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 Washington Post
August 6, 2009
The Obama administration's Sudan envoy is facing growing resistance to a suggestion he made recently to civilians displaced from Darfur that they should start planning to go back to their villages. Darfurian civilians and U.N. relief agencies say it is still too dangerous to return to the region where a six-year-long conflict has led to the deaths of more than 300,000 people.
In the latest sign of tension, Sheik al-Tahir, a leader at Kalma, one of Darfur's largest camps for displace
Source: CNS News
August 6, 2009
The Russian and United States militaries both played down the significance of two Russian attack submarines patrolling in international waters off the East Coast of the U.S., although the Pentagon confirmed Wednesday that it had been years since Russian subs had extended their reach into the region.
"It is the first time … in roughly a decade that we’ve seen this kind of behavior," Defense Department Press Secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters.
The New York T
Source: The American Task force on Palestine
August 5, 2009
A new study published by the Peres Center for Peace argues that economic peace, though a helpful tool, cannot replace a political solution with the Palestinians.
The study was released last week at a special conference on the topic at Tel Aviv University, following a meeting between Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom and Palestinian National Economy Minister Bassim Khoury...
...Ashkenazi, who prior to joining the Peres center was the head of the IDF's West Bank and Gaza
Source: Time
August 3, 2009
On a gray and rainy Saturday, five young men are gathered at the Body Guard music studio in Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital. The modest one-story building has only two rooms and no sign out front. Inside, the walls are lined with a velveteen fabric, the floor is covered in shag carpeting and there's minimal sound equipment — just a dated computer, two keyboards, a microphone and a mixing desk. The men are recording a track called "One Love," as King Fisher, the studio's founder and fa
Source: NYT
August 5, 2009
The towering concrete blast walls that have both protected and suffocated Baghdad streets for the past two years will come down within 40 days, Iraq's government announced Wednesday...
...The announcement was the latest in a government push to restore a sense of normalcy and shore up public confidence ahead of national elections scheduled for January.
The U.S. military, which erected most of the walls, said Wednesday it had not been informed of the decision -- an indica
Source: NYT
August 5, 2009
Recalling the "people power" outpourings she inspired two decades ago, more than 100,000 people thronged the streets of Manila as the body of former President Corazon C. Aquino was driven slowly through swirling winds and rain for burial on Wednesday.
For five days after Mrs. Aquino, 76, died of cancer early Saturday, crowds of mourners converged on her coffin as it passed through the streets and lay in state at Manila Cathedral.
Source: NYT
August 5, 2009
The last two men imprisoned for Provisional I.R.A. offenses were released from prison on Wednesday, closing another chapter in peacemaking yet rekindling memories of a killing that infuriated much of Ireland.
The two men, Pearse McCauley and Kevin Walsh, walked free from Ireland's Castlerea prison more than 10 years after they were convicted in the killing by the Irish Republican Army of an Irish policeman guarding a cash delivery van.
Mr. McCauley and Mr. Walsh were th
Source: The Telegraph (India)
August 2, 2009
A village in Kerala’s Periyar delta may be the site of a port that has remained untraced for centuries although ancient Indian and Greek texts had described it as an Indian Ocean trade hub, researchers have said.
Archaeological excavations at Pattanam, about 25km north of Kochi, have yielded an abundance of artefacts — a 2,000-year-old brick-layered wharf, a wooden canoe and hundreds of fragments of Roman and West Asian pottery, including wine jars.
The findings of th
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 6, 2009
Some of the most intimate thoughts of the late Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, which she secretly recorded in the years before her death, will be aired for the first time next month.
The first ever first person material on the private thoughts of Queen Elizabeth will be included in the long awaited official biography by William Shawcross which is being published next month.
Transcripts of the hours of conversation, which were taped by Sir Eric Anderson, her friend a
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 6, 2009
Hollywood's habit of playing with historical facts is leading schoolchildren to get it wrong too – even if they read the true story in classrooms, a new academic study shows.
Researchers have found that film is an incredibly powerful tool for teaching children about the past which can greatly increase historical knowledge.
