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: NYT
June 27, 2009
The history of repression to save regimes — or at least their leaders — is long. And every case is different: Some regimes are brittle in the face of popular pressure while others are supple in adapting to it; some can use nationalism as their trump card, while for others, it is an Achilles’ heel. And if some regimes are simple tyrannies, the structure of Iran’s political system is especially complex and opaque.
Still, a common thread is clear: It is the security services on which t
Source: http://www.space.com
June 29, 2009
Ever since something generated a huge explosion over Siberia in 1908, flattening an area as big as a large city, scientists have been trying to figure out what caused it.
Among the enduring mysteries: Following the explosion, the night skies shone brightly for several nights across Europe all the way to London, 3,000 miles away.
While there are some wild theories about the Tunguska event -- involving a UFO or black hole or a bizarre death ray -- astronomers have long kn
Source: Reuters
June 26, 2009
Germany's highest court has upheld a ban on three words appearing in sequence because of their link to a former anthem of the Nazi party.
The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe rejected on Thursday an appeal by a member of a far-right party who was fined 1,750 euros ($2,400) for wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words "die Fahnen hoch."
This literally translates as "the flags on high." The court said the words, which appeared as the final
Source: Daily Record
June 21, 2009
It took decades before [Myron] Swack, 83, of Independence, told his wife and family about months spent at a slave labor camp called Berga an der Elster — a story that involved 350 American soldiers, but which received only limited attention until recently.
Many of the Americans ended up at Berga either because they were Jewish or because the Germans thought they were. They lived on small bits of bread and thin turnip soup, working in mine shafts where rock dust ripped their lungs. T
Source: AP
June 29, 2009
SANTUBONG, Malaysia – As he trudges past chest-high ferns and butterflies the size of saucers, George Beccaloni scours a jungle hilltop overlooking the South China Sea for signs of a long-forgotten Victorian-era scientist.
He finds what he's looking for: an abandoned, two-story guest house, its doors missing and ceiling caved in.
"Excellent. This is the actual spot," he yells.
It is on this site, in a long-gone thatched hut, that Alfred Russel Wal
Source: NYT
June 28, 2009
CHICAGO — They arrived at the police union hall looking older, grayer, wider. At least one bore a cane.
It seemed an unlikely reunion: a gathering, 41 years later, of the police officers who clashed with demonstrators during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in this city, leaving behind an image Chicago has tried to shed ever since.
“People ask me, ‘What is there to celebrate about all of this?’ ” said Tom Keevers, one of the former officers, long gone from the fo
Source: AFP
June 28, 2009
The Holocaust nearly obliterated a millennium of Jewish life in Poland but a new website aims to bring it back in cyberspace by piecing together scraps of memories on life before the Nazis.
The "Virtual Shtetl" web portal was launched this month by the creators of a much-awaited Museum of the History of Polish Jews, to get a head start online before the museum is scheduled to open its doors in 2011.
In both Polish and English, the site is built on Web 2.0 tec
Source: AP
June 28, 2009
- Adventurers who conquered Mount Everest successfully launched a replica of an ancient Philippine boat Saturday that they will use to sail around Southeast Asia and possibly to Africa to promote Filipino pride and unity.
The replica of the balangay — a wooden-hulled boat used in the archipelago about 1,700 years ago — was built in 44 days by native Badjao boat-builders from the southernmost Philippine province of Tawi Tawi using traditional skills handed down through the generation
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
June 29, 2009
This faded face, with a pointed beard and furrowed brow, is believed to be the oldest image in existence of St Paul the Apostle.
Vatican archaeologists uncovered the fresco in a catacomb beneath Rome with the help of a laser, which cleared away centuries of grime, clay and limestone.
The image was created in the 4th century, according to Barbara Mazzei, the director of work at the catacomb.
'It was easy to see that it was Saint Paul because the style mat
Source: AP
June 26, 2009
Russia told a U.S. court on Friday that judges have no authority to tell the country how to handle sacred Jewish documents held in its state library that were seized by the Nazi and Soviet armies.
