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: BBC
July 1, 2009
A United Nations inquiry into the assassination of former Pakistani PM Benazir Bhutto has formally began.
It is headed by Chile's ambassador to the UN, Heraldo Munoz, and includes a former Indonesian attorney general and a former senior Irish police officer.
The inquiry will last six months and investigate the "facts and circumstances" of Ms Bhutto's death.
The three-member inquiry team will arrive in Pakistan later this month and submit its rep
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 2, 2009
A painstaking five-year restoration of a massive fresco painted by Michelangelo in the Vatican has revealed what experts believe is a self-portrait of the Renaissance genius.
Restorers claim that a bearded man wearing a blue turban in the Crucifixion of St Peter bears a striking resemblance to portraits and bronze busts of the artist.
The fresco shows the moment at which St Peter was raised on the cross by Roman soldiers, his face showing suffering but also defiance.
Source: Foxnews
July 2, 2009
Saddam Hussein let the world believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction because he did not want to appear weak to Iran, according to the Washington Post.
In interviews with the FBI before he was hanged, the former Iraqi president also denounced Usama bin Laden as "a zealot" and said the United States was not Iraq's enemy, the Post reports.
In fact, he claimed, he felt so vulnerable to the threat from "fanatic" leaders in Tehran that he would have b
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 2, 2009
Professor Derek Matthews was so surprised to discover that the students in his economics class at Cardiff University had such a poor grasp of British history that he decided to conduct an experiment.
He set five easy questions, which he believed 'every 18-year-old should know', and over three years 284 first-year university students took the test.
The results confirmed his fears. Just one in six knew that the Duke of Wellington led the British army in the Battle of Wate
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
July 2, 2009
The Queen is to honour the families of Britain's war dead with a new award in her name.
Those who have lost loved ones on the frontline or in terrorist attacks will be presented with the Elizabeth Cross.
In a radio message to the armed forces on the British Forces Broadcasting Service the Queen said: 'I greatly hope that the Elizabeth Cross will give further meaning to the nation's debt of gratitude to the families and loved ones of those who have died in the service
Source: Deutsche Welle
July 2, 2009
Mohamed ElBaradei's message was clear: "We are not going to say that this is a material breach unless obviously we see a gross violation of the resolution," the Director General of the International Atom Energy Association (IAEA) said at the end of January 2003. He was responding to demands by the administration of US President George W. Bush to find the so called "smoking gun," i.e. proof that Iraq possessed or developed nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction.
Source: History Today
June 30, 2009
I have vivid memories of a school trip to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg, 35 kilometres north of Berlin: the crematories, the so-called ‘Station Z’ built for the extermination of prisoners in 1942, the infirmary... I have no recollection, however, of the camp brothel.
Robert Sommer’s latest book The Concentration Camp Bordello: Sexual Forced Labor in National Socialistic Concentration Camps (Das KZ-Bordell) provides, however, for the first time a comprehensive study
Source: BBC
July 2, 2009
Hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed using high-precision weapons, while others were shot at close range, the group Amnesty International says.
Its report also calls rocket attacks by Palestinian militants war crimes and accuses Hamas of endangering civilians.
The Israeli military says its conduct was in line with international law.
Israel has attributed some civilian deaths to "professional mistakes", but has dismissed wider criticism
Source: BBC
July 1, 2008
It is headed by Chile's ambassador to the UN, Heraldo Munoz, and includes a former Indonesian attorney general and a former senior Irish police officer.
The inquiry will last six months and investigate the "facts and circumstances" of Ms Bhutto's death.
She was killed in December 2007 as she left a rally of her Pakistan People's Party (PPP) supporters in Rawalpindi.
Source: NYT
July 1, 2009
TOLEDO, Spain — As this medieval hilltop city baked in the afternoon heat, a group of Jewish leaders gathered beside a freshly dug grave and lowered into it small bundles of flaking, ancient bones. With prayers and a plea for forgiveness for disturbing the peace of more than 100 medieval souls, they laid them to rest in the cool, reddish earth.
The quiet ceremony in late June concluded months of delicate negotiations between Jewish groups and Spanish authorities over the fate of the
Source: AP
June 30, 2009
For the second time in two years, Polish officials began building a new museum of Jewish history in Warsaw on Tuesday that they hope will become a major cultural landmark.
