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)
June 29, 2009
The party of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel has declared that its
countrymen expelled by Poland after the Second World War have a ‘right
to a homeland’ and said the deportations should be condemned under
international law.
Wartime animosity between Poland and Germany could resurface after a
new election manifesto published by the Christian Democratic Union
(CDU) pledged to promote the cause of those expelled.
In 1945 millions of ethnic Germans were forced from their homes
Source: New York Times
June 30, 2009
Forlornly unidentified and altogether forgotten, these sites have been literally lost to history. On Avenue of the Americas, there is a block where the first cellphone call was completed in 1973; on West 125th Street, where the old Blumstein’s department store stood, nothing marks the place where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was stabbed in 1958. Then there is the spot on Fifth Avenue where Winston Churchill, crossing against the light, was struck by a car in 1931 and nearly killed.
Source: BBC
June 29, 2009
First it was Oprah Winfrey's wistful reach for the continent, now other prominent African Americans are finding their roots.
Since then thousands of other African Americans have followed suit, many of them household names in the US.
Comedian Chris Rock discovered that he was descended from the Udeme people of northern Cameroon.
DNA testing has also resulted in some African Americans being bestowed with honorary African titles.
Source: BBC
June 30, 2009
The second of three living survivors from the Tuol Sleng detention centre run by the Khmer Rouge has told a Cambodia tribunal how he was tortured.
Former mechanic Chum Mey, 63, told the United Nations-backed war crimes court that his toenails were torn out and he was subjected to electric shocks.
He said he was tortured repeatedly for 12 days and nights.
Chum Mey told the tribunal he had been working at a sewing machine factory in 1978 when he was brought
Source: BBC
June 29, 2009
Ukraine is opening up part of its old KGB archive, declassifying hundreds of thousands of documents spanning the entire Soviet period.
But the move to expose Soviet-era abuses is dividing Ukrainians, the BBC's Gabriel Gatehouse reports from Kiev.
Mr Viatrovych and his team are helping people to find out what happened to relatives and loved ones, often decades after they disappeared.
But the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), now in charge of the files, is d
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 30, 2009
A woman who inherited a collection of Chinese carved jade from her father has scored the first $1 million (£600,000) appraisal from experts on the US television programme "Antiques Roadshow," the producers said on Monday.
In a record for the show, four pieces of Chinese carved jade and celadon from the Qianlong era (1736-1795), including a large bowl made for the Emperor, were given a conservative auction estimate of up to $1.07 million.
The previous highest
Source: AP
June 30, 2009
Some 19th century checks and old rusty tools were left months ago at a bus stop in Longmont, and police say no one has come forward to claim them.
The Regional Transportation District turned over the unusual items to police in March after a rider said she found them at a bus stop in Longmont.
The items include handwritten checks from 1884 mounted on mat boards, as if they'd been on display.
Source: NYT
June 30, 2009
The book proposal from a man who was one of former Sen. John Edwards' closest aides claims that Edwards promised him to "take care of you for life" in return for falsely claiming he was the father of the baby carried by Edwards' mistress, Rielle Hunter.
The aide, Andrew Young, sold his book proposal to St. Martin's Press for an undisclosed price late last week. In his proposal, Young quotes Edwards, a Democrat who was his party's vice-presidential nominee in 2004 and ran f
Source: Foxnews (Click here to see a picture.)
June 30, 2009
Meet the "wonder weapon" that could have won the war for Hitler.
Called the Horten 229, the radical "flying wing" fighter-bomber looked and acted a lot like the U.S. Air Force's current B-2 — right down to the "stealth" radar-evading characteristics.
Fortunately for the world, the Ho 229 wasn't put into mass production before Nazi Germany surrendered in May 1945.
But American researchers boxed up and shipped home the prototypes
Source: NYT
June 29, 2009
The crisis in Honduras, where members of the country’s military abruptly awakened President Manuel Zelaya on Sunday and forced him out of the country in his bedclothes, is pitting Mr. Obama against the ghosts of past American foreign policy in Latin America.
