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: BCC
August 25, 2009
In the fourth of a series of articles marking the outbreak of World War II 70 years ago, the BBC Russian Service's Artyom Krechetnikov assesses Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's motivations behind the 1939 Soviet-Nazi pact.
He predicted that the outcome would depend entirely on whichever strategic position the USSR decided to adopt.
Should the Soviet Union form an alliance with France and Britain, he opined, Germany would be forced to abandon its territorial demands on Pol
Source: BBC
August 27, 2009
Records of more than 100,000 British prisoners of war captured during World War II are being published online.
The ancestry.co.uk lists, accessible for a fee, were compiled by the German military authorities under the 1929 Geneva Convention.
They contain details of British and Commonwealth personnel held in Germany, Austria and Poland in WWII.
The records have only now been made public and the website claims to be the first in the world to publish them.
Source: BBC
August 27, 2009
The six-year war between forces loyal to Sudan's government and rebels in Darfur has effectively ended, the UN's military commander in the region says.
General Martin Agwai, who is leaving his post this week, said the vicious fighting of earlier years had subsided as rebel groups split into factions.
He says the region now suffers more from low-level disputes and banditry.
The UN says 300,000 people have died in Darfur, but the Sudanese government puts th
Source: CNN
August 27, 2009
It was a gilded name in politics, but Ted Kennedy's life was an almost impossible kaleidoscope of outstanding public service, astonishing personal failures and the heavy burden of the unfulfilled legacies and promise of three older brothers: Joseph, Jack and Bobby.
Ted, the youngest of the Kennedys, became the patriarch of the family at 36 when Bobby -- whose 1968 presidential campaign championed the sick, the poor and the elderly -- was assassinated.
He would never be
Source: Taegan Goddard's Political Wire
August 27, 2009
"In this historic memoir, Ted Kennedy takes us inside his family, re-creating life with his parents and brothers and explaining their profound impact on him. or the first time, he describes his heartbreak and years of struggle in the wake of their deaths. Through it all, he describes his work in the Senate on the major issues of our time -- civil rights, Vietnam, Watergate, the quest for peace in Northern Ireland -- and the cause of his life: improved health care for all Americans,
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 26, 2009
A Picasso painting stolen from Kuwait during Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion has been discovered in southern Iraq.
Iraqi police arrested a man who was planning to sell "The Naked Woman" during a raid on his house in southern Iraq, officials said on Wednesday.
The painting was apparently among the artwork looted from Kuwait by Iraqi forces, said police spokesman Maj. Muthana Khalid.
It was seized on Tuesday during a raid near the mainly Shia city o
Source: Taiwan News
August 27, 2009
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Berlin on Thursday was to include talks on the modern-day Mideast conflict as well as acknowledgment of the painful history that ties Germany with the Jewish state created in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust...
... The subject of settlements was sure to be raised at Netanyahu's meeting with Merkel on Thursday. Speaking Wednesday, German government spokesman Klaus Vater said that Berlin advocates that "no further settlements be
Source: NYT
August 25, 2009
Once the mad dog of the Middle East, as Ronald Reagan called him, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, has focused on shedding his outlaw status: He heads the African Union, attended a Group of 8 economic conference in Rome and is courted by Western powers hungry for Libyan oil.
But if the world thought the colonel had changed his views after 40 years in power, he proved otherwise with the hero’s welcome he gave Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person convicted in the Lo
Source: CNSNews.com
August 26, 2009
On the 46th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s March on Washington, Education Secretary Arne Duncan declined to say whether King’s view that just laws are based on God's law should be taught in public schools...
... At a press conference Tuesday publicizing the Kids for King education initiative, which aims to get children to learn about King’s teachings, CNSNews.com asked Duncan whether he thought the content of King’s letter should be taught in public schools.
Source: Time
August 20, 2009
On a hot August afternoon in 2008, Ted Kennedy took John Kerry sailing on his 50-ft. schooner, the Mya.It was a perfect day on the water, sunny with the occasional cotton-ball cloud riding the strong winds over the family compound in Hyannis Port, Mass. With the Mya's blue hull moving at a good clip, Kennedy turned to his old friend with reminiscences of failed campaigns past: Kennedy's bid for the presidency in 1980 and Kerry's in 2004. What concerned Kennedy, who three months earlier had learn
Source: BBC
August 26, 2009
Staff at an 18th Century Scottish castle have been praised for saving it from widespread damage in a fire.