An earlier groundbreaking ceremony for the planned Museum of the History of Polish Jews took place in 2007 in the presence of the Polish president, but bureaucratic obstacles then held up construction.
On Tuesday, museum officials and politicians gathered again at the museum site in the heart of the f
Source: National Security Archive
July 1, 2009
FBI special agents carried out 20 formal interviews and at least 5 "casual conversations" with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein after his capture by U.S. troops in December 2003, according to secret FBI reports released as the result of Freedom of Information Act requests by the National Security Archive and posted today on the Web at www.nsarchive.org.
Saddam denied any connections to the "zealot" Osama bin Laden, cited
Source: AP
June 30, 2009
A July 27 public hearing is scheduled in Orange County on a Wal-Mart Supercenter proposed near the Wilderness Civil War battlefield.
The hearing scheduled by supervisors Tuesday night is the final step before the Board of Supervisors takes up the proposal. Supervisors have final say on the proposed 138,000-square-foot store.
Last week, the Planning Commission voted 5-4 to recommend approval of a special use permit for the store in Locust Grove. Supervisors do not have
Source: AP
July 1, 2009
A survivor of the Khmer Rouge's main prison said Wednesday that his ability to paint larger-than-life images of the regime's late leader, Pol Pot, and portraits of other communist icons helped save his life.
Bou Meng is one of only three living survivors of S-21 prison — all of them apparently spared because of skills deemed useful to the "killing fields" regime of the 1970s.
The artist was put to work painting portraits that glorified Mao Zedong of China and North
Source: WaPo
July 2, 2009
An investigator at the Securities and Exchange Commission warned superiors as far back as 2004 about irregularities at Bernard L. Madoff's financial management firm, but she was told to focus on an unrelated matter, according to agency documents and sources familiar with the investigation.
Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot, a lawyer in the SEC's Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, sent e-mails to a supervisor, saying information provided by Madoff during her review didn't
Source: AP
July 1, 2009
Fossils recently discovered in Myanmar could prove that the common ancestors of humans, monkeys and apes evolved from primates in Asia, rather than Africa, researchers contend in a study released Wednesday.
However, other scientists said that the finding, while significant, won't end the debate over the origin of anthropoids — the primate grouping that includes ancient species as well as modern humans.
The pieces of 38 million-year-old jawbones and teeth found near Bag
Source: National Geographic
June 30, 2009
Inside a newly discovered underground chamber, Israeli archaeologist Adam Zertal points to an unseen carving that he suspects may be a Zodiac sign that dates back to the Roman period around the first century A.D.
The largest human-made cave in Israel, the 1-acre (0.4-hectare) space in the Jordan Valley is thought to have begun as a quarry. In subsequent centuries it may have served as a monastery and a hideout for persecuted Christians or the Roman army, Zertal said.
Source: http://www.livinginperu.com
July 1, 2009
The last time global warming came to the Andes it produced the Inca Empire. A team of English and U.S. scientists has analyzed pollen, seeds and isotopes in core samples taken from the deep mud of a small lake not far from Machu Picchu and their report says that "the success of the Inca was underpinned by a period of warming that lasted more than four centuries."
The four centuries coincided directly with the rise of this startling, hyper-productive culture that at its ze
Source: Star.com
July 1, 2009
Returned from Ireland after more than 180 years, Maliseet birchbark boat inspires rebirth of craft
A culturally significant First Nation's artifact that has languished in Ireland for more than 180 years has returned to Canada, completing a circle of tradition for those on the New Brunswick reserves where it originated.
The "Grandfather Akwiten canoe," believed to be the oldest birchbark canoe in the world, was built by Maliseet craftsmen in the early 1820s bef
Source: Canadian Press
June 30, 2009
A team at McMaster University has uncovered a historical glimpse of Canadiana - a bill of treason connected to the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837.
Written on parchment and dated March 1838, the bill was filed against William Rogers, a yeoman living in or near Albion, York Township, Upper Canada.
The uprising was led by William Lyon Mackenzie, a Scottish-Canadian journalist, reformer and politician who was also the first mayor of Toronto.
He rallied 400 reb
