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: Telegraph (UK)
July 3, 2009
Australian palaeontologists have discovered three new dinosaur species among fossils at the bottom of a Queensland lake.
The two herbivores and one carnivore, which date back nearly 100m years to the middle of the Cretaceous period, were excavated from the Winton formation in the state's west. They are the first significant dinosaur discovery in Australia since 1981.
All of the dinosaurs have been named after characters in the famous Australian bush poem Waltzing Matild
Source: BBC
July 3, 2009
A military historian who posed as a war hero has been exposed as a fantasist.
Jack Livesey claimed he won the Military Medal while serving in the Parachute Regiment.
However, the Ministry of Defence confirmed Mr Livesey served in the Army Catering Corps for less than three years.
Former veterans told the BBC they were upset by the way he paraded his medals.
Source: Foxnews
July 2, 2009
The documents and memos were turned over to the American Civil Liberties Union as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
Newly released Defense Department documents and memos about the first years of operation of the jail at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, portray a chaotic and sometimes violent operation that its own commanders described as dysfunctional.
The documents and memos were turned over to the American Civil Liberties Union as part of a Freedom o
Source: NYT
July 2, 2009
In a series of interrogations before his execution, Saddam Hussein told an F.B.I. agent that on the eve of the 2003 American invasion, Iraq was trapped between United Nations orders to demonstrate that it had disarmed and a fear that appearing too weak would invite attack from its powerful neighbor and foe, Iran.
The ousted Iraqi dictator “was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions of the United States for his refusal to al
Source: Rasmussen Reports
July 3, 2009
Americans are celebrating the nation's 233rd birthday, and the words of the Declaration of Independence will be heard at countless patriotic ceremonies across the land. The core ideals articulated by those words are still embraced by solid majorities of the American public.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 89% of American adults agree that "we are all endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
July 3, 2009
When supporters of the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition converge on the site of the future President's House memorial at 4 p.m. today, they will be seeking to redeem the unpaid labor of enslaved forebears by ensuring paid labor in the here and now.
"It would be the height of historical hypocrisy that this would be built without the paid contributions of the sons and daughters of those who were enslaved here and built here in the first place," said Michael Coard, a founder
Source: NYT
July 2, 2009
Current and former top Central Intelligence Agency officers have appeared before a federal grand jury in Virginia as part of an 18-month investigation into the agency’s destruction of 92 videotapes depicting the brutal interrogations of two Qaeda detainees.
The witnesses recently called by the special prosecutor, former government officials said, include the agency’s top officer in London and Porter J. Goss, who was C.I.A. director when the tapes were destroyed in November 2005.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 3, 2009
Iran's announcement that it intends to put two British Embassy
employees on trial is nothing more than a return to the hostage-taking
tactics of the 1980s that resulted in the abduction of Terry Waite and
John McCarthy.
In the thirty years since the ayatollahs seized power in Tehran,
taking hostages has become a familiar tactic whenever the Islamic
regime feels itself under threat. Mr Waite and Mr McCarthy were among
dozens of Westerners kidnapped in Lebanon by Iranian-backed militi
Source: AP
July 3, 2009
Doctors have determined that John Demjanjuk is fit to stand trial on charges that he was an accessory to murder at a Nazi death camp, prosecutors said Friday.
The doctors said the 89-year-old retired auto worker, recently deported from the United States, can stand trial so long as his time in court does not exceed two 90-minute sessions daily, Munich prosecutors said.
Source: Financial Times (UK)
July 2, 2009
In 1901 a group of French archaeologists uncovered a 2,700-year-old Babylonian tablet in what is now Iran. Not only is the Hammurabi codex the first example of a written legal code; it is also the oldest known looted artefact, plundered from ancient Mesopotamia. “The looting of antiquities has been going on for a very long time in Iraq,” says Dr Elizabeth Stone of Stony Brook University, New York.
Dr Stone and Donny George, former head of the national museum in Baghdad, are at the f
Source: Guardian (UK)
July 2, 2009
A rare and extremely valuable copy of the United States Declaration of Independence has been discovered in Britain, it was announced today.
