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: Haaretz
May 18, 2009
A horrific page of history unfolded last Monday in Ukraine. It
concerned the gruesome and untold story of a spontaneous pogrom by
local villagers against hundreds of Jews in a town south of Ternopil
in 1941.
Not one, but five independent witnesses recounted the tale, recalling
how they rushed to a German army camp, borrowed weapons and gunned
down 500 Jews inside the town's Christian cemetery. One of them
remembered decapitating bodies in front of the church.
The man heading
Source: AP
May 18, 2009
More than 40 percent of Israel's Arab citizens say the Holocaust never happened, and barely one half think Israel has a right to exist, according to a survey published Monday. But the academic who directed it said the results were likely more statements of protest than belief.
Sammy Smooha believes the numbers, which have shown a significant shift in the past few years, signal a rising frustration among minority Arabs in the Jewish state. He said the growing Holocaust denial is fuel
Source: UPI
May 18, 2009
A University of Michigan professor says the discovery of a 47 million-year-old fossil may be from a primate species related to humans, apes and monkeys.
Michigan paleontology Professor Philip Gingeric, who also serves as the president-elect of the Paleontological Society of the United States, said the newly discovered fossil also supports the adapid theory of evolution, The Wall Street Journal said Monday.
A major ongoing evolutionary debate is focused on whether humans
Source: The Canadian Press
May 17, 2009
The story of Geronimo epitomizes the Old West: a larger-than-life Indian warrior whose remarkable exploits in battle bordered on the supernatural.
His remains also have taken on interest beyond all expectations. Some people believe grave robbers, including Prescott Bush, the father and grandfather of future presidents, took his skull for use in a powerful secret society at Yale University.
Historians don't buy it. They say Geronimo is still buried at Fort Sill in Oklaho
Source: Herald Sun (Australia)
May 16, 2009
Greece heaped scorn overnight on plans by Macedonia to erect a gigantic equestrian statue of Alexander the Great, the famed warrior-king of antiquity that both countries claim as their own.
The 22-metre statue of the ancient king of Macedon is to be placed on the main square of Macedonia's capital Skopje at an estimated cost of €4.5 million ($8.08 million), local authorities said.
In recent years, Greece has faced a challenge from the former Yugoslav republic over the s
Source: AP
May 17, 2009
Colorado man is facing federal looting charges after allegedly taking dinosaur bones and other artifacts from the Glen Canyon National Recreation area.
Charles Penn Lindsey, of Woodland Park, was charged with one misdemeanor count of looting public lands in Colorado's federal court this week.
Court documents say Lindsey took petrified wood, lava rock, flat red rock, garnet, stone artifact pieces, pot shards and 14 pieces of dinosaur bone from Glen Canyon in Kane County
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 18, 2009
Donald Rumsfeld, the former US defence secretary, provided George W Bush with top secret intelligence briefings on the Iraq war that featured cover pages adorned with Biblical quotes.
According to a report in GQ magazine the religious texts were imposed over pictures of the US armed forces engaged in the war.
Shown to only a small circle of senior advisers, the pages were first used on the eve of the 2003 invasion and were designed to provide support and encouragement
Source: BBC
May 18, 2009
The US Supreme Court says FBI Director Robert Mueller and ex-Attorney General John Aschcroft cannot be sued by a former 9/11 detainee for alleged abuse.
The justices on Monday reversed a lower court ruling that had allowed a lawsuit brought by Javaid Iqbal to go forward.
Mr Iqbal, from Pakistan, argued the two officials were responsible for a policy that saw him singled out for abuse on the basis of his religion and race.
The court ruled that his complain
Source: AP
May 18, 2009
Someone has beheaded a statue of President James Garfield that was installed last week at an Ohio college.
Hiram College spokesman Shawn Brown says the vandalism was discovered Friday morning, just a day after the sandstone statue was dedicated on the campus in Hiram, 30 miles southeast of Cleveland.
Brown says the college is hoping the head will be recovered so the 95-year-old statue can be restored, but police have no leads in their investigation.
Source: NYT
May 16, 2009
You have to marvel at how Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, a former Special Operations commander and the newly appointed leader of American forces in Afghanistan, does it. Mastermind the hunt for Al Qaeda in Iraq and plot stealth raids on Taliban strongholds in the Hindu Kush while getting just a few hours of sleep a night, exercising enough to exhaust a gym rat and eating one meal a day to avoid sluggishness. One meal. Who was it who said an army runs on its stomach?
