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: Sky News
July 26, 2008
150 years ago, on 26th July 1858, the first Jewish MP sat in Parliament. It reminds us that our open and inclusive society was only achieved after a series of significant and hard fought changes. This was one of them.
Lionel Rothschild was elected as MP for the City of London 11 years before. However, he refused to take his seat because Parliament prescribed a Christian oath. Instead he campaigned for change, in order that he could declare his loyalty, but as a Jew. After many set b
Source: Spiegel Online
July 25, 2008
Only a few weeks after its dramatic Berlin opening, the Madame Tussauds waxworks museum is back in the headlines. First it drew criticism for including Hitler and his bunker in its exhibition. Then a vandal decapitated the Hitler wax figure on the first day it was open to the public. And now the museum has angered politicians in the state of Bavaria for depicting a controversial former German defense minister as a "villain."
In a display entitled, "Heroes and Villain
Source: AP
July 25, 2008
A court sentenced one of Argentina's most feared former military leaders to life in prison on Thursday for the 1977 kidnapping, torture and killing of four leftist activists.
Luciano Benjamin Menendez, 81, was commander of the regional Third Army Corps in Cordoba for five years during Argentina's 1976-83 military dictatorship and controlled one of the regime's most notorious torture centers.
Hours before the sentencing, an unrepentant Menendez read a statement in front
Source: International Herald Tribune
July 25, 2008
SREBRENICA, Bosnia and Herzegovina: Fadila Efendik had little time to rejoice this week over the capture of Radovan Karadzic, the man she blames for the death of her only son: She was too busy looking for his missing and scattered body parts.
The arrest Monday of Karadzic, the wartime leader of the Bosnian Serbs accused of masterminding the worst massacre in Europe since World War II, brought her cold comfort, Efendik said.
She nervously played with her head scarf and s
Source: Reuters
July 25, 2008
The Beijing News is being investigated by Chinese officials after publishing a photograph of casualties from the protests at Tiananmen Square in 1989. The tabloid newspaper carried a photograph of victims being carried away on bicycles alongside an interview with the photographer Liu Xiangcheng. Chinese media are ordered to avoid references to the protests.
Source: Fox News
July 25, 2008
A judge Friday ordered former Atlantic City Mayor Robert Levy to serve three years probation and pay a $5,000 fine for lying about his Vietnam War service to receive extra veteran's benefits.
During a sentencing hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Jerome Simandle also ordered Levy to repay the $25,000 in extra benefits he received as a result of the lies.
Known as the "missing mayor" because he dropped out of sight for two weeks last fall, Levy later admitted
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 25, 2008
"I'm back home again," said Maria von Trapp in Salzburg, after spending several nights in her childhood home, which has been transformed into a hotel.
Located in an upmarket district of Salzburg, the "Villa Trapp" once belonged to the von Trapps, who gained global fame in the 1965 blockbuster starring Julie Andrews, which tells the story of a trainee nun who captures the heart of a lonely widower after introducing his seven children to the joy of music.
Source: BBC
July 25, 2008
A treasure trove of history preserved by nature for millions of years in eastern India is threatened with extinction.
Plant fossils, scattered all over the Rajmahal Hills in Sahebganj district of Jharkhand state, are fast finding their way into the hundreds of crusher machines that are reducing them into stone chips to be used in road construction.
Spread over approximately 2,600 sq km, the Rajmahal Hills are home to plant fossils dating back between 68 million years
Source: CNN
July 25, 2008
Sen. John McCain on Friday said as president he would consider bringing Osama bin Laden to justice through a Nuremberg-like international trial.
He told CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "We have various options. The Nuremberg Trials are certainly an example of the kind of tribunal that we could move forward with. I don't think we'd have any difficulty in devising an international -- internationally supported mechanism that would mete out justice. There's no problem there."
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
July 25, 2008
U.S. military spending on the war in Iraq has nearly matched the cost
of the war in Vietnam, according to a new Congressional Research
Service analysis of the financial costs of wars throughout U.S.
history. And total post-9/11 U.S. military spending has exceeded the
cost of Vietnam by a considerable margin.
The ongoing war in Iraq has incurred an estimated $648 billion to date,
and total post-9/11 military spending including the Iraq War,
Afghanistan and other terrorism-related mi
Source: AP
July 25, 2008
Like a religious relic, the heart of composer Frederic Chopin rests in a Warsaw church, untouched since it was preserved in alcohol after his death in 1849 at age 39.
