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: BBC
March 2, 2009
The Central intelligence Agency (CIA) has destroyed 92 tapes of interviews conducted with terror suspects, a US government lawyer has admitted.
The agency had previously said that it had destroyed only two tapes.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has launched a lawsuit against the CIA to seek details of the interrogations of terror suspects.
Techniques involved are understood to have included water-boarding, which the Obama administration says is
Source: AP
March 3, 2009
Radovan Karadzic refused Tuesday to enter pleas to a new streamlined indictment containing two genocide charges and nine other counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The former Bosnian Serb leader told a hearing at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal that the U.N. court "does not have the right to try me."
Karadzic, 62, claims he was promised immunity from prosecution by U.S. peace envoy Richard Holbrooke in return for stepping down from power and disa
Source: AP
March 3, 2009
Indonesia has opened a $5.6 million museum to commemorate the 230,000 people who died in the 2004 Asian tsunami.
The four-level building in hardest-hit Aceh province exhibits photographs of victims, stories of survivors and an electronic simulation of the massive undersea earthquake that triggered the 30-foot-high waves.
It also describes the tremendous outpouring of support from governments, companies and individuals in the aftermath of the Dec. 26, 2004 disaster, whic
Source: AP
March 3, 2009
Debbie Harris knew the military dog tag and small metal emblem of a Navy fighter squadron she recently found in the sand near her home on an Alabama beach belonged to a Blue Angels pilot who was killed when his jet crashed there a half-century ago.
But she wanted to find out more about Cmdr. Robert Nicholls Glasgow and what happened , so she turned to her aunt and uncle, who live in Pensacola, home of the National Museum of Naval Aviation. Their search led them to the museum's direc
Source: AP
March 3, 2009
A 300-million-year-old fossilized brain has been discovered by researchers studying a type of fish that once lived in what is now Kansas and Oklahoma.
"Fossilized brains are unusual, and this is by far the oldest known example," said John Maisey, curator in the division of paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Maisey and co-authors report in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science that the brain was di
Source: CNN
March 3, 2009
Hundreds of German rescue workers are searching the ruins of a collapsed building in Cologne for nine people who may be trapped beneath the rubble.
The main building which collapsed is the Historic Archive of the city of Cologne, which houses documents up to 1,000 years old.
The building itself was an unremarkable 20th-century structure, but the archives it contained were very valuable, said Brumfield, who has done research in the building.
Source: Tehran Times
March 3, 2009
Last month, scientists from around the world partied into the small hours on the 200th anniversary of the birth of Darwin.
But as we celebrate the work of one of the most influential scientists ever, let's take a moment or two to remember others who contributed ideas in the history of evolutionary thought. Many came from Britain as well as other countries in Europe. Others came from further afield, and their writings are increasingly coming to light thanks to the painstaking work o
Source: Times (UK)
March 3, 2009
A Nazi spy came within days of uncovering one of the Allies' most important missions and possibly changing the direction of the Second World War.
The story of a Portuguese wireless operator and the dramatic decision to pluck him from his vessel on the high seas to prevent him from betraying the position of a huge convoy bound for North Africa is revealed for the first time in a declassified MI5 file released by the National Archives.
Gastao de Freitas Ferraz was being
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 2, 2009
The Security Service was so concerned about the threat from Communist spies that its agents scrutinised the lives of suspected sympathisers Lee Miller and Mai Zetterling, analysing their choice of friends, recording their movements and even intercepting their post.
Lee Miller was already a famous fashion photographer, a muse for Picasso and a former lover of the surrealist painter Man Ray when MI5 began its investigation into her activities, according to the files at the National A
Source: Spiegel Online
March 2, 2009
German car components supplier Schaeffler appears to have been more deeply involved in the political system of the Third Reich than previously assumed, according to research conducted by SPIEGEL TV in Poland.
It was already known that a company acquired by Wilhelm Schaeffler in 1940 in the town of Kietrz in what is now Poland employed forced laborers, but Polish researchers are now also linking the name Schaeffler to the processing of human hair from the Auschwitz death camp.