The alarm was raised at 0730 BST at Floors Castle near Kelso after the blaze began near a freezer and spread behind lath and plaster walls.
Roxburghe Estates manager Roddy Jackson said the "quick actions" of staff had limited the damage to one room.
It meant the castle - the family home of the Duke of Roxburghe - was able to open to the publi
Source: BBC
August 26, 2009
Markings on a 16th Century carving from Stirling Castle could be the oldest surviving piece of written Scottish instrumental music, historians believe.
A sequence of 0s, Is and IIs have been found on one of the Stirling Heads - wooden medallions which would have decorated the castle's royal palace.
It is believed the music could have been played on instruments such as harps, viols, fiddles and lutes.
An experienced harpist has been trying to play the tune.
Source: BBC
August 26, 2009
In the latest of a series of articles marking the outbreak of World War II 70 years ago, BBC Russian affairs analyst Steven Eke analyses how opinions on the Nazi-Soviet pact have changed over the years.
In recent years, the tone and content of disagreements between Russia and the West over interpretations of World War II have seemed reminiscent of the Cold War.
The original German-language copy of the secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact on the Nazi-Soviet div
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 26, 2008
As Barack Obama broke off from his holiday in Martha's Vineyard to lead America in eulogising Ted Kennedy, just 10 miles away on Chappaquiddick a small wooden bridge provided a very different memorial.
Forty years ago last month, Sen Kennedy drove his car off Dyke Bridge in Chappaquiddick after a day's sailing and hard drinking with a group of married friends and young women who had worked on his brother Robert's presidential campaign.
After a carefully choreographed
Source: Foxnews
August 26, 2009
Sen. Edward Kennedy's bipartisan efforts were reflected in the outpouring of sympathies from former Presidents Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
All four living former presidents were among the many mourners Wednesday who paid tribute to the life and legacy of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy.
During 47 years in the Senate, Kennedy worked with 10 presidents -- five from each political party. And despite his liberal streak, he didn't hesitate
Source: Time
August 26, 2009
There was a time 40 years ago, right after the assassination of his brother Robert, when it looked like Edward Kennedy would become President someday by right of succession. The Kennedy curse, the one that had seen all three of his brothers cut down in their prime, had created for him a sort of Kennedy prerogative, or at least the illusion of one, an inevitable claim on the White House. For years he seemed like a man simply waiting for the right moment to take what everybody knew was coming his
Source: The Daily Beast
August 25, 2009
Out with the old, in with the… old? President Barack Obama may say he’s against the Bush administration’s interrogation policies, but he’s just tapped a key Bush-era CIA insider, John Brennan, to oversee his new interrogation policies. Brennan, who was in the CIA for 25 years and who served as the CIA’s deputy executive director during the period of "enhanced interrogation techniques," will be Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser. He'll oversee a new interrogation corps, which will be
Source: CNN
August 26, 2009
Services for Sen. Edward Kennedy will be Saturday morning at a Boston church before his burial in Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington, his office announced Wednesday.
President Obama, who called Kennedy an "extraordinary leader," will deliver a eulogy at the funeral, according to several sources.
Before the funeral, Kennedy's body will lie in repose Thursday afternoon and Friday in the Smith Center at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Bost
Source: Newsday.com
August 25, 2009
The Colorado History Museum is finding some history underneath the site where it's about to start building its new home.
Workers have been excavating the remains of some turn-of-the-century row houses, which have been well-preserved by a parking lot on top of the site. One cellar is nearly intact. Workers have also found dinnerware fragments, architectural hardware and old trash.
Source: NY Observer
August 24, 2009
David Gergen is working on a book about the Obama administration, according to Alice Mayhew, his editor at Simon & Schuster.
Ms. Mayhew declined to go into detail about Mr. Gergen’s project, but characterized it as as being about “watching an administration take hold.”
“It’s early days,” Ms. Mayhew said by phone this afternoon. “He’s writing about this administration and how it takes office, but he’s writing from the perspective of Gergen, which is unique, I think,