It was, lore ha
Source: Washington Post
May 18, 2009
The first planned colonial town in the New World was founded in 1494, when about 1,200 of Christopher Columbus's crew members from the 17 ships that made up his second journey to the Americas settled on the north coast of what is now the Dominican Republic.
Beset by mutiny, mismanagement, hurricanes and disease, the settlement of La Isabela lasted only a few years. The ruins remained largely intact until the 1950s, when a local official reportedly misunderstood the order from dictat
Source: BBC
May 16, 2009
The RAF has ended its involvement in Iraq, after 19 years of operations that began with the 1990 Gulf War.
From today, most British air personnel remaining in the country will return to the UK.
The RAF Ensign - flown at Basra Airport in southern Iraq since 2003 - has been lowered at a ceremony for 903 Expeditionary Air Wing.
A total of 22 RAF personnel died in Operation Telic, the name given to the UK military mission in Iraq since 2003.
The RAF w
Source: Sky News
May 15, 2009
Sir Paul McCartney has written to the American President to ask him to support an organisation which is working to restore peace in the Middle East. OneVoice has more than 650,000 followers and aims to end the conflict between Israel and Palestine.
Earlier this year the ex-Beatle officially joined OneVoice's international board of advisers, which includes Hollywood star Danny DeVito and ex-boxing legend Muhammad Ali.
McCartney hopes Obama will lend his political weig
Source: Guardian (UK)
May 18, 2009
Tony Blair last night received the $1m Dan David prize for leadership at a ceremony at Tel Aviv university, a prize awarded for "achievements having an outstanding scientific, technological, cultural or social impact on our world."
Blair's office said 90% of the money from the prize – which is named after the international businessman and philanthropist Dan David – would be donated to the Tony Blair faith foundation that promotes religious understanding, by bringing togeth
Source: Times (UK)
May 17, 2009
THE Vatican has come under renewed pressure to purge its ranks of suspected killers after a second Rwandan Catholic priest accused of involvement in the 1994 genocide was found to be working in Italy under an assumed name.
An international arrest warrant is being prepared by Rwanda for Father Emmanuel Uwayezu following the discovery that he is working in a parish at Empoli, near Florence. It will accuse him of direct complicity in the massacre of more than 80 students, aged from 12
Source: Times (UK)
May 18, 2009
Squads of pro-government paramilitaries were sent to the area around Insein prison in Rangoon and shops were ordered to close as the authorities acted to pre-empt public anger before today’s trial of the Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
According to Burmese journalists in Rangoon the paramilitaries, deployed near government buildings and monasteries, are searching cars and pedestrians, apparently fearing a repeat of the events of September 2007 when tens of thousands of B
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 15, 2009
Major Steven Hutchison, from Scottsdale, Arizona, was killed on Sunday when a homemade bomb exploded near his vehicle in Al-Faw.
Maj Hutchison, had wanted to re-enlist immediately after the September 11 attacks but his wife had opposed it.
His brother Richard said that when his wife Candy died of breast cancer, he signed up again in July 2007.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 16, 2009
The long-awaited Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) report into the suicide bombings which left 52 people dead and hundreds injured in July 2005 will effectively clear MI5 and the police of failing to prevent the attacks.
Sources have revealed that the report, to be published on Tuesday, will state that no new intelligence has emerged since the publication of the first report in May 2006.
The ISC report is said to be the most detailed ever compiled by the commi
Source: BBC
May 17, 2009
Bahr Idriss Abu Garda is charged with taking part in an attack in north Darfur in 2007, during which 12 African Union (AU) peacekeepers were killed.
Mr Abu Garda is the first Darfur rebel to have voluntarily answered a summons from the ICC, the court said.
The former senior member of the Jem rebel group denies any involvement.
"I will go, no problem. I know I was not involved," Mr Abu Garda, who now heads the United Resistance Movement (URF) re
Source: New York Daily News
May 17, 2009
The history of Queens can in many respects be divided into two eras - the days before the Queensboro Bridge and everything that happened after.
The 7,449-foot span is being feted over the next few weeks with an array of tributes, exhibits, lectures and tours coordinated by the NYC Bridge Centennial Commission.
The main event is a historic reenactment of the first ride over the bridge, complete with politicians in period dress, antique cars and a nighttime fireworks sho
