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: Times (UK)
March 24, 2009
It began with British betrayal after the Second World War and has stubbornly outlived every other conflict. But now, as it marks it diamond jubilee, the world’s longest-running war is nearing its endgame.
The guerrilla army of the Karen ethnic group, which has been fighting since 1949 for independence from Burma, is facing the greatest crisis in its history. If Karen resistance collapses, as some believe is likely, it will be a triumph for the Burmese junta as it consolidates its h
Source: Deutsche Welle
March 24, 2009
The French government says it will pay out at least 10 million euros ($13.6 million), initially for one year, to people with health problems as a result of French nuclear tests carried out in the Algerian Sahara and in Polynesia, Defense Minister Herve Morin was quoted as saying on Tuesday, March 24.
"About 150,000 civilian and military employees are theoretically concerned, as well as the people who lived in the Sahara and Polynesia at the time of the tests," Morin said i
Source: BBC
March 24, 2009
Serbs will gather at sites where people were killed and government ministers will lay wreaths for the dead.
Nato bombed Serbia for 11 weeks in an effort to push Serbian forces out of the province of Kosovo, accusing them of atrocities against ethnic Albanians.
Hundreds of Serbs were killed as bombs struck military and civilian targets.
Source: Washington Post
March 24, 2009
KASHGAR, China -- For hundreds of years, Uighur shopkeepers have been selling bread and firewood along the edges of Kashgar's old town to families whose ancestors bought their traditional mud-brick homes with gold coin and handed them down through the generations.
Now, this labyrinth of ancient courtyard homes and narrow, winding streets is endangered by the latest government plan to modernize a way of life that officials consider dangerous and backward.
Left behind are
Source: Reuters
March 20, 2009
BERLIN -– Berliners plan to topple a two kilometer-long chain of giant "dominoes" along the path of the wall that once separated communist east from the west, to mark the 20th anniversary of its fall.
"We want to knock over the wall once again," said Klaus Wowereit, mayor of Berlin. Assembly of more than 1,000 styrofoam slabs, each 2.5 meters (eight feet) high and one meter (three feet) wide, is beginning this week.
At a ceremony on November 9, the d
Source: CNN
March 20, 2009
America faces an economic calamity. Trouble brews in faraway lands.
Sound familiar?
More than 70 years ago, the very first superheroes debuted in the dire times of the Great Depression and the early years of World War II. Their names became legend -- Superman, Batman (or, as he was then known, the Bat-Man), Wonder Woman, Captain America -- and they're still with us today.
A new exhibit at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles celebrates these icons
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 23, 2009
Noble titles awarded by the late dictator General Francisco Franco should be withdrawn, an association seeking recognition for the victims of the Spanish Civil War and ensuing fascist regime has said.
The socialist government of Prime Minister Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, whose own grandfather was shot by fascist forces during the three year conflict, has faced fierce criticism after it emerged that one of the most controversial titles bestowed by Franco was renewed last month.
Source: BBC
February 24, 2009
Three British divers accused of stealing treasure from a shipwreck in the Atlantic Ocean in 2002, are due to appear in court in Spain.
Peter Devlin, Steve Russ and Malcolm Cubin - all from Cornwall - are charged with taking gold and diamonds, and with destroying Spain's cultural heritage.
They have denied the charges, which carry a jail term of up to six years.
The team was recovering tin ingots from the wreck of a Dutch vessel, but was accused of strayi
Source: BBC
February 23, 2009
A Chinese director is planning to stage a musical based on the founding text of communism, Karl Marx's Das Kapital.
The plot will revolve around a group of office employees who find out they are being exploited by their boss.
China's communist leaders still praise Karl Marx, although they now shy away from his economic theories.
But those involved in the production say that Marx is still relevant today, particularly in a world gripped by an economic cris
Source: BBC
February 24, 2009
A court in the Netherlands has found a Rwandan Hutu, Joseph Mpambara, guilty of torture during the Rwandan genocide in 1994 but not of war crimes.
He was given 20 years in prison for, the judges said, robbing "two women and at least four children of their most valuable possession: their lives".
He had ordered them pulled out of an ambulance, and were hacked to death.
