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: Telegraph (UK)
February 6, 2009
Bully beef, the cornerstone of the Army for more than a century, is to be replaced by mushroom pasta and halal dishes.
A new varied menu which will to be given to troops in Afghanistan will do away with corned beef hash in favour of dishes designed for the boiling temperatures of Helmand and a more multi-cultural military.
While some hardened veterans may shed a tear at the passing of their beloved bully beef (apparently out-voted by their juniors) all will welcome the
Source: NYT
February 5, 2009
Japan’s rural areas have been paved over and filled in with roads, dams and other big infrastructure projects, the legacy of trillions of dollars spent to lift the economy from a severe downturn caused by the bursting of a real estate bubble in the late 1980s. During those nearly two decades, Japan accumulated the largest public debt in the developed world — totaling 180 percent of its $5.5 trillion economy — while failing to generate a convincing recovery.
Now, as the Obama adminis
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 6, 2009
The Trust aims to renovate more than five thousand buildings to meet minimum environmental standards. The first priority will be insulation through lagging in the walls and roofs, draught proofing chimneys and double glazing.
Saving water will also be important with flow-restricted taps fitted, rain water butts installed and smaller dish washers replacing older models.
Energy saving lightbulbs have already been fitted in a number of properties, as have biomass heating
Source: Foxnews
February 6, 2009
Nazi hunters urged Egypt on Friday to come clean about how much it knew about a fugitive dubbed "Dr. Death," who reportedly lived here for decades until he died in 1992. But Egypt has long kept a strict silence about former Nazis reported to have taken refuge on its soil.
The discovery of Aribert Heim's secret life throws light on how the Arab world took in members of the Nazi regime after World War II, said Efraim Zuroff, head Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center. T
Source: ABC News
February 6, 2009
Bidders Aim to Grab Lincoln's 1864 Re-Election Victory Speech.
Thought to be one of his most important wartime speeches, his 1864 victory speech is terse -- just four pages -- but steady in the thoughtful optimism that the re-election inspired in him, that the nation could survive.
Since that time, America proved it could survive that and many other challenges. Lincoln's bold ideas never faded, nor did the four pages of that speech.
On Feb. 12, the bicent
Source: Discovery Channel
February 5, 2009
A rare mummified child from the early period of Egyptian history was discovered buried with a bright green amulet stone once believed to hold magical powers, according to a new study.
The finds help to explain why hieroglyphics and historical texts record that Egyptian children wore green eye makeup. It also adds to the growing body of evidence that ancient Egyptians thought color itself held sacred energy that could help or hurt individuals.
Lead author Raffaella Bianu
Source: Tehran Times
February 5, 2009
An Iranian archaeological team has recently discovered ten Parthian era jar burials at the Nakhl-e Ebrahim site in Hormozgan Province.
The burials were unearthed during the second season of excavations carried out to save artifacts and information from the Parthian cemetery and castle located at a distance of three kilometers from the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf.
The cemetery has almost completely been destroyed by smugglers of Iran’s cultural heritage.
Source: Reuters
February 6, 2009
Authorities in northern Cyprus believe they have found an ancient version of the Bible written in Syriac, a dialect of the native language of Jesus.
The manuscript was found in a police raid on suspected antiquity smugglers. Turkish Cypriot police testified in a court hearing they believe the manuscript could be about 2,000 years old.
The manuscript carries excerpts of the Bible written in gold lettering on vellum and loosely strung together, photos provided to Reuters
Source: IHT
February 5, 2009
Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday welcomed the Vatican's decision to order a traditionalist bishop who denies the Holocaust to recant his views, saying it was a good and important signal.
Merkel, who criticized Pope Benedict XVI this week for rehabilitating four bishops, including one who has questioned the extent of the Holocaust, said she was satisfied the Vatican had made clear that denying the Holocaust could not be permitted.
"The order from the Vatican is
Source: Foxnews
February 6, 2009
Confederate President Jefferson Davis, branded a traitor in his own country, is memorialized at statehouses across the South. But not in Mississippi, where he lived out his remaining days.
