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: WaPo
February 14, 2009
Twenty-four days into his presidency, Barack Obama recorded last night a legislative achievement of the sort that few of his predecessors achieved at any point in their tenure.
In size and scope, there is almost nothing in history to rival the economic stimulus legislation that Obama shepherded through Congress in just over three weeks. And the result -- produced largely without Republican participation -- was remarkably similar to the terms Obama's team outlined even before he was
Source: National Security Archive
February 13, 2009
Twenty years ago today, the commander of the Soviet Limited Contingent in Afghanistan Boris Gromov crossed the Termez Bridge out of Afghanistan, thus marking the end of the Soviet war which lasted almost ten years and cost tens of thousands of Soviet and Afghan lives.
As a tribute and memorial to the late Russian historian, General Alexander Antonovich Lyakhovsky, the National Security Archive today posted on the Web (www.nsarchive.org) a seri
Source: AP
February 14, 2009
Family papers detailing the private life of the former first lady Bess Truman were released last week, with no apparent bombshells about her in the more than 24,000 pages.
The Harry S. Truman Library and Museum opened the family papers to mark the 124th anniversary of the birth of Mrs. Truman. The library obtained the papers after the death of the Trumans’ daughter, Margaret Truman Daniel, in January 2008.
About 1,600 of the papers once belonged to Mrs. Truman’s mother
Source: McClatchy
February 14, 2009
Some Afghan experts are worried that the United States and its NATO allies are making some of the same mistakes that helped the Taliban's forerunners defeat the Soviet Union after a decade-long occupation that bled the Kremlin treasury, demoralized Moscow's military and contributed to the Soviet Union's collapse.
Among the mistakes, these experts said, are relying too heavily on military force, inflicting too many civilian casualties, concentrating too much power in Kabul and tolera
Source: Discovery Channel
February 6, 2009
Nuns and priests sacrificed their own lives to provide medical care for the poor in Renaissance France, according to a new study that implicates exposure to contagious plague victims in the deaths of several religious order members.
The study is among the first to find that plague, a deadly bacterial disease also known as "the Black Death," can be quickly and accurately identified in ancient human remains.
Several recently identified women who died after car
Source: Monsters and Critics
February 12, 2009
A Kurdish archaeological expedition announced on Thursday that it had found a small statue of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen in northern Iraq, a Kurdish news agency reported.
Hassan Ahmed, the director of the local antiquities authority, told the Kurdish news agency Akanews that archaeologists had found a 12-centimeter statue of the ancient Egyptian king in the valley of Dahuk, 470 kilometres north of Baghdad, near a site that locals have long called Pharaoh's Castle.
Source: BBC
February 14, 2009
As Russia marks the 20th anniversary of its withdrawal from Afghanistan, officials in Moscow are warning that US and Nato-led forces are making exactly the same mistakes as the Soviet Union made when it invaded the country in 1979.
Experts say the Soviet government under Leonid Brezhnev had assumed their invasion in December 1979 would bring rapid results, stabilising the fledgling communist government in Kabul and thus ensuring the loyalty of an important neighbouring country at t
Source: BBC
February 11, 2009
Newly published documents show how a German archaeologist used trickery to smuggle home a fabulous sculpture of the Egyptian queen, Nefertiti.
The archaeologist, Ludwig Borchardt, listed the bust of Queen Nefertiti among his finds in Egypt in 1913.
But he described it as a worthless piece of gypsum and hid it in a box.
It is now regarded as a supreme artefact of the Pharaonic era and attracts half a million visitors per year to Berlin's Egyptian Museum.
Source: BBC
February 13, 2009
A museum director in Turkey has been sentenced to nearly 13 years in jail for stealing precious artefacts from a collection in his care.
A court convicted Kazim Akbiyiklioglu and nine other members of staff for the theft of a coin and a golden brooch in the shape of a winged horse.
The items in the museum in Usak were part of the treasures of King Croesus, dating back to the 6th-7th Century BC.
The theft was exposed by an anonymous letter to local offici
Source: BBC
February 14, 2009
The court trying alleged perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide has expressed its shock at the death in an air crash of a top expert on the 1994 massacres.
Alison Des Forges, 66, was among 50 people killed in a plane crash on Thursday near Buffalo, New York state.
A spokesman for the the UN tribunal for Rwanda called her death "a great loss", said AFP news agency.