The documents are at the center of a lawsuit brought by members of Chabad-Lubavitch, which follows the teachings of Eastern European rabbis and emphasizes the study of the Torah. The group is suing Russia in U.S. court to recover thousands of manuscripts, prayers, lectures and philosophic
Source: AP
June 29, 2009
From cell phones and texting to religion and manners, younger and older Americans see the world differently, creating the largest generation gap since the tumultuous years of the 1960s and the culture clashes over Vietnam, civil rights and women's liberation.
A new study released Monday by the Pew Research Center found Americans of different ages increasingly at odds over a range of social and technological issues. It also highlights a widening age divide after last November's election, w
Source: Independent (UK)
June 29, 2009
The public is widely ignorant of the stories and people who provide the basis of Christianity, a survey has found, despite 75 per cent of respondents owning a copy of the Bible.
The National Biblical Literacy Survey found that as few as 10 per cent of people understood the main characters in the Bible and their relevance.
Figures such as Abraham and Joseph were a source of puzzlement and it was rare to find anyone who could name the Ten Commandments.
Many s
Source: Independent (UK)
June 29, 2009
A procession of restored Trabant cars streamed through a replica of a metal gate this weekend, commemorating the place and time, 20 years ago, when Hungary and Austria opened the first breach in the Iron Curtain and, in former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl's words, "took the first brick out of the Berlin Wall".
In the summer of 1989, this rural area was one of the most tense places in the world, as central Europeans tested the will of Mikhail Gorbachev's Kremlin to preser
Source: Independent (UK)
June 29, 2009
Ever since Benedictine monks first made their home at Westminster AD 960, Britain's most famous abbey has been an architectural playground.
Monarchs and architects, including Sir Christopher Wren, Nicholas Hawksmoor and Sir George Gilbert Scott, have commissioned and built towers, turrets and chapels in a variety of styles.
More than a 1,000 years on, the Abbey authorities are to launch a public consultation on plans to change the the building once again – with the addi
Source: Observer (UK)
June 28, 2009
Iraq has declared tomorrow a national holiday and is planning festivals to mark the end of the US presence on the streets of its towns and cities, more than six years after Saddam Hussein was ousted.
The much-anticipated milestone has been hailed as a return to sovereignty by Iraqi officials, who have maintained sometimes difficult relations with the US military throughout the years of occupation.
But the celebratory mood has angered some senior US officials and militar
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 26, 2009
Special Forces made a series of night jumps on the outskirts of Baghdad in a campaign against insurgent leaders and bomb-making factories, The Daily Telegraph has learnt.
The operations - which can only now be disclosed - played a significant role in removing "high value targets'' and reducing the ability of insurgents to make roadside bombs.
On at least a dozen occasions, SAS soldiers using highly-manoeuvrable parachutes jumped from the back of a Hercules aircra
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
June 28, 2009
Visitors to a railway attraction's Second World War-themed weekend were banned from dressing up as Hitler or SS officers.
They were invited to don 1940s-style clothes, both British and German, for Severn Valley Railway's re-enactment yesterday and today.
But the Swastika, Nazi uniforms and Hitler impersonations were barred from the popular tourist draw in Worcestershire because organisers feared they would cause offence.
Source: BBC
June 29, 2009
In 2005 Oprah Winfrey underwent DNA testing in an effort to determine the genetic make-up of her body's cells.
The popular American talk show host wanted to know where her ancestors, taken as slaves to the United States, had come from.
Famous genes
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 C
Source: BBC
June 29, 2009
Van Nath described how hunger had driven him to eat insects, and said he had also eaten the food beside corpses of starved fellow prisoners.
He was appearing at the trial of the man who ran the prison, Comrade Duch.
About 15,000 people were detained at Tuol Sleng in the late 1970s, but only seven are thought to have survived.
Source: NYT
June 27, 2009
As Democrats strained to win over crucial holdouts on the way to narrow, party-line approval of global warming legislation, they were dogged by a critical question: Has the political climate changed since 1993?
Veteran members of both parties vividly remember when many House Democrats, in the early months of the Clinton administration, reluctantly backed a proposed B.T.U. tax — a new levy on each unit of energy consumed — only to see it ignored by the Senate and seized as a campaign