Source: BBC
March 2, 2009
Beatrice Nirere was convicted by a Gacaca traditional community court set up to deal with 1994 genocide cases.
The Rwandan Patriotic Front member had denied helping set up road blocks where ethnic Tutsis were killed and chairing meetings to plan the massacre.
Some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in the 100-day slaughter.
Source: BBC
March 2, 2009
He was sentenced along with several other former officials over the 1999 killings of Shia Muslims in Baghdad.
Former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz was acquitted by the Iraqi court.
Majid has already received the death penalty for a campaign of genocide against the Kurds in 1988 and the crushing of a Shia uprising in 1991.
The executions have been held up by legal wrangling, and he remains in US custody.
Source: Slate
March 2, 2009
The opening of a sex shop in the historic district of Alexandria, Va., has generated outrage among local residents, who claim such a business sullies an area once frequented by the Founding Fathers. Were there sex shops in George Washington's day?
No. There is little record of sex toys, let alone a sex toy industry, from America's Colonial era. To the extent that Colonials used sex props, they would have made them on their own. (In one of the few references to sex and inanimate obje
Source: NY Daily News
February 28, 2009
The visitors have heard the urban legend about an escape passage built between Fort Totten in Queens, to Fort Schuyler in the Bronx, where the Long Island Sound and the East River meet.
Historians, park rangers and common sense suggest it is a myth. The technology needed to build a tunnel under more than 100 feet of water, simply didn't exist at the time, they maintain.
But speculation has been stoked by tantalizing clues - including dead-ending corridors and walled-up
Source: http://www.bizjournals.com
February 27, 2009
The home of Franklin Kameny, a longtime activist for gay rights, was designated by the Historic Preservation Review Board as a local landmark at a hearing on Thursday.
The site, located at 5020 Cathedral Ave. NW, is the first gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender site listed in D.C.’s inventory of historic sites.
During the 1960s and the early 1970s, Kameny’s home and office served as a meeting ground for planning gay civil rights campaigns and strategies.
Source: NYT
March 1, 2009
According to a June 1928 dispatch, experts were still hopeful that Roald Amundsen, the great polar explorer, would be found. “They recall the times in the past when he disappeared into the ice wastes of the Arctic and Antarctic, only to come out safely when hope for him had reached its lowest ebb.” But there was no finding Amundsen, despite a sea and air search that went on into the autumn....
In August, the Norwegian Navy will launch a new expedition to find the remains of Amundsen
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
March 6, 2009
Here's a little-known fact about Thomas Jefferson: He had a thing for mammoths, and even kept a collection of their bones in the White House.
So it seems strangely fitting that workers unearthed a 500,000-year-old mammoth skull and two tusks last month while excavating in downtown San Diego for the new campus of the Thomas Jefferson School of Law.
"It seemed bizarre at first, but when we heard about Thomas Jefferson's fascination with the mammoth, the coincidence w
Source: WaPo
March 2, 2009
The team that ran the most technologically advanced presidential campaign in modern history is finding it difficult to adapt that model to government. WhiteHouse.gov, envisioned as the primary vehicle for President Obama to communicate with the online masses, has been overwhelmed by challenges that staffers did not foresee and technological problems they have yet to solve.
Obama, for example, would like to send out mass e-mail updates on presidential initiatives, but the White House
Source: Survey commissioned to mark the debut of UKTV’s new history channel
March 2, 2009
The majority of British adults find it easier to remember details surrounding key historical events than significant moments in their own lives, including the death of a loved one or the birth of their first child - that’s the verdict of a compelling new research project released today.
The study, which was commissioned to mark the launch of UKTV’s new history channel Yesterday, was led by Professor Geoff Beattie who asked 300 people to recall exact details of 32 personal and histor
Source: WSJ
February 28, 2009
For six decades, his parents and siblings battled Moscow and their native Stockholm, mounting a search for answers that cost them their savings, careers, relationships, health and, concealed until now, two of their lives.
Also unknown, even to the Swedish foreign ministry -- whose file on Mr. Wallenberg dwarfs its record of any king, colony or war -- is that the family documented its struggle. Mr. Wallenberg's late mother and stepfather, who died two days apart in 1979, kept a diary