And that's how the Polish government wants to keep it.
Scientists want to remove the heart for DNA tests to see if Chopin actually died from cystic fibrosis and not tuberculosis as his death certificate stated. But the government says that's not a good reason to disturb the remains of a revered native son.
Source: HNN Staff based on a report by ABC News
July 25, 2008
Barack Obama drew a crowd estimated at 200,000 people in Berlin yesterday.
This not only surpassed his own record of 75,000 in Portland (which was aided by the presence of a rock band performance earlier in the day), but the record of both Presidents Kennedy and Reagan.
When President Kennedy delivered his famous 'Ich bin ein Berliner' speech in 1963 he attracted a crowd of 120,000.
Nearly a quarter century later President Reagan told Gorbachev to "
Source: CNN
July 25, 2008
The howling wind across a remote
landscape, a creaky metal gate or a run-in with a rattlesnake or
gun-toting local are the things that attract ghost towners. They are
history buffs who take their outdoor adventures with a dash of mystery.
Just as traditional outdoors enthusiasts enjoy mountaineering or hiking,
and tech-minded gadget lovers enjoy geocaching, ghost towners have their
own agenda: seeking out, documenting and photographing towns that one day
will cease to exist."We a
Source: International Herald Tribune
July 24, 2008
It may sound like the escapist indulgence of a well-fed man fleeing
the misery around him. But when Jawdat Khoudary opens the first ever
museum of archaeology in Gaza this month, it will be an act of Palestinian
patriotism, showing how this increasingly poor and isolated coastal strip
ruled by the Islamists of Hamas was once a thriving multicultural
crossroad.
The exhibit is housed in a stunning hall made up partly of the saved
stones of old houses, discarded wood ties of a former r
Source: Salt Lake Tribune
July 25, 2008
OSEPA - Benjamin Pykles scans the southern edge of this old townsite in
Utah's desolate Skull Valley, looking for the front wheel of a century-old
tricyle. The New York anthropologist believes the relic reveals a lot
about the Polynesian pioneer community that endured for a 28-year period
straddling the turn of the 20th century."This is not just some dreary place. There were kids here and they were
having fun," Pykles says as he finds his quarry during a tour Wednesday.
He records the w
Source: Yahoo
July 24, 2008
Australia's greatest ancient
Aboriginal rock art is at risk of being damaged or destroyed because it
sits at the epicentre of the country's resources boom, experts say.
The etchings of men and animals on the rocks of the Burrup Peninsula, some
of which are believed to be up to 30,000 years old, lie in Western
Australia's remote and mineral-laden Pilbara region.
Images carved onto the red rocks scattering the landscape include
kangaroos, lizards and emu tracks as well as the ex
Source: AP
July 25, 2008
Thomas Nast's political caricatures in the early 1870s so bedeviled New York City's corrupt Boss Tweed that he once bellowed: "Stop them damn pictures! I don't care what the papers write about me. My constituents can't read. But, damn it, they can see pictures."
Not only can most of us read these days, almost everyone has a TV set. And our late-night comedians provide the exaggerated portraits — fair or not — of our political leaders.
Jimmy Carter? Inept bean
Source: National Security Archive
July 22, 2008
Washington D.C., July 22, 2008 - After hearing arguments today, a federal court in New York decided that the government must release most of the sealed grand jury records from the 1951 indictment of alleged Soviet spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. In response to a petition filed by the National Security Archive and others, the government conceded in a June filing that the Rosenberg case is of “significant historical importance” and therefore said it would not contest the release of testimony of
Source: History Today (UK)
August 1, 2008
A ten-year project to mark the centenary of the Russian Revolution is to be launched this week. A major new study of Russia’s involvement in the First World War and 1917 Revolution will be announced at a symposium at the University of Aberdeen from July 22nd-24th. Experts from across the world will agree to publish at least six new books by 2017, covering the military struggle, international relations, the home front and culture. Dr Tony Heywood, Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at the
Source: AP
July 24, 2008
President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine said Thursday that he believed that a former friend had been involved in his near-fatal poisoning four years ago.
At a news conference, Yushchenko openly placed his suspicions on the former friend, David Zhvania, a member of a pro-presidential parliamentary faction who is the godfather of one of Yushchenko's children. It was a sharp departure from the past, when he refused to identify who he thought was responsible for the poisoning.
