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: Independent (UK)
February 20, 2009
The detective in charge of the Omagh bomb inquiry launched a devastating attack on the trial judge today after two police officers he accused of lying were cleared by an official investigation.
Former Chief Superintendent Norman Baxter demanded that Mr Justice Weir retract and apologise, claiming the officers had been grievously and publicly wronged, left humiliated, their reputations shattered and personal integrity dissolved.
Innocent people in a modern democr
Source: Times (UK)
February 20, 2009
Bikini Atoll, the North Pacific site of US nuclear testing 60 years ago and namesake of the swimsuit, has been submitted for listing as a World Heritage Site.
Locals hope the impact of the 12 years of nuclear testing will aid their bid, and in turn bring tourism back to the atoll, which forms part of the Marshall Islands in Micronesia in the North Pacific.
Jack Niedenthal, a spokesman for the people of the Bikini Islands, told The Times that Bikinians believe the “tre
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 18, 2009
The series of letters from the late Diana, Princess of Wales to John Major, the former Prime Minister, and Tony Blair, his successor, were deemed too private to be published under the Freedom of Information Act.
Members of the Royal Family are exempt from the Freedom of Information legislation but individual cases can be challenged on public interest grounds. The Office of the Information Commissioner said the letters were of a "personal nature" and not related to governm
Source: Spiegel Online
February 20, 2009
Argentina on Thursday told the ultra-conservative bishop Richard Williamson to leave the country. The British-born bishop, who has described the Holocaust as "lies, lies, lies," was told by the Argentine Interior Ministry to leave within 10 days, or else he would be expelled.
The government said Williamson's denial of "a proven historical truth" had "deeply shocked Argentine society, the Jewish people and all of humanity." An official statement added, w
Source: Spiegel Online
February 20, 2009
Chancellor Angela Merkel, one might think, has enough on her plate this year. Saving the economy from collapse has become a fulltime job and, soon, her campaign for re-election in the September vote will become a priority.
But now she's got a new worry brewing. Once again, the issue of how to remember those Germans expelled from Poland following World War II has come to the fore. Merkel only his two choices available to her. She can either side with the expellees, which could do se
Source: BBC
February 20, 2009
The English navy at around the time of the Armada was evolving revolutionary new tactics, according to new research.
Tests on cannon recovered from an Elizabethan warship suggest she carried powerful cast iron guns, of uniform size, firing standard ammunition.
"This marked the beginning of a kind of mechanisation of war," says naval historian Professor Eric Grove of Salford University.
"The ship is now a gun platform in a way that it wasn'
Source: Spiegel
February 17, 2009
Original blueprints of the Auschwitz death camp, discovered by chance in a Berlin apartment last year, have gone on display in the German capital. Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, an Auschwitz survivor, said they give a glimpse of "true hell".
Original blueprints showing construction plans for the Auschwitz death camp have gone on display in Berlin in an exhibition opened on Monday evening by a survivor, 86-year-old former Polish Foreign Minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski.
Source: Live 5 News
February 17, 2009
Tuesday marked the 145th anniversary of the night the H.L. Hunley submarine attacked and sank the Union war ship U.S.S Housatonic.
Thirteen men lost their lives that night in 1864: eight from the Hunley and five from the Housatonic.
But their mark had been left; naval warfare had changed.
After a march from Fort Moultrie to the Sunrise Presbyterian Church at Breach Inlet on Sullivans Island was a memorial service and a reading of the names of each of the fa
Source: National Geographic News
February 18, 2009
Divers exploring a southern Florida sinkhole have uncovered clues to what life was like for some of America's first residents.
Led by University of Miami professor John Gifford, underwater archaeologists are exploring Little Salt Spring, 12 miles (19 kilometers) south of Sarasota.
Earlier this year, students working about 30 feet (9 meters) below the surface found the remains of a gourd that probably was used as a canteen by an ancient hunter about 8,000 or 9,000 year
Source: Science Daily
February 18, 2009
Easter Island (Rapa Nui) has gained recognition in recent years due in part to a book that used it as a model for societal collapse from bad environmental practices—ringing alarm bells for those concerned about the health of the planet today. But that’s not the whole story, says Dr. Chris Stevenson, an archaeologist who has studied the island—famous for its massive stone statues—with a Rapa Nui scientist, Sonia Haoa, and Earthwatch volunteers for nearly 20 years.