The United States has a history of backing rival political factions and instigating coups in the region, and administration officials have found themselves on the defensive in recent days, dismissing repeated allegations by Pres
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 26, 2009
A 620-year-old skeleton discovered under the floor of Stirling Castle has shed new light on the violent life of a medieval knight.
Archaeologists believe that bones found in an ancient chapel on the site are those of an English knight named Robert Morley who died in a tournament there in 1388.
Radio carbon dating has confirmed that the skeleton is from that period, and detailed analysis suggests that he was in his mid-20s, was heavily muscled and had suffered several s
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 26, 2009
An ancient settlement dating back to before the time when Alexander the Great's armies swept across Afghanistan could be bulldozed and dynamited for a new road.
French archaeologists said they had been forced to stand in front of earthmovers to prevent Korean contractors building a road through a historic gorge.
Excavations show people have lived at Cheshm-e-Shafa since at least the fourth century BC, when the area was ruled by a Persian dynasty eventually swept away
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 29, 2009
Spanish dictator General Franco enjoyed lavish three course meals despite severe food shortages in the months after the country's civil war.
As Spaniards struggled to survive on daily rations of potatoes and beans in the months following the 1936-1939 conflict, he dined on stuffed hake and medallions of veal.
The collection of menus were discovered among papers belonging to a former Civil Guard officer, Carlos Palacios Miguel, who in the autumn of 1936 when Franco led
Source: Foxnews
June 29, 2009
Former Vice President Dick Cheney tells The Washington Times' America's Morning News radio show that he supports Gen. Ray Odierno, top commander in Iraq, but that insurgents could be waiting in the wings to launch more attacks.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney said he hopes the U.S. military's sacrifice in Iraq does not go to "waste" as a deadline to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraqi cities looms.
About 130,000 U.S. troops still remain in Iraq, but Odier
Source: Times Online (UK)
May 29, 2009
We are not yet approaching the level of the events of November 1979 when Iranian students overran the US Embassy and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. But the seizing of high-level local staff at the British Embassy gives this crisis its own flavour: in the 1979 Islamic Revolution the Iranians who worked at the US Embassy were left alone.
Today the defunct US Embassy in Tehran houses a detachment of Revolutionary Guards and an anti-American museum. It is the scene of ritual a
Source: AP
June 29, 2009
More than two years since leaving her prison cell, the woman who became the grinning face of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal spends most of her days confined to the four walls of her home.
Former Army reservist Lynndie England hasn't landed a job in numerous tries: When one restaurant manager considered hiring her, other employees threatened to quit.
England hopes a biography released this month and a book tour starting in July will help rehabilitate an image inde
Source: Foxnews
June 29, 2009
A lawsuit against Saudi Arabia filed by survivors and families members of those killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has ended as the Supreme Court announced Monday it will not hear additional arguments from the victims who were trying to revive their case.
The case against Saudi Arabia and five of its princes was already tossed out by two lower courts. More than 6,000 people joined the suit, claiming the Saudis were directly responsible for allowing the flow of money to Usama b
Source: CNN
June 29, 2009
Scientific tests prove bones housed in the Basilica of St. Paul in Rome are those of the apostle St. Paul himself, according to Pope Benedict XVI.
The tomb also holds "traces of a precious linen cloth, purple in color and laminated with pure gold, and a blue colored textile with linen filaments," the pope said.
The tests were carried out by inserting a probe into a small opening in the sarcophagus, "which had not been opened for many centuries," the
Source: NYT
June 27, 2009
True, David Letterman’s awkward joke about a daughter of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska prompted denunciations of the “media elite” (though it also boosted Mr. Letterman’s ratings).
But the admissions of extramarital adventures by two Republican stalwarts, Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina on Wednesday and Senator John Ensign of Nevada the week before, did not help their party’s cause and stood in dim contrast to President Obama’s recent success in co-opting parts of the conservatives
Source: NYT
June 27, 2009
Nearly 35 years after President Richard M. Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal, the Nixon Presidential Library last week released more than 150 hours of secret Oval Office recordings covering January and February of 1973. While much of the attention to the newly disclosed material focused on Mr. Nixon’s expressing his prejudices and discussing the cease-fire in Vietnam, other conversations offer a glimpse of his thinking about presidential decision making and the exercise of power. There i