Ms Des Forges was an expert adviser to the court on the genocide, in which some 800
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 14, 2009
Barack Obama has sent Sir Winston Churchill packing and pulse rates soaring among anxious British diplomats.
A bust of the former prime minister once voted the greatest Briton in history, which was loaned to George W Bush from the Government's art collection after the September 11 attacks, has now been formally handed back.
The bronze by Sir Jacob Epstein, worth hundreds of thousands of pounds if it were ever sold on the open market, enjoyed pride of place in the Oval
Source: BBC
February 13, 2009
A number of Indian MPs are calling for Mahatma Gandhi's personal possessions, due for auction in New York next month, to be returned to India.Mahatma Gandhi's spectacles, which he once said gave him "the vision to free India", a pair of his sandals and his pocket watch are among the items.
MPs across Indian parties have said that all efforts should be made to retrieve the possessions.
Auctioneers have put an estimate of £30,000 ($42,000) on the items.
Source: BBC
February 14, 2009
It is 20 years since Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against the author Salman Rushdie after the publication of The Satanic Verses.The novel's release led to widespread protest by Muslims who regarded it as blasphemous, including public burning of the book.
Rushdie had to live in hiding and under special protection for several years.
And while he is now able to live a more public life, he says the affair remains "an albatross around his neck".
Source: Times (UK)
February 14, 2009
In a bland courtroom on the outskirts of Phnom Penh next week the justice that most Cambodians believed had passed them by will finally begin to creak into motion.
Three decades after the fall of Pol Pot, the first trial of the leaders of his genocidal Khmer Rouge regime is to begin before a UN-backed tribunal - the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC).
On Tuesday a thin, elderly former schoolmaster will stand in the dock accused of crimes against h
Source: Deutsche Welle
February 12, 2009
It's sobering news. While classical music lovers can still, in all likelihood, look forward to a concert with top conductor Kurt Masur, Rolling Stones fans will be devastated that a free concert featuring the rock band will now no longer take place. Other spectacular program events are also going to be axed.
The taxpayer rather than private sponsors will now pick up the bill for the new slimline version of the celebrations, which will be run by Germany's Federal Press Office. The
Source: Times (UK)
February 14, 2009
A Spitfire that is still airworthy is expected to fetch £1.5 million when it is sold at auction.
The fighter, built by the British Vickers-Armstrong company in 1944, will be the first two-seater Spitfire to be offered at public auction for more than 20 years when it comes up for sale at the Royal Air Force Museum in Hendon on April 20.
The plane was restored to flying condition by its late owner Paul Portelli, a collector of historic aircraft, during five years of wor
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 13, 2009
While America and Canada are paying for their veterans to travel to the event, British war heroes are having to stump up the cash themselves.
Thousands of them are hoping to travel to Normandy for the commemoration in June, which for many will be their last.
But the Ministry of Defence has told them that the next time public money will be used for a commemoration will be the 100th anniversary in 2044, when they will all be dead.
Source: Spiegel Online
February 13, 2009
Ataba is a neighborhood in Cairo where tourists rarely go astray. This was probably precisely what made it such a perfect hiding place for the tall German man. Abd al-Hakim Duma remembers the slim, athletic man well. Everyone in the neighborhood called him "the foreigner."
Duma's father owned the Hotel Kasr al-Medina on Port Said Street. The foreigner lived in a plain room on the eighth floor, directly adjacent to the Duma family. "He often came to our apartment for l
Source: BBC
February 13, 2009
On the eve of the fourth anniversary of the murder that changed Lebanon's history, Saad Hariri, the young leader of the country's pro-Western Sunni parliamentary majority, received a phone call from Hillary Clinton.
The US secretary of state was ringing to assure him that the new American administration would do everything in its power to bring to justice those who killed his father, Lebanon's former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
Last week, seated next to his father's
Source: NYT
February 12, 2009
Anyone who has failed to keep track of a winning lottery ticket for all of 12 months may want to consider the efforts of 39 bondholders who have been safekeeping valuable, tissue-thin, New York City securities since shortly after the Civil War.
Next month, one of the bonds, issued in 1868 and thought to be one of the oldest active municipal bonds in the country, will come due. And the city stands ready to retire the debt incurred when Winston Churchill’s grandfather came up with the