However, it is so powerful that if the facts are wrong, pupils are more likely to believe them even if they are told otherwise by text books or tea
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 6, 2009
Harris, the author of the bestsellers Fatherland and Pompeii, has conceded that the Business Secretary is "in some ways similar" to the Roman, who died in 43 BC.
Both were considered to be among the sharpest minds of their generation. Both could also be seen as outsiders who took on the ruling elite of the day, before being banished on foreign exile.
Cicero's multi-faceted career as a lawyer, philosopher and statesman could also be said to have been imitated r
Source: Independent (UK)
August 7, 2009
All this week, Norway is feting a writer who was lucky to escape being shot for his shameless collaboration with the Nazis. Knut Hamsun was either, according to taste, one of the greatest figures in world literature, or a vile old man with a head full of nasty ideas who betrayed his country.
Not many years ago, anyone who went into a Norwegian bookshop and asked for one of Hamsun's books was likely to get a frosty reply from across the counter. And yet he was, to be blunt, the only
Source: Times (UK)
August 6, 2009
A series of allegations including murder, weapons smuggling and the deliberate slaughter of civilians have been levelled against the founder of Blackwater, the security company being investigated for shooting deaths in Iraq.
The accusations, including a claim that the company founder Erik Prince either murdered or had killed former employees co-operating with federal investigators, are contained in sworn affidavits lodged at a Virginia court on Monday night.
The compa
Source: BBC
August 6, 2009
The building would be turned into a memorial, officials said.
The house was put up for sale in July after the owner said she failed to find an institution interested in preserving the building's legacy.
Gandhi is thought to have lived there for three years from 1907 - when he began to formulate his philosophy of non-violent resistance.
Source: Deutsche Welle
August 6, 2009
The French retiree was granted German citizenship at a ceremony at the German consulate in Paris.
Rouxel said the event helped to ease a lifetime of rejection and humiliation in a country whose wartime occupation remained a taboo topic for a long time.
"I'm German. I'm not a bastard any more. I'm a child like all the others. At last I've got the second half that I was so cruelly missing," Rouxel said.
Source: Deutsche Welle
August 6, 2009
Stephan Kramer, general secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told ZDF television: "I think it makes sense and it is important to publish an edition of Hitler's ‘Mein Kampf’ with an academic commentary.
"An academic and historically critical edition needs to be prepared today to prevent neo-Nazis profiting from it," Kramer said. "An aggressive and enlightening engagement with the book would doubtless remove many of its false, persisting myths."
Source: LA Times
August 1, 2009
The 10 lines of Aramaic or Hebrew script on the artifact is 'unprecedented,' an archaeologist says. Researchers are not yet able to decipher it.
U.S. archaeologists have found an extremely rare 2,000-year-old limestone cup inscribed with 10 lines of Aramaic or Hebrew script near the Zion Gate of the Old City of Jerusalem.
Although the script itself is not eroded or otherwise degraded, he said, researchers are not yet able to decipher it because the text is in an informa
Source: ABC News
August 2, 2009
In 2003, archaeologists excavating in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores made a discovery that forced scientists to completely rethink conventional theories of human evolution.
They reported the discovery of a new species of human, one that lived as recently as 12,000 years ago, at the same time as modern humans.
But others disagreed, arguing the one-metre-high skeleton was a modern human that suffered from a deformity known as microcephaly.
Source: BBC
August 6, 2009
Medals and a dog tag from one of Germany's largest World War II prisoner-of-war (PoW) camps have gone under the hammer at auction in Powys.
The medals and the tag, from Stalag 1VB, belonged to the late DLS Hamer of Kerry, near Newtown, who was a driver in the Army Service Corps.
He was captured in 1943 and spent the rest of the war in captivity until the camp was liberated by the Russians.
The memorabilia was expected to make about £200, but was sold for
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 5, 2009
A fossil of a pterodactyl, the earliest known flying vertebrate, shows the creatures had unique and complex wing fibers that enabled them to fly with the precision and control of birds, researchers said on Wednesday.
The finding by a team of Brazilian, German, Chinese and British researchers in China backs up the theory that the reptiles that dominated the skies from up to 220 million years ago, were not just basic gliders.
A new technique that involves shining ultra-v
