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
June 11, 2008
British Muslim parents are to blame for leaving their children open to the lure of Islamic extremism, according to an influential academic
Dr Farhan Nizami CBE, a key adviser on Islam to the Prince of Wales, accused British Muslims of failing to make sure their children learn to speak English or supporting them in their education.
He said this leaves them alienated from mainstream society and exposed to being groomed by radical Islamic groups.
It is the fir
Source: Telegraph
June 11, 2008
A leading university has been forced to extend degree courses by 12 months because students are poorly educated.
Imperial College London has added a year to engineering degrees to teach the basic skills that students failed to learn at school and college.
Most of the first year is now spent going over remedial mathematics and science.
An admissions tutor at Imperial - ranked the world's fifth best university last year - said many "spoon-fed" stude
Source: AP
June 11, 2008
Archaeologists in Jordan continued to say Tuesday they'd discovered a cave underneath one of the world's oldest churches that may have been an even more ancient site of Christian worship, but an outside expert expressed caution about the claim.
Archaeologist Abdel-Qader Hussein, head of the Rihab Center for Archaeological Studies, said this week that the cave was unearthed in the northern Jordanian city of Rihab after three months of excavation and shows evidence of early Christian
Source: Yemen Observer
June 11, 2008
Any official proved to be involved in archeology crimes must be removed from his position and charged with the crime of defiling Yemen’s historical identity and cultural heritage, stated one of the recommendations that participants agreed on during a symposium called “The Protection of Yemen’s Archeology and the Preservation of its Civilization Heritage,” organized by the Progress and Advancement Forum on Sunday.
Under the sponsorship of Yahya Mohammed Abdullah Saleh, Chairmen of th
Source: AFP
June 11, 2008
Nepal's former king Gyanendra left his palace in Kathmandu late on Wednesday for the last time to live as a commoner in a former hunting lodge on the outskirts of the capital.
Gyanendra and his wife Komal Shah left in the back of a black Mercedes as hundreds of riot police surrounded the main gate of the sprawling Narayanhiti palace complex in the heart of the ancient temple-studded city.
Shouts of "long live the republic" rang out from a crowd of about 500 pe
Source: AP
June 10, 2008
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a former Democratic presidential contender, said Monday he wants the House to consider a resolution to impeach President Bush.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi consistently has said impeachment was ''off the table.''
Kucinich, D-Ohio, read his proposed impeachment language in a floor speech. He contended Bush deceived the nation and violated his oath of office in leading the country into the Iraq war.
Kucinich introduced a resolution last year to
Source: National Security Archive
June 11, 2008
Washington, DC, June 11, 2008 - An American spy plane went missing over the Soviet Union at the height of the Cuban missile crisis for one and a quarter hours without the Air Force informing either President Kennedy or Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, according to a new book by Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs (drawing on documents posted here today by the National Security Archive.)
The accidental intrusion into Soviet air space by a U-2 belonging to the Strategic A
Source: WaPo
June 11, 2008
A lawsuit over billions of dollars in royalties collected from oil and gas companies that leased Native American land has meandered through the court system for so long that a federal judge recently compared the case to Charles Dickens's "Bleak House," a tome about a long-running and convoluted legal dispute.
"The 'suit has, in course of time, become so complicated' that 'no two lawyers can talk about it for five minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to al
Source: AFP
June 10, 2008
Heir to the throne Prince Charles on Tuesday paid off a family debt incurred more than 350 years ago -- but was spared the accumulated interest that could have run into tens of thousands of pounds.
Charles handed over 453 pounds and 15 pence (572 euros and 20 euro cents, 885 dollars and four cents) which King Charles II failed to pay to the Clothiers Company in Worcester, central England, in 1651.
The king had commissioned uniforms for his troops to fight the republican
Source: AFP
June 10, 2008
A dinosaur bone discovered in Australia has defied prevailing wisdom about how the world's continents separated from a super-continent millions of years ago, a new study published on Tuesday said.
The 19-centimetre (eight-inch) bone was found in southeastern Australia but it comes from a very close cousin to Megaraptor, a flesh-ripping monster that lorded over swathes of South American some 90 million years ago.