A bill to accept a statue of Davis from the Sons of Confederate Veterans is now the latest skirmish in the long battle over Confederate history, often fought on Southern Capitol lawns and rotundas.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans has been shopping for a home for the Davis statue for
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 6, 2009
The chief justice of the Islamabad High Court, Sardar Mohammad Aslam, made the decision after hearing lawyers representing government and the nuclear scientist in a closed doors session on Friday.
"The petitioner is declared a free citizen and writ petition is disposed off," said a written order issued by the court.
Khan has been effectively under house arrest in Islamabad since February 2004, when he confessed on television to sending nuclear secrets to Iran,
Source: International Herald Tribune
February 6, 2009
German investigators said Thursday that they had independent information corroborating reports that the most-wanted Nazi fugitive in the world, the concentration camp doctor Aribert Heim, had died in Egypt in 1992.
Horst Haug, a spokesman for the police in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, said that the police had information "from the personal circle" of Heim, who would now be 94, indicating that he died of rectal cancer in Cairo. In a statement issued jointly by the
Source: Tehran Times
February 5, 2009
The burials were unearthed during the second season of excavations carried out to save artifacts and information from the Parthian cemetery and castle located at a distance of three kilometers from the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf.
The cemetery has almost completely been destroyed by smugglers of Iran’s cultural heritage.
One of the 17 graves discovered during the two seasons of excavations over the past two years used a different style of burial. It belongs t
Source: BBC
February 6, 2009
Twenty years ago, Poland's communist government did something without precedent - it sat down with the banned Solidarity trade union to try to defuse growing social unrest.
What became known as the Round Table Talks led to the first multi-party elections in the Soviet bloc and a stunning victory by Solidarity, led by Lech Walesa, which heralded the collapse of communism across the eastern half of Europe.
The Iron Curtain has gone, but there is a cold curtain of fog ov
Source: NBC News Video
February 5, 2009
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Source: AP
January 5, 2009
The Pentagon's senior judge overseeing terror trials at Guantanamo Bay dropped charges Thursday against an al-Qaida suspect in the 2000 USS Cole bombing, upholding President Barack Obama's order to freeze military tribunals there. The charges against suspected al-Qaida bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri marked the last active Guantanamo war crimes case.
The legal move by Susan J. Crawford, the top legal authority for military trials at Guantanamo, brings all cases into compliance with O
Source: CSMonitor
February 6, 2009
MUNICH - After unprecedented outcry in Pope Benedict XVI's home country of Germany by Roman Catholic and Jewish leaders worldwide, the Vatican this week clarified efforts to reconcile with an ultra-right-wing set of bishops excommunicated in 1988, one of whom denies that the Holocaust, or the Shoah, took the lives of 6 million Jews during Nazi rule here in World War II.
Bishop Richard Williamson of the hard-right St. Pius X Society "must absolutely, unequivocally and publicly d
Source: Media Matters (liberal watchdog group)
February 5, 2009
On the February 5 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, while criticizing President Obama for saying that the economy is currently doing poorly, co-host Steve Doocy purported to contrast what Obama has said with President Franklin D. Roosevelt's famous statement that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." In fact, in the very speech in which Roosevelt made that remark, he noted the poor state of the economy at the time. After co-host Brian Kilmeade asserted, "I just do
Source: Reuters
February 4, 2009
Presidents do not like to admit mistakes. They see it as a sign of weakness. That is why it was noteworthy that Barack Obama publicly admitted making a mistake only two weeks after taking power.
Obama's slang admission that "I screwed up" in pushing ahead with Tom Daschle as U.S. health care chief despite a controversy over unpaid taxes was a sign of the new style he brings to the White House.
The last president, George W. Bush, struggled to identify a mistake
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
February 5, 2009
The American Association of Public Opinion Research has censured a Johns Hopkins University professor for refusing to disclose “basic facts” about his controversial research that estimated the number of civilians who have died in Iraq since the 2003 invasion is hundreds of thousands more than most other estimates.
The association conducted an eight-month inquiry into results published by Gilbert Burnham in the October 2006 issue of The Lancet, a British medical journal, that estimat
