Zaidi was initially sentenced to three years after pleading not guilty to assaulting a foreign leader, then the court reduced it to o
Source: Yahoo News
August 30, 2009
MOSCOW – Russia's president defended Moscow's role in World War II before the 70th anniversary of its outbreak, saying in an interview broadcast Sunday that anyone who lays equal blame on the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany is telling a "cynical lie."
Dmitry Medvedev's remarks were the latest salvo in Russia's bitter dispute with its neighbors over the war and its aftermath. The Kremlin has launched a campaign for universal acceptance of its portrayal of the Soviet Union as
Source: Herald Express
August 28, 2009
A new dig to find evidence of Britain's first man starts in Torquay (Devon, England) next week. The team of archaeologists are back at Kents Cavern to continue their major excavations underground in search of more evidence for the Neanderthal occupation of the caves tens of thousands of years ago. The cavern is open during the excavation from Tuesday to Thursday from September 10 and visitors will be able to view the dig in action, the first in more than 80 years, as part of the guided cave tour
Source: Gulf Daily News
August 23, 2009
Ancient burial mounds in a Bahraini village, which the government hoped to have recognised as a World Heritage Site, will be bulldozed to make way for a new road, houses and a public park. Councillors have successfully argued that 62 mounds in Buri, which date back as far as 4,000 years, were standing in the way of development. However, heritage chiefs are insisting on excavating the area, near Hamad Town, before allowing the bulldozers in. Any mound found to be of particular
historical signifi
Source: Heritage Key
August 18, 2009
Cherchen Man, who died around 1000 BCE, is tall, dark-haired, clad in a red tunic and tartan leggings and sporting a beard as ginger as a burning fox. His DNA attests to his Celtic origins. So why on earth, then, was his mummified corpse discovered buried in the barren sands of the Taklamakan Desert, in the far-flung Xinjiang region of western China?
It's a question that still has experts scratching their heads, especially since Cherchen Man is just one of hundreds of ancient d
Source: The Anniston Star
August 24, 2009
More than 1,000 years ago, people walked the hills of what is now Calhoun County (USA). Most traces of them are gone, but the American Indians who called this land home left a few markers. Some are scattered on hilltops in the form of sacred mounds. One pile of stones on a particular hilltop evokes the curved body of a snake. And there are formations with purposes unclear and at times in dispute. All of these sites are part of a slowly unfolding story, one archaeologists hope to tell by learning
Source: Irish Sun
August 25, 2009
Archaeologists at the University of Bradford will be leading an exploration into how prehistoric people made their living in Italy at the end of the Ice Age. The research aims to find out how hunter- gatherers in Mediterranean Europe survived before farming became widespread and why the transition to agriculture was a smooth one.
Researchers will use high-precision dating to accurately age occupation layers in archaeological cave sites and identify which animals were being hunt
Source: Planet Earth Online
August 25, 2009
Shell beads newly unearthed from four sites in Morocco confirm early humans were consistently wearing and potentially trading symbolic jewellery as early as 80,000 years ago. These beads add significantly to similar finds dating back as far as 110,000 in Algeria, Morocco, Israel and South Africa, confirming these as the oldest form of personal ornaments.
A team of researchers recovered 25 marine shell beads dating back to around 70,000 to 85,000 years ago from sites in Morocco.
Source: The Guardian
August 28, 2009
The site at the Links of Noltland on the island of Westray on the northern fringes of the Orkney islands (Scotland) is emerging as one of the UK's most important prehistoric digs: over the last 30 years archaeologists have uncovered a complex of neolithic and bronze age houses, field systems, rich middens and possibly ceremonial buildings dating to 3,500 BCE. Even before the recently found prehistoric
figurine emerged (as we reported last week), Noltland had revealed glimpses of this slowly evo
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 30, 2009
Secondary pupils will have to learn about five landmark events that shaped Scotland if they want to pass a new exam being unveiled by ministers.
A compulsory Scottish Higher history paper is to be introduced next month to answer criticism that youngsters have little knowledge of the country's past.
The exam will cover the 13th-Century Wars of Independence, in which William Wallace and Robert the Bruce played a major part.
It will also cover the 16th-Cent
Source: The Wall Street Journal
August 30, 2009
WASHINGTON -- Former Vice President Dick Cheney hinted that, in the waning days of the Bush administration, he had pushed for a military strike to destroy Iran's nuclear-weapons program.
In an interview on Fox News Sunday, Mr. Cheney described himself as being isolated among advisers to then-President George W. Bush, who ultimately decided against direct military action.
"I was probably a bigger advocate of military action than any of my colleagues," Mr. Chene