The ancient Rapanui
Source: Quad-City Times (Iowa)
February 17, 2009
Some 1,700 years ago, the people who live in what is known officially as archaeological site “13LA582” west of Oakville, Iowa, were hunter-gatherers who also grew native crops like sunflower seeds.
They lived in a doughnut-shaped village around a communal area and occupied 20 to 25 tree branch and bark wigwams capable of housing up to 10 people each.
The group is believed to be part of the Weaver culture located not far from the confluence of the Iowa and Cedar rivers i
Source: New Statesman
February 19, 2009
Three years ago, archaeologists at Bristol University embarked on a unique research project: the excavation of a 1991 Ford Transit van. After some background research, they carefully collected up all the dog hairs and sweet wrappers before stripping back the layers of carpet, plywood lining, metal and rust. Some of their discoveries were fairly trivial, such as the revelation that the van's roof was badly dented after serving as an impromptu diving board at a riotous Christmas party. But there w
Source: BBC
February 18, 2009
An exhibition which has opened in New York takes the unlikely step of placing fake works of art on display.
The Brooklyn Museum, like many others, began buying ancient Coptic and Pagan sculptures after World War II.
However, the museum's curators recently discovered that roughly a third of their collection is fake.
The resulting exhibition places genuine sculptures from the 4th Century AD alongside a small group of forgeries, probably from the mid-20th C
Source: Independent (UK)
February 19, 2009
At the time it was hushed up. But now survivors of Britain’s worst civilian tragedy, the Bethnal Green Tube shelter disaster, want a dignified memorial for its 173 victims ...
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Even after 65 years, remembering how Vera Trotter was killed on a winter’s evening in 1943 as the Luftwaffe made one of its regular post-Blitz raids on London’s East End is still enough to bring Alf Morris to tears. Standing on the eastern steps of Bethnal Green Tube station, the 78-year-old d
Source: BBC
February 19, 2009
Argentina has ordered an ultra-traditionalist British bishop who denies the Holocaust to leave the country or face expulsion.
The Interior Ministry said Richard Williamson had been told he had 10 days to leave Argentina.
Earlier this month the bishop was removed from his post as the head of a Roman Catholic seminary in Argentina.
A row erupted in January after the Pope decided to lift Bishop Williamson's excommunication on an unrelated matter.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 19, 2009
Germany is to offer citizenship to tens of thousands of 'war children' fathered by Nazi soldiers in France during the Second World War.
The move is being offered in recognition of the suffering of those who became known as the "bastards of the Boche" and often suffered discrimination
The German interior ministry said the move was a "symbolic gesture to make up for past wrongs" suffered by the children who are now in their 60s.
Accordi
Source: AFP
February 19, 2009
The world has lost Manx in the Isle of Man, Ubykh in Turkey and last year Alaska's last native speaker of Eyak, Marie Smith Jones, died, taking the aboriginal language with her.
Of the 6,900 languages spoken in the world, some 2,500 are endangered, the UN's cultural agency UNESCO said Thursday as it released its latest atlas of world languages.
That represents a multi-fold increase from the last atlas compiled in 2001 which listed 900 languages threatened with extinctio
Source: The New Nixon (blog)
February 19, 2009
[The book focuses on the family that produced Richa
Source: IHT
February 17, 2009
The Chinese government is increasing pressure on Christie's auction house to withdraw two bronzes from its sale of Yves Saint Laurent's vast collection next week in Paris, saying they were looted from the imperial Summer Palace near Beijing nearly 150 years ago.
The two Qing dynasty bronze animal heads, one depicting a rabbit and the other a rat, are believed to have been part of a set comprising 12 animals from the Chinese zodiac that were created for the imperial gardens during th
Source: BBC
February 19, 2009
On the 65th anniversary of an audacious World War II bombing raid on a Gestapo prison, one of the few survivors has spoken of his part in the dangerous mission.
Operation Jericho was devised to give 100 French patriots the chance to escape the firing squad, scheduled for 19 February 1944, at Amiens Prison in occupied Northern France.
Pilot Officer Cecil Dunlop, 92, from Bath, was on one of the first bombers to fly over the prison and drop his payload.
Th