But he was acquitted of the murder of Tutsis sheltering at a church, due to in
Source: AP
February 23, 2009
Connecticut legislators are considering making their state the first in New England to apologize for slavery and other racist policies of old.
The resolution says slavery was practiced in Connecticut from the 17th through 19th centuries. There were about 5,100 slaves in the Connecticut colony by the mid-1770s. That's about 3 percent of the population at the time.
The resolution also urges schools and organizations to acknowledge Connecticut's evolution from a colony to
Source: AP
March 23, 2009
A Greek fisherman must have been expecting a monster of a catch when he brought up his nets in the Aegean Sea last week.
Instead, Greek authorities say his haul was a section of a 2,200-year-old bronze statue of a horseman.
Source: Newsweek
March 21, 2009
The night of September 11, 2001, had come and gone in Saudi Arabia,
and the dawn prayers had been said in Jidda. But at midmorning, when a
visitor to Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdel Aziz al-Saud found him in
one of the vast rooms of his palace, the de facto ruler of the country
was still bent on the floor."He was alone," remembers the visitor,
insisting on anonymity."He prayed long, long, long—much longer than I
have ever seen." At last the man who is now the king of Saudi Arabia
(he woul
Source: Noah Mendel, reporting for HNN. (Mr. Mendel is an HNN intern.)
March 23, 2009
After months of back-and-forth, it seems Confederate President Jefferson Davis might find a final resting place.
In the summer of 2008, the Southern Confederate Veterans, the self-proclaimed “guardians of Confederate history and heritage,” commissioned Lexington-based sculptor Gary Casteel to create a statue in honor of the bicentennial of Davis’s birth. Costing upwards of $100,000, the statue depicts Davis with his biological son, Joe, and adopted black son, Jim Limber.
Source: Truthout.org
March 23, 2009
The CIA has about 3,000 documents related to the 92 destroyed videotapes that showed "war on terror" detainees being subjected to harsh interrogations, the Justice Department has disclosed, suggesting an extensive back-and-forth between CIA field operatives and officials of the Bush administration.
The Justice Department said the documents include "cables, memoranda, notes and e-mails" related to the destroyed CIA videotapes. Those tapes included 12 that sh
Source: The National
March 23, 2009
It sits atop a man-made hill overlooking the ancient city of Babylon. In its prime – with its swimming pool, Roman-inspired columns, chandeliers and bathrooms complete with jacuzzis – it was a testament to the gluttony of the Baathist regime.
Today, gutted and looted, Saddam Hussein’s three-storey palace that overlooks the Euphrates River only hints at its former glory. The windows are smashed, the chandeliers broken and the swimming pool empty. The furniture is gone and the walls a
Source: NPR
March 20, 2009
Iraq is suffering one of the worst droughts in decades.
While this is bad news for farmers, it is good news for archaeologists in the country.
The receding waters of the Euphrates River have revealed ancient archaeological sites, some of which
were unknown until now.
For Ratib Ali al-Kubaisi, the director of Anbar province's Antiquities Department, the drought has
opened up a whole new land of opportunity.
He explains that civilization began in Anbar, next to the Euphrat
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
March 21, 2009
At a news conference on March 18, the Civil War Preservation Trust (CWPT) unveiled its annual report on the status of the nation’s historic battlegrounds. The report, entitled History Under Siege: A Guide to America’s Most Endangered Civil War Battlefields, identifies the most threatened Civil War sites in the United States and what can be done to save them.
History Under Siege: A Guide to America’s Most Endangered Civil War Battlefields is composed of two parts. The first section p
Source: BBC
March 23, 2009
"Looking for Nazi war criminals is the ultimate law enforcement race against the clock."
Eli Rosenbaum, director of the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) in the United States, has a list of thousands of suspects.
But working out whether any of them are alive and in the US is a laborious job.
A full check could take 100 years at current rates, he says - but in 10 years "the World War II biological clock will come to an end".
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 23, 2009
John F Kennedy fathered a secret lovechild while recuperating from a war injury and later offered to marry the boy's mother, she has claimed.
In the latest claim to emerge about the former US president's energetic love life, Lisa Lanett, an Austrian-born American, said she had a two-year affair with Kennedy after they met in Phoenix, Arizona, during the Second World War.
Now 87, she told the Austrian newspaper Kurier that Kennedy, then a young and single US navy office
