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: New Scientist
March 6, 2009
SKELETON exhumed from a grave in Venice is being claimed as the first known example of the "vampires" widely referred to in contemporary documents.
Matteo Borrini of the University of Florence in Italy found the skeleton of a woman with a small brick in her mouth while excavating mass graves of plague victims from the Middle Ages on Lazzaretto Nuovo Island in Venice.
At the time the woman died, many people believed that the plague was spread by "vampires&
Source: AFP
March 10, 2009
An 87-year-old alleged war criminal accused of murdering a young Jewish man in World War II said Tuesday he had taken a lie detector test to prove his innocence.
Charles Zentai is accused of beating to death teenager Peter Balazs in 1944 in Budapest while serving as a soldier in the army of his native Hungary, then allied with Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany.
Speaking ahead of a legal challenge to his extradition to Hungary, which was ordered last August, Zentai said he had
Source: IHT
March 9, 2009
Security forces in central Tibet have increased patrols and border vigilance in advance of a sensitive anniversary to guard against possible disruptions caused by followers of the Dalai Lama or by Western groups advocating Tibetan independence, according to state news agency reports Monday. Meanwhile, a police car and a fire engine were attacked with homemade explosives in a Tibetan area on Monday, but no one was wounded.
The announcement of the increased patrols came one day before
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 6, 2009
The US-led coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan are being undermined by intelligence failures, according to a study of the two wars.
Commanders in the field are being overwhelmed by contradictory information and are often unwilling to share intelligence among allies, according to the confidential report.
It points to an example of Dutch pilots in Afghanistan who bombed targets on US orders, but were refused access to US "battle damage assessments" on what they
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 10, 2009
Two novels by the late Chilean author Roberto Bolaño, once hailed as "the finest writer of the present century", have reportedly been found among his papers in Spain.
The previously unseen manuscripts were entitled Diorama and The Troubles of the Real Police Officer, according to a report in La Vanguardia.
The newspaper said the documents also included what is believed to be a sixth section of the epic five part novel 2666, which created a stir when it was pu
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 10, 2009
A prostitute who campaigned for the rights of sex workers has been honoured with a burial plot in the same cemetery where Protestantism's John Calvin is buried, sparking criticism from women's rights activists.
Griselidis Real, who died in 2005, was buried on Monday at the Cemetery of the Kings, which is reserved for individuals that have profoundly marked Swiss or international history. Argentinian writer Jose Luis Borges and child psychologist Jean Piaget are among the luminaries
Source: BBC
March 10, 2009
A French minister has criticised a film maker for likening his government to France's Nazi-backed Vichy regime over its treatment of illegal migrants.
Immigration Minister Eric Besson said the comparison was "intolerable", and that Director Philippe Lioret had "crossed the line".
Mr Lioret made the comparison about a law making it a crime to help illegal immigrants, which he called "crazy".
In the last five years, UK officia
Source: BBC
March 10, 2009
One of the biggest exhibitions of mummies ever staged is opening in the northern Italian town of Bolzano.
The show, called the Dream of Eternal Life, features more than 60 mummies from Egypt, Asia, Europe and South America, assembled from 27 museums.
They include animals as well as humans, and the artefacts connected with them.
Among the mummies will be the world-famous 5,300-year-old "Iceman" known as Oetzi, a mummified Neolithic hunter who wa
Source: BBC
March 10, 2009
US Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke says the world is suffering from the worst financial crisis since the 1930s.
Mr Bernanke argues that the roots of the current global economic downturn stem from global imbalances in trade and flows of capital in the late 1990s.
In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, he argues that the US and its trading partners did not do enough to redress these imbalances.
He also says future economic recovery depends on
Source: Fox news
March 10, 2009
The five detainees at Guantanamo Bay charged with plotting the September 11, 2001 attacks have filed a document accepting responsibility for the deaths of nearly 3,000 people and expressing pride at their accomplishment, The New York Times reported late Monday.