The document, which is in perfect condition, is believed to be one of only 200 ever printed and was found amongst files at the National Archives in Richmond.
Stumbled upon by an American antiquarian bookseller carrying out research, the Dunlap print of the declaration was printed on 4 July 1776 and brings the total of known survivin
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 2, 2009
The Group of Eight brings together eight of the world's richest and
most powerful countries: the United States, Britain, France, Russia,
Germany, Japan, Italy and Canada.
The G8 is not an international organisation like the United Nations or
European Union – it has no permanent secretariat or staff.
Instead, it brings together heads of the world's strongest economies
at an annual summit for informal discussions of the most pressing
global issues with a view to increasing inter
Source: WSJ
July 2, 2009
For more than 200 years, buried deep within Thomas Jefferson's correspondence and papers, there lay a mysterious cipher -- a coded message that appears to have remained unsolved. Until now.
The cryptic message was sent to President Jefferson in December 1801 by his friend and frequent correspondent, Robert Patterson, a mathematics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. President Jefferson and Mr. Patterson were both officials at the American Philosophical Society -- a group th
Source: The Vancouver Sun
July 2, 2009
A controversy has erupted over one of the most famous corpses from the War of 1812.
U.S. general Zebulon Pike was killed when retreating British and Canadian troops intentionally blew up a munitions depot during the American capture of York(present-day Toronto) in April 1813.
His remains were taken by ship across Lake Ontario and buried at a military cemetery in Sackets Harbor, N.Y.
But a subsequent re-burial and lingering confusion over the exact location
Source: BBC
July 2, 2009
A descendant of India's last Mughal emperor has been rescued from a life of penury in Calcutta by getting a job with the state-run Coal India.
Madhu is the illiterate great-great-granddaughter of emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar and has been employed to run errands in Coal India's offices.
A letter of employment will be formally handed over to her by the coal minister at a function in Calcutta next month. The move by Coal India follows sustai
Source: Telegra ( )
July 2, 2009
Marie Curie, the Nobel Prize-winning nuclear physicist has been voted the greatest woman scientist of all time.
Marie Curie has been voted the greatest woman scientist of all time. Photo: PA
The Polish-born researcher, who discovered radiation therapy could treat cancer, won just over a quarter of the poll (25.1 per cent) - almost twice as much as her nearest rival Rosalind Franklin (14.2 per cent), the English biophysicist who helped discover the structure of DNA.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
June 2, 2009
For more than 200 years, buried deep within Thomas Jefferson's correspondence and papers, there lay a mysterious cipher -- a coded message that appears to have remained unsolved. Until now.
The cryptic message was sent to President Jefferson in December 1801 by his friend and frequent correspondent, Robert Patterson, a mathematics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. President Jefferson and Mr. Patterson were both officials at the American Philosophical Society -- a group th
Source: Newsweek
July 1, 2009
On July 22 the Einstein Papers Project, located at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, will release the 12th volume of letters written or received by Albert Einstein—791 of them—plus transcripts of several notable lectures and interviews the physicist gave, covering the year 1921. It was a momentous 12 months. You might think there are no new revelations to be made about him, but for Einstein groupies the current volume addresses at least one key question: what did Einstein know
Source: Reuters
July 2, 2009
Saddam Hussein believed Iran was a significant threat to Iraq and left open the possibility that he had weapons of mass destruction rather than appear vulnerable, according to declassified FBI documents on interrogations of the former Iraqi leader.
"Hussein believed that Iraq could not appear weak to its enemies, especially Iran," FBI special agent George Piro wrote on notes of a conversation with Saddam in June 2004 about weapons of mass destruction.
He belie
Source: AFP
July 2, 2009
Arne Soerensen, a retired Danish doctor, flips through thousands of pages of notes scribbled over 50 years of research and issues his diagnosis: Napoleon died of a kidney disease.
Soerensen has dedicated his life to studying the French emperor's health to debunk the myth that he was poisoned by his enemies or suffered from stomach cancer.
In the latest twist in a long-running medical saga, Soerensen wrote in a new book "Napoleon's nyrer" (Napoleon's kidneys) p