The extraordinary similarity between the two giant theropo
Source: Politico.com
June 10, 2008
Barack Obama’s vice presidential vetting team will undoubtedly run across some quirky and potentially troublesome issues as it goes about the business of scouring the backgrounds of possible running mates. But it’s unlikely they’ll find one so curious as Virginia Democratic Sen. Jim Webb’s affinity for the cause of the Confederacy.
Webb is no mere student of the Civil War era. He’s an author, too, and he’s left a trail of writings and statements about one of the rawest and most sens
Source: BBC
June 9, 2008
An audio recording of the 1958 secret trial of Hungary's executed prime minister Imre Nagy is being played in public for the first time. It marks the 50th anniversary of Mr Nagy's trial for treason for his role in the 1956 anti-Soviet uprising.
The 52 hours of tapes began playing on Monday morning, and will continue in real time in a gallery in Budapest.
The 1956 revolution is seen by many Hungarians as one of the proudest moments in their history.
Mr Nagy was prime minister during th
Source: Times (UK)
June 11, 2008
President Bush has admitted to The Times that his gun-slinging rhetoric made the world believe that he was a “guy really anxious for war” in Iraq. He said that his aim now was to leave his successor a legacy of international diplomacy for tackling Iran.
In an exclusive interview, he expressed regret at the bitter divisions over the war and said that he was troubled about how his country had been misunderstood. “I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a differe
Source: http://english.hani.co.kr
June 10, 2008
Conservative business group proposed history textbook revisions in April and gov’t followed.
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The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology is drawing criticism for allegedly trying to become involved in the process of revising history textbooks, after its plans to hold a rare meeting with the textbook editors. The ministry’s plan came about following a strong call from conservative historians and businesses for revisions to middle and high school history textboo
Source: AFP
June 9, 2008
World military spending grew 45 percent in the past decade, with the United States accounting for nearly half of all expenditures, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said Monday.
Military spending grew six percent last year alone, according to SIPRI’s annual report.
In 2007, 1,339 billion dollars (851 billion euros) was spent on arms and other military expenditures, corresponding to 2.5 percent of global gross domestic product, or GDP, and 202
Source: Independent (UK)
June 10, 2008
Nearly 120 years after the last massacre of Native Americans by the United States cavalry at Wounded Knee, some of the lands confiscated from their descendants are to be returned to the Oglala Sioux.
Badlands National Park in South Dakota, which encompasses Wounded Knee, is one of the poorest parts of the US. It has few paved roads. Unemployment is shockingly high among the Sioux. Alcoholism is rampant and there are high rates of suicide and imprisonment of American Indians.
Source: BBC
June 10, 2008
The US naval fleet's smallest nuclear-powered submarine is to attempt to locate the wreck of a ship which sank off the Yorkshire coast in 1779.
The Bonhomme Richard - captained by Scottish-born sailor John Paul Jones - went down off Flamborough Head.
Jones is widely regarded as the founder of the modern day US navy.
History experts now hope to use modern technology to find the wreck, which has been the subject of a number of discovery attempts in recent yea
Source: International Herald Tribune
June 10, 2008
A hushed group of people, nearly four dozen strong, slipped into the American Museum of Natural History, ahead of the crowds. Their cheeks were smeared with rust-colored dye, red and white woven bands encircled their heads.
They were at the end of a journey that had, in its way, taken years. Unlike the thousands of schoolchildren that filled the museum's halls Monday, these 46 visitors were there for an altogether different purpose: to take their ancestors home.
"O
Source: LAT
June 10, 2008
PHILADELPHIA, MISS. -- Some places are defined by a single event. Roswell, N.M., will always be known for space aliens, Dallas for assassination. And this little town in the Piney Woods of eastern Mississippi will forever be the site of one of the most brutal crimes of the civil rights era.
But Philadelphia -- situated in a county once dubbed Bloody Neshoba -- can now add a remarkable footnote to its most nefarious chapter: The rural county where three men were killed for trying to
Source: International Herald Tribune
June 9, 2008
So many American planes and airmen were stationed on this French Mediterranean island during World War II that they called it the USS Corsica - an unsinkable aircraft carrier. Up and down its flat eastern shore stretched a string of 14 airfields, the jumping-off points for B-25 bombers and P-47 fighters that attacked German lines throughout Italy, southern France and Austria.
More than 50,000 American pilots, mechanics, nurses, doctors, cooks, truck drivers and others passed through