The document, which the newspaper said may be released publicly on Tuesday, describes the five men as the "9/11 Shura Council," and says their actions were an offering to God, according to excerpts of the document r
Source: Washington Post
March 10, 2009
BOGOTA, Colombia -- In a new book titled "Out of Captivity," three Americans describe being chained at the neck by rebel guards during five years of imprisonment in Colombia's jungles, and reveal tensions among themselves and their fellow hostages.
Another former hostage, Fernando Araújo, recounts in his book the anguish of finding his wife with another man after his escape from the guerrillas' clutches.
Luis Eladio Pérez writes that during the years he was he
Source: Azzaman
March 9, 2009
The Iraq Museum has received 531 archeological pieces which were in the possession of senior
government officials.
The pieces were handed over to the Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Qahtan al-Jibouri who in turn
gave them to the Iraq Museum, according to the ministry's spokesman Abdulzahara al-Talaqani.
Talaqani said the first batch comprising a magnificent collection of numismatic coins was returned
to the museum by Minister of National Securit
Source: LAT
March 10, 2009
Americans are becoming less religious, increasingly turning away from many denominations that once served as their spiritual homes, according to a major national survey released Monday.
The percentage of people who do not claim a religious identity has nearly doubled since 1990, growing to 15% of Americans last year, researchers with the American Religious Identification Survey found.
Mainline Christian denominations, once bulwarks of the religious landscape, have suff
Source: Reuters
March 8, 2009
The Chinese government and Tibet's government-in-exile offer competing versions of whether the remote, mountainous territory was historically ruled as part of China, or whether it has legitimate claims to independence or autonomy.
Following are some details about the history of relations.
Source: NYT
March 8, 2009
For Turkey, the number should have been a bombshell.
According to a long-hidden document that belonged to the interior minister of the Ottoman Empire, 972,000 Ottoman Armenians disappeared from official population records from 1915 through 1916.
In Turkey, any discussion of what happened to the Ottoman Armenians can bring a storm of public outrage. But since its publication in a book in January, the number — and its Ottoman source — has gone virtually unmentioned. Newsp
Source: AP
March 9, 2009
Experts know of about a dozen Civil War-era shipwrecks off the Texas coast. They might have just identified another.
Contractors searching for debris from Hurricane Ike near Galveston Island took a sonar scan of what the Texas Historical Commission believes is a previously undiscovered ship carrying cotton that sank in 1864.
The Carolina, also known as the Caroline, was a privately owned merchant ship that tried to break though a federal blockade of Galveston. After be
Source: AP
March 8, 2009
America's first black attorney general and Gov. George C. Wallace's daughter celebrated the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march Sunday — 44 years after state troopers from her father's administration beat marchers as they started the landmark journey.
Peggy Wallace Kennedy introduced Attorney General Eric Holder at a historic Selma church filled to overflowing.
"It's reconciliation and redemption," Wallace's daughter said.
Source: NYT
March 9, 2009
Calling into question the legitimacy of all the signing statements that former President George W. Bush used to challenge new laws, President Obama on Monday ordered executive officials to consult with Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. before relying on any of them to bypass a statute.
But Mr. Obama also signaled that he intends to use signing statements himself if Congress sends him legislation that has provisions he decides are unconstitutional. He pledged to use a modest approa
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
March 9, 2009
Many of the most substantive and significant documents generated by the Obama Administration to date are surprisingly absent from the White House web site.
President Obama recently ordered the reorganization of the National Security Council through a Presidential Policy Directive. But the unclassified Directive is not even mentioned on the White House web site, much less posted there. Secrecy News obtained a copy of the signed directive PPD-1 (pdf).
Another directive,
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 9, 2009
Mr Patch, who is 110, was made an Officer of the French Legion of Honour in a ceremony at the nursing home where he lives in Wells, Somerset.
Presenting him with the medal, Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, France's Ambassador to Britain, said Mr Patch embodied "the ultimate sacrifice made by hundreds of thousands of troops in World War I".
Mr Patch began his Army training in 1917 and was recruited in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry as a Lewis gunner assista
